Grice’s Dictionary
H. P. Grice, St. John’s Oxford
Compiled
by Grice’s Playgroup, The Bodleian
absolutum: the absolutum is one, unlike Grice’s absoluta, or absolutes.
Trust Grice to pluralise Bradley’s absolute. While it is practical to restore
the root of ‘axis’ for Grice’s value (validum, optimum), it is not easy to find
a grecianism for the absolutum absolute. Lewis and Short have “absolvere,”
which they render as
‘to loosen from, to make loose, set free, detach, untie (usu. trop., the fig. being
derived from fetters, qs. a vinculis solvere, like “vinculis exsolvere,” Plaut.
Truc. 3, 4, 10). So that makes sense. Lewis and Short also have “absolutum,” which they render as“absolute, unrestricted,
unconditional,” – as in Cicero: “hoc mihi videor videre, esse quasdam cum
adjunctione necessitudines, quasdam simplices et absolutas” (Inv. 2, 57, 170). Grice
repatedly uses the plural ‘abosolutes,’ and occasionally the singular. Obviously,
Grice has in mind the absolute-relative distinction, not wanting to be seen as
relativist, unless it is a constructionist relativist. Grice refers to Bradley in ‘Prolegomena,’ and has an essay
on the ‘absolutes.’ It is all back to when German philosopher F. Schiller, of
Corpus, publishes “Mind!” Its frontispiece is a portrait of the absolute, “very
much like the Bellman’s completely blank map in The hunting of the snark.” The
absolutum is the sum of all being, an emblem of idealism. Idealism dominates
Oxford for part of Grice’s career. The realist mission, headed by Wilson, is to
clean up philosophy’s act Bradley’s Appearance and reality, mirrors the point of
the snark. Bradley uses the example of a lump of sugar. It all begins to
crumble, In Oxonian parlance, the absolute is a boo-jum, you see. Bradley is clear
here, to irritate Ayer: the absolutum is, put simply, a higher unity, pure
spirit. “It can never and it enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution
and progress.” Especially at Corpus, tutees are aware of Hartmann’s absolutum.
Barnes thinks he can destroy with his emotivism. Hartmann, otherwise a
naturalist, is claims that this or that value exists, not in the realm (Reich)
of nature, but as an ideal essence of a thing, but in a realm which is not
less, but more real than nature. For Hartmann, if a value exists, it is not
relative, but absolute, objective, and rational, and so is a value judgment. Like
Grice, for Hartmann, the relativity dissolves upon conceiving and constructing
a value as an absolutum, not a relativum. The essence of a thing need not
reduce to a contingence. To conceive the essence of a table is to conceive what
the métier of a table. Like Hartmann, Grice is very ‘systematik’ axiologist, and
uses ‘relative’ variously. Already in the Oxford Philosophical Society, Grice
conceives of an utterer’s meaning and his communicatum is notoriously relative.
It is an act of communication relative to an agent. For Grice, there is hardly
a realm of un-constructed reality, so his construction of value as an absolutum
comes as no surprise. Grice is especially irritated by Julie Andrews in Noël
Coward’s “Relative values” and this Oxonian cavalier attitude he perceives in Barnes
and Hare, a pinko simplistic attitude against any absolute. Unlike
Hartmann, Grice adopts not so much a neo-Kantian as an Ariskantian tenet. The
ratiocinative part of the soul of a personal being is designated the proper
judge in the power structure of the soul. Whatever is relative to this
particular creature successfully attains, ipso facto, absolute value. Refs.: For
a good overview of emotivism in Oxford v. Urmson’s The emotive theory of
ethics. Grice, “Values, morals, absolutes, and the metaphysical,” The H. P.
Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), c 9-f. 24, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley.
abstractum: The usual phrase in Grice is ‘abstract’ as adjective
and applied to ‘entity’ as anything troublesome to nominalism. At Oxford, Grice
belongs to the class for members whose class have no members. If class C and
class C have the same members, they are the
same. A class xx is a set just in case there is a class yy such that x∈yx∈y. A class which is not a set is an
improper, not a proper class, or a well-ordered one, as Burali-Forti puts it in
‘Sulle classi ben ordinate.’ Grice reads
Cantor's essay and finds an antinomy on the third page. He mmediately writes his
uncle “I am reading Cantor and find an antinomy.” The antinomy is obvious and
concerns the class of all classes that are not members of themselves. This
obviously leads to a pragmatic contradiction, to echo Moore, since this class must
be and not be a member of itself and not a member of itself. Grice had access
to the Correspondence of Zermelo and re-wrote the antinomy.Which leads Grice to
Austin. For Austin thinks he can lead a class, and that Saturday morning is a
good time for a class of members whose classes have no members, almost an
insult. Grice is hardly attached to canonicals, not even first-order predicate logic
with identity and class theory. Grice sees extensionalism asa a position imbued
with the spirit of nominalism yet dear to the philosopher particularly
impressed by the power of class theory. But Grice is having in mind the concretum-abstractum
distinction, and as an Aristotelian, he wants to defend a category as an
abstractum or universalium. Lewis and Short have ‘concrescere,’ rendered as ‘to
grow together; hence with the prevailing idea of uniting, and generally of soft
or liquid substances which thicken; to harden, condense, curdle, stiffen,
congeal, etc. (very freq., and class. in prose and poetry).’ For ‘abstractum,’
they have ‘abstrăhere, which they render as ‘to draw away from a place or
person, to drag or pull away.’ The ability to see a horse (hippos) without
seeing horseness (hippotes), as Plato remarks, is a matter of stupidity. Yet,
perhaps bue to the commentary by his editors, Grice feels defensive about
proposition. Expanding on an essay on the propositional complexum,’ the idea is
that if we construct a complexum step by step, in class-theoretical terms, one
may not committed to an ‘abstract entity.’ But how unabstract is class theory?
Grice hardly attaches to the canonicals of first-order predicate calculus with
identity together with class theory. An item i is a universalium and 'abstractum' iff
i fails to occupy a region in space and time. This raises a few
questions. It is conceivable that an items that is standardly regarded as
an 'abstractum' may nonetheless occupy a volumes of space and time. The school
of latter-day nominalism is for ever criticised at Oxford, and Grice is no
exception. The topic of the abstractum was already present in Grice’s previous
generation, as in the essay by Ryle on the systematically misleading
expression, and the category reprinted in Flew. For it to be, a particular
concretum individuum or prima substantia has to be something, which is what an
abstractum universaium provides. A universal is part of the ‘essentia’ of the
particular. Ariskants motivation for for coining “to katholou” is doxastic. Aristotle
claims that to have a ‘doxa’ requires there to be an abstract universalium, not
apart from (“para”), but holding of (“kata”) a concretum individuum. Within the
“this” (“tode”) there is an aspect of “something” (“ti.”). Aristotle uses the “hêi”
(“qua”) locution, which plays a crucial role in perceiving. Ariskant’s remark
that a particular horse is always a horse (with a species and a genus) may
strike the non-philosopher as trivial. Grice strongly denies that its
triviality is unenlightening, and he loves to quote from Plato. Liddell and
Scott have “ἱππότης,” rendered as “horse-nature, the concept of horse,”
Antisth. et Pl. ap. Simp.in Cat. 208.30,32, Sch. Arist Id.p.167F. Then there is
the ‘commensurate universal,’ the major premise is a universal proposition. Grice
provides a logical construction of such lexemes as “abstractum” and
“universalium,” and “concretum” and “individuum,” or “atomon” in terms of two
relations, “izzing” and “hazzing.” x is an individuum or atomon iff nothing
other than x izzes x. Austin is Austin, and Strawson is Strawson. Now, x is a primum
individuum, proton atomon, or prima substantia, iff x is an individuum, and
nothing hazzes x. One needs to
distinguish between a singular individuum and a particular (“to kathekaston,” particulare)
simpliciter. Short and Lewis have “partĭcŭlāris, e, adj.” which they render,
unhelpfully, as “particular,” but also as “of or concerning a part, partial,
particular.” “Propositiones aliae universales, aliae particulares, ADogm. Plat.
3, p. 35, 34: partĭcŭlārĭter is
particularly, ADogm. Plat. 3, p. 33, 32; opp. “generaliter,” Firm. Math. 1, 5
fin.; opp. “universaliter,” Aug. Retract. 1, 5 fin. Cf. Strawson,
“Particular and general,” crediting Grice twice; the second time about a fine
point of denotatum: ‘the tallest man that ever lived, lives, or will live.” To
define a ‘particular,’ you need to introduce, as Ariskant does, the idea of
predication. (∀x)(x
is an individuum)≡◻(∀y)(y izzes x)⊃(x izzes y). (∀x)(x izz a particulare(≡◻(∀y)(x
izzes predicable of y)⊃(x
izzes y Λ y izzes x). Once we have defined a ‘particular,’ we can go
and define a ‘singulare,’ a ‘tode ti,’ a ‘this what.” (∀x)(x izzes singulare)⊃(x izzes an individuum). There’s
further implicate to come. (∀x)(x izzes a particulare)⊃(x izzes an individuum)). The concern by Grice
with the abstractum as a “universalium in re” can be traced back to his reading
of Aristotle’s Categoriæ, for his Lit. Hum., and later with Austin and
Strawson. Anything but a ‘prima substantia,’ ‒ viz. essence, accident, attribute,
etc. ‒ may be said to belong in the realm of the abstractum or
universalium qua predicable. As such, an abstractum and univeralium is not a
spatio-temporal continuant. However, a category shift or
‘subjectification,’ by Grice allows a universalium as subject. The topic is
approached formally by means of the notion of order. First-order predicate
calculus ranges over this or that spatio-temporal continuant individual, in
Strawson’s use of the term. A higher-order predicate calculus ranges over this
or that abstractum, a feature, and beyond. An abstractum universalium is only referred
to in a second-order predicate calculus. This is Grice’s attempt to approach
Aristkant in pragmatic key. In his exploration of the abstractum, Grice is
challenging extensionalism, so fashionable in the New World within The School
of Latter-Day Nominalists. Grice is careful here since he is well aware that
Bennett has called him a meaning-nominalist. Refs.: For pre-play group
reflections see Ryle’s Categories and Systematically misleading expressions.
Explorations by other members of Grice’s playgroup are Strawson, ‘Particular
and general’ and Warnock, ‘Metaphysics in logic,’ The main work by Grice at
Oxford on the ‘abstractum’ is with Austin (f. 15) and later with Strawson (f.23).
Grice, “Aristotle’s Categoriae,” The H. P. Grice Papers, S. II, c. 6-f. 15 and
c. 6, f. 23, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley.
acceptability: Grice generalizes his desirability and credibility
functions into a single acceptability. Acceptability has obviously degrees.
Grice is thinking of ‘scales’ alla: must, optimal acceptability (for both
modalities), should (medium acceptability), and ought (defeasible
acceptability). He develops the views in The John Locke lectures, having
introduced ‘accept,’ in his BA lecture on ‘Intention and Uncertainty.’ In fact,
much as in “Causal Theory” he has an excursus on ‘Implication,’ here he has,
also in italics, an excursus on “acceptance.” It seems that a degree of analogy
between intending and believing has to be admitted; likewise the presence of a
factual commitment in the case of an expression of intention. We can now use
the term ‘acceptance’ to express a generic concept applying both to cases of
intention and to cases of belief. He who intends to do A and he who believes
that he will do A can both be said to accept (or to accept it as being the
case) that he will do A. We could now attempt to renovate the three-pronged
analysis discussed in Section I, replacing references in that analysis to being
sure or certain that one will do A by references to accepting that one will do
A. We might reasonably hope thereby to escape the objections raised in Section
I, since these objections seemingly centred on special features of the notion of
certainty which would NOT attach to the generic notion of acceptance. Hope that
the renovated analysis will enable us to meet the sceptic will not immediately
be realised, for the sceptic can still as (a) why some cases of acceptance
should be specially dispensed from the need for evidential backing, and (b) if
certain cases are exempt from evidential justification but not from
justification, what sort of justification is here required. Some progress might
be achieved by adopting a different analysis of intention in terms of
acceptance. We might suggest that ‘Grice intends to go to Harborne’ is very
roughly equivalent to the conjunction of ‘Grice accepts-1 that he will go to
Harborne’ and ‘Grice accepts-2 that his going to Harborne will result from the
effect of his acceptance-1 that he will go to Harborne. The idea is that when a
case of acceptance is also a case of belief, the accepter does NOT regard his
acceptance as contributing towards the realisation of the state of affairs the
future the existence of which he accepts; whereas when a case of acceptance is
not a case of belief but a case of intention, he does regard the acceptance as
so contributing. Such an analysis clearly enables us to deal with the sceptic
with regard to this question (a), viz. why some cases of acceptance (those
which are cases of intention) should be specially exempt from the need of
evidential backing. For if my going to Harborne is to depend causally on my
acceptance that I shall-c go, the possession of satisfactory evidence that I
shall-c go will involve possession of the information that I accept that I
shall-c go. Obviously, then, I cannot (though others can) come to accept that I
shall-c go on the basis of satisfactory evidence, for to have such evidence I
should have already to have accepted that I shall-c go. I cannot decide whether
or not to accept-1 that I shall-c go on the strength of evidence which includes
as a datum that I do accept-1 that I shall-c go. Grice grants that we are still
unable to deal with the sceptic as regards question (b), viz. what sort of
justification is available for those cases of acceptance which require
non-evidential justification even though they involve a factual commitment.
Though it is clear that, on this analysis, one must not expect the intender to
rely on evidence for his statements of what he will in fact do, we have not
provided any account of the nature of the non-evidential considerations which
may be adduced to justify such a statement, nor (a fortiori) of the reasons why
such considerations might legitimately thought to succeed in justifying such a
statement. Refs.: Grice, “Intention and uncertainty,” The British Academy, and
BANC, MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library.
acceptum: Grice needs a past participle for a ‘that’-clause of
something ‘thought’. He has ‘creditum’ for what is believed, and
‘desideratum’ for what is desired. So he uses ‘acceptum’ for what is
accepted, a neutral form to cover both the desideratum and the
creditum. Short and Lewis have ‘accipio,’ f. ‘capio.’ Grice uses the
abbreviation “Acc” for this. As he puts it in the Locke lectures: "An idea I want to explore is that we represent
the sentences ‘Smith should be
recovering his health by now’ and ‘Smith should join the cricket club’ as having the following structures. First, a common
"rationality" operator 'Acc', to be heard as "it is
reasonable that", "it is acceptABLE that", "it
ought to be that", "it should be that", or in some
other similar way.Next, one or other of two mode operators, which in the case
of the first are to be written as
'⊢' and in the case
of the second are to be written as '!.’ Finally a 'radical', to be represented by
'r' or some other lower-case letter. The structure for the
second is ‘Acc + ⊢ + r. For the second, ‘Acc + ! + r,’
with each symbol falling within the scope of its predecessor. Grice is not a
psychologist, but he speaks of the ‘soul.’ He was a philosopher engaged in
philosophical psychology. The psychological theory which Grice envisages would
be deficient as a theory to explain behaviour if it did not contain provision
for interests in the ascription of psychological states otherwise than as tools
for explaining and predicting behaviour, interests e. g. on the part of one
creature to be able to ascribe these rather than those psychological states to
another creature because of a concern for the other creature. Within such a
theory it should be possible to derive strong motivations on the part of the
creatures Subjects to the theory against the abandonment of the central
concepts of the theory and so of the theory itself, motivations which the
creatures would or should regard as justified.
Indeed, only from within the framework of such a theory, I think, can
matters of evaluation, and so, of the evaluation of modes of explanation, be
raised at all. If I conjecture aright, then, the entrenched system contains the
materials needed to justify its own entrenchment; whereas no rival system
contains a basis for the justification of anything at all. We should recall that
the first rendering that Liddell and Scott give for “ψυχή” is “life;” the
tripartite division of “ψ., οἱ δὲ περὶ Πλάτωνα καὶ Ἀρχύτας καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ
Πυθαγόρειοι τὴν ψ. τριμερῆ ἀποφαίνονται, διαιροῦντες εἰς λογισμὸν καὶ θυμὸν καὶ
ἐπιθυμίαν,” Pl.R.439e sqq.; in Arist. “ἡ ψ. τούτοις ὥρισται, θρεπτικῷ,
αἰσθητικῷ, διανοητικῷ, κινήσει: πότερον δὲ τοὔτων ἕκαστόν ἐστι ψ. ἢ ψυχῆς
μόριον;” de An.413b11, cf. PA641b4; “ἡ θρεπτικὴ ψ.” Id.de An.434a22,
al.; And Aristotle also has Grice’s favourite, ‘psychic,’ ψυχικός , ή, όν,
“of the soul or life, spiritual, opp. “σωματικός, ἡδοναί” Arist.EN1117b28. The
compound “psichiologia” is first used in "Psichiologia de ratione animae
humanae," (in Bozicevic-Natalis, Vita Marci Maruli Spalatensis). A
footnote in “Method,” repr. in “Conception” dates Grice’s lectures at
Princeton. Grice is forever grateful to Carnap for having coined ‘pirot,’ or
having thought to have coined. Apparently, someone had used the expression
before him to mean some sort of exotic fish. He starts by listing this or that
a focal problem. The first problem is circularity. He refers to the
dispositional behaviouristic analysis by Ryle. The second focal problem is the
alleged analytic status of a psychological law. One problem concerns some
respect for Grice’s own privileged access to this or that state and this or
that avowal of this or that state being incorrigible. The fourth problem
concerns the law-selection. He refers to pessimism. He talks of folk-science. D
and C are is each predicate-constant in some law L in some psychological
theory θ. This or that instantiable of D or C may well be a set or a
property or neither. Grices way of Ramseyified naming: There is just one
predicate D, such that nomological generalization L introducing D via implicit
definition in theory θ obtains. Uniqueness is essential since D is
assigned to a names for a particular instantiable (One can dispense with
uniqueness by way of Ramseyified description discussed under ‘ramseyified
description.’) Grice trusts he is not overstretching Ramsey’s original
intention. He applies Ramsey-naming and Ramsey-describing to pain. He who
hollers is in pain. Or rather, He who is in pain hollers. (Sufficient but not
necessary). He rejects disjunctional physicalism on it sounding harsh, as Berkeley
puts it, to say that Smiths brains being in such and such a state is a case of,
say, judging something to be true on insufficient evidence. He criticises the
body-soul identity thesis on dismissing =s main purpose, to license predicate
transfers. Grice wasnt sure what his presidential address to the American
Philosophical Association will be about. He chose the banal (i.e. the
ordinary-language counterpart of something like a need we ascribe to a squirrel
to gobble nuts) and the bizarre: the philosophers construction of need and
other psychological, now theoretical terms. In the proceedings, Grice
creates the discipline of Pology. He cares to mention philosophers Aristotle,
Lewis, Myro, Witters, Ramsey, Ryle, and a few others. The essay became popular
when, of all people, Block, cited it as a programme in functionalism,
which it is Grices method in functionalist philosophical psychology. Introduces
Pology as a creature-construction discipline. Repr. in “Conception,” it
reached a wider audience. The essay is highly subdivided, and covers a lot of
ground. Grice starts by noting that, contra Ryle, he wants to see psychological
predicates as theoretical concepts. The kind of theory he is having in mind is
folksy. The first creature he introduces to apply his method is Toby, a
squarrel, that is a reconstructed squirrel. Grice gives some principles of
Pirotology. Maxims of rational behaviour compound to form what he calls an
immanuel, of which The Conversational Immanuel is a part. Grice concludes with
a warning against the Devil of Scientism, but acknowledges perhaps he was
giving much too credit to Myros influence on this! “Method”
in “Conception,” philosophical psychology, Pirotology. The Immanuel
section is perhaps the most important from the point of view of conversation as
rational cooperation. For he identifies three types of generality: formal,
applicational, and content-based. Also, he allows for there being different
types of imannuels. Surely one should be the conversational immanuel. Ryle
would say that one can have a manual, yet now know how to use it! And theres
also the Witters-type problem. How do we say that the conversationalist is
following the immanuel? Perhaps the statement is too strong – cf. following a
rule – and Grices problems with resultant and basic procedures, and how the
former derive from the latter! This connects with Chomsky, and in general with
Grices antipathy towards constitutive rules! In “Uncertainty,” Grice warns that
his interpretation of Prichards willing that as a state should not preclude a
physicalist analysis, but in Method it is all against physicalism. In Method, from the mundane to the recondite, he is
playful enough to say that primacy is no big deal, and that, if properly
motivated, he might give a reductive analysis of the buletic in terms of the
doxastic. But his reductive analysis of the doxastic in terms of the buletic
runs as follows: P judges that p iff P wills as follows: given any situation in
which P wills some end E and here are two non-empty classes K1 and
K2 of action types, such that: the performance by P of an
action-type belonging to K1 realises E1 just in
case p obtains, and the performance by the P of an action type belonging to of
K2 will realise E just in case p does not obtain, and here is
no third non-empty class K3 of action types such that the
performance by the P of an action type belonging to will realise E
whether p is true or p is false, in such situation, the P is to will that the P
performs some action type belonging to K1. Creature construction
allows for an account of freedom that will metaphysically justify absolute
value. Frankfurt has become famous for his second-order and
higher-order desires. Grice is exploring similar grounds in what comes out as
his “Method” (originally APA presidential address, now repr. in “Conception”).
Refs.: The obvious source is his “Method,” repr. in “Conception,” but the
keyword: “philosophical psychology” is useful in the Grice papers. There is a
specific essay on the power structure of the soul, The H. P. Grice Collection,
BANC.
Animatum
– anything thought. From ‘psyche,’ anima. Grice uses the symbol of the letter
psi here which he renders as ‘animatum.’
aporia: While aware of
Baker’s and Deutsch’s treatment of the ‘aporia’ in Aristotle’s account of
‘philos,’ Grice explores ‘aporia’ in Plato in the Thrasymachus on ‘legal
justice’ prior to ‘moral justice’ in Republic. in Dialectic, question for
discussion, difficulty, puzzle, “ἀπορίᾳ σχόμενος” Pl.Prt.321c; ἀ. ἣν ἀπορεῖς
ib.324d; “ἡ ἀ. ἰσότης ἐναντίων λογισμῶν” Arist. Top.145b1, al.; “ἔχει ἀπορίαν
περί τινος” Id.Pol.1285b28; “αἱ μὲν οὖν ἀ. τοιαῦταί τινες συμβαίνουσιν”
Id.EN1146b6; “οὐδεμίαν ποιήσει ἀ.” Id.Metaph.1085a27; ἀ. λύειν, διαλύειν, Id.MM
1201b1, Metaph.1062b31; “ἀπορίᾳ ἀπορίαν λύειν” D.S.1.37.Discussion with the Sophist Thrasymachus can
only lead to aporia. And the more I trust you, the more I
sink into an aporia of sorts. —Aha! roared Thrasymachus to
everyone's surprise. There it is! Socratic aporia is
back! Charge! neither Socrates' company nor Socrates himself gives any
convincing answer. So, he says, finding himself in a real aporia,
he visits Thrasymachus as well, and ... I
argue that a combination of these means in form that I call
“provocative-aporetic” better accounts for the means that Plato uses to exert a
protreptic effect on readers. Aporia is a simultaneously intellectual and
affective experience, and the way that readers choose to respond to aporia has
a greater protreptic effect than either affective or intellectual means alone. When
Socrates says he can 'transfer' the use of "just" to things related
to the 'soul,' what kind of conversational game is that? Grice took Socrates's manoeuvre very seriously.Socrates
relies on the tripartite theory of the soul. Plato,
actually -- since Socrates is a drammatis persona! In "Philosophical Eschatology, Metaphysics, and Plato's
Republic," H. P. Grice's purpose is to carry out a provocative-aporetic
reading Book I Grice argues that it is a dispute between two ways of
understanding 'just' which causes the aporia when Socrates tries to analyse
'just.' Although Socrates will not argue for the complexity and
tripartition of the soul until Bk. IV, we can at least note the contrast with
Thrasymachus' “idealize user” theory.For Socrates, agents are complex, and
justice coordinates the parts of the agent.For Thrasymachus, agents are simple
“users,” and justice is a tool for use. (2 - 3) Justice makes its
possessor happy; the function (telos, metier) argument. To make the
argument that justice is an excellence (virtus, arete) of soul (psyche) that
makes its possessor happy, Socrates relies on a method for discovering the
function (ἔργον, ergon, 352e1, cf. telos, metier, causa finalis) of any object
whatsoever. Socrates begins by differentiating between an exclusive
functions and an optimal function, so that we may discover the functions in
different types of objects, i.e., natural and artificial objects. We can
say an object performs some function (ergon) if one of the following conditions
holds.If the object is the only one that can do the work in
question, or If it is the object that does that work best.Socrates then
provides examples from different part-whole complexes to make his
point. The eye's exclusive function is to see, because no other organ is
specialized so as to perform just that function. A horse's work is to
carry riders into battle. Even though this might not be a horse's
EXCLUSIVE function, it may be its “optimal” function in that the horse is best
suited or designed by God to the task. Finally, the pruning knife is best
for tending to vines, not because it cannot cut anything else, but because it
is optimally suited for that task. Socrates' use of the pruning knife of
as an example of a thing's function resembles a return to the technē model,
since a craftsman must make the knife for a gardener to Socrates asks,
“Would you define this as the function of a horse and of anything else, as that
which someone does either through that thing alone, or best?” (...τοῦτο ἄν
θείης καὶ ἵππου καὶ ἄλλου ὁτουοῦν ἔργον, ὅ ἄν ἤ μόνῳ ἐκείνῳ ποιῇ τις ἤ ἄριστα;
352e1-2) Thrasymachus agrees to this definition of function. 91 use.But his use
of the eye — a bodily organ — should dissuade us from this view. One may
use these examples to argue that Socrates is in fact offering a new method to
investigate the nature of justice: 1) Find out what the functions of such
objects are2) determine (by observation, experiment, or even thought
experiment) cases where objects of such a kind perform their functions well and
cases where they perform them poorly; and 3) finally find out the
qualities that enable them to perform such functions well (and in the absence
of which they perform poorly), and these are their virtues.A crucial difference
between this method and technē model of justice lies in the interpretation that
each assigns to the realm of human artifacts. Polemarchus and Thrasymachus
both assume that the technē is unique as a form of knowledge for the power and
control that it offers users. In Polemarchus' case, the technē of justice,
“helping friends and harming enemies,” may be interpreted as a description of a
method for gaining political power within a traditional framework of communal
life, which assumes the oikos as the basic unit of power. Those families
that help their friends and harm their enemies thrive. Thrasymachus, on
the other hand, emphasizes the ways that technai grant users the power to
exploit nature to further their own, distinctively individual ends. Thus,
the shepherd exploits the sheep to make a livelihood for himself. Socrates'
approach differs from these by re-casting “mastery” over nature as submission
to norms that structure the natural world. For example, many factors contribute
to making This points to a distinction Socrates draws in Book X between
producers and users of artifacts. He uses the example of the blacksmith
who makes a bridle and the horseman who uses the bridle to argue that
production and use correspond to two gradations of knowledge (601c). The
ultimate purpose of the example is to provide a metaphor — using the craft
analogy — for identifying gradations of knowledge on a copy-original paradigm
of the form-participant relation. the pruning knife the optimal tool for
cutting vines: the shape of the human hand, the thickness and shape of the
vines, and the metal of the blade. Likewise, in order for horses to
optimally perform their “work,” they must be "healthy" and
strong. The conditions that bring about their "health" and
strength are not up to us, however."Control” only comes about through the
recognition of natural norms. Thus technē is a type of knowledge that
coordinates structures in nature.It is not an unlimited source of
power. Socrates' inclusion of the human soul (psyche) among those things
that have a function is the more controversial aspect of function
argument.Socrates says that the functions (erga) of the soul (psyche)
are “to engage in care-taking, ruling, and deliberation” and, later,
simply that the ergon (or function) of the soul (or psyche) is “to live”
(τὸ ζῆν, "to zen," 353d6). But the difficulty seems to be this:
the functions of pruning knives, horses, and bodily organs are determined with respect
to a limited and fairly unambiguous context that is already defined for
them. But what is this context with respect to the soul (psyche) of a
human individual? One answer might be that the social world — politics —
provides the context that defines the soul's function, just as the needs of the
human organism define the context in which the eye can perform a
function. But here a challenger might reply that in aristocracies,
oligarchies, and democracies, “care-taking, ruling, and deliberation” are utilized
for different ends.In these contexts, individual souls might have different
functions, according to the “needs” that these different regimes
have. Alternatively, one might deny altogether that the human soul has a
function: the distinctive feature of human beings might be their position
“outside” of nature. Thus, even if Socrates' description of the soul's
function is accurate, it is too general to be really informative.Socrates must
offer more details for the function argument to be convincing. Nonetheless,
the idea that justice is a condition that lets the soul perform its functions
is a significant departure from the technē model of justice, and one that
will remain throughout the argument of the Republic. […] τὸ ἐπιμελεῖσθαι
καὶ ἄρχειν καὶ βουλεύεσθαι (353d3). As far as Bk. I is concerned,
“justice” functions as a place-holder for that condition of the soul which
permits the soul to perform its functions well. What that condition is,
however, remains unknown.For this reason, Plato has Socrates concludes Bk. I by
likening himself to a “glutton” (ὥσπερ οἱ λίχνοι, 354b1), who takes another
dish before “moderately enjoying the previous” serving (πρὶν τοῦ προτέρου
μετρίως ἀπολαύσαι, 354b2-3). For Socrates wants to know what effects the
optimal condition of soul brings about before knowing what the condition itself
is. Thus Bk. I concludes in "aporia," but not in a way that
betrays the dialogue's lack of unity.The “separatist” thesis concerning Bk. I
goes back to Hermann in "Geschichte und System der Platonischen
Philosophie." One can argue on behalf of the “separatist” view as
well. One can argue against the separatist thesis, even granting some
evidence in favour of the separatist thesis. To the contrary, the
"aporia" clearly foreshadows the argument that Socrates makes about
the soul in Bk. IV, viz. that the soul (psyche) is a complex whole of parts --
an implicatum in the “justice is stronger” argument -- and that 'just' is the
condition that allows this complex whole be integrated to an optimal degree. Thus,
Bk. I does not conclude negatively, but rather provides the resources for going
beyond the "technē" model of justice, which is the primary cause of
Polemarchus's and Thrasymachus's encounter with "aporia" in Bk.
I. Throughout conversation of "The Republic," Socrates does not
really alter the argument he gives for justice in Bk. I, but rather states the
same argument in a different way. My gratitude to P. N.
Moore. Refs: Wise guys and smart alecks in Republic 1 and 2; Proleptic composition
in the Republic, or why Bk. 1 was never a separate dialogue, The Classical
Quarterly; "Socrates: ironist and moral philosopher."
Ariskant: Grice’s favourite philosopher is Ariskant. One way
to approach Grice’s meta-philosophy is by combining teleology with deontology. Eventually,
Grice embraces a hedonistic eudaimonism, if rationally approved. Grice knows
how to tutor in philosophy: he tutor on Kant as if he is tutoring on Aristotle,
and vice versa. His tutees would say, Here come [sic] Kantotle. Grice is obsessed
with Kantotle. He would teach one or the other as an ethics requirement. Back
at Oxford, the emphasis is of course Aristotle, but he is aware of some trends
to introduce Kant in the Lit.Hum. curriculum, not with much success. Strawson
does his share with the pure reason in Kant in The bounds of sense, but White
professors of moral philosophy are usually not too keen on the critique by Kant
of practical reason. Grice is fascinated that an Irishman, back in 1873, cares
to translate (“for me”) all that Kant has to say about the eudaimonism and
hedonism of Aristotle. An Oxonian philosopher is expected to be a utilitarian,
as Hare is, or a Hegelian, and that is why Grice prefers, heterodoxical as he is,
to be a Kantian rationalist instead. But Grice cannot help being Aristotelian,
Hardie having instilled the “Eth. Nich.” on him at Corpus. While he can’t read
Kant in German, Grice uses Abbott’s Irish vernacular. Note the archaic
metaphysic sic in singular. More Kant. Since Baker can read the
vernacular even less than Grice, it may be good to review the editions. It all
starts when Abbott thinks that his fellow Irishmen are unable to tackle Kant in
the vernacular. Abbott’s thing comes out in 1873: Kant’s critique of practical
reason and other works on the theory of tthics, with Grice quipping. Oddly, I
prefer his other work! Grice collaborates with Baker mainly on work on meta-ethics
seen as an offspring, alla Kant, of philosophical psychology. Akrasia or
egkrateia is one such topic. Baker contributes to PGRICE, a festschrift for
Grice, with an essay on the purity, and alleged lack thereof, of this or that
morally evaluable motive – rhetorically put: do ones motives have to
be pure? For Grice morality cashes out in self-love, self-interest, and desire.
Baker also contributes to a volume on Grice’s honour published by
Palgrave, Meaning and analysis: essays on Grice. Baker organises of a
symposium on the thought of Grice for the APA, the proceedings of which published
in The Journal of Philosophy, with Bennett as chair, contributions by Baker and
Grandy, commented by Stalnaker andWarner. Grice explores with Baker
problems of egcrateia and the reduction of duty to self-love and interest.
Refs.: The obvious keyword is “Kant,” – especially in the Series III on the
doctrines, in collaboration with Baker. There are essays on the Grundlegung,
too. The keyword for “Kantotle,” and the keywords for ‘free,’ and ‘freedom,’
and ‘practical reason,’ and ‘autonomy, are also helpful. Some of this material
in “Actions and events,” “The influence of Kant on Aristotle,” by H. P. Grice,
John Locke Scholar (failed), etc., Oxford (Advisor: J. Dempsey). The H. P.
Grice Papers, BANC.
bonum: Old Romans did not have an article, so for them it is
unum, bonum, verum, and pulchrum. They were trying to translate the very
articled Grecian things, ‘to agathon,’ ‘to alethes,’ and ‘to kallon.’ The three
references given by Liddell and Scott are good ones. τὸ ἀ., the good,
Epich.171.5, cf. Pl.R.506b, 508e, Arist.Metaph.1091a31, etc. The Grecian Grice
is able to return to the ‘article’. Grice has an early essay on ‘the good,’ and
he uses the same expression at Oxford for the Locke lectures when looking for a
‘desiderative’ equivalent to ‘the true.’ Hare had dedicated the full part of
his “Language of Morals” to ‘good,’ so Grice is well aware of the centrality of
the topic. He was irritated by what he called a performatory approach to the
good, where ‘x is good’ =df. ‘I approve of x.’ Surely that’s a conversational
implicatum. However, in his analysis of reasoning (the demonstratum – since he
uses the adverb ‘demonstrably’ as a marker of pretty much like ‘concusively,’
as applied to both credibility and desirability, we may focus on what Grice
sees as ‘bonum’ as one of the ‘absolutes,’ the absolute in the desirability
realm, as much as the ‘verum’ is the absolute in the credibility realm. Grice
has an excellent argument regarding ‘good.’ His example is ‘cabbage,’ but also
‘sentence.’ Grice’s argument is to turn the disimpicatum into an explicitum. To
know what a ‘cabbage,’ or a formula is, you need to know first what a ‘good’
cabbage is or a ‘well-formed formula,’ is. An ill-formed sentence is not deemed
by Grice a sentence. This means that we define ‘x’ as ‘optimum x.’ This is not
so strange, seeing that ‘optimum’ is actually the superlative of ‘bonum’ (via
the comparative). It does not require very
sharp eyes, but only the willingness to use the eyes one has, to see that our
speech and thought are permeated with the notion of purpose; to say what a
certain kind of thing is is only too frequently partly to say what it is for.
This feature applies to our talk and thought of, for example, ships, shoes,
sealing wax, and kings; and, possibly and perhaps most excitingly, it extends
even to cabbages.“There is a range of cases in which, so far from its
being the case that, typically, one first learns what it is to be a F and then,
at the next stage, learns what criteria distinguish a good F from a F which is
less good, or not good at all, one needs first to learn what it is to be a good
F, and then subsequently to learn what degree of approximation to being a good
F will qualify an item as a F; if the gap between some item x and good Fs is
sufficently horrendous, x is debarred from counting as a F at all, even as a
bad F.”“In the John Locke Lectures, I called a concept which exhibits this
feature as a ‘value-paradeigmatic’ concept. One example of a
value-paradeigmatic concept is the concept of reasoning; another, I now suggest,
is that of sentence. It may well be that the existence of value-oriented
concepts (¢b ¢ 2 . • • . ¢n) depends on the prior existence of pre-rational concepts ( ¢~, ¢~ . . . .
¢~), such that an item x qualifies for the application of the concept ¢ 2 if
and only if x satisfies a rationally-approved
form or version of the corresponding pre-rational concept ¢'. We have a
(primary) example of a step in reasoning only if we have a transition of a
certain rationally approved kind from
one thought or utterance to another.
bootstrap: a principle introduced by Grice in “Prejudices and
predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice,” to limit
the power of the meta-language. The weaker your metalanguage the easier you’ll
be able to pull yourself by your own bootstraps. He uses bootlaces in
“Metaphysics, Philosophical Eschatology, and Plato’s Republic.”
communicatum: it is a commonplace that Grice belongs, as most
philosophers of the twentieth century, to the movement of the linguistic turn. Short
and Lewis have “commūnĭcare,”
earlier “conmunicare,” f. communis, and thus sharing the prefix with
“conversare.” Now “communis” is an interesting lexeme that Grice uses quite
centrally in his idea of the ‘common ground’ – when a feature of discourse is
deemed to have been assigned ‘common-ground status.’ “Communis” features the
“cum-” prefix, commūnis (comoinis); f. “con” and root “mu-,” to bind; Sanscr.
mav-; cf.: immunis, munus, moenia. The ‘communicatum’ (as used by Tammelo
in social philosophy) may well cover
what Grice would call the total ‘significatio,’ or ‘significatum.’ Grice takes this seriously. Let us start then by examining what
we mean by ‘linguistic,’ or ‘communication.’ It is curious that while most
Griceians overuse ‘communicative’ as applied to ‘intention,’ Grice does not. Communicator’s
intention, at most. This is the Peirce in Grice’s soul. Meaning provides an
excellent springboard for Grice to centre his analysis on psychological or
soul-y verbs as involving the agent and the first person: smoke only
figuratively means fire, and the expression smoke only figuratively (or
metabolically) means that there is fire. It is this or that utterer (say,
Grice) who means, say, by uttering Where theres smoke theres fire, or ubi
fumus, ibi ignis, that where theres smoke theres fire. A means something
by uttering x, an utterance-token is roughly equivalent to utterer U intends
the utterance of x to produce some effect in his addressee A by means of the
recognition of this intention; and we may add that to ask what U means is to
ask for a specification of the intended effect - though, of course, it may not
always be possible to get a straight answer involving a that-clause, for
example, a belief that He does provide a
more specific example involving the that-clause at a later stage. By uttering
x, U means that-ψb-dp ≡ (Ǝφ)(Ǝf)(Ǝc) U utters
x intending x to be such that anyone who has φ think
that x has f, f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing
that p, and (Ǝφ') U intends x to be such that anyone who
has φ' think, via thinking that x has f and that f is
correlated in way c with ψ-ing that p, that U ψ-s
that p, and in view of (Ǝφ') U intending x to be such
that anyone who has φ' think, via thinking that x has
f, and f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing
that p, that U ψ-s that p, U ψ-s
that p, and, for some substituends of ψb-d, U utters x intending that, should there actually
be anyone who has φ, he will, via thinking in view
of (Ǝφ') U intending x to be such that anyone who
has φ' think, via thinking that x has
f, and f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing
that p, that U ψ-s that p, U ψ-s
that p himself ψ that p, and it is
not the case that, for some inference element E, U intends x to be
such that anyone who has φ both rely on E in coming
to ψ, or think that U ψ-s, that p and think
that (Ǝφ) U intends x to be such that anyone who
has φ come to ψ (or think that U ψ-s)
that p without relying on E. Besides St. John The Baptist, and Salome,
Grice cites few Namess in Meaning. But he makes a point about Stevenson! For
Stevenson, smoke means fire. Meaning develops out of an interest by Grice on
the philosophy of Peirce. In his essays on Peirce, Grice quotes from many other
authors, including, besides Peirce himself (!), Ogden, Richards, and Ewing, or
A. C. Virtue is not a fire-shovel Ewing, as Grice calls him, and this or that
cricketer. In the characteristic Oxonian fashion of a Lit. Hum., Grice has no
intention to submit Meaning to publication. Publishing is vulgar. Bennett,
however, guesses that Grice decides to publish it just a year after his Defence
of a dogma. Bennett’s argument is that Defence of a dogma pre-supposes some
notion of meaning. However, a different story may be told, not necessarily
contradicting Bennetts. It is Strawson who submits the essay by Grice to The
Philosophical Review (henceforth, PR) Strawson attends Grices talk on Meaning
for The Oxford Philosophical Society, and likes it. Since In defence of a dogma
was co-written with Strawson, the intention Bennett ascribes to Grice is
Strawsons. Oddly, Strawson later provides a famous alleged counter-example to
Grice on meaning in Intention and convention in speech acts, following J. O.
Urmson’s earlier attack to the sufficiency of Grices analysans -- which has
Grice dedicating a full James lecture (No. 5) to it. there is Strawsons
rat-infested house for which it is insufficient. An interesting fact,
that confused a few, is that Hart quotes from Grices Meaning in his critical
review of Holloway for The Philosophical Quarterly. Hart quotes Grice
pre-dating the publication of Meaning. Harts point is that Holloway should have
gone to Oxford! In Meaning, Grice may be seen as a practitioner of
ordinary-language philosophy: witness his explorations of the factivity (alla
know, remember, or see) or lack thereof of various uses of to mean. The second
part of the essay, for which he became philosophically especially popular,
takes up an intention-based approach to semantic notions. The only authority
Grice cites, in typical Oxonian fashion, is, via Ogden and Barnes, Stevenson,
who, from The New World (and via Yale, too!) defends an emotivist theory of
ethics, and making a few remarks on how to mean is used, with scare quotes, in
something like a causal account (Smoke means fire.). After its publication
Grices account received almost as many alleged counterexamples as
rule-utilitarianism (Harrison), but mostly outside Oxford, and in The New World.
New-World philosophers seem to have seen Grices attempt as reductionist and as
oversimplifying. At Oxford, the sort of counterexample Grice received, before
Strawson, was of the Urmson-type: refined, and subtle. I think your account
leaves bribery behind. On the other hand, in the New World ‒ in what Grice
calls the Latter-Day School of Nominalism, Quine is having troubles with
empiricism. Meaning was repr. in various collections, notably in Philosophical
Logic, ed. by Strawson. It should be remembered that it is Strawson who has the
thing typed and submitted for publication. Why Meaning should be repr. in a
collection on Philosophical Logic only Strawson knows. But Grice does say that
his account may help clarify the meaning of entails! It may be Strawsons
implicature that Parkinson should have repr. (and not merely credited) Meaning
by Grice in his series for Oxford on The theory of meaning. The preferred
quotation for Griceians is of course The Oxford Philosophical Society quote, seeing
that Grice recalled the exact year when he gave the talk for the Philosophical
Society at Oxford! It is however, the publication in The Philosophi, rather
than the quieter evening at the Oxford Philosophical Society, that occasioned a
tirade of alleged counter-examples by New-World philosophers. Granted, one or
two Oxonians ‒ Urmson and Strawson ‒ fell in! Urmson criticises the sufficiency
of Grices account, by introducing an alleged counter-example involving bribery.
Grice will consider a way out of Urmsons alleged counter-example in his fifth
Wiliam James Lecture, rightly crediting and thanking Urmson for this! Strawsons
alleged counter-example was perhaps slightly more serious, if regressive. It
also involves the sufficiency of Grices analysis. Strawsons rat-infested house
alleged counter-example started a chain which required Grice to avoid,
ultimately, any sneaky intention by way of a recursive clause to the effect
that, for utterer U to have meant that p, all meaning-constitutive intentions
should be above board. But why this obsession by Grice with mean? He is being
funny. Spots surely dont mean, only mean.They dont have a mind. Yet Grice opens
with a specific sample. Those spots mean, to the doctor, that you, dear, have
measles. Mean? Yes, dear, mean, doctors orders. Those spots mean measles. But
how does the doctor know? Cannot he be in the wrong? Not really, mean is
factive, dear! Or so Peirce thought. Grice is amazed that Peirce thought that
some meaning is factive. The hole in this piece of cloth means that a bullet
went through is is one of Peirce’s examples. Surely, as Grice notes, this is an
unhappy example. The hole in the cloth may well have caused by something else,
or fabricated. (Or the postmark means that the letter went through the post.)
Yet, Grice was having Oxonian tutees aware that Peirce was krypto-technical.
Grice chose for one of his pre-Meaning seminars on Peirce’s general theory of
signs, with emphasis on general, and the correspondence of Peirce and Welby.
Peirce, rather than the Vienna circle, becomes, in vein with Grices dissenting
irreverent rationalism, important as a source for Grices attempt to English
Peirce. Grices implicature seems to be that Peirce, rather than Ayer, cared for
the subtleties of meaning and sign, never mind a verificationist theory about
them! Peirce ultra-Latinate-cum-Greek taxonomies have Grice very nervous,
though. He knew that his students were proficient in the classics, but still. Grice
thus proposes to reduce all of Peirceian divisions and sub-divisions (one
sub-division too many) to mean. In the proceedings, he quotes from Ogden,
Richards, and Ewing. In particular, Grice was fascinated by the correspondence of
Peirce with Lady Viola Welby, as repr. by Ogden/Richards in, well, their study
on the meaning of meaning. Grice thought the science of symbolism pretentious,
but then he almost thought Lady Viola Welby slightly pretentious, too, if youve
seen her; beautiful lady. It is via Peirce that Grice explores examples such as
those spots meaning measles. Peirce’s obsession is with weathercocks almost as
Ockham was with circles on wine-barrels. Old-World Grices use of New-World
Peirce is illustrative, thus, of the Oxonian linguistic turn focused on
ordinary language. While Peirce’s background was not philosophical, Grice thought
it comical enough. He would say that Peirce is an amateur, but then he said the
same thing about Mill, whom Grice had to study by heart to get his B. A. Lit.
Hum.! Plus, as Watson commented, what is wrong with amateur? Give me an amateur
philosopher ANY day, if I have to choose from professional Hegel! In finding
Peirce krypo-technical, Grice is ensuing that his tutees, and indeed any
Oxonian philosophy student (he was university lecturer) be aware that to mean
should be more of a priority than this or that jargon by this or that (New
World?) philosopher!? Partly! Grice wanted his students to think on their own,
and draw their own conclusions! Grice cites Ewing, Ogden/Richards, and many
others. Ewing, while Oxford-educated, had ended up at Cambridge (Scruton almost
had him as his tutor) and written some points on Meaninglessness! Those spots
mean measles. Grice finds Peirce krypto-technical and proposes to English him
into an ordinary-language philosopher. Surely it is not important whether we
consider a measles spot a sign, a symbol, or an icon. One might just as well
find a doctor in London who thinks those spots symbolic. If Grice feels like
Englishing Peirce, he does not altogether fail! meaning, reprints, of
Meaning and other essays, a collection of reprints and offprints of Grices
essays. Meaning becomes a central topic of at least two strands in
Retrospective epilogue. The first strand concerns the idea of the centrality of
the utterer. What Grice there calls meaning BY (versus meaning TO), i.e. as he
also puts it, active or agents meaning. Surely he is right in defending an
agent-based account to meaning. Peirce need not, but Grice must, because he is
working with an English root, mean, that is only figurative applicable to
non-agentive items (Smoke means rain). On top, Grice wants to conclude that
only a rational creature (a person) can meanNN properly. Non-human animals may
have a correlate. This is a truly important point for Grice since he surely is
seen as promoting a NON-convention-based approach to meaning, and also
defending from the charge of circularity in the non-semantic account of
propositional attitudes. His final picture is a rationalist one. P1 G
wants to communicate about a danger to P2. This presupposes there IS
a danger (item of reality). Then P1 G believes there is a
danger, and communicates to P2 G2 that there is a danger. This
simple view of conversation as rational co-operation underlies Grices account
of meaning too, now seen as an offshoot of philosophical psychology, and indeed
biology, as he puts it. Meaning as yet another survival mechanism. While he
would never use a cognate like significance in his Oxford Philosophical Society
talk, Grice eventually starts to use such Latinate cognates at a later stage of
his development. In Meaning, Grice does not explain his goal. By sticking with
a root that the Oxford curriculum did not necessarily recognised as
philosophical (amateur Peirce did!), Grice is implicating that he is starting
an ordinary-language botanising on his own repertoire! Grice was amused by the
reliance by Ewing on very Oxonian examples contra Ayer: Surely Virtue aint a
fire-shovel is perfectly meaningful, and if fact true, if, Ill admit, somewhat
misleading and practically purposeless at Cambridge. Again, the dismissal by
Grice of natural meaning is due to the fact that natural meaning prohibits its
use in the first person and followed by a that-clause. ‘I mean-n that p’ sounds
absurd, no communication-function seems in the offing, there is no ‘sign for,’
as Woozley would have it. Grice found, with Suppes, all types of primacy
(ontological, axiological, psychological) in utterers meaning. In Retrospective
epilogue, he goes back to the topic, as he reminisces that it is his
suggestion that there are two allegedly distinguishable meaning concepts, even
if one is meta-bolical, which may be called natural meaning and non-natural
meaning. There is this or that test (notably factivity-entailment vs. cancelation,
but also scare quotes) which may be brought to bear to distinguish one concept
from the other. We may, for example, inquire whether a particular occurrence of
the predicate mean is factive or non-factive, i. e., whether for it to be true
that [so and so] means that p, it does or does not have to be the case that it
is true that p. Again, one may ask whether the use of quotation marks to
enclose the specification of what is meant would be inappropriate or
appropriate. If factivity, as in know, remember, and see, is present and
quotation marks, oratio recta, are be inappropriate, we have a case of natural
meaning. Otherwise the meaning involved is non-natural meaning. We may now ask
whether there is a single overarching idea which lies behind both members of
this dichotomy of uses to which the predicate meaning that seems to be
Subjects. If there is such a central idea it might help to indicate to us which
of the two concepts is in greater need of further analysis and elucidation and
in what direction such elucidation should proceed. Grice confesses that he has
only fairly recently come to believe that there is such an overarching idea and
that it is indeed of some service in the proposed inquiry. The idea behind both
uses of mean is that of consequence, or consequentia, as Hobbes has it. If x
means that p, something which includes p or the idea of p, is a consequence of
x. In the metabolic natural use of meaning that p, p, this or that consequence,
is this or that state of affairs. In the literal, non-metabolic, basic,
non-natural use of meaning that p, (as in Smith means that his neighbour’s
three-year child is an adult), p, this or that consequence is this or that
conception or complexus which involves some other conception. This perhaps
suggests that of the two concepts it is, as it should, non-natural meaning
which is more in need of further elucidation. It seems to be the more
specialised of the pair, and it also seems to be the less determinate. We may,
e. g., ask how this or that conception enters the picture. Or we may ask
whether what enters the picture is the conception itself or its justifiability.
On these counts Grice should look favorably on the idea that, if further
analysis should be required for one of the pair, the notion of non-natural meaning
would be first in line. There are factors which support the suitability of
further analysis for the concept of non-natural meaning. MeaningNN that
p (non-natural meaning) does not look as if it Namess an original feature of
items in the world, for two reasons which are possibly not mutually
independent. One reason is that, given suitable background conditions, meaning,
can be changed by fiat. The second reason is that the presence of meaningNN is
dependent on a framework provided by communication, if that is not too
circular. Communication is in the philosophical lexicon. Lewis and
Short have “commūnĭcātĭo,” f. communicare,"(several times in Cicero,
elsewhere rare), and as they did with negatio and they will with significatio,
Short and Lewis render, unhelpfully, as a making common, imparting,
communicating. largitio et communicatio civitatis;” “quaedam societas et
communicatio utilitatum,” “consilii communicatio, “communicatio sermonis,” criminis
cum pluribus; “communicatio nominum, i. e. the like appellation of several objects;
“juris; “damni; In rhetorics, communicatio, trading on the communis, a figure,
translating Grecian ἀνακοίνωσις, in accordance with which the utterer turns to
his addressee, and, as it were, allows him to take part in the inquiry. It
seems to Grice, then, at least reasonable and possibly even emphatically
mandatory, to treat the claim that a communication vehicle, such as this and
that expression means that p, in this transferred, metaphoric, or meta-bolic
use of means that as being reductively analysable in terms of this or that
feature of this or that utterer, communicator, or user of this or that expression.
The use of meaning that as applied to this or that expression is posterior
to and explicable through the utterer-oriented, or utterer-relativised use,
i.e. involving a reference to this or that communicator or user of this or that
expression. More specifically, one should license a metaphorical use of mean,
where one allows the claim that this or that expression means that p, provided
that this or that utterer, in this or that standard fashion, means that p, i.e.
in terms of this or that souly statee toward this or that propositional
complexus this or that utterer ntends, in a standardly fashion, to produce by
his uttering this or that utterance. That this or that expression means (in
this metaphorical use) that p is thus explicable either in terms of this
or that souly state which is standardly intended to produce in this or that
addressee A by this or that utterer of this or that expression, or in this or
that souly staken up by this or that utterer toward this or that activity or
action of this or that utterer of this or that expression. Meaning was in
the air in Oxfords linguistic turn. Everybody was talking meaning. Grice manages
to quote from Hares early “Mind” essay on the difference between imperatives
and indicatives, also Duncan-Jones on the fugitive proposition, and of
course his beloved Strawson. Grice was also concerned by the fact that in the manoeuvre
of the typical ordinary-language philosopher, there is a constant abuse of
mean. Surely Grice wants to stick with the utterers meaning as the primary use.
Expressions mean only derivatively. To do that, he chose Peirce to see if he
could clarify it with meaning that. Grice knew that the polemic was even
stronger in London, with Ogden and Lady Viola Welby. In the more academic
Oxford milieu, Grice knew that a proper examination of meaning, would lead him,
via Kneale and his researches on the history of semantics, to the topic of
signification that obsessed the modistae (and their modus significandi). For
what does L and S say about about this? This is Grice’s reply to popular Ogden.
They want to know what the meaning of meaning is? Here is the Oxononian response
by Grice, with a vengeance. Grice is not an animist nor a mentalist, even
modest. While he allows for natural phenomena to mean (smoke means fire),
meaning is best ascribed to some utterer, where this meaning is nothing but the
intentions behind his utterance. This is the fifth James lecture. Grice
was careful enough to submit it to PR, since it is a strictly philosophical
development of the views expressed in Meaning which Strawson had submitted on
Grice’s behalf to the same Review and which had had a series of responses by
various philosophers. Among these philosophers is Strawson himself in Intention
and convention in the the theory of speech acts, also in PR. Grice quotes
from very many other philosophers in this essay, including: Urmson,
Stampe, Strawson, Schiffer, and Searle. Strawson is especially
relevant since he started a series of alleged counter-examples with his
infamous example of the rat-infested house. Grice particularly treasured
Stampes alleged counter-example involving his beloved bridge! Avramides earns a
D. Phil Oxon. on that, under Strawson! This is Grices occasion to address
some of the criticisms ‒ in the form of alleged counter-examples,
typically, as his later reflections on epagoge versus diagoge note ‒
by Urmson, Strawson, and other philosophers associated with Oxford, such as
Searle, Stampe, and Schiffer. The final analysandum is pretty complex (of the
type that he did find his analysis of I am hearing a sound complex in Personal
identity ‒ hardly an obstacle for adopting it), it became yet
another target of attack by especially New-World philosophers in the pages of
Mind, Nous, and other journals, This is officially the fifth James lecture.
Grice takes up the analysis of meaning he had presented way back at the Oxford
Philosophical Society. Motivated mainly by the attack by Urmson and by Strawson
in Intention and convention in speech acts, that offered an alleged
counter-example to the sufficiency of Grices analysis, Grice ends up
introducing so many intention that he almost trembled. He ends up seeing
meaning as a value-paradeigmatic concept, perhaps never realisable in a
sublunary way. But it is the analysis in this particular essay where he is at
his formal best. He distinguishes between protreptic and exhibitive utterances,
and also modes of correlation (iconic, conventional). He symbolises the utterer
and the addressee, and generalises over the type of psychological state,
attitude, or stance, meaning seems to range (notably indicative vs.
imperative). He formalises the reflexive intention, and more importantly, the
overtness of communication in terms of a self-referential recursive intention
that disallows any sneaky intention to be brought into the picture of
meaning-constitutive intentions. Grice thought he had dealt with Logic and
conversation enough! So he feels of revising his Meaning. After all, Strawson
had had the cheek to publish Meaning by Grice and then go on to criticize it in
Intention and convention in speech acts. So this is Grices revenge, and he
wins! He ends with the most elaborate theory of mean that an Oxonian could ever
hope for. And to provoke the informalists such as Strawson (and his disciples
at Oxford – led by Strawson) he pours existential quantifiers like the plague!
He manages to quote from Urmson, whom he loved! No word on Peirce, though, who
had originated all this! His implicature: Im not going to be reprimanted in
informal discussion about my misreading Peirce at Harvard! The concluding note
is about artificial substitutes for iconic representation, and meaning as a
human institution. Very grand. This is Grices metabolical projection of
utterers meaning to apply to anything OTHER than utterers meaning, notably a
token of the utterers expression and a TYPE of the utterers expression, wholly
or in part. Its not like he WANTS to do it, he NEEDS it to give an account of
implicatum. The phrase utterer is meant to provoke. Grice thinks that speaker
is too narrow. Surely you can mean by just uttering stuff! This is the
sixth James lecture, as published in “Foundations of Language” (henceforth,
“FL”), or “The foundations of language,” as he preferred. As it happens, it
became a popular lecture, seeing that Searle selected this from the whole set
for his Oxford reading in philosophy on the philosophy of language. It is also
the essay cited by Chomsky in his influential Locke lectures. Chomsky
takes Grice to be a behaviourist, even along Skinners lines, which provoked a
reply by Suppes, repr. in PGRICE. In The New World, the H. P. is often given in
a more simplified form. Grice wants to keep on playing. In Meaning, he had said
x means that p is surely reducible to utterer U means that p. In this lecture,
he lectures us as to how to proceed. In so doing he invents this or that
procedure: some basic, some resultant. When Chomsky reads the reprint in
Searles Philosophy of Language, he cries: Behaviourist! Skinnerian! It was
Suppes who comes to Grices defence. Surely the way Grice uses expressions like
resultant procedure are never meant in the strict behaviourist way. Suppes
concludes that it is much fairer to characterise Grice as an intentionalist.
Published in FL, ed. by Staal, Repr.in Searle, The Philosophy of Language,
Oxford, the sixth James Lecture, FL, resultant procedure, basic
procedure. Staal asked Grice to publish the sixth James lecture for a
newish periodical publication of whose editorial board he was a member. The fun
thing is Grice complied! This is Grices shaggy-dog story. He does not seem too
concerned about resultant procedures. As he will ll later say, surely I can
create Deutero-Esperanto and become its master! For Grice, the primacy is the
idiosyncratic, particularized utterer in this or that occasion. He knows a
philosopher craves for generality, so he provokes the generality-searcher with
divisions and sub-divisions of mean. But his heart does not seem to be there,
and he is just being overformalistic and technical for the sake of it. I am
glad that Putnam, of all people, told me in an aside, you are being too formal,
Grice. I stopped with symbolism since! Communication. This is Grice’s clearest
anti-animist attack by Grice. He had joins Hume in mocking causing and willing:
The decapitation of Charles I as willing Charles Is death. Language semantics
alla Tarski. Grice know sees his former self. If he was obsessed, after Ayer,
with mean, he now wants to see if his explanation of it (then based on his
pre-theoretic intuition) is theoretically advisable in terms other than dealing
with those pre-theoretical facts, i.e. how he deals with a lexeme like mean.
This is a bit like Grice: implicatum, revisited. An axiological approach to
meaning. Strictly a reprint of Grice, which should be the preferred citation.
The date is given by Grice himself, and he knew! Grice also composed some notes
on Remnants on meaning, by Schiffer. This is a bit like Grices meaning
re-revisited. Schiffer had been Strawsons tutee at Oxford as a Rhode Scholar in
the completion of his D. Phil. on Meaning, Clarendon. Eventually, Schiffer
grew sceptic, and let Grice know about it! Grice did not find Schiffers
arguments totally destructive, but saw the positive side to them. Schiffers
arguments should remind any philosopher that the issues he is dealing are
profound and bound to involve much elucidation before they are solved. This is
a bit like Grice: implicatum, revisited. Meaning revisited (an ovious nod to
Evelyn Waughs Yorkshire-set novel) is the title Grice chose for a contribution
to a symposium at Brighton organised by Smith. Meaning revisited (although Grice
has earlier drafts entitled Meaning and philosophical psychology) comprises
three sections. In the first section, Grice is concerned with the application
of his modified Occam’s razor now to the very lexeme, mean. Cf. How many senses
does sense have? Cohen: The Senses of Senses. In the second part, Grice
explores an evolutionary model of creature construction reaching a stage of
non-iconic representation. Finally, in the third section, motivated to solve
what he calls a major problem ‒ versus the minor problem concerning the
transition from the meaning by the utterer to the meaning by the
expression. Grice attempts to construct meaning as a value-paradeigmatic
notion. A version was indeed published in the proceedings of the Brighton
symposium, by Croom Helm, London. Grice has a couple of other drafts with
variants on this title: philosophical psychology and meaning, psychology and
meaning. He keeps, meaningfully, changing the order. It is not arbitrary that
the fascinating exploration by Grice is in three parts. In the first, where he
applies his Modified Occams razor to mean, he is revisiting Stevenson. Smoke
means fire and I mean love, dont need different senses of mean. Stevenson is
right when using scare quotes for smoke ‘meaning’ fire utterance. Grice is very
much aware that that, the rather obtuse terminology of senses, was exactly the
terminology he had adopted in both Meaning and the relevant James lectures (V
and VI) at Harvard! Now, its time to revisit and to echo Graves, say, goodbye
to all that! In the second part he applies Pology. While he knows his audience
is not philosophical ‒ it is not Oxford ‒ he thinks they still may get
some entertainment! We have a P feeling pain, simulating it, and finally
uttering, I am in pain. In the concluding section, Grice becomes Plato. He sees
meaning as an optimum, i.e. a value-paradeigmatic notion introducing value in
its guise of optimality. Much like Plato thought circle works in his idiolect.
Grice played with various titles, in the Grice Collection. Theres philosophical
psychology and meaning. The reason is obvious. The lecture is strictly divided
in sections, and it is only natural that Grice kept drafts of this or that section
in his collection. In WOW Grice notes that he re-visited his Meaning re-visited
at a later stage, too! And he meant it! Surely, there is no way to understand
the stages of Grice’s development of his ideas about meaning without Peirce! It
is obvious here that Grice thought that mean two figurative or metabolical
extensions of use. Smoke means fire and Smoke means smoke. The latter is a
transferred use in that impenetrability means lets change the topic if
Humpty-Dumpty m-intends that it and Alice are to change the topic. Why did
Grice feel the need to add a retrospective epilogue? He loved to say that what
the “way of words” contains is neither his first, nor his last word. So trust
him to have some intermediate words to drop. He is at his most casual in the
very last section of the epilogue. The first section is more of a very
systematic justification for any mistake the reader may identify in the offer.
The words in the epilogue are thus very guarded and qualificatory. Just one
example about our focus: conversational implicate and conversation as rational
co-operation. He goes back to Essay 2, but as he notes, this was hardly the
first word on the principle of conversational helpfulness, nor indeed the first
occasion where he actually used implicature. As regards co-operation, the
retrospective epilogue allows him to expand on a causal phrasing in Essay 2,
“purposive, indeed rational.” Seeing in retrospect how the idea of rationality
was the one that appealed philosophers most – since it provides a rationale and
justification for what is otherwise an arbitrary semantic proliferation. Grice
then distinguishes between the thesis that conversation is purposive, and the
thesis that conversation is rational. And, whats more, and in excellent
Griceian phrasing, there are two theses here, too. One thing is to see
conversation as rational, and another, to use his very phrasing, as rational
co-operation! Therefore, when one discusses the secondary literature, one
should be attentive to whether the author is referring to Grices qualifications
in the Retrospective epilogue. Grice is careful to date some items. However,
since he kept rewriting, one has to be careful. These seven folder contain the
material for the compilation. Grice takes the opportunity of the compilation by
Harvard of his WOW, representative of the mid-60s, i. e. past the heyday of
ordinary-language philosophy, to review the idea of philosophical progress in
terms of eight different strands which display, however, a consistent and
distinctive unity. Grice keeps playing with valediction, valedictory,
prospective and retrospective, and the different drafts are all kept in The
Grice Papers. The Retrospective epilogue, is divided into two sections. In the
first section, he provides input for his eight strands, which cover not just
meaning, and the assertion-implication distinction to which he alludes to in
the preface, but for more substantial philosophical issues like the philosophy
of perception, and the defense of common sense realism versus the sceptial
idealist. The concluding section tackles more directly a second theme he had
idenfitied in the preface, which is a methodological one, and his long-standing
defence of ordinary-language philosophy. The section involves a fine
distinction between the Athenian dialectic and the Oxonian dialectic, and tells
the tale about his fairy godmother, G*. As he notes, Grice had dropped a few
words in the preface explaining the ordering of essays in the compilation. He
mentions that he hesitated to follow a suggestion by Bennett that the ordering
of the essays be thematic and chronological. Rather, Grice chooses to
publish the whole set of seven James lectures, what he calls the centerpiece,
as part I. II, the explorations in semantics and metaphysics, is organised more
or less thematically, though. In the Retrospective epilogue, Grice takes up
this observation in the preface that two ideas or themes underlie his Studies:
that of meaning, and assertion vs. implication, and philosophical methodology.
The Retrospective epilogue is thus an exploration on eight strands he
identifies in his own philosophy. Grices choice of strand is careful. For
Grice, philosophy, like virtue, is entire. All the strands belong to the same
knit, and therefore display some latitudinal, and, he hopes, longitudinal
unity, the latter made evidence by his drawing on the Athenian dialectic as a
foreshadow of the Oxonian dialectic to come, in the heyday of the Oxford school
of analysis, when an interest in the serious study of ordinary language had
never been since and will never be seen again. By these two types of unity,
Grice means the obvious fact that all branches of philosophy (philosophy of
language, or semantics, philosophy of perception, philosophical psychology,
metaphysics, axiology, etc.) interact and overlap, and that a historical regard
for ones philosophical predecessors is a must, especially at Oxford. Why is
Grice obsessed with asserting? He is more interested, technically, in the
phrastic, or dictor. Grice sees a unity, indeed, equi-vocality, in the
buletic-doxastic continuum. Asserting is usually associated with the doxastic.
Since Grice is always ready to generalise his points to cover the buletic
(recall his Meaning, “theres by now no reason to stick to informative cases,”),
it is best to re-define his asserting in terms of the phrastic. This is enough
of a strong point. As Hare would agree, for emotivists like Barnes, say, an
utterance of buletic force may not have any content whatsoever. For Grice,
there is always a content, the proposition which becomes true when the action
is done and the desire is fulfilled or satisfied. Grice quotes from Bennett.
Importantly, Grice focuses on the assertion/non-assertion distinction. He
overlooks the fact that for this or that of his beloved imperative utterance,
asserting is out of the question, but explicitly conveying that p is not.
He needs a dummy to stand for a psychological or souly state, stance, or
attitude of either boule or doxa, to cover the field of the utterer
mode-neutrally conveying explicitly that his addressee A is to entertain that
p. The explicatum or explicitum sometimes does the trick, but sometimes it does
not. It is interesting to review the Names index to the volume, as well as the
Subjects index. This is a huge collection, comprising 14 folders. By contract,
Grice was engaged with Harvard, since it is the President of the College that
holds the copyrights for the James lectures. The title Grice eventually chooses
for his compilation of essays, which goes far beyond the James, although
keeping them as the centerpiece, is a tribute to Locke, who, although obsessed
with his idealist and empiricist new way of ideas, leaves room for both the
laymans and scientists realist way of things, and, more to the point, for this
or that philosophical semiotician to offer this or that study in the way of
words. Early in the linguistic turn minor revolution, the expression the new
way of words, had been used derogatorily. WOW is organised in two parts: Logic
and conversation and the somewhat pretentiously titled Explorations in
semantics and metaphysics, which offers commentary around the centerpiece. It
also includes a Preface and a very rich and inspired Retrospective epilogue.
From part I, the James lectures, only three had not been previously published.
The first unpublished lecture is Prolegomena, which really sets the scene, and
makes one wonder what the few philosophers who quote from The logic of grammar
could have made from the second James lecture taken in isolation. Grice
explores Aristotle’s “to alethes”: “For the true and the false exist with respect
to synthesis and division (peri gar synthesin kai diaireisin esti to pseudos
kai to alethes).” Aristotle insists upon the com-positional form of truth in
several texts: cf. De anima, 430b3 ff.: “in truth and falsity, there is a
certain composition (en hois de kai to pseudos kai to alethes, synthesis tis)”;
cf. also Met. 1027b19 ff.: the true and the false are with respect to (peri)
composition and decomposition (synthesis kai diaresis).” It also shows that Grices style is meant for public
delivery, rather than reading. The second unpublished lecture is Indicative
conditionals. This had been used by a few philosophers, such as Gazdar, noting
that there were many mistakes in the typescript, for which Grice is not to be
blamed. The third is on some models for implicature. Since this Grice
acknowledges is revised, a comparison with the original handwritten version of
the final James lecture retrieves a few differences From Part II, a few essays
had not been published before, but Grice, nodding to the longitudinal unity of
philosophy, is very careful and proud to date them. Commentary on the
individual essays is made under the appropriate dates. Philosophical
correspondence is quite a genre. Hare would express in a letter to the
Librarian for the Oxford Union, “Wiggins does not want to be understood,” or in
a letter to Bennett that Williams is the worse offender of Kantianism! It was
different with Grice. He did not type. And he wrote only very occasionally!
These are four folders with general correspondence, mainly of the academic
kind. At Oxford, Grice would hardly keep a correspondence, but it was different
with the New World, where academia turns towards the bureaucracy. Grice is not
precisely a good, or reliable, as The BA puts it, correspondent. In the Oxford
manner, Grice prefers a face-to-face interaction, any day. He treasures his
Saturday mornings under Austins guidance, and he himself leads the Play Group
after Austins demise, which, as Owen reminisced, attained a kind of cult
status. Oxford is different. As a tutorial fellow in philosophy, Grice was
meant to tutor his students; as a University Lecturer he was supposed to lecture
sometimes other fellowss tutees! Nothing about this reads: publish or perish!
This is just one f. containing Grices own favourite Griceian references. To the
historian of analytic philosophy, it is of particular interest. It shows which
philosophers Grice respected the most, and which ones the least. As one might
expect, even on the cold shores of Oxford, as one of Grices tutees put it,
Grice is cited by various Oxford philosophers. Perhaps the first to cite Grice
in print is his tutee Strawson, in “Logical Theory.” Early on, Hart quotes
Grice on meaning in his review in The Philosophical Quarterly of Holloways
Language and Intelligence before Meaning had been published. Obviously, once
Grice and Strawson, In defense of a dogma and Grice, Meaning are published
by The Philosophical Review, Grice is discussed profusely. References to the
implicatum start to appear in the literature at Oxford in the mid-1960s, within
the playgroup, as in Hare and Pears. It is particularly intriguing to explore
those philosophers Grice picks up for dialogue, too, and perhaps arrange them
alphabetically, from Austin to Warnock, say. And Griceian philosophical
references, Oxonian or other, as they should, keep counting! The way to search
the Grice Papers here is using alternate keywords, notably “meaning.” “Meaning”
s. II, “Utterer’s meaning and intentions,” s. II, “Utterer’s meaning,
sentence-meaning, and word meaning,” s. II, “Meaning revisited,” s. II. – but
also “Meaning and psychology,” s. V, c.7-ff.
24-25. While Grice uses “signification,” and lectured on Peirce’s
“signs,” “Peirce’s general theory of signs,” (s. V, c. 8-f. 29), he would avoid
such pretentiously sounding expressions. Searching under ‘semantic’ and
‘semantics’ (“Grammar and semantics,” c. 7-f. 5; “Language semantics,” c.
7-f.20, “Basic Pirotese, sentence semantics and syntax,” c. 8-f. 30, “Semantics
of children’s language,” c. 9-f. 10, “Sentence semantics” (c. 9-f. 11);
“Sentence semantics and propositional complexes,” c. 9-f.12, “Syntax and
semantics,” c. 9-ff. 17-18) may help, too. Folder on Schiffer (“Schiffer,” c.
9-f. 9), too.
commitment: Grice’s commitment to the 39 Articles. An
utterer is committed to those and only those entities to which the bound
variables of his utterance must be capable of referring in order that the
utterance made be true.”
common-ground status assignment. The
regulations for common-ground assignment have to do with general rational
constraints on conversation. Grice is clear in “Causal,” and as Strawson lets
us know, he was already clear in “Introduction” when talking of a ‘pragmatic
rule.’ Strawson states the rule in terms of making your conversational
contribution the logically strongest possible. If we abide by an imperative of
conversational helpfulness, enjoining the maximally giving and receiving of
information and the influencing and being influenced by others in the
institution of a decisions, the sub-imperative follows to the effect, ‘Thou
shalt NOT make a weak move compared to the stronger one that thou canst
truthfully make, and with equal or greater economy of means.’“Causal” provides a more difficult version, because it
deals with non-extensional contexts where ‘strong’ need not be interpreted as
‘logical strength’ in terms of entailment. Common ground status assignment
springs from the principle of conversational helpfulness or conversational
benevolence. What would be the benevolent point of ‘informing’ your addressee
what you KNOW your addressee already knows? It is not even CONCEPTUALLY
possible. You are not ‘informing’ him if you are aware that he knows it. So,
what Strawson later calls the principle of presumption of ignorance and the
principle of the presumption of knowledge are relevant. There is a balance
between the two. If Strawson asks Grice, “Is the king of France bald?” Grice is
entitled to assume that Strawson thinks two things Grice will perceive as
having been assigned a ‘common-ground’ status as uncontroversial topic not
worth conversing about. First, Strawson thinks that there is one king. (∃x)Fx. Second, Strawson thinks that there is at most one
king. (x)(y)((Fx.Fy)⊃ x=y).
That the king is bald is NOT assigned common-ground status, because Grice
cannot expect that Strawson thinks that Grice KNOWS that. Grice symbolises the
common-ground status by means of subscripts. He also uses square-bracekts, so
that anything within the scope of the square brackets is immune to controversy,
or as Grice also puts it, conversationally _inert_: things we don’t talk about.
complexum: While Grice does have an essay on the ‘complexum,’ he is
mostly being jocular. His dissection of the proposition proceds by considering
‘the a,’ and its denotatum, or reference, and ‘is the b,’ which involves then
the predication. This is Grice’s shaggy-dog story. Once we have ‘the dog is
shaggy,’ we have a ‘complexum,’ and we can say that the utterer means, by
uttering ‘Fido is shaggy,’ that the dog is hairy-coated. Simple, right? It’s
the jocular in Grice. He is joking on philosophers who look at those representative
of the linguistic turn, and ask, “So what do you have to say about reference
and predication,’ and Grice comes up with an extra-ordinary analysis of what is
to believe that the dog is hairy-coat, and communicating it. In fact, the
‘communicating’ is secondary. Once Grice has gone to metabolitical extension of
‘mean’ to apply to the expression, communication becomes secondary in that it
has to be understood in what Grice calls the ‘atenuated’ usage involving this
or that ‘readiness’ to have this or that procedure, basic or resultant, in
one’s repertoire! Bealer is one of Grices most brilliant tutees in the New
World. The Grice collection contains a full f. of correspondence with
Bealer. Bealer refers to Grice in his influential Clarendon essay on content.
Bealer is concerned with how pragmatic inference may intrude in the ascription
of a psychological, or souly, state, attitude, or stance. Bealer loves to quote
from Grice on definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular, the
implicature being that Russell is impenetrable! Bealers mentor is Grices close
collaborator Myro, so he knows what he is talking about. Refs.: The main
reference is in ‘Reply to Richards.’ But there is “Sentence semantics and
propositional complexes,” c. 9-f. 12, BANC.
conceptum: Grice obviously uses Frege’s notion of a ‘concept.’ One of
Grice’s metaphysical routines is meant to produce a logical construction of a
concept or generate a new concept. Aware of the act/product distinction, Grice
distinguishes between the conceptum, or concept, and the conception, or
conceptio. Grice allows that ‘not’ may be a ‘concept,’ so he is not tied to the
‘equine’ idea by Frege of the ‘horse.’ Since an agent can fail to conceive that
his neighbour’s three-year old is an adult, Grice accepts that ‘conceives’ may
take a ‘that’-clause. In ‘ordinary’ language, one does not seem to refer, say,
to the concept that e = mc2, but that may be a failure or ‘ordinary’ language.
In the canonical cat-on-the-mat, we have Grice conceiving that the cat is on
the mat, and also having at least four concepts: the concept of ‘cat,’ the
concept of ‘mat,’ the concept of ‘being on,’ and the concept of the cat being
on the mat.
conditional: Grice lists ‘if’ as the third binary functor in his
response to Strawson. The relations between “if” and “⊃” have already, but only in part, been discussed. 1 The sign
“⊃” is called the Material Implication sign a name I shall
consider later. Its meaning is given by the rule that any statement of the form
‘p⊃q’ is false in the case in which the first of its
constituent statements is true and the second false, and is true in every other
case considered in the system; i. e., the falsity of the first constituent
statement or the truth of the second are, equally, sufficient conditions of the
truth of a statement of material implication ; the combination of truth in the
first with falsity in the second is the single, necessary and sufficient,
condition (1 Ch. 2, S. 7) of its falsity. The standard or primary -- the
importance of this qualifying phrase can scarcely be overemphasized. There are
uses of “if … then … ” which do not
answer to the description given here,, or to any other descriptions given in
this chapter -- use of an “if …
then …” sentence, on the other hand, we saw to be in circumstances where, not
knowing whether some statement which could be made by the use of a sentence
corresponding in a certain way to the first clause of the hypothetical is true
or not, or believing it to be false, we nevertheless consider that a step in
reasoning from that statement to a statement related in a similar way to the
second clause would be a sound or reasonable step ; the second statement also
being one of whose truth we are in doubt, or which we believe to be false. Even
in such circumstances as these we may sometimes hesitate to apply the word
‘true’ to hypothetical statements (i.e., statements which could be made by the
use of “if ... then …,” in its standard significance), preferring to call them
reasonable or well-founded ; but if we apply ‘true’ to them at all, it will be
in such circumstances as these. Now one of the sufficient conditions of the
truth of a statement of material implication may very well be fulfilled without
the conditions for the truth, or reasonableness, of the corresponding
hypothetical statement being fulfilled ; i.e., a statement of the form ‘p⊃q’ does not entail the corresponding statement of the form
“if p then q.” But if we are prepared to accept the hypothetical statement, we
must in consistency be prepared to deny the conjunction of the statement
corresponding to the first clause of the sentence used to make the hypothetical
statement with the negation of the statement corresponding to its second clause
; i.e., a statement of the form “if p then q” does entail the corresponding statement
of the form ‘p⊃q.’ The force of “corresponding” needs elucidation. Consider
the three following very ordinary specimens of hypothetical sentences. If the
Germans had invaded England in 1940, they would have won the war. If Jones were
in charge, half the staff would have been dismissed. If it rains, the match
will be cancelled. The sentences which could be used to make statements
corresponding in the required sense to the subordinate clauses can be
ascertained by considering what it is that the speaker of each hypothetical
sentence must (in general) be assumed either to be in doubt about or to believe
to be not the case. Thus, for (1) to (8), the corresponding pairs of sentences
are as follows. The Germans invaded England in 1940; they won the war. Jones is
in charge; half the staff has been dismissed. It will rain; the match will be
cancelled. Sentences which could be used to make the statements of material
implication corresponding to the hypothetical statements made by these
sentences can now be framed from these pairs of sentences as follows. The Germans
invaded England in 1940 ⊃ they won the war. Jones is in charge ⊃ half the staff has been, dismissed. It will rain ⊃ the match will be cancelled. The very fact that these verbal
modifications are necessary, in order to obtain from the clauses of the
hypothetical sentence the clauses of the corresponding material implication
sentence is itself a symptom of the radical difference between hypothetical
statements and truth-functional statements. Some detailed differences are also
evident from these examples. The falsity of a statement made by the use of ‘The
Germans invaded England in 1940’ or ‘Jones is in charge’ is a sufficient
condition of the truth of the corresponding statements made by the use of (Ml)
and (M2) ; but not, of course, of the corresponding statements made by the use
of (1) and (2). Otherwise, there would normally be no point in using sentences
like (1) and (2) at all; for these sentences would normally carry – but not
necessarily: one may use the pluperfect or the imperfect subjunctive when one
is simply working out the consequences of an hypothesis which one may be
prepared eventually to accept -- in the tense or mood of the verb, an
implication of the utterer's belief in the falsity of the statements
corresponding to the clauses of the hypothetical. It is not raining is
sufficient to verify a statement made by the use of (MS), but not a
statement made by the use of (3). Its not raining Is also sufficient to verify
a statement made by the use of “It will rain ⊃
the match will not be cancelled.” The formulae ‘p revise ⊃q’ and ‘q revise⊃
q' are consistent with one another, and the joint assertion of corresponding
statements of these forms is equivalent to the assertion of the corresponding
statement of the form * *-~p. But “If it rains, the match will be cancelled” is
inconsistent with “If it rains, the match will not be cancelled,” and their
joint assertion in the same context is self-contradictory. Suppose we call the
statement corresponding to the first clause of a sentence used to make a
hypothetical statement the antecedent of the hypothetical statement; and the
statement corresponding to the second clause, its consequent. It is sometimes
fancied that whereas the futility of identifying conditional statements with
material implications is obvious in those cases where the implication of the
falsity of the antecedent is normally carried by the mood or tense of the verb
(e.g., (I) or (2)), there is something to be said for at least a partial
identification in cases where no such implication is involved, i.e., where the
possibility of the truth of both antecedent and consequent is left open (e.g.,
(3). In cases of the first kind (‘unfulfilled’ or ‘subjunctive’ conditionals)
our attention is directed only to the last two lines of the truth-tables for *
p ⊃ q ', where the antecedent has the truth-value, falsity; and
the suggestion that ‘~p’ entails ‘if p, then q’ is felt to be obviously wrong.
But in cases of the second kind we may inspect also the first two lines, for
the possibility of the antecedent's being fulfilled is left open; and the suggestion
that ‘p . q’ entails ‘if p, then q’ is not felt to be obviously wrong. This is
an illusion, though engendered by a reality. The fulfilment of both antecedent
and consequent of a hypothetical statement does not show that the man who made
the hypothetical statement was right; for the consequent might be fulfilled as
a result of factors unconnected with, or in spite of, rather than because of,
the fulfilment of the antecedent. We should be prepared to say that the man who
made the hypothetical statement was right only if we were also prepared to say
that the fulfilment of the antecedent was, at least in part, the explanation of
the fulfilment of the consequent. The reality behind the illusion is complex : en.
3 it is, partly, the fact that, in many cases, the fulfilment of both
antecedent and consequent may provide confirmation for the view that the
existence of states of affairs like those described by the antecedent is a good
reason for expecting states of affairs like those described by the consequent ;
and it is, partly, the fact that a man whosays, for example, 4 If it rains, the
match will be cancelled * makes a prediction (viz.. that the match will be
cancelled) under a proviso (viz., that it rains), and that the cancellation of
the match because of the rain therefore leads us to say, not only that the
reasonableness of the prediction was confirmed, but also that the prediction
itself was confirmed. Because a statement of the form “p⊃q” does not entail the corresponding statement of the form '
if p, then q ' (in its standard employment), we shall expect to find, and have
found, a divergence between the rules for '⊃'
and the rules for ' if J (in its standard employment). Because ‘if p, then q’
does entail ‘p⊃q,’ we shall also expect to find some degree of parallelism
between the rules; for whatever is entailed by ‘p "3 q’ will be entailed
by ‘if p, then q,’ though not everything which entails ‘p⊃q’ will entail ‘if p, then q.’ Indeed, we find further
parallels than those which follow simply from the facts that ‘if p, then q’
entails ‘p⊃q’ and that entailment is transitive. To laws (19)-(23)
inclusive we find no parallels for ‘if.’ But for (15) (p⊃j).JJ⊃? (16) (P ⊃q).~qZ)~p (17) p'⊃q s ~q1)~p (18) (?⊃j).(?
⊃r) ⊃ (p⊃r) we find that, with certain reservations, 1 the following
parallel laws hold good : (1 The reservations are important. It is, e. g.,
often impossible to apply entailment-rule (iii) directly without obtaining
incorrect or absurd results. Some modification of the structure of the clauses
of the hypothetical is commonly necessary. But formal logic gives us no guide
as to which modifications are required. If we apply rule (iii) to our specimen
hypothetical sentences, without modifying at all the tenses or moods of the
individual clauses, we obtain expressions which are scarcely English. If we
preserve as nearly as possible the tense-mood structure, in the simplest way
consistent with grammatical requirements, we obtain the sentences : If the
Germans had not won the war, they would not have invaded England in
1940.) If half the staff had not been dismissed, Jones would not be in
charge. If the match is not cancelled, it will not rain. But these sentences,
so far from being logically equivalent to the originals, have in each case a
quite different sense. It is possible, at least in some such cases, to frame
sentences of more or less the appropriate pattern for which one can imagine a
use and which do stand in the required logical relationship to the original
sentences (e.g., ‘If it is not the case that half the staff has been dismissed,
then Jones can't be in charge;’ or ‘If the Germans did not win the war, it's
only because they did not invade England in 1940;’ or even (should historical
evidence become improbably scanty), ‘If the Germans did not win the war, it
can't be true that they invaded England in 1940’). These changes reflect
differences in the circumstances in which one might use these, as opposed to
the original, sentences. Thus the sentence beginning ‘If Jones were in charge
…’ would normally, though not necessarily, be used by a man who antecedently
knows that Jones is not in charge : the sentence beginning ‘If it's not the
case that half the staff has been dismissed …’ by a man who is working towards
the conclusion that Jones is not in charge. To say that the sentences are
nevertheless logically equivalent is to point to the fact that the grounds for
accepting either, would, in different circumstances, have been grounds for
accepting the soundness of the move from ‘Jones is in charge’ to ‘Half the
staff has been dismissed.’) (i) (if p,
then q; and p)^q (ii) (if p, then qt and not-g) Dnot-j? (iii) (if p, then f) ⊃ (if not-0, then not-j?) (iv) (if p, then f ; and iff, then
r) ⊃(if j>, then r) (One must remember that calling the
formulae (i)-(iv) is the same as saying that, e.g., in the case of (iii), c if
p, then q ' entails 4 if not-g, then not-j> '.) And similarly we find that,
for some steps which would be invalid for 4 if ', there are corresponding steps
that would be invalid for “⊃,” e. g. (p^q).q :. p are invalid inference-patterns,
and so are if p, then q ; and q /. p if p, then ; and not-j? /. not-f .The
formal analogy here may be described by saying that neither * p 13 q ' nor * if
j?, then q * is a simply convertible formula. We have found many laws (e.g.,
(19)-(23)) which hold for “⊃” and not for “if.” As an example of
a law which holds for “if,” but not for
“⊃,” we may give the analytic formula “ ~[(if p, then q) * (if
p, then not-g)]’. The corresponding formula 4 ~[(P 3 ?) * (j? 3 ~?}]’ is not
analytic, but (el (28)) is equivalent to the contingent formula ‘~~p.’ The
rules to the effect that formulae such as (19)-{23) are analytic are sometimes
referred to as ‘paradoxes of implication.’ This is a misnomer. If ‘⊃’ is taken as identical either with ‘entails’ or, more
widely, with ‘if ... then …’ in its
standard use, the rules are not paradoxical, but simply incorrect. If ‘⊃’ is given the meaning it has in the system of truth functions,
the rules are not paradoxical, but simple and platitudinous consequences of the
meaning given to the symbol. Throughout this section, I have spoken of a
‘primary or standard’ use of “if … then …,” or “if,” of which the main
characteristics were: that for each hypothetical statement made by this use of
“if,” there could be made just one statement which would be the antecedent of
the hypothetical and just one statement which would be its consequent; that the
hypothetical statement is acceptable (true, reasonable) if the antecedent
statement, if made or accepted, would, in the circumstances, be a good ground
or reason for accepting the consequent statement; and that the making of the
hypothetical statement carries the implication either of uncertainty about, or
of disbelief in, the fulfilment of both antecedent and consequent. (1 Not all
uses of * if ', however, exhibit all these characteristics. In particular,
there is a use which has an equal claim to rank as standard and which is
closely connected with the use described, but which does not exhibit the first
characteristic and for which the description of the remainder must consequently
be modified. I have in mind what are sometimes called 'variable' or 'general’
hypothetical : e.g., ‘lf ice is left in the sun, it melts,’ ‘If the side of a
triangle is produced, the exterior angle is equal to the sum of the two
interior and opposite angles ' ; ' If a child is very strictly disciplined in
the nursery, it will develop aggressive tendencies in adult life,’ and so on.
To a statement made by the use of a sentence such as these there corresponds no
single pair of statements which are, respectively, its antecedent and
consequent. On the other 1 There is much more than this to be said about this
way of using ‘if;’ in particular, about the meaning of the question whether the
antecedent would be a good ground or reason for accepting the consequent and
about the exact way in which this question is related to the question of
whether the hypothetical is true {acceptable, reasonable) or not hand, for
every such statement there is an indefinite number of non-general hypothetical
statements which might be called exemplifications, applications, of the
variable hypothetical; e.g., a statement made by the use of the sentence ‘If
this piece of ice is left in the sun, it will melt.’ To the subject of variable
hypothetical I may return later. 1 Two relatively uncommon uses of ‘if’ may be
illustrated respectively by the sentences ‘If he felt embarrassed, he showed no
signs of it’ and ‘If he has passed his exam, I’m a Dutchman (I'll eat my hat,
&c.)’ The sufficient and necessary condition of the truth of a statement
made by the first is that the man referred to showed no sign of embarrassment.
Consequently, such a statement cannot be treated either as a standard
hypothetical or as a material implication. Examples of the second kind are
sometimes erroneously treated as evidence that ‘if’ does, after all, behave
somewhat as ‘⊃’ behaves. The evidence for this is, presumably, the facts
(i) that there is no connexion between antecedent and consequent; (ii) that the
consequent is obviously not (or not to be) fulfilled ; (iii) that the intention
of the speaker is plainly to give emphatic expression to the conviction that
the antecedent is not fulfilled either ; and (iv) the fact that “(p ⊃ q) . ~q” entails “~p.” But this is a strange piece of
logic. For, on any possible interpretation, “if p then q” has, in respect of
(iv), the same logical powers as ‘p⊃q;’
and it is just these logical powers that we are jokingly (or fantastically)
exploiting. It is the absence of connexion referred to in (i) that makes it a
quirk, a verbal flourish, an odd use of ‘if.’ If hypothetical statements were
material implications, the statements would be not a quirkish oddity, but a
linguistic sobriety and a simple truth. Finally, we may note that ‘if’ can be employed not simply in making
statements, but in, e.g., making provisional announcements of intention (e.g.,
‘If it rains, I shall stay at home’) which, like unconditional announcements of
intention, we do not call true or false but describe in some other way. If the
man who utters the quoted sentence leaves home in spite of the rain, we do not
say that what he said was false, though we might say that he lied (never really
intended to stay in) ; or that he changed his mind. There are further uses of
‘if’ which I shall not discuss. 1 v. ch. 7, I. The safest way to read the
material implication sign is, perhaps, ‘not both … and not …’ The material
equivalence sign ‘≡’ has the meaning given by the
following definition : p q =df=⊃/'(p⊃ff).(sOj)'
and the phrase with which it is sometimes identified, viz., ‘if and only if,’
has the meaning given by the following definition: ‘p if and only if q’ =df ‘if
p then g, and if q then p.’ Consequently, the objections which hold against the
identification of ‘p⊃q” with ‘if p then q’ hold with double force against the
identification of “p≡q’ with ‘p if and only if q.’ ‘If’
is of particular interest to Grice. The interest in the ‘if’ is double in
Grice. In doxastic contexts, he needs it for his analysis of ‘intending’
against an ‘if’-based dispositional (i.e. subjective-conditional) analysis. He
is of course, later interested in how Strawson misinterpreted the ‘indicative’
conditional! It is later when he starts to focus on the ‘buletic’ mode marker,
that he wants to reach to Paton’s categorical (i.e. non-hypothetical)
imperative. And in so doing, he has to face the criticism of those Oxonian
philosophers who were sceptical about the very idea of a conditional buletic
(‘conditional command – what kind of a command is that?’. Grice would refere to
the protasis, or antecedent, as a relativiser – where we go again to the
‘absolutum’-‘relativum’ distinction. The conditional is also paramount in
Grice’s criticism of Ryle, where the keyword would rather be ‘disposition.’
Then ther eis the conditional and disposition. Grice is a philosophical
psychologist. Does that make sense? So are Austin (Other Minds), Hampshire
(Dispositions), Pears (Problems in philosophical psychology) and Urmson
(Parentheticals). They are ALL against Ryle’s silly analysis in terms of
single-track disposition" vs. "many-track disposition," and
"semi-disposition." If I hum and walk, I can either hum or walk. But
if I heed mindfully, while an IN-direct sensing may guide me to YOUR soul, a
DIRECT sensing guides me to MY soul. When Ogden consider attacks to meaning,
theres what he calls the psychological, which he ascribes to Locke Grices
attitude towards Ryle is difficult to assess. His most favourable assessment
comes from Retrospective epilogue, but then he is referring to Ryle’s fairy
godmother. Initially, he mentions Ryle as a philosopher engaged in, and
possibly dedicated to the practice of the prevailing Oxonian methodology, i.e.
ordinary-language philosophy. Initially, then, Grice enlists Ryle in
the regiment of ordinary-language philosophers. After introducing Athenian
dialectic and Oxonian dialectic, Grice traces some parallelisms, which should
not surprise. It is tempting to suppose that Oxonian dialectic reproduces some
ideas of Athenian dialectic. It would actually be surprising if there
were no parallels. Ryle was, after all, a skilled and enthusiastic student of
Grecian philosophy. Interestingly, Grice then has Ryles fairy godmother as
proposing the idea that, far from being a basis for rejecting the
analytic-synthetic distinction, opposition that there are initially two
distinct bundles of statements, bearing the labels analytic and synthetic,
lying around in the world of thought waiting to be noticed, provides us with the
key to making the analytic-synthetic distinction acceptable. The essay has
a verificationist ring to it. Recall Ayer and the verificationists trying to
hold water with concepts like fragile and the problem of counterfactual
conditionals vis-a-vis observational and theoretical concepts. Grices
essay has two parts: one on disposition as such, and the second,
the application to a type of psychological disposition, which
would be phenomenalist in a way, or verificationist, in that it derives from
introspection of, shall we say, empirical phenomena. Grice is going to
analyse, I want a sandwich. One person wrote in his manuscript, there is
something with the way Grice goes to work. Still. Grice says that I want a
sandwich (or I will that I eat a sandwich) is problematic, for analysis, in
that it seems to refer to experience that is essentially private and
unverifiable. An analysis of intending that p in terms of being disposed that p
is satisfied solves this. Smith wants a sandwich, or he wills that he eats a sandwich,
much as Toby needs nuts, if Smith opens the fridge and gets one. Smith is
disposed to act such that p is satisfied. This Grice opposes to the
‘special-episode’ analysis of intending that p. An utterance like I want a
sandwich iff by uttering the utterance, the utterer is describing this or that
private experience, this or that private sensation. This or that sensation
may take the form of a highly specific souly sate, like what Grice
calls a sandwich-wanting-feeling. But then, if he is not happy with the privacy
special-episode analysis, Grice is also dismissive of
Ryles behaviourism in The concept of mind, fresh from the press, which
would describe the utterance in terms purely of this or that observable
response, or behavioural output, provided this or that sensory input. Grice
became friendlier with functionalism after Lewis taught him how. The
problem or crunch is with the first person. Surely, Grice claims, one does not
need to wait to observe oneself heading for the fridge before one is in a position
to know that he is hungry. Grice poses a problem for the
protocol-reporter. You see or observe someone else, Smith, that Smith wants a
sandwich, or wills that he eats a sandwich. You ask for evidence. But when it
is the agent himself who wants the sandwich, or wills that he eats a
sandwich, Grice melodramatically puts it, I am not in the
audience, not even in the front row of the stalls; I am on the
stage. Genial, as you will agree. Grice then goes on to offer an
analysis of intend, his basic and target attitude, which he has just used to
analyse and rephrase Peirces mean and which does relies on this or that piece
of dispositional evidence, without divorcing itself completely from the
privileged status or access of first-person introspective knowledge. In
“Uncertainty,” Grice weakens his reductive analysis of intending that, from
neo-Stoutian, based on certainty, or assurance, to neo-Prichardian, based on
predicting. All very Oxonian: Stout was the sometime Wilde reader in mental
philosophy (a post usually held by a psychologist, rather than a philosopher ‒
Stouts favourite philosopher is psychologist James! ‒ and Prichard was
Cliftonian and the proper White chair of moral philosophy. And while in
“Uncertainty” he allows that willing that may receive a physicalist treatment,
qua state, hell later turn a functionalist, discussed under ‘soul, below, in
his “Method in philosophical psychology (from the banal to the bizarre”
(henceforth, “Method”), in the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical
Association, repr. in “Conception.” Grice can easily relate to Hamsphires
"Thought and Action," a most influential essay in the Oxonian scene.
Rather than Ryle! And Grice actually addresses further topics on intention
drawing on Hampshire, Hart, and his joint collaboration with Pears. Refs.:
The main reference is Grice’s early essay on disposition and intention, The H.
P. Grice. Refs.: The main published source is Essay 4 in WOW, but there are
essays on ‘ifs and cans,’ so ‘if’ is a good keyword, on ‘entailment,’ and for
the connection with ‘intending,’ ‘disposition and intention,’ BANC.
conjunction: In traditional parlance, one ‘pars orationis.’ In the
identification of ‘and’ with ‘Λ’ there
is already a considerable distortion of the facts. ‘And’ can perform many jobs
which ‘Λ’ cannot perform. It can, for
instance, be used to couple nouns (“Tom and William arrived”), or adjectives
(“He was hungry and thirsty”), or adverbs (“He walked slowly and painfully”);
while ' . ' can be used only to couple expressions which could appear as
separate sentences. One might be tempted to say that sentences in which “and”
coupled words or phrases, were short for sentences in which “and” couples
clauses; e.g., that “He was hungry and thirsty” was short for “He was hungry
and he was thirsty.” But this is simply false. We do not say, of anyone who
uses sentences like “Tom and William arrived,” that he is speaking
elliptically, or using abbreviations. On the contrary, it is one of the
functions of “and,” to which there is no counterpart In the case of “.,” to
form plural subjects or compound predicates. Of course it is true of many
statements of the forms “x and y” are/* or ' x is /and g \ that they are
logically equivalent to corresponding statements of the" form * x Is /and
yisf'oT^x is /and x is g \ But, first, this is a fact about the use, in certain
contexts, of “and,” to which there
corresponds no rule for the use of * . '. And, second, there are countless
contexts for which such an equivalence does not hold; e.g. “Tom and Mary made
friends” is not equivalent to “Tom made friends and Mary made friends.” They
mean, usually, quite different things. But notice that one could say “Tom and
Mary made friends; but not with one another.” The implication of mutuality in
the first phrase is not so strong but that it can be rejected without
self-contradiction; but it is strong enough to make the rejection a slight
shock, a literary effect. Nor does such an equivalence hold if we replace “made
friends” by “met yesterday,” “were conversing,” “got married,” or “were playing
chess.” Even “Tom and William arrived” does not mean the same as “Tom arrived
and William arrived;” for the first suggests “together” and the second an order
of arrival. It might be conceded that “and” has functions which “ .” has not
(e.g., may carry in certain contexts an implication of mutuality which ‘.’ does not), and yet claimed that the rules
which hold for “and,” where it is used to couple clauses, are the same as the
rules which hold for “.” Even this is not true. By law (11), " p , q ' is
logically equivalent to * q . p ' ; but “They got married and had a child” or
“He set to work and found a job” are by no means logically equivalent to “They
had a child and got married” or “He found a job and set to work.” One might try
to avoid these difficulties by regarding ‘.’ as having the function, not of '
and ', but of what it looks like, namely a full stop. We should then have to
desist from talking of statements of the forms ' p .q\ * p . J . r * &CM
and talk of sets-of-statements of these forms instead. But this would not
avoid all, though it would avoid some, of the difficulties. Even in a passage
of prose consisting of several indicative sentences, the order of the sentences
may be in general vital to the sense, and in particular, relevant (in a way
ruled out by law (II)) to the truth-conditions of a set-of-statements made by
such a passage. The fact is that, in general, in ordinary speech and writing,
clauses and sentences do not contribute to the truthconditions of things said
by the use of sentences and paragraphs in which they occur, in any such simple
way as that pictured by the truth-tables for the binary connectives (' D ' * .
', 4 v ', 35 ') of the system, but in far more subtle, various, and complex
ways. But it is precisely the simplicity of the way in which, by the definition
of a truth-function, clauses joined by these connectives contribute to the
truth-conditions of sentences resulting from the junctions, which makes
possible the stylized, mechanical neatness of the logical system. It will not
do to reproach the logician for his divorce from linguistic realities, any more
than it will do to reproach the abstract painter for not being a
representational artist; but one may justly reproach him if he claims to be a
representational artist. An abstract painting may be, recognizably, a painting
of something. And the identification of “.” with ‘and,’ or with a full stop, is
not a simple mistake. There is a great deal of point in comparing them. The
interpretation of, and rules for, “.”define a minimal linguistic operation,
which we might call ‘simple conjunction’ and roughly describe as the joining
together of two (or more) statements in the process of asserting them both (or
all). And this is a part of what we often do with ' and ', and with the full
stop. But we do not string together at random any assertions we consider true;
we bring them together, in spoken or written sentences or paragraphs, only when
there is some further reason for the rapprochement, e.g., when they record
successive episodes in a single narrative. And that for the sake of which we
conjoin may confer upon the sentences embodying the conjunction logical
features at variance with the rules for “.” Thus we have seen that a statement
of the form “p and q” may carry an implication of temporal order incompatible
with that carried by the corresponding statement of the form “q and p.” This is
not to deny that statements corresponding to these, but of the forms ‘pΛq’ and ‘qΛp’would
be, if made, logically equivalent; for such statements would carry no
implications, and therefore no incompatible implications, of temporal order.
Nor is it to deny the point, and merit, of the comparison; the statement of the
form ‘pΛq’ means at least a part of what is
meant by the corresponding statement of the form ‘p and q.’ We might say: the form ‘p q’ is an abstraction from the
different uses of the form ‘p and q.’ Simple conjunction is a minimal element in
colloquial conjunction. We may speak of ‘. ‘ as the conjunctive sign; and read
it, for simplicity's sake, as “and” or “both … and … “I have already remarked
that the divergence between the meanings given to the truth-functional
constants and the meanings of the ordinary conjunctions with which they are
commonly identified is at a minimum in the cases of ' ~ ' and ‘.’ We have seen,
as well, that the remaining constants of the system can be defined in terms of
these two. Other interdefinitions are equally possible. But since ^’ and ‘.’ are more nearly identifiable with ‘not’ and
‘and’ than any other constant with any other English word, I prefer to
emphasize the definability of the remaining constants in terms of ‘ .’ and ‘~.’
It is useful to remember that every rule or law of the system can be expressed
in terms of negation and simple conjunction. The system might, indeed, be
called the System of Negation and Conjunction. Grice lists ‘and’ as the first
binary functor in his response to Strawson. Grice’s conversationalist
hypothesis applies to this central ‘connective.’ Interestingly, in his essay on
Aristotle, and discussing, “French poet,” Grice distinguishes between
conjunction and adjunction. “French” is adjuncted to ‘poet,’ unlike ‘fat’ in
‘fat philosopher.’ Refs.The main published
source is “Studies in the Way of Words” (henceforth, “WOW”), I (especially
Essays 1 and 4), “Presupposition and conversational implicature,” in P. Cole,
and the two sets on ‘Logic and conversation,’ in The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
conversational
avowal: Grice’s favourite
conversational avowal, mentioned by Grice, is a declaration of an intention..
Grice starts using the phrase ‘conversational avowal’ after exploring Ryle’s
rather cursory exploration of them in The Concept of Mind. This is
interesting because in general Grice is an anti-ryleist. The verb is of
course ‘to avow,’ which is ultimately a Latinate from ‘advocare.’ A processes
or event of the soul is, on the official view, supposed to be played out in a
private theatre. Such an event is known directly by the man who has them either
through the faculty of introspection or the ‘phosphorescence’ of
consciousness. The subject is, on this view, incorrigible—his avowals of
the state of his soul cannot be corrected by others—and he is infallible—he cannot
be wrong about which states he is in. The official doctrine mistakenly
construes an avowals or a report of such an episode as issuing from a special
sort of observation or perception of shadowy existents. We should consider
some differences between two sorts of 'conversational' avowals: (i) I feel a
tickle and (ii) I feel ill. If a man feels a tickle, he has a tickle, and if he
has a tickle, he feels it. But if he feels ill, he may not be ill, and if
he is ill, he may not feel ill. Doubtless a man’s feeling ill is some
evidence for his being ill. But feeling a tickle is not evidence for his having
a tickle, any more than striking a blow is evidence for the occurrence of a
blow. In ‘feel a tickle’ and ‘strike a blow’, ‘tickle’ and ‘blow’ are cognate
accusatives to the verbs ‘feel’ and ‘strike’. The verb and its accusative
are two expressions for the same thing, as are the verbs and their accusatives
in ‘I dreamt a dream’ and ‘I asked a question’. But ‘ill’ and ‘capable of
climbing the tree’ are not cognate accusatives to the verb ‘to feel.' So they
are not in grammar bound to signify feelings, as ‘tickle’ is in grammar bound
to signify a feeling. Another purely grammatical point shows the same
thing. It is indifferent whether I say ‘I feel a tickle’ or ‘I have a tickle’;
but ‘I have . . .’ cannot be completed by ‘. . . ill’, (cf. ‘I have an
illness’), ‘. . . capable of climbing the tree’, (cf. I have a capability to
climb that tree’) ‘. . . happy’ (cf. ‘I have a feeling of happiness’ or ‘I have
happiness in my life’) or ‘. . . discontented’ (cf. ‘I have a feeling of strong
discontent towards behaviourism’). If we try to restore the verbal parallel by
bringing in the appropriate abstract nouns, we find a further incongruity; ‘I
feel happiness’(I feel as though I am experiencing happiness), ‘I feel illness’
(I feel as though I do have an illness’) or ‘I feel ability to climb the tree’
(I feel that I am endowed with the capability to climb that tree), if they mean
anything, they do not mean at all what a man means by uttering ‘I feel happy,’
or ‘I feel ill,’ or ‘I feel capable of climbing the tree’. On the other
hand, besides these differences between the different uses of ‘I feel . . .’
there are important CONVERSATIONAL analogies as well. If a man says that
he has a tickle, his co-conversationalist does not ask for his evidence, or
requires him to make quite sure. Announcing a tickle is not proclaiming the
results of an investigation. A tickle is not something established by
careful witnessing, or something inferred from a clue, nor do we praise for his
powers of observation or reasoning a man who let us know that he feels tickles,
tweaks and flutters. Just the same is true of avowals of moods. If a man
makes a conversational contribution, such as‘I feel bored’, or ‘I feel
depressed’, his co-conversationalist does not usually ask him for his evidence,
or request him to make sure. The co-conversationalist may accuse the man of
shamming to him or to himself, but the co-conversationalist does not accuse him
of having been careless in his observations or rash in his inferences, since a
co-conversationalist would not usually think that his conversational avowal is
a report of an observation or a conclusion. He has not been a good or a
bad detective; he has not been a detective at all. Nothing would surprise us
more than to hear him say ‘I feel depressed’ in the alert and judicious tone of
voice of a detective, a microscopist, or a diagnostician, though this tone of
voice is perfectly congruous with the NON-AVOWAL past-tense ‘I WAS feeling
depressed’ or the NON-AVOWAL third-person report, ‘HE feels depressed’. If the
avowal is to do its conversational job, it must be said in a depressed tone of
voice. The conversational avowal must be blurted out to a sympathizer, not reported
to an investigator. Avowing ‘I feel depressed’ is doing one of the things, viz.
one CONVERSATIONAL thing, that depression is the mood to do. It is not a piece
of scientific premiss-providing, but a piece of ‘conversational moping.’That is
why, if the co-conversationalist is suspicious, he does not ask ‘Fact or
fiction?’, ‘True or false?’, ‘Reliable or unreliable?’, but ‘Sincere or
shammed?’ The CONVERSATIONAL avowal of moods requires not acumen, but
openness. It comes from the heart, not from the head. It is not
discovery, but voluntary non-concealment. Of course people have to learn how to
use avowal expressions appropriately and they may not learn these lessons very
well. They learn them from ordinary discussions of the moods of others and from
such more fruitful sources as novels and the theatre. They learn from the same
sources how to cheat both other people and themselves by making a sham
conversational avowal in the proper tone of voice and with the other proper
histrionic accompaniments. If we now raise the question ‘How does a man find
out what mood he is in?’ one can answer that if, as may not be the case, he
finds it out at all, he finds it out very much as we find it out. As we have
seen, he does not groan ‘I feel bored’ because he has found out that he is
bored, any more than the sleepy man yawns because he has found out that he is
sleepy. Rather, somewhat as the sleepy man finds out that he is sleepy by
finding, among other things, that he keeps on yawning, so the bored man finds
out that he is bored, if he does find this out, by finding that among other
things he glumly says to others and to himself ‘I feel bored’ and ‘How bored I
feel’. Such a blurted avowal is not merely one fairly reliable index among
others. It is the first and the best index, since being worded and voluntarily
uttered, it is meant to be heard and it is meant to be understood. It calls for
no sleuth-work.In some respects a conversational avowal of a moods, like ‘I
feel cheerful,’ more closely resemble announcements of sensations like ‘I feel
a tickle’ than they resemble utterances like ‘I feel better’ or ‘I feel capable
of climbing the tree’. Just as it would be absurd to say ‘I feel a tickle but
maybe I haven’t one’, so, in ordinary cases, it would be absurd to say ‘I feel cheerful
but maybe I am not’. But there would be no absurdity in saying ‘I FEEL better
but, to judge by the doctor’s attitude, perhaps I am WORSE’, or ‘I do FEEL as
if I am capable of climbing the tree but maybe I cannot climb it.’This
difference can be brought out in another way. Sometimes it is natural to say ‘I
feel AS IF I could eat a horse’, or ‘I feel AS IF my temperature has returned
to normal’. But, more more immediate conversational avowals, it would seldom if
ever be natural to say ‘I feel AS IF I were in the dumps’, or ‘I feel AS IF I
were bored’, any more than it would be natural to say ‘I feel AS IF I had a
pain’. Not much would be gained by discussing at length why we use ‘feel’ in
these different ways. There are hosts of other ways in which it is also used. I
can say ‘I felt a lump in the mattress’, ‘I felt cold’, ‘I felt queer’, ‘I felt
my jaw-muscles stiffen’, ‘I felt my gorge rise’, ‘I felt my chin with my
thumb’, ‘I felt in vain for the lever’, ‘I felt as if something important was
about to happen’, ‘I felt that there was a flaw somewhere in the argument’, ‘I
felt quite at home’, ‘I felt that he was angry’. A feature common to most
of these uses of ‘feel’ is that the utterer does not want further questions to
be put. They would be either unanswerable questions, or unaskable questions.
That he felt it is enough to settle some debates.That he merely felt it is
enough to show that debates should not even begin. Names of moods, then, are
not the names of feelings. But to be in a particular mood is to be in the mood,
among other things, to feel certain sorts of feelings in certain sorts of
situations. To be in a lazy mood, is, among other things, to tend to have
sensations of lassitude in the limbs when jobs have to be done, to have cosy
feelings of relaxation when the deck-chair is resumed, not to have electricity
feelings when the game begins, and so forth. But we are not thinking
primarily of these feelings when we say that we feel lazy; in fact, we seldom
pay much heed to sensations of these kinds, save when they are abnormally
acute. Is a name of a mood a name
of an emotion? The only tolerable reply is that of course they are, in that
some people some of the time use ‘emotion’. But then we must add that in this
usage an emotion is not something that can be segregated from thinking,
daydreaming, voluntarily doing things, grimacing or feeling pangs and itches.
To have the emotion, in this usage, which we ordinarily refer to as ‘being
bored’, is to be in the mood to think certain sorts of thoughts, and not to
think other sorts, to yawn and not to chuckle, to converse with stilted
politeness, and not to talk with animation, to feel flaccid and not to feel
resilient. Boredom is not some unique distinguishable ingredient, scene or
feature of all that its victim is doing and undergoing. Rather it is the
temporary complexion of that totality. It is not like a gust, a sunbeam, a
shower or the temperature; it is like the morning’s weather. An unstudied
conversational utterance may embody an explicit interest phrase, or a
conversational avowal, such as ‘I want it’, ‘I hope so’, ‘That’s what I
intend’, ‘I quite dislike it’, ‘Surely I am depressed’, ‘I do wonder, too’, ‘I
guess so’ and ‘I am feeling hungry.’The surface grammar (if not logical form)
makes it tempting to misconstrue all the utterances as a description. But in
its primary employment such a conversational avowal as ‘I want it’ is not used
to convey information.‘I want it’ is used to make a request or demand. ‘I want
it’ is no more meant as a contribution to general knowledge than ‘please’. For
a co-conversationalist to respond with the tag ‘Do you?’ or worse, as Grice’s
tutee, with ‘*how* do you *know* that you want it?’ is glaringly inappropriate.
Nor, in their primary employment, are conversational avowals such as ‘I hate
it’ or ‘That’s what I I intend’ used for the purpose of telling one’s addressee
facts about the utterer; or else we should not be surprised to hear them
uttered in the cool, informative tones of voice in which one says ‘HE hates it’
and ‘That’s what he intends’. We expect a conversational avowal, on the
contrary, to be spoken in a revolted and a resolute tone of voice respectively.
It is an utterances of a man in a revolted and resolute frame of mind. A
conversational avowal is a thing said in detestation and resolution and not a
thing said in order to advance biographical knowledge about detestations and
resolutions. A man who notices the unstudied utterances of the utterer,
who may or may not be himself, is, if his interest in the utterer has the
appropriate direction, especially well situated to pass comments upon the
qualities and frames of mind of its author.‘avowal’ as a philosophical lexeme
may not invite an immediate correlate in the Graeco-Roman, ultimately Grecian,
tradition. ‘Confessio’ springs to mind, but this is not what Grice is thinking
about. He is more concerned with issues of privileged access and
incorrigibility, or corrigibility, rather, as per the alleged immediacy of a
first-person report of the form, “I feel that …” . Grice does use ‘avowal’
often especially in the early stages, when the logical scepticism about
incorrigibility comes under attack. Just to be different, Grice is interested
in the corrigibility of the avowal. The issue is of some importance in his
account of the act of communication, and how one can disimplicate what one
means. Grice loves to play with his tutee doubting as to whether he means that
p or q. Except at Oxford, the whole thing has a ridiculous ring to it. I want
you to bring me a paper by Friday. You mean the newspaper? You very well know
what I mean. But perhaps you do not. Are you sure you mean a philosophy paper
when you utter, ‘I want you to bring a paper by Friday’? As Grice notes, in
case of self-deception and egcrateia, it may well be that the utterer does not
know what he desires, if not what he intends, if anything. Freud and Foucault
run galore. The topic will interest a collaborator of Grice’s, Pears, with his
concept of ‘motivated irrationality.’ Grice likes to discuss a category
mistake. I may be categorically mistaken but I am not categorically
confused. Now when it comes to avowal-avowal, it is only natural that if he is
interested in Aristotle on ‘hedone,’ Grice would be interested in
Aristotle on ‘lupe.’ This is very philosophical, as Urmson agrees. Can one
‘fake’ pain? Why would one fake pain? Oddly, this is for Grice the origin of
language. Is pleasure just the absence of pain? Liddell and Soctt have “λύπη”
and render it as pain of body, oἡδον; also, sad plight or condition, but also
pain of mind, grief; “ά; δῆγμα δὲ λύπης οὐδὲν ἐφ᾽ ἧπαρ προσικνεῖται; τί γὰρ
καλὸν ζῆν βίοτον, ὃς λύπας φέρει; ἐρωτικὴ λ.’ λύπας προσβάλλειν;” “λ. φέρειν
τινί; oχαρά.” Oddly, Grice goes back to pain in Princeton, since it is explored
by Smart in his identity thesis. Take pain. Surely, Grice tells the
Princetonians, it sounds harsh, to echo Berkeley, to say that it is the brain
of Smith being in this or that a state which is justified by insufficient
evidence; whereas it surely sounds less harsh that it is the C-fibres that
constitute his ‘pain,’ which he can thereby fake. Grice distinguishes between a
complete unstructured utterance token – “Ouch” – versus a complete
syntactically structured erotetic utterance of the type, “Are you in pain?”. At
the Jowett, Corpus Barnes has read Ogden and says ‘Ouch’ (‘Oh’) bears an
‘emotional’ or ‘emotive’ communicatum provided there is an intention there
somewhere. Otherwise, no communicatum occurs. But if there is an intention, the
‘Oh’ can always be a fake. Grice distinguishes between a ‘fake’ and a ‘sneak.’
If U intends A to perceive ‘Oh’ as a fake, U means that he is in pain. If there
is a sneaky intention behind the utterance, which U does NOT intend his A to
recognise, there is no communicatum. Grice criticises emotivism as rushing
ahead to analyse a nuance before exploring what sort of a nuance it is. Surely
there is more to the allegedly ‘pseudo-descriptive’ ‘x is good,’ than U meaning
that U emotionally approves of x. In his ‘myth,’ Grice uses pain magisterially
as an excellent example for a privileged-access allegedly incorrigible avowal,
and stage 0 in his creature progression. By uttering ‘Oh!,’ under voluntary
control, Barnes means, iconically, that he is in pain. Pain fall under the
broader keyword: emotion, as anger does. Cf. Aristotle on the emotion in De
An., Rhet., and Eth. Nich. Knowing that at Oxford, if you are a classicist, you
are not a philosopher, Grice never explores the Stoic, say, approach to pain,
or lack thereof (“Which is good, since Walter Pater did it for me!”). Refs.:
“Can I have a pain in my tail?” The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The
Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley.
conversational benevolence: The type of rationality that Grice sees in conversational
is one that sees conversation as ‘rational co-operation.’ So it is obvious that
he has to invoke some level of benevolence. When tutoring his rather egoistic
tutees he had to be careful, so he hastened to add a principle of
conversational self-love. It was different when lecturing outside a tutorial!
In fact ‘benevolence’ here is best understood as ‘altruism’. So, if there is a
principle of conversational egoism, there is a correlative principle of
conversational altruism. If Grice uses ‘self-love,’ there is nothing about
‘love,’ in ‘benevolence.’ Butler may have used ‘other-love’! Even if of course
we must start with the Grecians! We must not forget that Plato and Aristotle
despised "autophilia", the complacency and self-satisfaction making
it into the opposite of "epimeleia heautou” in Plato’s Alcibiades.
Similarly, to criticize Socratic ethics as a form of egoism in opposition to a
selfless care of others is inappropriate. Neither a self-interested seeker of
wisdom nor a dangerous teacher of self-love, Socrates, as the master of
epimeleia heautou, is the hinge between the care of self and others. One has to
be careful here. A folk-etymological connection between ‘foam’ may not be
needed – when the Romans had to deal with Grecian ‘aphrodite.’ This requires
that we look for another linguistic botany for Grecian ‘self-love’ that Grice
opposes to ‘benevolentia.’ Hesiod derives Aphrodite from “ἀφρός,” ‘sea-foam,’ interpreting
the name as "risen from the foam", but most modern scholars regard
this as a spurious folk etymology. Early modern scholars of classical mythology
attempted to argue that Aphrodite's name was of Griceain or Indo-European
origin, but these efforts have now been mostly abandoned. Aphrodite's name is
generally accepted to be of non-Greek, probably Semitic, origin, but its exact
derivation cannot be determined. Scholars in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, accepting Hesiod's "foam" etymology as genuine,
analyzed the second part of Aphrodite's name as -odítē "wanderer" or -dítē
"bright". Janda, also accepting Hesiod's etymology, has argued in
favor of the latter of these interpretations and claims the story of a birth
from the foam as an Indo-European mytheme. Similarly, an Indo-European compound
abʰor-, very" and dʰei- "to shine" have been proposed, also
referring to Eos. Other have argued that these hypotheses are unlikely since
Aphrodite's attributes are entirely different from those of both Eos and the
Vedic deity Ushas.A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have also been
suggested. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian ‘barīrītu,’
the name of a female demon that appears in Middle Babylonian and Late
Babylonian texts. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing eprϑni
"lord", an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις.This
would make the theonym in origin an honorific, "the lady".Most
scholars reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite
actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru (from Greek Aphrō, clipped
form of Aphrodite). The medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a highly contrived
etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos (ἁβροδίαιτος),
"she who lives delicately", from habrós and díaita. The alteration
from b to ph is explained as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek
"obvious from the Macedonians". It is much easier with the Romans. Lewis and Short have ‘ămor,’ old form “ămŏs,”
“like honos, labos, colos, etc.’ obviously from ‘amare,’ and which they render
as ‘love,’ as in Grice’s “conversational self-love.” Your tutor will reprimand
you if you spend too much linguistic botany on ‘eros.’ “Go straight to
‘philos.’” But no. There are philosophical usages of ‘eros,’ especially when it
comes to the Grecian philosophers Grice is interested in: Aristotle reading
Plato, which becomes Ariskant reading Plathegel. So, Liddell and Scott have
“ἔρως” which of course is from a verb, or two: “ἕραμαι,” “ἐράω,” and which they
render as “love, mostly of the sexual passion, ““θηλυκρατὴς ἔ.,” “ἐρῶσ᾽ ἔρωτ᾽
ἔκδημον,” “ἔ. τινός love for one, S.Tr.433, “παίδων” E. Ion67, and “generally,
love of a thing, desire for it,” ““πατρῴας γῆς” “δεινὸς εὐκλείας ἔ.” “ἔχειν
ἔμφυτον ἔρωτα περί τι” Plato, Lg. 782e ; “πρὸς τοὺς λόγους” (love of law),
“ἔρωτα σχὼν τῆς Ἑλλάδος τύραννος γενέσθαι” Hdt.5.32 ; ἔ. ἔχει με c. inf.,
A.Supp.521 ; “θανόντι κείνῳ συνθανεῖν ἔρως μ᾽ ἔχει” S.Fr.953 ; “αὐτοῖς ἦν ἔρως
θρόνους ἐᾶσθαι” Id.OC367 ; ἔ. ἐμπίπτει μοι c. inf., A.Ag.341, cf. Th.6.24 ; εἰς
ἔρωτά τινος ἀφικέσθαι, ἐλθεῖν, Antiph.212.3,Anaxil.21.5 : pl., loves, amours,
“ἀλλοτρίων” Pi.N.3.30 ; “οὐχ ὅσιοι ἔ.” E.Hipp.765 (lyr.) ; “ἔρωτες ἐμᾶς πόλεως”
Ar.Av.1316 (lyr.), etc. ; of dolphins, “πρὸς παῖδας” Arist.HA631a10 :
generally, desires, S.Ant.617 (lyr.). 2. object of love or desire, “ἀπρόσικτοι
ἔρωτες” Pi.N.11.48, cf. Luc.Tim.14. 3. passionate joy, S.Aj.693 (lyr.); the god
of love, Anacr.65, Parm.13, E.Hipp.525 (lyr.), etc.“Έ. ἀνίκατε μάχαν” S.Ant.781
(lyr.) : in pl., Simon.184.3, etc. III. at Nicaea, a funeral wreath, EM379.54.
IV. name of the κλῆρος Ἀφροδίτης, Cat.Cod.Astr.1.168 ; = third κλῆρος,
Paul.Al.K.3; one of the τόποι, Vett.Val.69.16. And they’ll point to you that
the Romans had ‘amor’ AND ‘cupidus’ (which they meant as a transliteration of
epithumia). If for Kant and Grice it is the intention that matters, ill-will
counts. If Smith does not want Jones have a job, Smith has ill-will towards
Jones. This is all Kant and Grice need to call Smith a bad person. It means it
is the ill-will that causes Joness not having a job. A conceptual elucidation.
Interesting from a historical point of view seeing that Grice had introduced a
principle of conversational benevolence (i.e. conversational goodwill) pretty
early. Malevolentia was over-used by Cicero, translating the Grecian. Grice
judges that if Jones fails to get the job that benevolent Smith promised, Smith
may still be deemed, for Kant, if not Aristotle, to have given him the
job. A similar elucidation was carried by Urmson with his idea of
supererogation (heroism and sainthood). For a hero or saint, someones goodwill
but not be good enough! Which does not mean it is ill, either! Refs.: The
source is Grice’s seminar in the first set on ‘Logic and conversation.’ The H.
P. Grice Papers, BANC.
Conversational category. Kant proposed 12 categories: unity, plurality, and totality
for concept of quantity; reality, negation, and limitation, for the concept of
quality; inherence and subsistence, cause and effect, and community for the
concept of relation; and possibility-impossibility, existence-nonexistence, and
necessity and contingency. Kategorien
sind nach Kant apriorisch und unmittelbar gegeben. Sie sind Werkzeuge des
Urteilens und Werkzeuge des Denkens. Als solche dienen sie nur der Anwendung
und haben keine Existenz. Sie bestehen somit nur im menschlichen Verstand. Sie
sind nicht an Erfahrung gebunden.[5] Durch ihre Unmittelbarkeit sind sie auch nicht an Zeichen
gebunden.[6] Kants erkenntnistheoretisches Ziel ist es, über die Bedingungen
der Geltungskraft von Urteilen Auskunft zu geben. Ohne diese Auskunft können
zwar vielerlei Urteile gefällt werden, sie müssen dann allerdings als
„systematische Doktrin(en)“ bezeichnet werden.[7] Kant kritisiert damit das rein analytische Denken der
Wissenschaft als falsch und stellt ihm die Notwendigkeit des synthetisierenden
Denkens gegenüber.[8] Kant begründet die Geltungskraft mit dem Transzendentalen Subjekt.[9] Das Transzendentalsubjekt ist dabei ein reiner
Reflexionsbegriff, welcher das synthetisierende Dritte darstellt (wie in
späteren Philosophien Geist (Hegel), Wille, Macht, Sprache und Wert (Marx)),
das nicht durch die Sinne wahrnehmbar ist. Kant sucht hier die Antwort auf die
Frage, wie der Mensch als vernunftbegabtes Wesen konstituiert werden kann,
nicht in der Analyse, sondern in einer Synthesis.[10]
Bei Immanuel Kant, der somit als bedeutender Erneuerer der
bis dahin „vorkritischen“ Kategorienlehre gilt, finden sich zwölf „Kategorien
der reinen Vernunft“. Für Kant sind diese Kategorien Verstandesbegriffe,
nicht aber Ausdruck des tatsächlichen Seins der Dinge an sich. Damit wandelt sich die ontologische Sichtweise der Tradition in
eine erkenntnistheoretische Betrachtung, weshalb Kants
„kritische“ Philosophie (seit der Kritik der
reinen Vernunft) oft auch als „Kopernikanische Wende in der Philosophie“ bezeichnet
wird.
Quantität, Qualität, Relation und Modalität sind die vier grundlegenden
Urteilsfunktionen des Verstandes, nach denen die Kategorien gebildet werden.
Demnach sind z. B. der Urteilsfunktion „Quantität“ die Kategorien bzw.
Urteile „Einheit“, „Vielheit“ und „Allheit“ untergeordnet, und der
Urteilsfunktion „Relation“ die Urteile der „Ursache“ und der „Wirkung“.
Bereits
bei Friedrich
Adolf Trendelenburg findet man den Hinweis auf die verbreitete Kritik, dass
Kant die den Kategorien zugrunde liegenden Urteilsformen nicht systematisch
hergeleitet und damit als notwendig begründet hat. Einer der Kritikpunkte ist
dabei, dass die Kategorien sich teilweise auf Anschauungen (Einzelheit,
Realität, Dasein), teilweise auf Abstraktionen wie Zusammenfassen, Begrenzen
oder Begründen (Vielheit, Allheit, Negation, Limitation, Möglichkeit,
Notwendigkeit) beziehen.
Conversational
cooperation – used by Grice WOW:368 – previously, ‘rational cooperation’ – what
cooperation is not rational? He uses ‘converational cooperation” and “supreme
principle of conversational cooperation” (369). He uses ‘supreme conversational
principle” of “cooperativeness” (369), to avoid seeing the conversational
imperatives as an unorganized heap of conversational obligations.
conversational explicitum: Grice distinguishes between the conversational explicitum
and the conversational explicatum. Grice plays with ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’
at various places. He often uses ‘explicit’and ‘implicit’ adverbially: the
utterer explicitly conveys that p versus the utterer implicitly conveys that p
(hints that p, suggests that p, indicates that p, implicates that p, implies
that p). Grice regards that both dimensions form part of the total act of
signification, accepting as a neutral variant, that the utterer has signified
that p.
conversational helpfulness: helpfulness is Grice’s favourite virtue. He dedicates a
set of seven lectures to it, entitled as follows. Lecture 1, Prolegomena;
Lecture 2: Logic and Conversation; Lecture 3: Further notes on logic and
conversation; Lecture 4: Indicative conditionals; Lecture 5: Us meaning and
intentions; Lecture 6: Us meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning; and
Lecture 7: Some models for implicature. I hope they dont expect me to lecture
on James! Grice admired James, but not vice versa. Grice entitled the
set as being Logic and Conversation. That is the title, also, of the second
lecture. Grice keeps those titles seeing that it was way the whole set of
lectures were frequently cited, and that the second lecture had been published
under that title in Davidson and Harman, The Logic of Grammar. The
content of each lecture is indicated below. In the first, Grice manages to
quote from Witters. In the last, he didnt! The original set
consisted of seven lectures. To wit: Prolegomena, Logic and conversation,
Further notes on logic and conversation, Indicative Conditionals, Us meaning
and intentions, Us meaning, sentence-meaning, and word meaning, and Some models
for implicature. They were pretty successful at Oxford. While the notion of an
implicatum had been introduced by Grice at Oxford, even in connection with a
principle of conversational helpfulness, he takes the occasion now to explore
the type of rationality involved. Observation of the principle of
conversational helpfulness is rational (reasonable) along the following lines:
anyone who cares about the two central goals to conversation (give/receive
information, influence/be influened) is expected to have an interest in
participating in a conversation that is only going to be profitable given that
it is conducted along the lines set by the principle of conversational
helpfulness. In Prolegomena he lists Austin, Strawson, Hare, Hart, and himself,
as victims of a disregard for the implicatum. In the third lecture he
introduces his razor, Senses are not to be muliplied beyond necessity. In
Indicative conditionals he tackles Strawson on if as not representing the horse-shoe
of Whitehead and Russell. The next two lectures on the meaning by the utterer
and intentions, and meaning by the utterer, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning
refine his earlier, more austere, account of this particularly Peirceian
phenomenon. He concludes the lectures with an exploration on the relevance of
the implicatum to philosophical psychology. Grice was well aware that many
philosophers had become enamoured with the s. and would love to give it a
continuous perusal. The set is indeed grandiose. It starts with a Prolegomena
to set the scene: He notably quotes himself in it, which helps, but also
Strawson, which sort of justifies the general title. In the second lecture,
Logic and Conversation, he expands on the principle of conversational helpfulness
and the explicitum/implicatum distinction – all very rationalist! The third
lecture is otiose in that he makes fun of Ockham: Senses are not to be
multiplied beyond necessity. The fourth lecture, on Indicative conditionals, is
indeed on MOST of the formal devices he had mentioned on Lecture II, notably
the functors (rather than the quantifiers and the iota operator, with which he
deals in Presupposition and conversational implicature, since, as he notes,
they refer to reference). This lecture is the centrepiece of the set. In the
fifth lecture, he plays with mean, and discovers that it is attached to the
implicatum or the implicitum. In the sixth lecture, he becomes a nominalist, to
use Bennetts phrase, as he deals with dog and shaggy in terms of this or that
resultant procedure. Dont ask me what they are! Finally, in “Some models for
implicature,” he attacks the charge of circularity, and refers to
nineteenth-century explorations on the idea of thought without language alla
Wundt. I dont think a set of James lectures had even been so comprehensive!
Conversational helpfulness. This is Grice at his methodological best. He was
aware that the type of philosophying he was about to criticise wass a bit
dated, but whats wrong with being old-fashioned? While this may be seen as a
development of his views on implicature at that seminal Oxford seminar, it may
also be seen as Grice popularising the views for a New-World, non-Oxonian
audience. A discussion of Oxonian philosophers of the play group of Grice,
notably Austin, Hare, Hart, and Strawson. He adds himself for good measure
(“Causal theory”). Philosophers, even at Oxford, have to be careful with the
attention that is due to general principles of discourse. Grice quotes
philosophers of an earlier generation, such as Ryle, and some interpreters or
practitioners of Oxonian analysis, such as Benjamin and Searle. He even manages
to quote from Witterss Philosophical investigations, on seeing a banana as a
banana. There are further items in the Grice collection that address Austins
manoeuvre, Austin on ifs and cans, Ifs and cans, : conditional,
power. Two of Grices favourites. He opposed Strawsons view on if.
Grice thought that if was the horseshoe of Whitehead and Russell, provided we
add an implicatum to an entailment. The can is merely dispositional, if
not alla Ryle, alla Grice! Ifs and cans, intention, disposition. Austin
had brought the topic to the fore as an exploration of free will. Pears had
noted that conversational implicature may account for the conditional
perfection (if yields iff). Cf. Ayers on Austin on if and can. Recall that
for Grice the most idiomatic way to express a disposition is with the
Subjectsive mode, the if, and the can ‒ The ice can break. Cf. the mistake: It
is not the case that what you must do, you can do. The can-may distinction is
one Grice played with too. As with will and shall, the attachment of one mode
to one of the lexemes is pretty arbitrary and not etymologically justified ‒
pace Fowler on it being a privilege of this or that Southern Englishman as
Fowler is. If he calls it Prolegomena, he is being jocular. Philosophers
Mistakes would have been too provocative. Benjamin, or rather Broad, erred, and
so did Ryle, and Ludwig Witters, and my friends, Austin (the mater that
wobbled), and in order of seniority, Hart (I heard him defend this about
carefully – stopping at every door in case a dog comes out at breakneck speed),
Hare (To say good is to approve), and Strawson (“Logical theory”: To utter if
p, q is to implicate some inferrability, To say true! is to endorse –
Analysis). If he ends with Searle, he is being jocular. He quotes Searle from
an essay in British philosophy in Lecture I, and from an essay in Philosophy in
America in Lecture V. He loved Searle, and expands on the Texas oilmens club
example! We may think of Grice as a linguistic botanizer or a meta-linguistic
botanizer: his hobby was to collect philosophers mistakes, and he catalogued
them. In Causal theory he produces his first list of seven. The pillar box
seems red to me. One cannot see a dagger as a dagger. Moore didnt know that the
objects before him were his own hands. What is actual is not also possible. For
someone to be called responsible, his action should be condemnable. A cause
must be given only of something abnormal or unusual (cf. ætiology). If you know
it, you dont believe it. In the Prolegomena, the taxonomy is more complicated.
Examples A (the use of an expression, by Austin, Benjamin, Grice, Hart, Ryle,
Wittgenstein), Examples B (Strawson on and, or, and especially if), and
Examples C (Strawson on true and Hare on good – the performative theories). But
even if his taxonomy is more complicated, he makes it more SO by giving other
examples as he goes on to discuss how to assess the philosophical mistake. Cf.
his elaboration on trying, I saw Mrs. Smith cashing a cheque, Trying to cash a
cheque, you mean. Or cf. his remarks on remember, and There is an analogy here
with a case by Wittgenstein. In summary, he wants to say. Its the philosopher
who makes his big mistake. He has detected, as Grice has it, some
conversational nuance. Now he wants to exploit it. But before rushing ahead to
exploit the conversational nuance he has detected, or identified, or collected
in his exercise of linguistic botanising, the philosopher should let us know
with clarity what type of a nuance it is. For Grice wants to know that the
nuance depends on a general principle (of goal-directed behaviour in general,
and most likely rational) governing discourse – that participants in a conversation
should be aware of, and not on some minutiæ that has been identified by the
philosopher making the mistake, unsystematically, and merely descriptively, and
taxonomically, but without ONE drop of explanatory adequacy. The fact that he
directs this to his junior Strawson is the sad thing. The rest are all Grices
seniors! The point is of philosophical interest, rather than other. And he
keeps citing philosophers, Tarski or Ramsey, in the third James leture, to
elaborate the point about true in Prolegomena. He never seems interested in
anything but an item being of philosophical interest, even if that means HIS
and MINE! On top, he is being Oxonian: Only at Oxford my colleagues were so
obsessed, as it has never been seen anywhere else, about the nuances of
conversation. Only they were all making a big mistake in having no clue as to
what the underlying theory of conversation as rational co-operation would
simplify things for them – and how! If I introduce the explicatum as a
concession, I shall hope I will be pardoned! Is Grices intention epagogic, or
diagogic in Prolegomena? Is he trying to educate Strawson, or just delighting
in proving Strawson wrong? We think the former. The fact that he quotes himself
shows that Grice is concerned with something he still sees, and for the rest of
his life will see, as a valid philosophical problem. If philosophy generated no
problems it would be dead. Refs.: The main sources are the two sets on ‘logic
and conversation.’ There are good paraphrases in other essays when he
summarises his own views, as he did at Urbana. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
conversational imperative: In most versions that Grice provides of the ‘general
expectations’ of rational discourse, he chooses the obvious imperative form. On
occasion he does use ‘imperative.’ Grice is vague as to the term of choice for
this or that ‘expectation.’ According to Strawson, Grice even once used
‘conversational rule,’ and he does use ‘conversational rule of the
conversational game of making this or that conversational move.’ Notably, he
also uses ‘conversational principle,’ and ‘conversational desideratum.’ And
‘maxim’! And ‘conversational directive (371), and ‘conversational obligation’
(369). By ‘conversational maxim,’ he means ‘conversational maxim.’ He uses
‘conversational sub-maxim’ very occasionally. He rather uses ‘conversational
super-maxim.’ He uses ‘immanuel,’ and he uses ‘conversational immanuel.’ It is
worth noting that the choice of word influences the exegesis. Loar takes these
things to be ‘empirical generalisations over functional states’! And Grice
agrees that there is a dull, empiricist way, in which these things can be seen
as things people conform to. There is a quasi-contractualist approach to:
things people convene on. And there is an Ariskantian approach: things people
SHOULD abide by. Surely Grice is not requiring that the conversationalists ARE
explicitly or consciously AWARE of these things. There is a principle of effort
of economical reason to cope with that!
conversational implicatum: Grice loved an implicatum. And an implicature. An
elaboration of his Oxonian seminar on Logic and conversation. Theres a
principle of conversational helpfulness, which includes a desideratum of
conversational candour and a desideratum of conversational clarity, and the
sub-principle of conversational self-interest clashing with the sub-principle
of conversational benevolence. The whole point of the manoeuvre is to provide a
rational basis for a conversational implicatum, as his term of art goes.
Observation of the principle of conversational helpfulness is
rational/reasonable along the following lines: anyone who is interested in the
two goals conversation is supposed to serve ‒ give/receive information,
influence/be influenced ‒ should only care to enter a conversation that will be
only profitable under the assumption that it is conducted in accordance with
the principle of conversational helfpulness, and attending desiderata and
sub-principles. Grice takes special care in listing tests for the proof that an
implicatum is conversational in this rather technical usage: a conversational
implicatum is rationally calculable (it is the content of a psychological
state, attitude or stance that the addressee assigns to the utterer on
condition that he is being helpful), non-detachable, indeterminate, and very
cancellable, thus never part of the sense and never an entailment of this or
that piece of philosophical vocabulary, in Davidson and Harman, the logic of
Grammar, also in Cole and Morgan, repr. in a revised form in Grice, logic and
conversation, the second James lecture, : principle of conversational
helpfulness, implicatum, cancellability. While the essay was also repr. by
Cole and Morgan. Grice always cites it from the two-column reprint in The Logic
of Grammar, ed. by Davidson and Harman. Most people without a philosophical
background first encounter Grice through this essay. A philosopher usually gets
first acquainted with his In defence of a dogma, or Meaning. In Logic and
Conversation, Grice re-utilises the notion of an implicatum and the principle
of conversational helpfulness that he introduced at Oxford to a more
select audience. The idea Grice is that the observation of the principle
of conversational helfpulness is rational (reasonable) along the
following lines: anyone who is concerned with the two goals which are
central to conversation (to give/receive information, to influence/be
influenced) should be interested in participating in a conversation that
is only going to be profitable on the assumption that it is conducted
along the lines of the principle of conversational helfpulness. Grices
point is methodological. He is not at all interested in conversational
exchanges as such. Unfortunately, the essay starts in media res, and skips
Grices careful list of Oxonian examples of disregard for the key idea of
what a conversant implicates by the conversational move he makes. His
concession is that there is an explicatum or explicitum (roughly, the logical
form) which is beyond pragmatic constraints. This concession is easily
explained in terms of his overarching irreverent, conservative, dissenting
rationalism. This lecture alone had been read by a few philosophers
leaving them confused. I do not know what Davidson and Harman were thinking
when they reprinted just this in The logic of grammar. I mean: it is obviously
in media res. Grice starts with the logical devices, and never again takes the
topic up. Then he explores metaphor, irony, and hyperbole, and surely the
philosopher who bought The logic of grammar must be left puzzled. He has to
wait sometime to see the thing in full completion. Oxonian philosophers would,
out of etiquette, hardly quote from unpublished material! Cohen had to rely on
memory, and thats why he got all his Grice wrong! And so did Strawson in If and
the horseshoe. Even Walker responding to Cohen is relying on memory. Few philosophers
quote from The logic of grammar. At Oxford, everybody knew what Grice was up
to. Hare was talking implicature in Mind, and Pears was talking conversational
implicature in Ifs and cans. And Platts was dedicating a full chapter to “Causal
Theory”. It seems the Oxonian etiquette was to quote from Causal Theory. It was
obvious that Grices implication excursus had to read implicature! In a few
dictionaries of philosophy, such as Hamlyns, under implication, a reference to
Grices locus classicus Causal theory is made – Passmore quotes from Causal
theory in Hundred years of philosophy. Very few Oxonians would care to buy a
volume published in Encino. Not many Oxonian philosophers ever quoted The logic
of grammar, though. At Oxford, Grices implicata remained part of the unwritten
doctrines of a few. And philosophers would not cite a cajoled essay in the
references. The implicatum allows a display of truth-functional Grice. For
substitutional-quantificational Grice we have to wait for his treatment of the.
In Prolegomena, Grice had quoted verbatim from Strawsons infamous idea that
there is a sense of inferrability with if. While the lecture covers much more
than if (He only said if; Oh, no, he said a great deal more than that! the
title was never meant to be original. Grice in fact provides a rational
justification for the three connectives (and, or, and if) and before that, the
unary functor not. Embedding, Indicative conditionals: embedding, not and If,
Sinton on Grice on denials of indicative conditionals, not, if. Strawson
had elaborated on what he felt was a divergence between Whiteheads and Russells
horseshoe, and if. Grice thought Strawsons observations could be understood in
terms of entailment + implicatum (Robbing Peter to Pay Paul). But problems, as
first noted to Grice, by Cohen, of Oxford, remain, when it comes to the scope
of the implicatum within the operation of, say, negation. Analogous problems
arise with implicata for the other earlier dyadic functors, and and or, and
Grice looks for a single explanation of the phenomenon. The qualification
indicative is modal. Ordinary language allows for if utterances to be in modes
other than the imperative. Counter-factual, if you need to be philosophical
krypto-technical, Subjectsive is you are more of a classicist! Grice took a
cavalier to the problem: Surely it wont do to say You couldnt have done that,
since you were in Seattle, to someone who figuratively tells you hes spend the
full summer cleaning the Aegean stables. This, to philosophers, is the centerpiece
of the lectures. Grice takes good care of not, and, or, and concludes with the
if of the title. For each, he finds a métier, alla Cook Wilson in Statement and
Inference. And they all connect with rationality. So he is using material from
his Oxford seminars on the principle of conversational helpfulness. Plus Cook
Wilson makes more sense at Oxford than at Harvard! The last bit, citing Kripke
and Dummett, is meant as jocular. What is important is the teleological
approach to the operators, where a note should be made about dyadicity. In
Prolegomena, when he introduces the topic, he omits not (about which he was
almost obsessed!). He just gives an example for and (He went to bed and took
off his dirty boots), one for or (the garden becomes Oxford and the kitchen
becomes London, and the implicatum is in terms, oddly, of ignorance: My wife is
either in town or country,making fun of Town and Country), and if. His
favourite illustration for if is Cock Robin: If the Sparrow did not kill him,
the Lark did! This is because Grice is serious about the erotetic, i.e.
question/answer, format Cook Wilson gives to things, but he manages to bring
Philonian and Megarian into the picture, just to impress! Most importantly, he
introduces the square brackets! Hell use them again in Presupposition and
Conversational Implicature and turns them into subscripts in Vacuous Namess.
This is central. For he wants to impoverish the idea of the implicatum. The
explicitum is minimal, and any divergence is syntactic-cum-pragmatic import.
The scope devices are syntactic and eliminable, and as he knows: what the eye
no longer sees, the heart no longer grieves for! The modal
implicatum. Since Grice uses indicative, for the title of his third James
lecture (Indicative Conditionals) surely he implicates subjunctive ‒
i.e. that someone might be thinking that he should give an account of
indicative-cum-subjective. This relates to an example Grice gives in Causal
theory, that he does not reproduce in Prolegomena. Grice states the philosophical
mistake as follows. What is actual is not also possible. Grice seems to be
suggesting that a subjective conditional would involve one or other of the
modalities, he is not interested in exploring. On the other hand, Mackie has
noted that Grices conversationalist hypothesis (Mackie quotes verbatim from
Grices principle of conversational helpfulness) allows for an explanation of
the Subjectsive if that does not involve Kripke-type paradoxes involving
possible worlds, or other. In Causal Theory, Grice notes that the issue with
which he has been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it
is certainly not an isolated one. There are several philosophical theses or
dicta which would he thinks need to be examined in order to see whether or not
they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which Grice has been discussing to
be amenable to treatment of the same general kind. An examples which occurs to
me is the following. What is actual is not also possible. I must emphasise that
I am not saying that this example is importantly similar to the thesis which I
have been criticizing, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter
more generally, the position adopted by Grices objector seems to Grice to
involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one
contemporary mode of philosophizing. He is not condemning that kind of manoeuvre.
He is merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk
collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic
nuances which we have detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably
clear what sort of nuances they are. If was also of special interest to Grice
for many other reasons. He defends a dispositional account of intending that in
terms of ifs and cans. He considers akrasia conditionally. He explored the
hypothetical-categorical distinction in the buletic mode. He was concerned with
therefore as involved with the associated if of entailment. Refs.:
“Implicatum” is introduced in Essay 2 in WoW – but there are scattered
references elsewhere. He often uses the plural ‘implicata’ too, as in
“Retrospective Epilogue,” The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC. An implicatum requires
a complexum. Frege was the topic of the explorations by Dummett. A tutee
of Grices once brought Dummetts Frege to a tutorial and told Grice that he
intended to explore this. Have you read it? No I havent, Grice answered.
And after a pause, he went on: And I hope I will not. Hardly promising, the
tutee thought. Some authors, including Grice, but alas, not Frege, have
noted some similarities between Grices notion of a conventional implicature and
Freges schematic and genial rambles on colouring. Aber Farbung, as Frege would
state! Grice was more interested in the idea of a Fregeian sense, but he felt
that if he had to play with Freges aber he should! One of Grices metaphysical
construction-routines, the Humeian projection, is aimed at the generation of
concepts, in most cases the rational reconstruction of an intuitive concept displayed
in ordinary discourse. We arrive at something like a Fregeian sense. Grice
exclaimed, with an intonation of Eureka, almost. And then he went back to
Frege. Grices German was good, so he could read Frege, in the vernacular.
For fun, he read Frege to his children (Grices, not Freges): In einem obliquen
Kontext, Frege says, Grice says, kann ja z. B. die Ersetzung eines „aber durch
ein „und, die in einem direkten Kontext keinen Unterschied des Wahrheitswerts
ergibt, einen solchen Unterschied bewirken. Ill make that easy for you,
darlings: und is and, and aber is but. But surely, Papa, aber is not cognate
with but! Its not. That is Anglo-Saxon, for you. But is strictly Anglo-Saxon
short for by-out; we lost aber when we sailed the North Sea. Grice went on:
Damit wird eine Abgrenzung von Sinn und Färbung (oder Konnotationen) eines
Satzes fragwürdig. I. e. he is saying that She was poor but she was honest only
conventionally implicates that there is a contrast between her poverty and her
honesty. I guess he heard the ditty during the War? Grice ignored that remark,
and went on: Appell und Kundgabe wären ferner von Sinn und Färbung genauer zu
unterscheiden. Ich weiß so auf interessante Bedeutungs Komponenten hin,
bemüht sich aber nicht, sie genauer zu differenzieren, da er letztlich nur
betonen will, daß sie in der Sprache der Logik keine Rolle spielen. They play a
role in the lingo, that is! What do? Stuff like but. But surely they are not
rational conversational implicata!? No, dear, just conventional tricks you can
ignore on a nice summer day! Grice however was never interested in what he
dismissively labels the conventional implicatum. He identifies it because he
felt he must! Surely, the way some Oxonian philosophers learn to use stuff
like, on the one hand, and on the other, (or how Grice learned how to use men
and de in Grecian), or so, or therefore, or but versus and, is just to allow
that he would still use imply in such cases. But surely he wants conversational
to stick with rationality: conversational maxim and converational implicatum
only apply to things which can be justified transcendentally, and not
idiosyncrasies of usage! Grice follows Church in noting that Russell misreads
Frege as being guilty of ignoring the use-mention distinction, when he doesnt.
One thing that Grice minimises is that Freges assertion sign is composite. Tha
is why Baker prefers to use the dot “.” as the doxastic correlative for the
buletic sign ! which is NOT composite. The sign „├‟ is composite. Frege
explains his Urteilstrich, the vertical component of his sign ├ as conveying
assertoric force. The principal role of the horizontal component as such is to
prevent the appearance of assertoric force belonging to a token of what does
not express a thought (e.g. the expression 22). ─p expresses a thought even if
p does not.) cf. Hares four sub-atomic particles: phrastic (dictum), neustic
(dictor), tropic, and clistic. Cf. Grice on the radix controversy: We do not
want the “.” in p to become a vanishing sign. Grices Frege, Frege, Words, and
Sentences, Frege, Farbung, aber. Frege was one of Grices obsessions. A Fregeian
sense is an explicatum, or implicitum, a concession to get his principle of
conversational helpfulness working in the generation of conversational
implicata, that can only mean progress for philosophy! Fregeian senses are not
to be multiplied beyond necessity. The employment of the routine of
Humeian projection may be expected to deliver for us, as its result,
a concept – the concept(ion) of value, say, in something like a
Fregeian sense, rather than an object. There is also a strong affinity
between Freges treatment of colouring (of the German particle aber, say) and
Grices idea of a convetional implicatum (She was poor, but she was honest,/and
her parents were the same,/till she met a city feller,/and she lost her honest
Names, as the vulgar Great War ditty went). Grice does not seem interested in
providing a philosophical exploration of conventional implicata, and there is a
reason for this. Conventional implicata are not essentially connected, as
conversational implicata are, with rationality. Conventional implicata cannot
be calculable. They have less of a philosophical interest, too, in that they
are not cancellable. Grice sees cancellability as a way to prove some
(contemporary to him, if dated) ordinary-language philosophers who analyse an
expression in terms of sense and entailment, where a cancellable conversational
implicatum is all there is (to it). He mentions Benjamin in Prolegomena,
and is very careful in noting how Benjamin misuses a Fregeian sense. In his
Causal theory, Grice lists another mistake: What is known to be the case is not
believed to be the case. Grice gives pretty few example of a conventional
implicatum: therefore, as in the utterance by Jill: Jack is an Englishman; he
is, therefore, brave. This is interesting because therefore compares to so
which Strawson, in PGRICE, claims is the asserted counterpart to if. But
Strawson is never associated with the type of linguistic botany that Grice is.
Grice also mentions the idiom, on the one hand/on the other hand, in some
detail in “Epilogue”: My aunt was a nurse in the Great War; my sister, on the
other hand, lives on a peak at Darien. Grice thinks that Frege misuses the
use-mention distinction but Russell corrects that. Grice bases this on Church.
And of course he is obsessed with the assertion sign by Frege, which Grice thinks
has one stroke tooo many. The main reference is give above for ‘complexum.’ Those
without a philosophical background tend to ignore a joke by Grice. His echoing
Kant in the James is a joke, in the sense that he is using Katns well-known to
be pretty artificial quartet of ontological caegories to apply to a totally
different phenomenon: the taxonomy of the maxims! In his earlier non-jocular
attempts, he applied more philosophical concepts with a more serious rationale.
His key concept, conversation as rational co-operation, underlies all his
attempts. A pretty worked-out model is in terms then of this central, or
overarching principle of conversational helpfulness (where conversation as
cooperation need not be qualified as conversation as rational co-operation) and
being structured by two contrasting sub-principles: the principle of
conversational benevolence (which almost overlaps with the principle of
conversational helpfulness) and the slightly more jocular principle of
conversational self-love. There is something oxymoronic about self-love being
conversational, and this is what leads to replace the two subprinciples by a
principle of conversational helfpulness (as used in WoW:IV) simpliciter. His
desideratum of conversational candour is key. The clash between the desideratum
of conversational candour and the desideratum of conversational clarity (call
them supermaxims) explains why I believe that p (less clear than p) shows the
primacy of candour over clarity. The idea remains of an overarching principle
and a set of more specific guidelines. Non-Oxonian philosophers would see
Grices appeal to this or that guideline as ad hoc, but not his tutees! Grice
finds inspiration in Joseph Butler’s sermon on benevolence and self-love, in
his sermon 9, upon the love of our neighbour, preached on advent Sunday. And if
there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying,
Namesly, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, Romans xiii. 9. It is
commonly observed, that there is a disposition in men to complain of the
viciousness and corruption of the age in which they live, as greater than that
of former ones: which is usually followed with this further observation, that
mankind has been in that respect much the same in all times. Now, to determine
whether this last be not contradicted by the accounts of history: thus much can
scarce be doubted, that vice and folly takes different turns, and some
particular kinds of it are more open and avowed in some ages than in others;
and, I suppose, it may be spoken of as very much the distinction of the
present, to profess a contracted spirit, and greater regards to self-interest,
than appears to have been done formerly. Upon this account it seems worth while
to inquire, whether private interest is likely to be promoted in proportion to
the degree in which self-love engrosses us, and prevails over all other
principles; "or whether the contracted affection may not possibly be so
prevalent as to disappoint itself, and even contradict its own end, private
good?" Repr. in revised form as WOW, I. Grice felt the need to
go back to his explantion (cf. Fisher, Never contradict. Never explain) of the
nuances about seem and cause (“Causal theory”.). Grice uses ‘My wife is in the
kitchen or the bedroom,’ by Smith, as relying on a requirement of discourse.
But there must be more to it. Variations on a theme by Grice. Make your
contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the
accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. Variations
on a theme by Grice. I wish to represent a certain subclass of
non-conventional implicaturcs, which I shall
call conversational implicaturcs, as being essentially connected with
certain general features of discourse; so my next step is to try to say what
these features are. The following may provide a first approximation to a
general principle. Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession
of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are
characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each
participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of
purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. This purpose or direction
may be fixed from the start (e.g., by an initial proposal of a question for
discussion), or it may evolve during the exchange; it may be fairly definite,
or it may be so indefinite as to leave very considerable latitude to the
participants, as in a casual conversation. But at each stage, some possible
conversational moves would be excluded as conversationally unsuitable. We might
then formulate a rough general principle which participants will be expected
ceteris paribus to observe, viz.: Make your conversational contribution such as
is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or
direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. One might label this
the co-operative principle. We might then formulate a rough general principle
which participants will be expected ceteris paribus to
observe, viz.: Make your contribution such as is required, at the
stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk
exchange in which you are engaged. One might label this the Cooperative
Principle. Strictly, the principle itself is not co-operative: conversants
are. Less literary variant: Make your move such as is required by the
accepted goal of the conversation in which you are engaged. But why logic and
conversation? Logica had been part of the trivium for ages ‒ Although they
called it dialectica, then. Grice on the seven liberal arts. Moved by
Strawsons treatment of the formal devices in “Introduction to logical theory”
(henceforth, “Logical theory”), Grice targets these, in their
ordinary-discourse counterparts. Strawson indeed characterizes Grice as his
logic tutor – Strawson was following a PPE., and his approach to logic is
practical. His philosophy tutor was Mabbott. For Grice, with a M. A. Lit.
Hum. the situation is different. Grice knows that the Categoriae and De Int. of
his beloved Aristotle are part of the Logical Organon which had been so
influential in the history of philosophy. Grice attempts to reconcile
Strawsons observations with the idea that the formal devices reproduce some
sort of explicatum, or explicitum, as identified by Whitehead and Russell in
Principia Mathematica. In the proceedings, Grice has to rely on some general
features of discourse, or conversation as a rational co-operation. The
alleged divergence between the ordinary-language operators and their formal
counterparts is explained in terms of the conversational implicata, then.
I.e. the content of the psychological attitude that the addressee A has to
ascribe to the utterer U to account for any divergence between the formal device
and its alleged ordinary-language counterpart, while still assuming that U is
engaged in a co-operative transaction. The utterer and his addressee
are seen as caring for the mutual goals of conversation ‒ the
exchange of information and the institution of decisions ‒ and
judging that conversation will only be profitable (and thus reasonable and
rational) if conducted under some form of principle of conversational
helpfulness. The observation of a principle of conversational
helpfulness is reasonable (rational) along the following lines: anyone
who cares about the goals that are central to conversation/communication
(such as giving and receiving information, influencing and being influenced by
others) must be expected to have an interest, given suitable circumstances, in
participating in a conversation that will be profitable ONLY on the assumption
that it is conducted in general accordance with a principle of conversational
helpfulness. In titling his seminar Logic and conversation, Grice is
thinking Strawson. After all, in the seminal “Logical theory,” that every
Oxonian student was reading, Strawson had the cheek to admit that he never
ceased to learn logic from his tutor, Grice. Yet he elaborates a totally anti
Griceian view of things. To be fair to Strawson, the only segment where he
acknwoledges Grices difference of opinion is a brief footnote, concerning the
strength or lack thereof, of this or that quantified utterance. Strawson uses
an adjective that Grice will seldom do, pragmatic. On top, Strawson attributes
the adjective to rule. For Grice, in Strawsons wording, there is this or that
pragmatic rule to the effect that one should make a stronger rather than a
weaker conversational move. Strawsons Introduction was published before Grice
aired his views for the Aristotelian Society. In this seminar then Grice takes
the opportunity to correct a few misunderstandings. Important in that it
is Grices occasion to introduce the principle of conversational helpfulness as
generating implicata under the assumption of rationality. The lecture makes it
obvious that Grices interest is methodological, and not philological. He is not
interest in conversation per se, but only as the source for his principle of
conversational helpfulness and the notion of the conversational implicatum,
which springs from the distinction between what an utterer implies and what his
expression does, a distinction apparently denied by Witters and all too
frequently ignored by Austin. Logic and conversation, an Oxford seminar,
implicatum, principle of conversational helpfulness, eywords: conversational
implicature, conversational implicatum. Conversational
Implicature Grices main invention, one which trades on the distinction
between what an utterer implies and what his expression does. A distinction
apparently denied by Witters, and all too frequently ignored by, of all people,
Austin. Grice is implicating that Austins sympathies were for the
Subjectsification of Linguistic Nature. Grice remains an obdurate
individualist, and never loses sight of the distinction that gives rise to the
conversational implicatum, which can very well be hyper-contextualised,
idiosyncratic, and perfectly particularized. His gives an Oxonian example. I
can very well mean that my tutee is to bring me a philosophical essay next week
by uttering It is raining.Grice notes that since the object of the present
exercise, is to provide a bit of theory which will explain, for a
certain family of cases, why is it that a particular
implicature is present, I would suggest that the final test of
the adequacy and utility of this model should be: can it be used to construct
an explanation of the presence of such an implicature, and is it more
comprehensive and more economical than any rival? is the no doubt pre-theoretical explanation
which one would be prompted to give of such an implicature consistent with, or
better still a favourable pointer towards the requirements involved in the
model? cf. Sidonius: Far otherwise: whoever disputes with you will find those
protagonists of heresy, the Stoics, Cynics, and Peripatetics, shattered with
their own arms and their own engines; for their heathen followers, if they
resist the doctrine and spirit of Christianity, will, under your teaching, be
caught in their own familiar entanglements, and fall headlong into their
own toils; the barbed syllogism of your arguments will hook the
glib tongues of the casuists, and it is you who will tie
up their slippery questions in categorical clews, after the
manner of a clever physician, who, when compelled by reasoned thought, prepares
antidotes for poison even from a serpent.qvin potivs experietvr qvisqve
conflixerit stoicos cynicos peripateticos hæresiarchas propriis armis propriis
qvoqve concvti machiNamesntis nam sectatores eorum Christiano dogmati ac sensvi
si repvgnaverint mox te magistro ligati vernaculis implicaturis in
retia sua præcipites implagabvntur syllogismis tuæ propositionis vncatis
volvbilem tergiversantvm lingvam inhamantibvs dum spiris categoricis lubricas
qvæstiones tv potivs innodas acrivm more medicorvm qui remedivm contra venena
cum ratio compellit et de serpente conficivnt. If he lectured on Logic and
Conversation on implicature, Grice must have thought that Strawsons area was
central. Yet, as he had done in Causal theory and as he will at Harvard, Grice
kept collecting philosophers mistakes. So its best to see Grice as a
methodologist, and as using logic and conversation as an illustration of his
favourite manoeuvre, indeed, central philosophical manoeuver that gave him a
place in the history of philosophy. Restricting this manoeuvre to just an area
minimises it. On the other hand, there has to be a balance: surely logic and
conversation is a topic of intrinsic interest, and we cannot expect all
philosophers – unless they are Griceians – to keep a broad unitarian view of
philosophy as a virtuous whole. Philosophy, like virtue, is entire.
Destructive implicature to it: Mr. Puddle is our man in æsthetics implicates
that he is not good at it. What is important to Grice is that the mistakes of
these philosophers (notably Strawson!) arise from some linguistic phenomena, or,
since we must use singular expressions this or that linguistic phenomenon. Or
as Grice puts it, it is this or that linguistic phenomenon which provides the
material for the philosopher to make his mistake! So, to solve it, his theory
of conversation as rational co-operation is posited – technically, as a way to
explain (never merely describe, which Grice found boring ‒ if English, cf.
never explain, never apologise ‒ Jacky Fisher: Never contradict. Never
explain.) these phenomena – his principle of conversational helpfulness and the
idea of a conversational implicatum. The latter is based not so much on
rationality per se, but on the implicit-explicit distinction that he constantly
plays with, since his earlier semiotic-oriented explorations of Peirce. But
back to this or that linguistic phenomenon, while he would make fun of Searle
for providing this or that linguistic phenomenon that no philosopher would ever
feel excited about, Grice himself was a bit of a master in illustrating this a
philosophical point with this or that linguistic phenomenon that would not be
necessarily connected with philosophy. Grice rarely quotes authors, but surely
the section in “Causal theory,” where he lists seven philosophical theses
(which are ripe for an implicatum treatment) would be familiar enough for
anybody to be able to drop a names to attach to each. At Harvard, almost every
example Grice gives of this or that linguistic phenomenon is UN-authored (and
sometimes he expands on his own view of them, just to amuse his audience – and
show how committed to this or that thesis he was), but some are not unauthored.
And they all belong to the linguistic turn: In his three groups of examples,
Grice quotes from Ryle (who thinks he knows about ordinary language), Witters,
Austin (he quotes him in great detail, from Pretending, Plea of excuses, and No
modification without aberration,), Strawson (in “Logical theory” and on Truth
for Analysis), Hart (as I have heard him expand on this), Grice, Searle, and
Benjamin. Grice implicates Hare on ‘good,’ etc. When we mention the
explicit/implicit distinction as source for the implicatum, we are referring to
Grices own wording in Retrospective epilogue where he mentions an utterer as
conveying in some explicit fashion this or that, as opposed to a gentler, more
(midland or southern) English, way, via implicature, or implIciture, if you
mustnt. Cf. Fowler: As a southern Englishman, Ive stopped trying teaching a
northern Englishman the distinction between ought and shall. He seems to get it
always wrong. It may be worth exploring how this connects with rationality. His
point would be that that an assumption that the rational principle of
conversational helpfulness is in order allows P-1 not just to convey in a
direct explicit fashion that p, but in an implicit fashion that q, where q is
the implicatum. The principle of conversational helpfulness as generator of
this or that implicata, to use Grices word (generate). Surely, He took off his
boots and went to bed; I wont say in which order sounds hardly in the vein of
conversational helpfulness – but provided Grice does not see it as logically
incoherent, it is still a rational (if not reasonable) thing to say. The point
may be difficult to discern, but you never know. The utterer may be conveying,
Viva Boole. Grices point about rationality is mentioned in his later
Prolegomena, on at least two occasions. Rational behaviour is the phrase he
uses (as applied first to communication and then to discourse) and in stark
opposition with a convention-based approach he rightly associates with Austin.
Grice is here less interested here as he will be on rationality, but
coooperation as such. Helpfulness as a reasonable expecation (normative?), a
mutual one between decent chaps, as he puts it. His charming decent chap is so
Oxonian. His tutee would expect no less ‒ and indeed no more! A rather obscure
exploration on the connection of semiotics and philosophical psychology. Grice
is aware that there is an allegation in the air about a possible vicious circle
in trying to define category of expression in terms of a category of
representation. He does not provide a solution to the problem which hell take
up in his Method in philosophical psychology, in his role of President of the
APA. It is the implicatum behind the lecture that matters, since Grice
will go back to it, notably in the Retrospective Epilogue. For Grice, its all
rational enough. Theres a P, in a situation, say of danger – a bull ‒. He
perceives the bull. The bulls attack causes this perception. Bull! the P1 G1
screams, and causes in P2 G2 a rearguard movement. So where is
the circularity? Some pedants would have it that Bull cannot be understood in a
belief about a bull which is about a bull. Not Grice. It is nice that he
brought back implicature, which had become obliterated in the lectures, back to
title position! But it is also noteworthy, that these are not explicitly
rationalist models for implicature. He had played with a model, and an
explanatory one at that, for implicature, in his Oxford seminar, in terms of a
principle of conversational helpfulness, a desideratum of conversational
clarity, a desideratum of conversational candour, and two sub-principles: a
principle of conversational benevolence, and a principle of conversational
self-interest! Surely Harvard could be spared of the details! Implicature.
Grice disliked a presupposition. BANC also contains a folder for Odd ends:
Urbana and non-Urbana. Grice continues with the elaboration of a formal
calculus. He originally baptised it System Q in honour of Quine. At a
later stage, Myro will re-Names it System G, in a special version, System GHP,
a highly powerful/hopefully plausible version of System G, in gratitude to Grice.
Odd Ends: Urbana and Not Urbana, Odds and ends: Urbana and not Urbana, or
not-Urbana, or Odds and ends: Urbana and non Urbana, or Oddents, urbane and not
urbane, semantics, Urbana lectures. The Urbana lectures are on language
and reality. Grice keeps revising them, as these items show. Language and
reality, The University of Illinois at Urbana, The Urbana Lectures, Language
and reference, language and reality, The Urbana lectures, University of
Illinois at Urbana, language, reference, reality. Grice favours a
transcendental approach to communication. A beliefs by a communicator
worth communicating has to be true. An order by a communicator worth
communicating has to be satisfactory. The fourth lecture is the one Grice dates
in WOW . Smith has not ceased from beating his wife, presupposition and
conversational implicature, in Radical pragmatics, ed. by R. Cole, repr. in a
revised form in Grice, WOW, II, Explorations in semantics and metaphysics,
essay, presupposition and implicature, presupposition, conversational
implicature, implicature, Strawson. Grice: The loyalty examiner will not summon
you, do not worry. The cancellation by Grice could be pretty subtle. Well, the
loyalty examiner will not be summoning you at any rate. Grice goes back to the
issue of negation and not. If, Grice notes, is is a matter of dispute whether
the government has a very undercover person who interrogates those whose
loyalty is suspect and who, if he existed, could be legitimately referred to as
the loyalty examiner; and if, further, I am known to be very sceptical about
the existence of such a person, I could perfectly well say to a plainly loyal
person, Well, the loyalty examiner will not be summoning you at any rate,
without, Grice would think, being taken to imply that such a person
exists. Further, if the utterer U is well known to disbelieve in the existence
of such a person, though others are inclined to believe in him, when U finds a
man who is apprised of Us position, but who is worried in case he is summoned,
U may try to reassure him by uttering, The loyalty examiner will not summon
you, do not worry. Then it would be clear that U uttered this because U is sure
there is no such person. The lecture was variously reprinted, but the Urbana
should remain the preferred citation. There are divergences in the various
drafts, though. The original source of this exploration was a seminar.
Grice is interested in re-conceptualising Strawsons manoeuvre regarding
presupposition as involving what Grice disregards as a metaphysical concoction:
the truth-value gap. In Grices view, based on a principle of conversational
tailoring that falls under his principle of conversational
helpfulness ‒ indeed under the desideratum of conversational clarity
(be perspicuous [sic]). The king of France is bald entails there is a king of
France; while The king of France aint bald merely implicates it. Grice
much preferred Collingwoods to Strawsons presuppositions! Grice thought, and
rightly, too, that if his notion of the conversational implicatum was to gain Oxonian
currency, it should supersede Strawsons idea of the præ-suppositum.
Strawson, in his attack to Russell, had been playing with Quines idea of a
truth-value gap. Grice shows that neither the metaphysical concoction of a
truth-value gap nor the philosophical tool of the præ-suppositum is needed. The
king of France is bald entails that there is a king of France. It is part of
what U is logically committed to by what he explicitly conveys. By uttering,
The king of France is not bald on the other hand, U merely implicitly conveys
or implicates that there is a king of France. A perfectly adequate, or
impeccable, as Grice prefers, cancellation, abiding with the principle of
conversational helpfulness is in the offing. The king of France ain’t bald.
What made you think he is? For starters, he ain’t real! Grice credits Sluga for
having pointed out to him the way to deal with the definite descriptor or
definite article or the iota quantifier the formally. One thing Russell
discovered is that the variable denoting function is to be deduced from the
variable propositional function, and is not to be taken as an indefinable.
Russell tries to do without the iota i as an indefinable, but fails. The success
by Russell later, in On denoting, is the source of all his subsequent progress.
The iota quantifier consists of an inverted iota to be read the individuum x,
as in (℩x).F(x). Grice opts for the Whiteheadian-Russellian standard
rendition, in terms of the iota operator. Grices take on Strawson is a strong
one. The king of France is bald; entails there is a king of France, and what
the utterer explicitly conveys is doxastically unsatisfactory. The king of
France aint bald does not. By uttering The king of France aint bald U only
implicates that there is a king of France, and what he explicitly conveys is
doxastically satisfactory. Grice knew he was not exactly robbing Peter to pay
Paul, or did he? It is worth placing the lecture in context. Soon after
delivering in the New World his exploration on the implicatum, Grice has no
better idea than to promote Strawsons philosophy in the New World. Strawson
will later reflect on the colder shores of the Old World, so we know what Grice
had in mind! Strawsons main claim to fame in the New World (and at least Oxford
in the Old World) was his On referring, where he had had the cheek to say that
by uttering, The king of France is not bald, the utterer implies that there is
a king of France (if not that, as Grice has it, that what U explicitly conveys
is doxastically satisfactory. Strawson later changed that to the utterer
presupposes that there is a king of France. So Grice knows what and who he was
dealing with. Grice and Strawson had entertained Quine at Oxford, and Strawson
was particularly keen on that turn of phrase he learned from Quine, the
truth-value gap. Grice, rather, found it pretty repulsive: Tertium exclusum!
So, Grice goes on to argue that by uttering The king of France is bald, one
entailment of what U explicitly conveys is indeed There is a king of France.
However, in its negative co-relate, things change. By uttering The king of
France aint bald, the utterer merely implicitly conveys or implicates (in a
pretty cancellable format) that there is a king of France. The king of France
aint bald: theres no king of France! The loyalty examiner is like the King of
France, in ways! The piece is crucial for Grices re-introduction of the
square-bracket device: [The king of France] is bald; [The king of France] aint
bald. Whatever falls within the scope of the square brackets is to be read as
having attained common-ground status and therefore, out of the question, to use
Collingwoods jargon! Grice was very familiar with Collingwood on
presupposition, meant as an attack on Ayer. Collingwoods reflections on
presuppositions being either relative or absolute may well lie behind Grices
metaphysical construction of absolute value! The earliest exploration by Grice
on this is his infamous, Smith has not ceased from beating his wife, discussed
by Ewing in Meaninglessness for Mind. Grice goes back to the example in the
excursus on implying that in Causal Theory, and it is best to revisit this
source. Note that in the reprint in WOW Grice does NOT go, one example of
presupposition, which eventually is a type of conversational implicature. Grices
antipathy to Strawsons presupposition is metaphysical: he dislikes the idea of
a satisfactory-value-gap, as he notes in the second paragraph to Logic and
conversation. And his antipathy crossed the buletic-doxastic divide! Using φ to represent a sentence in either mode,
he stipulate that ~φ is satisfactory just in case ⌈φ⌉ is unsatisfactory. A crunch,
as he puts it, becomes obvious: ~ ⊢The king of France is bald may perhaps be
treated as equivalent to ⊢~(The king of
France is bald). But what about ~!Arrest the intruder? What do we say in cases
like, perhaps, Let it be that I now put my hand on my head or Let it be that my
bicycle faces north, in which (at least on occasion) it seems to be that
neither !p nor !~p is either satisfactory or unsatisfactory? If !p is neither
satisfactory nor unsatisfactory (if that make sense, which doesnt to me), does
the philosopher assign a third buletically satisfactory value (0.5) to !p
(buletically neuter, or indifferent). Or does the philosopher say that we have
a buletically satisfactory value gap, as Strawson, following Quine, might
prefer? This may require careful consideration; but I cannot see that the
problem proves insoluble, any more than the analogous problem connected with
Strawsons doxastic presupposition is insoluble. The difficulty is not so much
to find a solution as to select the best solution from those which present
themselves. The main reference is Essay 2 in WoW, but there are scattered
references elsewhere. Refs.: The main sources are the two
sets of ‘logic and conversation,’ in BANC, but there are scattered essays on
‘implicature’ simpliciter, too -- “Presupposition
and conversational implicature,” c. 2-f. 25; and “Convesational implicature,”
c. 4-f. 9, “Happiness, discipline, and implicatures,” c. 7-f. 6;
“Presupposition and implicature,” c. 9-f. 3, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
Conversational
rationality. Used in Retrospective, p. 369.
credibility: Following Jeffrey and Davidson, respectively, Grice uses
‘desirability’ and ‘probability,’ but sometimes ‘credibibility,’ realizing that
‘credibility’ is more symmetrical with ‘desirability’ than ‘probability’ is.
Urmson had explored this in “Parenthetical verbs.” Urmson co-relates,
‘certaintly’ with ‘know’ and ‘probably’ with ‘believe.’ But Urmson adds four
further adverbs: “knowingly,” “unknowingly,” “believably,” and “unbelievably.” Urmson
also includes three more: “uncredibly,” in variation with “incredibly,” and
‘credibly.” The keyword should be ‘credibility.’
creditum: used by Grice for the doxastic equivalent of the buletic
or desideratum. A creditum is an implicatum, as Grice defines the implicatum of
the content that an addresse has to assume the utterer BELIEVES to deem him
rational. The ‘creditum’-condition is essential for Grice in his ‘exhibitive’
account to the communication. By uttering “Smoke!”, U means that there is some
if the utterer intends that his addressee BELIEVE that he, the utterer, is in a
state of soul which has the propositional complex there is smoke. It is worth
noting that BELIEF is not needed for the immediate state of the utterer’s soul:
this can always be either a desire or a belief. But a belief is REQUIRED as the
immediate (if not ultimate) response intended by the utterer that his addressee
adapt. It is curious that given the primacy that Grice held of the desirability
over the credibility that many of his conversational maxims are formulated as
imperatives aimed at matters of belief, conditions and value of credibility,
probability and adequate evidence. In the cases where Grice emphasizes
‘information,’ which one would associate with ‘belief,’ this association may be
dropped provided the exhibitive account: you can always influence or be
influenced by others in the institution of a common decision provided you give
and receive the optimal information, or rather, provided the conversationalists
assume that they are engaged in a MAXIMAL exchange of information. That
‘information’ does not necessarily apply to ‘belief’ is obvious in how
complicated an order can get, “Get me a bottle”. “Is that all?” “No, get me a
bottle and make sure that it is of French wine, and add something to drink the
wine with, and drive careful, and give my love to Rosie.” No belief is
explicitly transmitted, yet the order seems informative enough. Grice sometimes
does use ‘informative’ in a strict context involving credibility. He divides
the mode of credibility into informational (when addressed to others) and
indicative (when addressed to self), for in a self-addressed utterance such as,
“I am being silly,” one cannot intend to inform oneself of something one
already knows!
demonstratum: ‘Rationality’ is one of those words Austin forbids to use.
Grice would venture with ‘reason,’ and better, ‘reasons’ to make it countable,
and good for botanising. Only in the New World, and when he started to get
input from non-philosophers, did Grice explore ‘rationality’ itself. Oxonians
philosophers take it for granted, and do not have to philosophise about it.
Especially those who belong to Grice’s play group of ‘ordinary-language’
philosophers! Oxonian philosophers will quote from the Locke version! Obviously,
while each of the four lectures credits their own entry below, it may do to
reflect on Grices overall aim. Grice structures the lectures in the form of a
philosophical dialogue with his audience. The first lecture is intended to
provide a bit of linguistic botanising for reasonable, and rational. In
later lectures, Grice tackles reason qua noun. The remaining lectures are
meant to explore what he calls the Aequi-vocality thesis: must has only
one Fregeian that crosses what he calls the buletic-doxastic divide. He is
especially concerned ‒ this being the Kant lectures ‒
with Kants attempt to reduce the categorical imperative to a counsel of
prudence (Ratschlag der Klugheit), where Kants prudence is Klugheit, versus
skill, as in rule of skill, and even if Kant defines Klugheit as a skill to
attain what is good for oneself ‒ itself divided into privatKlugheit
and Weltklugheit. Kant re-introduces the Aristotelian idea of eudaimonia.
While a further lecture on happiness as the pursuit of a system of ends is
NOT strictly part of the either the Kant or the Locke lectures, it
relates, since eudaemonia may be regarded as the goal involved in the
relevant imperative. “Aspects”, Clarendon, Stanford, The Kant
memorial Lectures, “Aspects,” Clarendon, Some aspects of reason, Stanford;
reason, reasoning, reasons. The lectures were also delivered as the Locke
lectures. Grice is concerned with the reduction of the categorical
imperative to the hypothetical or suppositional imperative. His main
thesis he calls the æqui-vocality thesis: must has one unique or singular
sense, that crosses the buletic-boulomaic/doxastic divide. “Aspects,”
Clarendon, Grice, “Aspects, Clarendon, Locke lecture notes: reason. On
“Aspects”. Including extensive language botany on rational, reasonable, and
indeed reason (justificatory, explanatory, and mixed). At this point,
Grice notes that linguistic botany is indispensable towards the construction of
a more systematic explanatory theory. It is an exploration of a range of
uses of reason that leads him to his Aequi-vocality thesis that must has only
one sense; also ‘Aspects of reason and reasoning,’ in Grice, “Aspects,”
Clarendon, the Locke lectures, the Kant lectures, Stanford, reason,
happiness. While Locke hardly mentions reason, his friend Burthogge does,
and profusely! It was slightly ironic that Grice had delivered these
lectures as the Rationalist Kant lectures at Stanford. He was honoured to
be invited to Oxford. Officially, to be a Locke lecture you have to be
*visiting* Oxford. While Grice was a fellow of St. Johns, he was still
most welcome to give his set of lectures on reasoning at the Sub-Faculty of
Philosophy. He quotes very many authors, including Locke! In his proemium,
Grice notes that while he was rejected the Locke scholarship back in the day,
he was extremely happy to be under Lockes ægis now! When preparing for his
second lecture, he had occasion to revise some earlier drafts dated pretty
early, on reasons, Grice, “Aspects,” Clarendon, reason,
reasons. Linguistic analysis on justificatory, explanatory and mixed uses
of reason. While Grice knows that the basic use of reason is qua verb
(reasoner reasons from premise p to conclusion c), he spends some time in
exploring reason as noun. Grice found it a bit of a roundabout way to
approach rationality. However, his distinction between justificatory and
explanatory reason is built upon his linguistic botany on the use of reason qua
noun. Explanatory reason seems more basic for Grice than justificatory
reason. Explanatory reason explains the behaviour of a rational
agent. Grice is aware of Freud and his rationalizations. An agent may
invoke some reason for his acting which is not legitimate. An agent may
convince himself that he wants to move to Bournemouth because of the weather; when
in fact, his reason to move to Bournemouth is to be closer to Cowes and join
the yacht club there. Grice loved an enthymeme. Grices enthymeme. Grice, the
implicit reasoner! As the title of the lecture implies, Grice takes the verb,
to reason, as conceptually prior. A reasoner reasons, briefly, from a premise
to a conclusion. There are types of reason: flat reason and gradual reason. He
famously reports Shropshire, another tutee with Hardie, and his proof on the
immortality of the human soul. Grice makes some remarks on akrasia as key, too.
The first lecture is then dedicated to an elucidation, and indeed attempt at a
conceptual analysis in terms of intentions and doxastic conditions reasoner R
intends that premise P yields conclusion C and believes his intention will
cause his entertaining of the conclusion from his entertaining the premise. One
example of particular interest for a study of the use of conversational reason
in Grice is that of the connection between implicatum and reasoning. Grice
entitles the sub-section of the lecture as Too good to be reasoning, which is
of course a joke. Cf. too much love will kill you, and Theres no such thing as
too much of a good thing (Shakespeare, As you like it). Grice notes: I have so
far been considering difficulties which may arise from the attempt to find, for
all cases of actual reasoning, reconstructions of sequences of utterances or
explicit thoughts which the reasoner might plausibly be supposed to think of as
conforming to some set of canonical patterns of inference. Grice then turns to
a different class of examples, with regard to which the problem is not that it
is difficult to know how to connect them with canonical patterns, but rather
that it is only too easy (or shall I say trivial) to make the connection. Like
some children (not many), some cases of reasoning are too well behaved for
their own good. Suppose someone says to Grice, and It is very interesting that
Grice gives conversational examples. Jack has arrived, Grice replies, I
conclude from that that Jack has arrived. Or he says Jack has arrived AND Jill
has *also* arrived, And Grice replies, I conclude that Jill has arrived.(via
Gentzens conjunction-elimination). Or he says, My wife is at home. And Grice
replies, I reason from that that someone (viz. your wife) is at home. Is there
not something very strange about the presence in my three replies of the verb
conclude (in example I and II) and the verb reason (in the third example)?
misleading, but doxastically fine, professor! It is true, of course, that if
instead of my first reply I had said (vii) vii. So Jack has arrived, has he?
the strangeness would have been removed. But here so serves not to indicate
that an inference is being made, but rather as part of a not that otiose way of
expressing surprise. One might just as well have said (viii). viii. Well, fancy
that! Now, having spent a sizeable part of his life exploiting it, Grice is not
unaware of the truly fine distinction between a statements being false (or
axiologically satisfactory), and its being true (or axiologically satisfactory)
but otherwise conversationally or pragmatically misleading or inappropriate or
pointless, and, on that account and by such a fine distinction, a statement, or
an utterance, or conversational move which it would be improper (in terms of
the reasonable/rational principle of conversational helfpulness) in one way or
another, to make. It is worth considering Grices reaction to his own
distinction. Entailment is in sight! But Grice does not find himself lured by the
idea of using that distinction here! Because Moores entailment, rather than
Grices implicatum is entailed. Or because explicatu, rather than implicatum is
involved. Suppose, again, that I were to break off the chapter at this point,
and switch suddenly to this argument. ix. I have two hands (here is one hand
and here is another). If had three more hands, I would have five. If I were to
have double that number I would have ten, and if four of them were removed six
would remain. So I would have four more hands than I have now. Is one happy to
describe this performance as reasoning? Depends whos one and whats happy!?
There is, however, little doubt that I have produced a canonically acceptable
chain of statements. So surely that is reasoning, if only conversationally
misleadingly called so. Or suppose that, instead of writing in my customary
free and easy style, I had framed my remarks (or at least the argumentative
portions of my remarks) as a verbal realization, so to speak, of sequences of
steps in strict conformity with the rules of a natural-deduction system of
first-order predicate logic. I give, that is to say, an updated analogue of a
medieval disputation. Implicature. Gentzen is Ockham. Would those brave souls
who continued to read be likely to think of my performance as the production of
reasoning, or would they rather think of it as a crazy formalisation of
reasoning conducted at some previous time? Depends on crazy or formalisation.
One is reminded of Grice telling Strawson, If you cannot formalise, dont say
it; Strawson: Oh, no! If I can formalise it, I shant say it! The points
suggested by this stream of rhetorical questions may be summarized as follows.
Whether the samples presented FAIL to achieve the title of reasoning, and thus
be deemed reasoning, or whether the samples achieve the title, as we may
figuratively put it, by the skin of their teeth, perhaps does not very greatly
matter. For whichever way it is, the samples seem to offend against something
(different things in different cases, Im sure) very central to our conception
of reasoning. So central that Moore would call it entailment! A mechanical
application of a ground rule of inference, or a concatenation thereof, is
reluctantly (if at all) called reasoning. Such a mechanical application may
perhaps legitimately enter into (i.e. form individual steps in) authentic
reasonings, but they are not themselves reasonings, nor is a string of them.
There is a demand that a reasoner should be, to a greater or lesser degree, the
author of his reasonings. Parroted sequences are not reasonings when parroted,
though the very same sequences might be reasoning if not parroted. Ped
sequences are another matter. Some of the examples Grice gives are deficient
because they are aimless or pointless. Reasoning is characteristically
addressed to this or that problem: a small problem, a large problem, a problem
within a problem, a clear problem, a hazy problem, a practical problem, an
intellectual problem; but a problem! A mere flow of ideas minimally qualifies
(or can be deemed) as reasoning, even if it happens to be logically
respectable. But if it is directed, or even monitored (with intervention should
it go astray, not only into fallacy or mistake, but also into such things as
conversational irrelevance or otiosity!), that is another matter! Finicky
over-elaboration of intervening steps is frowned upon, and in extreme cases
runs the risk of forfeiting the title of reasoning. In conversation, such
over-elaboration will offend against this or that conversational maxim, against
(presumably) some suitably formulated maxim conjoining informativeness. As
Grice noted with regard to ‘That pillar box seems red to me.’ That would be
baffling if the addressee fails to detect the communication-point. An utterance
is supposed to inform, and what is the above meant to inform its addressee? In
thought, it will be branded as pedantry or neurotic caution. If a distinction
between brooding and conversing is to be made! At first sight, perhaps, one
would have been inclined to say that greater rather than lesser
explicitnessness is a merit. Not that inexplicitness, or implicatum-status, as
it were ‒ is bad, but that, other things being equal, the more explicitness the
better. But now it looks as if proper explicitness (or explicatum-status) is an
Aristotelian mean, or mesotes, and it would be good some time to enquire what
determines where that mean lies. The burden of the foregoing observations seems
to me to be that the provisional account of reasoning, which has been before
us, leaves out something which is crucially important. What it leaves out is
the conception of reasoning, as I like to see conversation, as a purposive
activity, as something with goals and purposes. The account or picture leaves
out, in short, the connection of reasoning with the will! Moreover, once we
avail ourselves of the great family of additional ideas which the importation
of this conception would give us, we shall be able to deal with the quandary
which I laid before you a few minutes ago. For we could say e.g. that R reasons
(informally) from p to c just in case R thinks that p and intends that, in
thinking c, he should be thinking something which would be the conclusion of a
formally valid argument the premisses of which are a supplementation of p. This
will differ from merely thinking that there exists some formally valid
supplementation of a transition from p to c, which I felt inclined NOT to count
as (or deem) reasoning. I have some hopes that this appeal to the purposiveness
or goal-oriented character of authentic reasoning or good reasoning might be
sufficient to dispose of the quandary on which I have directed it. But I am by
no means entirely confident that this is the case, and so I offer a second
possible method of handling the quandary, one to which I shall return later
when I shall attempt to place it in a larger context. We have available to us
(let us suppose) what I might call a hard way of making inferential moves. We
in fact employ this laborious, step-by-step procedure at least when we are in
difficulties, when the course is not clear, when we have an awkward (or
philosophical) audience, and so forth. An inferential judgement, however, is a
normally desirable undertaking for us only because of its actual or hoped for
destinations, and is therefore not desirable for its own sake (a respect in
which, possibly, it may differ from an inferential capacity). Following the
hard way consumes time and energy. These are in limited supply and it would,
therefore, be desirable if occasions for employing the hard way were minimized.
A substitute for the hard way, the quick way, which is made possible by
habituation and intention, is available to us, and the capacity for it (which
is sometimes called intelligence, and is known to be variable in degree) is a desirable
quality. The possibility of making a good inferential step (there being one to
be made), together with such items as a particular inferers reputation for
inferential ability, may determine whether on a particular occasion we suppose
a particular transition to be inferential (and so to be a case of reasoning) or
not. On this account, it is not essential that there should be a single
supplementation of an informal reasoning which is supposed to be what is
overtly in the inferers mind, though quite often there may be special reasons
for supposing this to be the case. So Botvinnik is properly credited with a
case of reasoning, while Shropshire is not. Drawing from his recollections of
an earlier linguistic botany on reason. Grice distinguishes between justificatory
reason and explanatory reason. There is a special case of mixed reason,
explanatory-cum-justificatory. The lecture can be seen as the way an exercise
that Austin took as taxonomic can lead to explanatory adequacy, too! Bennett is
an excellent correspondent. He holds a very interesting philosophical
correspondence with Hare. This is just one f. with Grices correspondence with
Bennett. Oxford don, Christchurh, NZ-born Bennett, of Magdalen, B. Phil. Oxon.
Bennett has an essay on the interpretation of a formal system under Austin. It
is interesting that Bennett was led to consider the interpretation of a formal
system under Austins Play Group. Bennett attends Grices seminars. He is my
favourite philosopher. Bennett quotes Grice in his Linguistic behaviour. In
return, Grice quotes Bennett in the Preface toWOW. Bennett has an earlier
essay on rationality, which evidences that the topic is key at Grices Oxford.
Bennett has studied better than anyone the way Locke is Griceian. A word or
expression does not just stand for idea, but for the intention of the utterer
to stand for it! Grice also enjoyed construal by Bennett of Grice as a
nominalist. Bennett makes a narrow use of the epithet. Since Grice does
distinguish between an utterance-token (x) and an utterance-type, and considers
that the attribution of meaning from token to type is metabolic, this makes
Grice a nominalist. Bennett is one of the few to follow Kantotle and make him
popular on the pages of the Times Literary Supplement, of all places. Refs.:
The locus classicus is “Aspects,” Clarendon. But there are allusions on
‘reason’ and ‘rationality, in The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
desideratum: Grice was never sure what adjective to use for the
‘desiderative.’ He liked buletic. He liked desideratum because it has the
co-relate ‘consideratum,’ for belief. He
uses ‘deriderative’ and a few more! Of course what he means is a
sub-psychological modality, or rather a ‘soul.’ So he would apply it
‘primarily’ to the soul, as Plato and Aristotle does. The ‘psyche’, or ‘anima’
is what is ‘desiderativa.’ The Grecians are pretty confused about this (but
‘boulemaic’ and ‘buletic’ are used), and the Romans didn’t help. Grice is
concerned with a rational-desiderative, that takes a “that”-clause (or oratio
obliqua), and qua constructivist, he is also concerned with a pre-rational
desiderative (he has an essay on “Needs and Wants,” and his detailed example in
“Method” is a squarrel (sic) who needs a nut. On top, while Grice suggest s
that it goes both ways: the doxastic can be given a reductive analaysis in
terms of the buletic, and the buletic in terms of the doxastic, he only cares
to provide the former. Basically, an agent judges that p, if his willing that p
correlates to a state of affairs that satisfies his desires. Since he does not
provide a reductive analysis for Prichard’s willing-that, one is left
wondering. Grice’s position is that ‘willing that…’ attains its ‘sense’ via the
specification, as a theoretical concept, in some law in the folk-science that
agents use to explain their behaviour. Grice gets subtler when he deals with
mode-markers for the desiderative: for these are either utterer-oriented, or
addressee-oriented, and they may involve a buletic attitude itself, or a
doxastic attitude. When utterer-addressed, utterer wills that utterer wills
that p. There is no closure here, and indeed, a regressus ad infinitum is what
Grice wants, since this regressus allows him to get univeersabilisability, in
terms of conceptual, formal, and applicational kinds of generality. In this he
is being Kantian, and Hareian. While Grice praises Kantotle, Aristotle here
would stay unashamedly ‘teleological,’ and giving priority to a will that may
not be universalisable, since it’s the communitarian ‘good’ that matters. what does
Grice have to say about our conversational practice? L and S have “πρᾶξις,”
from “πράσσω,” and which they render as ‘moral action,’ oποίησις, τέχνη;”
“oποιότης,” “ἤθη καὶ πάθη καὶ π.,” “oοἱ πολιτικοὶ λόγοι;” “ἔργῳ καὶ πράξεσιν,
οὐχὶ λόγοις” Id.6.3; ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι ὄντα τε καὶ πραττόμενα, “exhibited in
actual life,” action in drama, “oλόγος; “μία π. ὅλη καὶ τελεία.” With practical
Grice means buletic. Praxis involves acting, and surely Grice presupposes
acting. By uttering, i. e. by the act of uttering, expression x, U m-intends
that p. Grice occasionally refers to action and behaviour as the thing which an
ascription of a psychological state explains. Grice prefers the idiom of soul.
Theres the ratiocinative soul. Within the ratiocinative, theres the executive
soul and the merely administrative soul. Cicero had to translate Aristotle into
prudentia, every time Aristotle talked of phronesis. Grice was aware that
the terminology by Kant can be confusing. Kant used ‘pure’ reason for reason in
the doxastic realm. The critique by Kant of practical reason is hardly
symmetrical to his critique of doxastic reason. Grice, with his
æqui-vocality thesis of must (must crosses the buletic-boulomaic/doxastic
divide), Grice is being more of a symmetricalist. The buletic, boulomaic, or
volitive, is a part of the soul, as is the doxatic or judicative. And
judicative is a trick because there is such a thing as a value judgement, or an
evaluative judgement, which is hardly doxastic. Grice plays with two
co-relative operators: desirability versus probability. Grice invokes the
exhibitive/protreptic distinction he had introduced in the fifth James lecture,
now applied to psychological attitudes themselves. This Grice’s attempt is to
tackle the Kantian problem in the Grundlegung: how to derive the categorical
imperative from a counsel of prudence. Under the assumption that the protasis
is Let the agent be happy, Grice does not find it obtuse at all to construct a
universalisable imperative out of a mere motive-based counsel of prudence.
Grice has an earlier paper on pleasure which relates. The derivation involves
seven steps. Grice proposes seven steps in the derivation. 1. It is a
fundamental law of psychology that, ceteris paribus, for any creature R, for
any P and Q, if R wills P Λ judges if P, P as a result of Q, R wills
Q. 2. Place this law within the scope of a "willing" operator: R
wills for any P Λ Q, if R wills P Λ judges that if P, P as
a result of Q, R wills Q. 3. wills turns to should. If rational, R will have to
block unsatisfactory (literally) attitudes. R should (qua rational) judge for
any P Λ Q, if it is satisfactory to will that P Λ it is
satisfactory to judge that if P, P as a result of Q, it is sastisfactory to
will that Q. 4. Marking the mode: R should (qua rational) judge for any
P Λ Q, if it is satisfactory that !P Λ that if it .P, .P
only as a result of Q, it is satisfactory that !Q. 5. via (p & q
-> r) -> (p -> (q -> r)): R should (qua rational)
judge for any P Λ Q, if it is satisfactory that if .P, .P only
because Q, i is satisfactory that, if let it be that P, let it be that Q. 6. R
should (qua rational) judge for any P Λ Q, if P, P only because p
yields if let it be that P, let it be that Q. 7. For any P Λ Q if P,
P only because Q yields if let it be that P, let it be that Q. Grice was
well aware that a philosopher, at Oxford, needs to be a philosophical
psychologist. So, wanting and needing have to be related to willing. A plant
needs water. A floor needs sweeping. So need is too broad. So is want, a
non-Anglo-Saxon root for God knows what. With willing things get closer to the
rational soul. There is willing in the animal soul. But when it comes to
rational willing, there must be, to echo Pritchard, a conjecture, some doxastic
element. You cannot will to fly, or will that the distant chair slides over the
floor toward you. So not all wants and needs are rational willings, but then
nobody said they would. Grice is interested in emotion in his power structure
of the soul. A need and a want may count as an emotion. Grice was never too
interested in needing and wanting because they do not take a that-clause. He
congratulates Urmson for having introduced him to the brilliant willing that …
by Prichard. Why is it, Grice wonders, that many ascriptions of buletic states
take to-clause, rather than a that-clause? Even mean, as ‘intend.’ In this
Grice is quite different from Austin, who avoids the that-clause. The
explanation by Austin is very obscure, like those of all grammars on the
that’-clause, the ‘that’ of ‘oratio obliqua’ is not in every way similar to the
‘that’-clause in an explicit performative formula. Here the utterer is not
reporting his own ‘oratio’ in the first person singular present indicative
active. Incidentally, of course, it is not in the least necessary that an
explicit performative verb should be followed by a ‘that’-clause. In important
classes of cases it is followed by ‘to . . .,’ or by or nothing, e. g. ‘I
apologize for…,’ ‘I salute you.’ Now many of these verbs appear to be quite
satisfactory pure performatives. Irritating though it is to have them as such,
linked with clauses that look like statements, true or false, e. g., when I say
‘I prophesy that …,’ ‘I concede that …’,
‘I postulate that …,’ the clause following normally looks just like a
statement, but the verb itself seems to be pure performatives. One
may distinguish the performative opening part, ‘I state that …,’ which makes
clear how the utterance is to be taken, that it is a statement, as distinct
from a prediction, etc.), from the bit in the that-clause which is required to
be true or false. However, there are many cases which, as language stands at
present, we are not able to split into two parts in this way, even though the
utterance seems to have a sort of explicit performative in it. Thus, ‘I liken x
to y,’ or ‘I analyse x as y.’ Here we both do the likening and assert that
there is a likeness by means of one compendious phrase of at least a
quasi-performative character. Just to spur us on our way, we may also mention
‘I know that …’, ‘I believe that …’, etc. How complicated are these examples?
We cannot assume that they are purely descriptive, which has Grice talking of
the pseudo-descriptive. Want etymologically means absence; need should be
preferred. The squarrel (squirrel) Toby needs intake of nuts, and youll soon
see gobbling them! There is not much philosophical bibliography on these two
psychological states Grice is analysing. Their logic is interesting. Smith
wants to play cricket. Smith needs to play cricket. Grice is
concerned with the propositional content attached to the want and need
predicate. Wants that sounds harsh; so does need that. Still, there
are propositional attached to the pair above. Smith plays cricket. Grice
took a very cavalier attitude to what linguists spend their lives
analysing. He thought it was surely not the job of the philosopher,
especially from a prestigious university such as Oxford, to deal with the
arbitrariness of grammatical knots attached to this or that English verb. He rarely
used English, but stuck with ordinary language. Surely, he saw himself in
the tradition of Kantotle, and so, aiming at grand philosophical truths: not
conventions of usage, even his own! 1. Squarrel Toby has a nut, N, in
front of him. 2. Toby is short on squarrel food (observed or assumed), so, 3.
Toby wills squarrel food (by postulate of Folk Pyschological
Theory θ connecting willing with intake of N). 4. Toby prehends a nut
as in front (from (1) by Postulate of Folk Psychological Theory θ, if it
is assumed that nut and in front are familiar to Toby). 5. Toby joins squarrel
food with gobbling, nut, and in front (i.e. Toby judges gobbling, on nut in
front, for squarrel food (by Postulate of Folk Psychological
Theory θ with the aid of prior observation. So, from 3, 4 and 5, 6.
Tobby gobbles; and since a nut is in front of him, gobbles the nut in front of
him. The system of values of the society to which the agent belongs forms the
external standard for judging the relative importance of the commitments by the
agent. There are three dimensions of value: universally human, cultural that
vary with societies and times; and personal that vary with individuals. Each
dimension has a standard for judging the adequacy of the relevant values. Human
values are adequate if they satisfy basic needs; cultural values are adequate
if they provide a system of values that sustains the allegiance of the
inhabitants of a society; and personal values are adequate if the conceptions
of well‐being formed out of them enable individuals to live
satisfying lives. These values conflict and our well‐being requires some way of settling their conflicts, but
there is no universal principle for settling the conflicts; it can only be done
by attending to the concrete features of particular conflicts. These features
vary with circumstances and values. Grice reads Porter.The idea of the value
chain is based on the process view of organizations, the idea of seeing a
manufacturing (or service) organization as a system, made up of subsystems each
with inputs, transformation processes and outputs. Inputs, transformation
processes, and outputs involve the acquisition and consumption of resources –
money, labour, materials, equipment, buildings, land, administration and
management. How value chain activities are carried out determines costs and
affects profits.In his choice of value system and value sub-system, Grice is
defending objectivity, since it is usually the axiological relativist who uses
such a pretentious phrasing! More than a value may co-ordinate in a system. One
such is eudæmonia (cf. system of ends). The problem for Kant is the reduction
of the categorical imperative to the hypothetical or
suppositional imperative. For Kant, a value tends towards the
Subjectsive. Grice, rather, wants to offer a metaphysical defence of objective
value. Grice called the manual of conversational maxims the Conversational
Immanuel. The keyword to search the H. P. Grice is ‘will,’ and ‘volitional,’
even ‘ill-will,’ (“Metaphysics and ill-will,” s. V, c. 7-f. 28) and
‘benevolence’ (vide below under ‘conversational benevolence”). Also
‘desirability’: “Modality, desirability, and probability,” s. V, c. 8-ff.
14-15, and the conference lecture in a different series, “Probability,
desirability, and mood operators,” s. II, c. 2-f.11). Grice makes systematic use of ‘practical’ to
contrast with the ‘alethic,’ too (“Practical reason,” s. V, c. 9-f.1), The H.
P. Grice Papers, BANC.
desideratum of conversational
candour: the concept of ‘candour’is
especially basic for Grice since it is constitutive of what it means to
identify the ‘significatum.’ As he notes, ‘false’ information is no
information. This is serious, because it has to do with the acceptum. A
contribution which is not trustworthy is not deemed a contribution. It is
conceptually impossible to intend to PROVIDE information if you are aware that
you are not being trustworthy and not conveying it. As for the degree of
explicitness, as Grice puts it. Since in communication in a certain fashion all
must be public, if an idea or thesis is heavily obscured, it can no longer be
regarded as having been propounded. This gives acceptum justification to the
correlative desideratum of conversational clarity. On top, if there is a level
of obscurity, the thing is not deemed to have been a communicatum or
significatum. It is all about confidence, you know. U expects A will find him
confident. Thus we find in Short and Lewis, “confīdo,” wich they render as
“to trust confidently in something,” and also, “confide in, rely firmly upon,
to believe, be assured of,” as an enhancing of “sperare,” in Cicero’s Att. 6,
9, 1. Trust and rationality are pre-requisites of conversation. Urmson develops
this. They phrase in Urmson is "implied claim." Whenever U makes a
conversational contribution in a standard context, there is an implied claim to
U being trustworthy and reasonable. What do Grice and Urmson mean by an
"implied claim"? It is obvious enough, but they both love to expand.
Whenever U utters an expression which can be used to convey truth or falsehood
there is an implied claim to trustworthiness by U, unless the situation shows
that this is not so. U may be acting or reciting or incredulously echoing the
remark of another, or flouting the expectation. This, Grice and Urmson think,
may need an explanation. Suppose that U utters, in an ordinary
circumstance, ‘It will rain tomorrow,’ or ‘It rained yesterday,’ or ‘It is
raining.’ This act carries with it the claim that U should be trusted and
licenses A to believe that it will rain tomorrow. By this is meant that
just as it is understood that no U will give an order unless he is entitled to
give orders, so it is understood that no U will utter a sentence of a kind
which can be used to make a statement unless U is willing to claim that that statement
is true, and hence one would be acting in a misleading manner if one uttered
the sentence if he was not willing to make that claim. Here, the predicate
“implies that …,” Grice, Grant, Moore, Nowell-Smith, and Urmson hasten to add,
is being used in such a way that, if there is a an expectation that a thing is
done in Circumstance C, U implies that C holds if he does the thing. The point
is often made if not always in the terms Grice uses, and it is, Urmson and
Grice believe, in substance uncontroversial. Grice and Urmson wish to make the
point that, when an utterer U deploys a hedge with an indicative sentence,
there is not merely an implied claim that the whole statement is true but also
that is true. The implied or expressed claim by the utterer to
trustworthiness need not be very strong. The whole point of a hedge is to
modify or weaken (if not, as Grice would have it, flout) the claim by U to full
trustworthiness which would be implied by the unhedged assertion. But
even if U utters “He is, I suppose, at home;” or “I guess that the penny
will come down heads," U expresses, or for Urmson plainly implies,
with however little reason, that this is what U accepts as worth the trust by
A. Now Grice and Urmson meet an objection which is made by some philosophers to
this comparison. Grice and Urmson intend to meet the objection by a fairly
detailed examination of the example which they themselves would most likely
choose. In doing this Grice and Urmson further explain the use of a
parenthetical verb. The adverb is "probably" and the verb is “I
believe.” To say, that something is probable, the imaginary objector will say,
is to imply that it is reasonable to believe, that the evidence justifies a
guarded claim for the trust or trustworthiness of U and the truth of the
statement. But to say that someone else, a third person, believes something
does not imply that it is reasonable for U or A to believe it, nor that the
evidence justifies the guarded or implied claim to factivity or truth which U
makes. Therefore, the objector continues, the difference between the use
of “I believe” and “probably” is not, as Grice and Urmson suggest, merely one
of nuance and degree of impersonality. In one case, “probably,” reasonableness
is implied; in the other, “believe,” it is not. This objection is met by Grice
and Urmson. They do so by making a general point. To use the
rational-reasonable distinction in “Conversational implicature” and “Aspects,”
there is an implied claim by U to reasonableness. Further to an implied
claim to trust whenever a sentence is uttered in a standard context, now Grice
and Urmson add, to meet the sceptical objection about the contrast between
“probably” and “I believe” that, whenever U makes a statement in a standard
context there is an implied claim to reasonableness. This contention must be
explained alla Kant. Cf. Strawson on the presumption of conversational
relevance, and Austin, Moore, Nowell-Smith, Grant, and Warnock. To use
Hart’s defeasibility, and Hall’s excluder, unless U is acting or story-telling,
or preface his remarks with some such phrase as “I know Im being silly,
but …” or, “I admit it is unreasonable, but …” it is, Grice and
Urmson think, a presupposition or expectation of communication or conversation
that a communicator will not make a statement, thereby implying this trust,
unless he has some ground, however tenuous, for the statement. To
utter “The King is visiting Oxford tomorrow,” or “The President of the BA has a
corkscrew in his pocket,” and then, when asked why the utterer is uttering
that, to answer “Oh, for no reason at all,” would be to sin,
theologically, against the basic conventions governing the use of discourse.
Grice goes on to provide a Kantian justification for that, hence his amusing
talk of maxims and stuff. Therefore, Urmson and Grice think there is an
implied or expressed claim to reasonableness which goes with all
our statements, i.e. there is a mutual expectation that a communicator will not
make a statement unless he is prepared to claim and defend its reasonablenesss.
Cf. Grice’s desideratum of conversational candour, subsumed under the
over-arching principle of conversational helpfulness (formerly conversational
benevolence-cum-self-love). Grice thinks that the principle of
conversational benevolence has to be weighed against the principle of
conversational self-love. The result is the overarching principle of
conversational helpfulness. Clarity gets in the picture. The desideratum of
conversational clarity is a reasonable requirement for conversants to abide
by. Grice follows some observations by Warnock. The logical grammar
of “trust,” “candour,” “charity,” “sincerity,” “decency,” “honesty,” is subtle,
especially when we are considering the two sub-goals of conversation: giving
and receiving information/influencing and being influenced by others. In both
sub-goals, trust is paramount. The explorations of trust has become an Oxonian
hobby, with authors not such like Warnock, but Williams, and
others. Grice’s essay is entitled, “Trust, metaphysics, value.” Trust as a
corollary of the principle of conversational helpfulness. In a given
conversational setting, assuming the principle of conversational helpfulness is
operating, U is assumed by A to be trustworthy and candid. There are two
modes of trust, which relate to the buletic sub-goal and the doxastic sub-goal
which Grice assumes the principle of conversational helpfulness captures:
giving and receiving information, and influencing and being influenced by
others. In both sub-goals, trust is key. In the doxastic realm, trust
has to do, not so much or only, with truth (with which the expression is
cognate), or satisfactoriness-value, but evidence and probability. In the
buletic realm, there are the dimensions of satisfactoriness-value (‘good’
versus ‘true’), and ‘ground’ versus evidence, which becomes less crucial. But
note that one is trustworthy regarding BOTH the buletic attitude and the
doxastic attitude. Grice mentions this or that buletic attitudes which is not
usually judged in terms of evidential support (“I vow to thee my country.”)
However, in the buletic realm, U is be assumed as trustworthy if U has the
buletic attitude he is expressing. The cheater, the insincere, the dishonest,
the untrustworthy, for Grice is not irrational, just repugnant. How immoral is
the idea that honesty is the best policy? Is Kant right in thinking there is no
right to refrain from trust? Surely it is indecent. For Kant, there is no
motivation or ‘motive,’ pure or impure, behind telling the truth – it’s just a
right, and an obligation – an imperative. Being trustworthy for Kant is
associated with a pure motive. Grice agrees. Decency comes into the picture. An
indecent agent may still be rational, but in such a case, conversation may
still be seen as rational (if not reasonable) and surely not be seen as
rational helpfulness or co-operation, but rational adversarial competition,
rather, a zero-sum game. Grice found the etymology of ‘decent’ too obscure.
Short and Lewis have “dĕcet,” which they deem cognate with Sanscrit “dacas,”
‘fame,’ and Grecian “δοκέω,‘to seem,’ ‘to think,’ and with Latin ‘decus,’
‘dingus.’ As an impersonal verb, Short and Lewis render it as ‘it is seemly,
comely, becoming,; it beseems, behooves, is fitting, suitable, proper (for syn.
v. debeo init.): decere quasi aptum esse consentaneumque tempori et personae,
Cic. Or. 22, 74; cf. also nunc quid aptum sit, hoc est, quid maxime deceat in
oratione videamus, id. de Or. 3, 55, 210 (very freq. and class.; not in
Caesar). Grice’s idea of decency is connected to his explorations on rational
and reasonable. To cheat may be neither unreasonable nor rational. It is
just repulsive. Indecent, in other words. In all this, Grice is concerned
with ordinary language, and treasures Austin questioning Warnock, when Warnock was
pursuing a fellowship at Magdalen. “What would you say the difference is
between ‘Smith plays cricket rather properly’ and ‘Smith plays cricket rather
incorrectly’?” They spent the whole dinner over the subtlety. By desserts,
Warnock was in love with Austin. Cf. Grice on his prim and proper Aunt
Matilda. The exploration by Grice on trust is Warnockian in character, or vice
versa. In “Object of morality,” Warnock has trust as key, as indeed, the very
object of morality. Grice starts to focus on trust in an Oxford seminars on the
implicatum. If there is a desideratum of conversational candour, and the goal
of the principle of conversational helpfulness is that of giving and receiving
information, and influencing and being influenced by others, ‘false’ ‘information’
is just no information – Since exhibiteness trumps protrepsis, this applies to
the buletic, too. Grice loved that Latin dictum, “tuus candor.” He makes an
early defence of this in his fatal objection to Malcolm. A philosopher cannot
intentionally instill a falsehood in his tutee, such as “Decapitation willed
the death of Charles I” (the alleged paraphrase of the paradoxical philosopher
saying that ‘causing’ is ‘willing’ and rephrasing “Decapitation was the cause
of the death of Charles I.” There is, for both Grice and Apel, a transcendental
(if weak) justification, not just utilitarian (honesty as the best policy), as
Stalnaker notes in his contribution to the Grice symposium for APA. Unlike
Apel, the transcendental argument is a weak one in that Grice aims to show that
conversation that did not abide by trust would be unreasonable, but surely
still ‘possible.’ It is not a transcendental justification for the ‘existence’
of conversation simpliciter, but for the existence of ‘reasonable,’ decent conversation.
If we approach charity in the first person, we trust ourselves that some of our
beliefs have to be true, and that some of our desires have to be satisfactory
valid, and we are equally trusted by our conversational partners. This is
Grice’s conversational golden rule. What would otherwise be the point of
holding that conversation is rational co-operation? What would be the point of
conversation simpliciter? Urmson follows Austin, so Austin’s considerations on
this, notably in “Other minds,” deserve careful examination. Urmson was of
course a member of Grice’s play group, and these are the philosophers that we
consider top priority. Another one was P. H. Nowell-Smith. At least two of his
three rules deserve careful examination. Nowell-Smith notes that this or that ‘rule’
of contextual implication is not meant to be taken as a ‘rigid rule’. Unlike
this or that rule of entailment, a conversational rule can be broken without
the utterer being involved in self-contradiction or absurdity. When U uses an
expression to make a statement, it is contextually implied that he believes it
to be true. Similarly, when he uses it to perform any of the other jobs for
which sentences are used, it is contextually implied that he is using it for
one of the jobs that it normally does. This rule is often in fact broken.
Anti-Kantian lying, Bernhard-type play-acting, Andersen-type story-telling, and
Wildeian irony is each a case in which U breaks the rule, or flouts the
expectation, either overtly or covertly. But each of these four cases is a
secondary use, i.e. a use to which an expression cannot logically or
conceptually be put unless, as Hart would have it, it has a primary use. There
is no limit to the possible uses to which an expression may be put. In many
cases a man makes his point by deliberately using an expression in a queer way
or even using it in the ‘sense’ opposite to its unique normal one, as in irony
(“He is a fine friend,” implying that he is a scoundrel). The distinction
between a primary and a secondary use is important because many an argument
used by a philosopher consists in pointing out some typical example of the way
in which some expression E is used. Such an argument is always illegitimate if
the example employed is an example of a secondary use, however common such a
use may be. U contextually implies that he has what he himself believes to be
good reasons for his statement. Once again, we often break this rule and we
have special devices for indicating when we are breaking it. Phrases such as
‘speaking offhand …,’ 'I do not really know but …,’ and ‘I should be inclined
to say that …,’ are used by scrupulous persons to warn his addressee that U has
not got what seem to him good reasons for his statement. But unless one of
these guarding phrases is used we are entitled to believe that U believes
himself to have good reasons for his statement and we soon learn to *mistrust*
people who habitually infringe this rule. It is, of course, a mistake to infer
from what someone says categorically that he has in fact good reasons for what
he says. If I tell you, or ‘inform’ to you, that the duck-billed platypus is a
bird (because I ' remember ' reading this in a book) I am unreliable; but I am
not using language improperly. But if I tell you this without using one of the
guarding phrases and without having what I think good reasons, I am. What U
says may be assumed to be relevant to the interests of his addressee. This is
the most important of the three rules; unfortunately it is also the most
frequently broken. Bores are more common than liars or careless talkers. This
rule is particularly obvious in the case of answers to questions, since it is
assumed that the answer is an answer. Not all statements are answers to
questions; information may be volunteered. Nevertheless the publication of a
text-book on trigonometry implies that the author believes that there are
people who want to learn about trigonometry, and to give advice implies a
belief that the advice is relevant to one’s addressee's problem. This rule is
of the greatest importance for ethics. For the major problem of ethics is that
of bridging the gap between a decisions, an ought-sentence, an injunction, and
a sentence used to give advice on the one hand and the statements of *fact*,
sometime regarding the U’s soul, that constitute the reasons for these on the
other. It is in order to bridge these gaps that insight into necessary
synthetic connexions is invoked. This rule of contextual implication may help
us to show that there is no gap to be bridged because the reason-giving
sentence must turn out to be also *practical* from the start and not a
statement of *fact*, even concerning the state of the U’s soul, from which a
practical sentence can somehow be deduced. This rule is, therefore, more than a
rule of good manners; or rather it shows how, in matters of ordinary language,
rules of good manners shade into logical rules. Unless we assume that it is
being observed we cannot understand the connexions between decisions, advice,
and appraisals and the reasons given in support of them. Refs.: The main reference is in the first set of ‘Logic and
conversation.’ Many keywords are useful, not just ‘candour,’ but notably
‘trust.’ (“Rationality and trust,” c. 9-f. 5, “Trust, metaphysics, and value,”
c. 9-f. 20, and “Aristotle and friendship, rationality, trust, and decency,” c.
6-f. 18), BANC.
desideratum of conversational
clarity. “Candour” and “clarity’ are
somewhat co-relative for Grice. He is interested in identifying this or that
desideratum. By having two of them, he can play. So, how UNCLEAR can a
conversationalist be provided he WANTS to be candid? Candour trumps clarity. But
too much ‘unperspicuity’ may lead to something not being deemed an ‘implicatum’
at all. Grice is especially concerned with philosopher’s paradoxes. Why would
Strawson say that the usage of ‘not,’ ‘and,’ ‘or,’ ‘if,’ ‘if and only if,’
‘all,’ ‘some (at least one), ‘the,’ do not correspond to the logician’s use?
Questions of candour and clarity interact. Grice’s first application, which he
grants is not original, relates to “The pillar box seems red” versus “The
pillar box is red.” “I would not like to give the false impression that the
pillar box is not red” seems less clear than “The pillar box is red” – Yet the
unperspicuous contributin is still ‘candid,’ in the sense that it expresses a
truth. So one has to be careful. On top, philosophers like Lewis were using
‘clarity is not enough’ as a battle cry! Grice’s favourite formulations of the
imperatives here are ‘self-contradictory,’ and for which he uses ‘[sic]’,
notably: “Be perspicuous [sic]’ and “Be brief. Avoid unnecessary prolixity
[sic].’
desirability: This Grice calls the Jeffrey operator. If Urmson likes
‘probably,’ Grice likes ‘desirably.’ This theorem is a corollary of the
desirability axiom by Jeffrey, which is: "If prob XY = 0, for a prima
facie PF(A V B) A (x E w)] = PFA A (x E
w)] + PfB A (x El+ w)]. This is the account by Grice of the adaptability of a
pirot to its changeable environs. Grice borrows the notion of probability (henceforth,
“pr”) from Davidson, whose early claim to fame was to provide the logic of the
notion. Grice abbreviates probability by Pr. and compares it to a buletic operator
‘pf,’ ‘for prima facie,’ attached to ‘De’ for desirability. A rational agent
must calculate both the probability and the desirability of his
action. For both probability and desirability, the degree is crucial.
Grice symbolises this by d: probability in degree d; probability in degree
d. The topic of life Grice relates to that of adaptation and surival, and
connects with his genitorial programme of creature construction (Pology.): life
as continued operancy. Grice was fascinated with life (Aristotle, bios) because
bios is what provides for Aristotle the definition (not by genus) of
psyche. The steps are as follows. Pf(p ⊃!q)/Pr(p
⊃ q); pf((p1 ^ p2) ⊃!q)/pr(p1 ^ p2 ⊃q); pf((p1 ^ p2 ^ p3) ⊃!q)/pr(p1 ^ p2 ^ p3 ^ p4 ⊃q);
pf (all things before me ⊃!q)/pr (all things before me ⊃
q); pf (all things considered ⊃ !q)/pr(all things considered ⊃ q); !q/|- q; G wills !q/G judges q. Strictly, Grice avoids
using the noun probability (other than for the title of this or that lecture).
One has to use the sentence-modifier ‘probably,’ and ‘desirably.’ So the
specific correlative to the buletic prima facie ‘desirably’ is the doxastic ‘probably.’
Grice liked the Roman sound to ‘prima facie,’ ‘at first sight’: “exceptio, quae prima facie justa videatur.” Refs.:
The two main sources are “Probability, desirability, and mood operators,” c.
2-f. 11, and “Modality, desirability and probability,” c. 8-ff. 14-15. But most
of the material is collected in “Aspects,” especially in the third and fourth
lectures. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
deutero-esperanto: Grice genially opposed to the idea of a convention. He
hated a convention. A language is not conventional. Meaning is not
conventional. Communication is not conventional. He was even unhappy with the account
of convention by Lewis in terms of an arbitrary co-ordination. While the
co-ordination bit passes rational muster, the arbitrary element is deemed a
necessary condition, and Grice hated that. For Grice there is natural, and
iconic. When a representation ceases to be iconic and becomes, for lack of a
better expression, non-iconic, things get, we may assume conventional. One form
of correlation in his last definition of meaing allows for a conventional
correlation. “Pain!,” the P cries. There is nothing in /pein/ that minimally
resembles the pain the P is suffering. So from his involuntary “Ouch” to his
simulated “Ouch,” he thinks he can say “Pain.” Bennett explored the stages after
that. The dog is shaggy is Grices example. All sorts of resultant procedures
are needed for reference and predication, which may be deemed conventional. One
may refer nonconventionally, by ostension. It seems more difficult to predicate
non-conventionally. But there may be iconic predication. Urquhart promises
twelve parts of speech: each declinable in eleven cases, four numbers, eleven
genders (including god, goddess, man, woman, animal, etc.); and conjugable in
eleven tenses, seven moods, and four voices. The language will translate any
idiom in any other language, without any alteration of the literal sense, but
fully representing the intention. Later, one day, while lying in his bath,
Grice designed deutero-esperanto. The obble is fang may be current only
for Griceian members of the class of utterers. It is only this or that
philosophers practice to utter The obble is fang in such-and-such
circumstances. In this case, the utterer U does have a readiness to utter The
obble is feng in such-and-such circumstances. There is also the scenario in
which The obble is fang is may be conceived by the philosopher not to be deemed
current at all, but the utterance of The obble is feng in such-and-such
circumstances is part of some system of communication which the utterer U
(Lockwith,, Urquart, Wilkins, Edmonds, Grice) has devised but which has never
been put into operation, like the highway code which Grice invent another day
again while lying in his bath. In that case, U does this or that basic or
resultant procedure for the obble is feng in an attenuated but philosophically
legitimate fashion. U has envisaged a possible system of practices which
involve a readiness to utter Example by Grice that does NOT involve a
convention in this usage. Surely Grice can as he indeed did, invent a language, call
it Deutero-Esperanto, Griceish, or Pirotese, which nobody at Oxford ever uses
to communicat. That makes Grice the authority - cf. arkhe, authority,
government (in plural), "authorities" - and Grice can lay down, while
lying in the tub, no doubt - what is proper. A P can be said to potch of
some obble o as fang or as feng. Also to cotch of some obble o, as fang or
feng; or to cotch of one obble o and another obble o as being fid to one
another.” In symbols: (Ex)(Ey).Px ^ Oy ^ potch(x, y, fang) (Ex)(Ey).Px ^ Oy ^
potch(x, y, feng) (Ex)(Ey).Px ^ Oy ^ cotch(x, y, fang) (Ex)(Ey).Px ^ Ox ^ cotch(x,
y, feng) (Ex)(Ey).Px ^ Oz ^ Oy ^ cotch(x, fid(y,z)). Let’s say that Ps (as
Russell and Carnap conceived them) inhabit a world of obbles, material
objects, or things. To potch is something like to perceive; to cotch something
like to think. Feng and fang are possible descriptions, much like our
adjectives. Fid is a possible relation between obbles. Grice provides a
symbolisation for content internalisation. The perceiver or cognitive
Subjects perceives or cognises two objects, x, y, as holding a relation of some
type. There is a higher level that Ps can reach when the object of their
potchings and cotchings is not so much objects but states of affairs. Its
then that the truth-functional operators will be brought to existence “^”:
cotch(p ^ q) “V”: cotch(p v q) “)”: )-cotch(p ) q) A P will be able
to reject a content, refuse-thinking: ~. Cotch(~p). When P1 perceives P2, the
reciprocals get more complicated. P2 cotches that P1!-judges that
p. Grice uses ψ1 for potching and ψ2
for cotching. If P2 is co-operative, and abides by "The Ps Immanuel,"
P2 will honour, in a Kantian benevolent way, his partners goal by adopting
temporarily his partners goal potch(x (portch(y, !p)) ⊃ potch(x, !p). But by then, its hardly simpler
ways. Especially when the Ps outdo their progenitor Carnap as metaphysicians.
The details are under “eschatology,” but the expressions are here “α izzes α.” This
would be the principle of non-contradiction or identity. P1 applies it war, and
utters War is war which yields a most peculiar implicature. “if α izzes β ∧ β izzes γ, α izz γ.” This is transitivity, which is
crucial for Ps to overcome Berkeley’s counterexample to Locke, and define their
identity over time. “if α hazzes β, α izzes β.” Or, what is accidental is not
essential. A P may allow that what is essential is accidental while misleading,
is boringly true. “α hazzes β iff α hazzes x ∧ x izzes β.” “If β is a katholou or universalium, β is
an eidos or forma.” For surely Ps need not be stupid to fail to see
squarrelhood. “if α hazzes β ∧ α
izzes a particular, γ≠α ∧ α izz β.” “α izzes predicable
of β iff ((β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α). “α izzes essentially predicable of β ⊃⊂ β izzes α α
izzes non-essentially/accidentally predicable of β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α). α = β iff α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α. “α izzes an atomon, or individuum ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(β izzes α ⊃ α
izzes β). “α izzes a particular ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(α izzes predicable of β ⊃ (α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α)). α izzes a universalium ⊃⊂ ◊(∃β)(α izzes predicable of α ∧ ~(α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α). α izzes some-thing ⊃ α
izzes an individuum. α izzes an eidos or forma ⊃ (α izzes some-thing ∧ α izzes a universalium); α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ (β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α). “ α izzes essentially predicable of α α izzes accidentally
predicable of β ⊃ α ≠ β. ~(α izzes accidentally predicable of
β) ⊃ α ≠ β. α izzes an kathekaston or particular ⊃ α izzes an individuum; α izz a particular ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x izz α). ~(∃x).(x
izzes a particular ∧ x izzes a forma) ⊢ α
izzes a forma ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x izzes α). x izzes a particular ⊃ ~(∃β)(α izzes β); α izzes a forma ⊃ ((α izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ β
hazzes α); α izzes a forma ∧ β
izzes a particular ⊃ (α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ β hazzes A); (α izzes a particular ∧ β izzes a universalium ∧ β izzes predicable of α) ⊃ (∃γ)(α ≠ γ ∧ γ
izzes essentially predicable of α). (∃x)
(∃y)(x izzes a particular ∧ y
izzes a universalium ∧ y izzes predicable of x ⊃ ~(∀x)(x izzes a universalium ∧ x izzes some-thing). (∀β)(β izzes a universalium ⊃ β izzes some-thing). α izzes a particular) ⊃ ~∃β.(α ≠ β ∧ β
izzes essentially predicable of α). (α izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ α
izzes non-essentially or accidentally predicable of β. Grice
is following a Leibnizian tradition. A philosophical language is any
constructed language that is constructed from first principles or certain
ideologies. It is considered a type of engineered language.
Philosophical languages were popular in Early Modern times, partly motivated by
the goal of recovering the lost Adamic or Divine language. The term
“ideal language” is sometimes used near-synonymously, though more modern
philosophical languages such as “Toki Pona” are less likely to involve such an
exalted claim of perfection. It may be known as a language of pure
ideology. The axioms and grammars of the languages together differ from
commonly spoken languages today. In most older philosophical languages,
and some newer ones, words are constructed from a limited set of morphemes that
are treated as "elemental" or fundamental. "Philosophical
language" is sometimes used synonymously with "taxonomic
language", though more recently there have been several conlangs
constructed on philosophical principles which are not taxonomic. Vocabularies
of oligo-synthetic communication-systems are made of compound expressions,
which are coined from a small (theoretically minimal) set of morphemes;
oligo-isolating communication-systems, such as Toki Pona, similarly use a
limited set of root words but produce phrases which remain s. of distinct
words. Toki Pona is based on minimalistic simplicity, incorporating
elements of Taoism. Láadan is designed to lexicalize and grammaticalise the
concepts and distinctions important to women, based on muted group
theory. A priori languages are constructed languages where the vocabulary
is invented directly, rather than being derived from other existing languages
(as with Esperanto, or Grices Deutero-Esperanto, or Pirotese or Ido). It all
starts when Carnap claims to know that pritos karulise elatically. Grice as
engineer. Pirotese is the philosophers engaging in Pology. Actually, Pirotese
is the lingo the Ps parrot. Ps karulise elatically. But not all of
them. Grice finds that the Pological talk allows to start from
zero. He is constructing a language, (basic) Pirotese, and the
philosophical psychology and world that that language is supposed to represent
or denote. An obble is a Ps object. Grice introduces potching and
cotching. To potch, in Pirotese, is what a P does with an obble: he perceives
it. To cotch is Pirotese for what a P can further do with an obble: know or
cognise it. Cotching, unlike potching, is factive. Pirotese would
not be the first language invented by a philosopher. Refs.: While the
reference to “Deutero-Esperanto’ comes from “Meaning revisited,” other keywords
are useful, notably “Pirotese” and “Symbolo.” Also keywords like “obble,” and “pirot.”
The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
diagoge: Grice contrasted epagoge with diagoge. But epagoge is
induction, so here we’ll consider his views on probability and how it
contrastds with diagoge. The diagoge is easy to identity: Grice is a social
animal, with the BA, Philosophy, conferences, discussion, The American
Philosophical Association, transcripts by Randall Parker, from the audio-tapes
contained in c. 10 within the same s. IV miscellaneous, Beanfest, transcripts
and audio-cassettes, s. IV, c. 6-f. 8, and f. 10, and s. V, c. 8-f. 4-8 Unfortunately, Parker typed carulise
for karulise, or not. Re: probability, Grice loves to reminisce an anecdote
concerning his tutor Hardie at Corpus when Hardie invoked Mills principles
to prove that Hardie was not responsible for a traffic jam. In drafts on word
play, Grice would speak of not bringing more Grice to your Mill. Mills
System of Logic was part of the reading material for his degree in Lit.
Hum.at Oxford, so he was very familiar with it. Mill represents the best
of the English empiricist tradition. Grice kept an interest on inductive
methodology. In his Life and opinions he mentions some obscure essays by
Kneale and Keynes on the topic. Grice was interested in Kneales secondary
induction, since Grice saw this as an application of a
construction routine. He was also interested in Keyness notion of a
generator property, which he found metaphysically intriguing.
Induction. Induction ‒ Mill’s Induction, induction, deduction, abduction,
Mill. More Grice to the Mill. Grice loved Hardies playing with Mill’s
method of difference with an Oxford copper. He also quotes Kneale and Keynes on
induction. Note that his seven-step derivation of akrasia relies on an
inductive step! Grice was fortunate to associate with Davidson, whose initial
work is on porbability. Grice borrows from Davidson the idea that inductive
probability, or probable, attaches to the doxastic, while prima facie attaches
to desirably, or desirability. Jeffreys notion of desirability is
partition-invariant in that if a proposition, A, can be expressed as the
disjoint disjunction of both {B1, B2, B3} and {C1, C2, C3}, ∑ Bi ∈ AProb (Bi ∣∣ A).
Des (Bi) = ∑Ci ∈ A Prob (Ci ∣∣ A).
Des (Ci). It follows that applying the rule of desirability maximization
will always lead to the same recommendation, irrespective of how the decision
problem is framed, while an alternative theory may recommend different courses
of action, depending on how the decision problem is
formulated. Here, then, is the analogue of Jeffreys desirability
axiom (D), applied to sentences rather than propositions: (D) (prob(s and t) =
0 and prob(s or t) "# 0, ⊃ d
( ) prob(s)des(s)+ prob(t)des(t) es s or t =-"---- prob( s) + prob(t )
(Grice writes prob(s) for the Subjectsive probability of sand des(s) for the
desirability or utility of s.) B. Jeffrey admits that "desirability"
(his terms for evidential value) does not directly correspond to any single
pre-theoretical notion of desire. Instead, it provides the best systematic
explication of the decision theoretic idea, which is itself our best effort to
make precise the intuitive idea of weighing options. As Jeffrey remarks, it is
entirely possibly to desire someone’s love when you already have it. Therefore,
as Grice would follow, Jeffrey has the desirability operator fall under the
scope of the probability operator. The agents desire that p provided he judges
that p does not obtain. Diagoge/epagoge, Grices audio-files, the audio-files,
audio-files of various lectures and conferences, some seminars with Warner and
J. Baker, audio files of various lectures and conferences. Subjects: epagoge,
diagoge. A previous folder in the collection contains the transcripts.
These are the audio-tapes themselves, obviously not in folder. The kind of
metaphysical argument which I have in mind might be said, perhaps, to exemplify
a dia-gogic or trans-ductive as opposed to epa-gogic or in-ductive approach to
philosophical argumentation. Hence Short and Lewis have, for ‘diagoge,’ the
cognates of ‘trādūco,’ f. transduco. Now, the more emphasis is placed on
justification by elimination of the rival, the greater is the impetus given to
refutation, whether of theses or of people. And perhaps a greater emphasis on a
diagogic procedure, if it could be shown to be justifiable, would have an
eirenic effect. Cf. Aristotle on diagoge, schole, otium. Liddell and Scott
have “διαγωγή,” which they render as “literally carrying across,” -- “τριήρων”
Polyaen.5.2.6, also as “carrying through,” and “hence fig.” “ἡ διὰ πάντων αὐτῶν
δ., “taking a person through a subject by instruction, Pl. Ep.343; so, course
of instruction, lectures, ἐν τῇ ἐνεστώσῃ δ. prob. in Phld. Piet.25; also
passing of life, way or course of life, “δ. βίου” Pl. R.344e: abs., Id.
Tht.177a, etc., way of passing time, amusement, “δ. μετὰ παιδιᾶς” Arist. EN
1127b34, cf. 1177a27; “δ. ἐλευθέριος” Id. Pol.1339b5; διαγωγαὶ τοῦ συζῆν public
pastimes, ib.1280b37, cf. Plu.126b (pl.). also delay, D.C. 57.3. management,
τῶν πραγμάτων δ. dispatch of business, Id.48.5. IV. station for ships, f. l. in
Hdn.4.2.8. And there are other entries to consider: διαγωγάν: διαίρεσιν,
διανομήν, διέλευσιν. Grice knew what he was talking about! Refs.: The main
sources listed under ‘desirability,’ above. There is a specific essay on
‘probability and life.’ Good keywords, too, are epagoge and induction The H. P.
Grice Papers, BANC.
dictum: It is Hare who introduced ‘dictum’ in the Oxonian
philosophical literature in his T. H. Green Essay. Hare distinguishes between
the ‘dictum,’ that the cat is on the mat, from the ‘dictor,’ ‘I state that the
cat is on the mat, yes.’ ‘Cat, on the mat, please.’ Grice often refers to
Hare’s play with words, which he obviously enjoys. In “Epilogue,” Grice
elaborates on the ‘dictum,’ and turns it into ‘dictivitas.’ How does he coin
that word? He starts with Cicero, who has ‘dictivm,’ and creates an abstract noun
to match. Grice needs a concept of a ‘dictum’ ambiguous as it is. Grice
distinguishes between what an Utterer explicitly conveys, e. g. that Strawson
took off his boots and went to bed. Then there’s what Grice implicitly conveys,
to wit: that Strawson took off his boots and went to bed – in that order. Surely
Grice has STATED that Strawson took off his boots and went to bed. Grice has
ASSERTED that Strawson took off his boots and went to bed. But if Grice were to
order Strawson: “Put on your parachute and jump!” the implicata may differ. By
uttering that utterance, Grice has not asserted or stated anything. So Grice
needs a dummy that will do for indicatives and imperatives. ‘Convey’ usually
does – especially in the modality ‘explicitly’ convey. Because by uttering that
utterance Grice has explicitly conveyed that Strawson is to put on his
parachute and jump. Grice has implicitly conveyd that Strawson is to put on his
parachute and THEN jump, surely.
disgrice: In PGRICE, Kemmerling speaks of disgricing as the
opposite of gricing. The first way to disgrice Kemmerling calls
‘strawsonising.’For Strawson, even the resemblance (for Grice, equivalence in
terms of 'iff' -- cf. his account of what an syntactically structured
non-complete expression) between (G) There is not a single volume in
my uncle’s library which is not by an English author,’and the negatively
existential form (LFG) ~ (Ex)(Ax . ~ Bx)’ is deceptive, ‘It is not
the case that there exists an x such
that x is a book in Grice’s uncle’s library and x is written by an Englishman. FIRST, 'There is not a single volume in uncle’s
library which is not by an English author' --
as normally used, carries the presupposition -- or entails, for Grice -- (G2) Some (at least one) book is in
Grice’s uncle’s library. SECOND, 'There is not a single volume in
Grice’s uncle’s library which is not by an English author,’ is far from being
'entailed' by (G3e) It is not the case that there is some (at least one)
book in my room. If we give ‘There not a
single book in my room which is not by an English author’ the modernist
logical form ‘~ (Ex)(Ax .~ Bx),’ we see
that this is ENTAILED by the
briefer, and indeed logicall stronger (in terms of entailments) ~ (Ex)Ax. So when Grice, with a solemn face, utters, ‘There
is not a single foreign volume in my uncle’s library, to reveal later that the library is empty, Grice should expect
his addressee to get some odd feeling. Surely not the feeling of having been
lied to -- or been confronted with an initial false utterance --, because we
have not. Strawson gets the feeling of having been made "the victim of a sort
of communicative outrage." "What you say is outrageous!" This
sounds stronger than it is. An outrage is believed to be an evil deed, offense,
crime; affront, indignity, act not within established or reasonable
limits," of food, drink, dress, speech, etc., from Old French outrage "harm, damage;
insult; criminal behavior; presumption, insolence, overweening" (12c.),
earlier oltrage (11c.),
From Vulgar Latin ‘ultraticum,’
excess," from Latin ultra,
beyond" (from suffixed form of PIE root *al- "beyond"). Etymologically, "the passing
beyond reasonable bounds" in any sense. The meaning narrowed in English
toward violent excesses because of folk etymology from out + rage. Of injuries to feelings,
principles, etc., from outrage, v. outragen,
"to go to excess, act immoderately," from outrage (n.) or from Old
French oultrager. From
1580s with meaning "do violence to, attack, maltreat." Related: Outraged; outraging. But Strawson gets the
feeling of having been made "the victim of a sort of communicative
outrage.” When Grice was only trying to tutor him in The Organon. Of
course it is not the case that Grice is explicitly conveying or expressing that
there there is some (at least one) book in his uncle's room. Grice has not said
anything false. Or rather, it is not the case that Grice utters an
utterance which is not alethically or doxastically satisfactory. Yet what Grice
gives Strawson the defeasible, cancellable, license to to assume that
Grice thinks there is at least one book. Unless he goes on to cancel the
implicature, Grice may be deemed to be misleading Strawson. What Grice
explicitly conveys to be true (or false) it is necessary (though not sufficient)
that there should at least one volume in his uncle’s library -- It is not the
case that my uncle has a library and in that library all the books are
autochthonous to England, i.e. it is not the case that Grice’s uncle has a
library; for starters, it is not the case that Grice has a literate uncle. Of
this SUBTLE, nuantic, or cloudy or foggy, "slight or delicate degree of
difference in expression, feeling, opinion, etc.," from Fr. nuance "slight difference, shade of colour,” from nuer "to shade," from nue "cloud," from Gallo-Roman nuba, from Latin nubes "a
cloud, mist, vapour," sneudh- "fog,"
source also of Avestan snaoda "clouds,"
Latin obnubere "to veil,"
Welsh nudd "fog," Greek nython, in Hesychius "dark, dusky") According to
Klein, the French usage is a reference to "the different colours of the
clouds,” in reference to color or tone, "a slight variation in shade; of
music, as a French term in English -- 'sort' is the relation between ‘There
is not a volume in my uncle's library which is not by an English author,’
and ‘My uncle's library is not empty. RE-ENTER GRICE. Grice suggested that
Strawson see such a fine point such as that, which Grice had the kindness to
call an 'implicatum', the result of an act of an ‘implicatura’ (they were both
attending Kneale’s seminar on the growth and ungrowth of logic) is irrelevant
to the issue of ‘entailment’. It is a 'merely pragmatic’ implicatum, Grice
would say, bringing forward a couple of distinctions: logical/pragmatic point;
logical/pragmatic inference; entailment/implicatum; conveying explicitly/conveying
implicitly; stating/implicating; asserting/implying; what an utterer means/what
the expression 'means' -- but cf. Nowell-Smith, who left Oxford after being
overwhelmed by Grice, "this is how the rules of etiquette inform the rules
of logic -- on the 'rule' of relevance in "Ethics," 1955. If to call
such a point, as Grice does, as "irrelevant to logic" is vacuous in
that it may be interpreted as saying that that such a fine foggy point is not
considered in a modernist formal system of first-order predicate calculus with
identity, this Strawson wishes not to dispute, but to emphasise. Call it his
battle cry! But to 'logic' as concerned with this or that relation between this
or that general class of statement occurring in ordinary use, and the attending
general condition under which this or that statement is correctly called 'true'
or 'false,' this fine foggy nice point would hardly be irrelevant. GRICE'S
FORMALIST (MODERNIST) INTERPRETATION. Some 'pragmatic' consideration, or
assumption, or expectation, a desideratum of conversational conduct obviously underlies
and in fact 'explains' the implicatum, without having to change the ‘sense’ of
Aristotle’s syllogistics in terms of the logical forms of A, E, I, and O. If we
abide by an imperative of conversational helpfulness, enjoining the maximally
giving and receiving of information and the influencing and being influenced by
others in the institution of a decisions, the sub-imperative follows to the
effect, ‘Thou shalt NOT make a weak move compared to the stronger one that thou
canst truthfully make, and with equal or greater economy of means.’ Assume the
form ‘There is not a single … which is not . . .,’ or ‘It is not the case
that ... there is some (at least one) x that ... is not ... is introduced
in ‘ordinary’ language with the same SENSE as the expression in the
‘ideal’ language, ~(Ex)(Ax and ~Bx). Then prohibition inhibits the utterance of
the form where the utterer can truly and truthfully simply convey
explicitly ‘There is not a single ..., i. e. ~(Ex)(Fx). It is
defeasible prohibition which tends to confer on the overprolixic form ('it is
not the case that ... there is some (at least one) x that is not ...') just
that kind of an implicatum which Strawson identifies. But having
detected a nuance in a conversational phenomenon is not the same thing as
rushing ahead to try to explain it BEFORE exploring in some detail what kind of
a nuance it is. The mistake is often commited by Austin, too (in "Other Minds,"
and "A Plea for Excuses"), and by Hart (on 'carefully'), and by Hare
(on "good"), and by Strawson on 'true,' (Analysis), ‘the,’ and 'if --
just to restrict to the play group. Grice tries to respond to anti-sense-datum
in "That pillar box seems red to me,” but Strawson was not listening. The overprolixic form in the ‘ordinary’
language, ‘It is not the case that there is some (at least one x) such that ...
x is not ...’ would tend, if it does not remain otiose, to develop or generate
just that baffling effect in one's addressee ('outrage!') that Strawson identifies,
as opposed to the formal-device in the ‘ideal’ language with which the the
‘ordinary’ language counterpart is co-related. What weakens our resistance
to the negatively existential analysis in this case more than in the case of
the corresponding "All '-sentence is the powerful attraction of the
negative opening phrase There is not …'. To avoid misunderstanding
one may add a point about the neo-traditionalist interpretation of the forms of
the traditional Aristotelian system. Strawson is not claiming that it
faithfully represents this or that intention of the principal exponent of the
Square of Opposition. Appuleius, who knows, was perhaps, more interested in
formulating this or that theorem governing this or that logical relation of
this or that more imposing general statement than this or that everyday general
statement that Strawson considers. Appuleius, who knows, might have
been interested, e. g., in the logical powers of this or that
generalisation, or this or that sentence which approximates more closely to the
desired conditions that if its utterance by anyone, at any time, at any place,
results in a true statement, so does its utterance by anyone else, at any other
time, at any other place. How far the account by the neo-traditionalist
of this or that general sentence of 'ordinary' langauge is adequate for every
generalization may well be under debate. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “In defence of
Appuleius,” BANC.
disimplicatum: the target is of course Davidson having the cheek to quote
Grice’s Henriette Herz Trust lecture for the BA! Lewis and Short have
‘intendere’ under ‘in-tendo,’ which they render as ‘to stretch out or forth,
extend, also to turn ones attention to, exert one’s self for, to purpose,
endeavour,” and finaly as “intend”! “pergin, sceleste, intendere hanc arguere?”
Plaut. Mil. 2, 4, 27 Grices tends towards claiming that you cannot extend
what you dont intend. In the James lectures, Grice mentions the use of is to
mean seem (The tie is red in this light), and see to mean hallucinate. The
reductive analyses of being and seeing hold. We have here two cases of loose
use (or disimplicature). Same now with his example in “Intention and Uncertainty”
(henceforth, “Uncertainty”): Smith intends to climb Mt. Everest + [common-ground
status: this is difficult]. Grices response to Davidsons pretty unfair use of
Grices notion of conversational implicature in Davidsons analysis of intention
caught a lot of interest. Pears loved Grices reply. Implicatum here is out of
the question ‒ disimplicatum may not. Grice just saw that his theory of
conversation is too social to be true when applied to intending. The doxastic
condition is one of the entailments in an ascription of an intending. It cannot
be cancelled as an implicatum can. If it can be cancelled, it is best seen as a
disimplicatum, or a loose use by an utterer meaning less than what he says or
explicitly conveys to more careful conversants. Grice and Davidson were
members of The Grice and Davidson Mutual Admiration Society. Davidson, not
being Oxonian, was perhaps not acquainted with Grices polemics at Oxford with
Hart and Hampshire (where Grice sided with Pears, rather). Grice and Pears
hold a minimalist approach to intending. On the other hand, Davidson makes
what Grice sees as the same mistake again of building certainty into the
concept. Grice finds that to apply the idea of a conversational implicatum
at this point is too social to be true. Rather, Grice prefers to coin the
conversational disimplicatum: Marmaduke Bloggs intends to climb Mt Everest
on hands and knees. The utterance above, if merely reporting what Bloggs
thinks, may involve a loose use of intends. The certainty on the agents
part on the success of his enterprise is thus cast with doubt. Davidson
was claiming that the agents belief in the probability of the object of the
agents intention was a mere conversational implicatum on the utterers
part. Grice responds that the ascription of such a belief is an entailment
of a strict use of intend, even if, in cases where the utterer aims at a
conversational disimplicatum, it can be dropped. The addressee will
still regard the utterer as abiding by the principle of conversational
helpfulness. Pears was especially interested in the Davidson-Grice polemic on
intending, disimplicature, disimplicature. Strictly, a section of his reply to
Davidson. If Grices claim to fame is implicature, he finds disimplicature an
intriguing notion to capture those occasions when an utterer means LESS than he
says. His examples include: a loose use of intending (without the entailment of
the doxastic condition), the uses of see in Shakespeareian contexts (Macbeth
saw Banquo, Hamlet saw his father on the ramparts of Elsinore) and the use of
is to mean seems (That tie is blue under this light, but green otherwise, when
both conversants know that a change of colour is out of the question. He plays
with Youre the cream in my coffee being an utterance where the disimplicature
(i.e. entailment dropping) is total. Disimplicature does not appeal to a new principle
of conversational rationality. It is perfectly accountable by the principle of
conversational helpfulness, in particular, the desideratum of conversational
candour. In everyday explanation we
exploit, as Grice notes, an immense richness in the family of expressions that
might be thought of as the wanting family. This wanting family includes
expressions like want, desire, would like to, is eager to, is anxious to, would
mind not…, the idea of appeals to me, is
thinking of, etc. As Grice remarks, The likeness and differences within this
wanting family demand careful attention. In commenting on Davidsons
treatment of wanting in Intending, Grice notes: It seems to Grice that the
picture of the soul suggested by Davidsons treatment of wanting is remarkably
tranquil and, one might almost say, computerized. It is the picture of an
ideally decorous board meeting, at which the various heads of sections advance,
from the standpoint of their particular provinces, the case for or against some
proposed course of action. In the end the chairman passes judgement, effective
for action; normally judiciously, though sometimes he is for one reason or
another over-impressed with the presentation made by some particular member.
Grices soul doesnt seem to him, a lot of the time, to be like that at all. It
is more like a particularly unpleasant department meeting, in which some
members shout, wont listen, and suborn other members to lie on their behalf;
while the chairman, who is often himself under suspicion of cheating, endeavours
to impose some kind of order; frequently to no effect, since sometimes the
meeting breaks up in disorder, sometimes, though it appears to end comfortably,
in reality all sorts of enduring lesions are set up, and sometimes, whatever
the outcome of the meeting, individual members go off and do things
unilaterally. Could it be that Davidson, of the New World, and Grice, of the
Old World, have different idiolects regarding intend? Could well be! It is said
that the New World is prone to hyperbole, so perhaps in Grices more cautious
use, intend is restricted to the conditions HE wants it to restrict it too! Odd
that for all the generosity he displays in Post-war Oxford philosophy (Surely I
can help you analyse you concept of this or that, even if my use of the
corresponding expression does not agree with yours), he goes to attack
Davidson, and just for trying to be nice and apply the conversational
implicatum to intend! Genial Grice! It is natural Davidson, with his
naturalistic tendencies, would like to see intending as merely invoking in a
weak fashion the idea of a strong psychological state as belief. And its
natural that Grice hated that! Refs.: The source is Grice’s comment on Davidson
on intending. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
disjunction: Grice lists ‘or’ as the second binary functor in his
response to Strawson. But both Grice and Strawson agreed that the Oxonian
expert on ‘or’ is Wood. Mitchell is good, too, though. The relations between
“v” and “or” (or “either ... or …”) are, on the whole, less intimate than those
between “.” and “and,” but less distant than those between “D” and “if.” Let us
speak of a statement made by coupling two clauses by “or” as an alternative
statement ; and let us speak of the first and second alternatesof such a
statement, on analogy with our talk of the antecedent and consequent of a
hypothetical statement. At a bus-stop, someone might say: “Either we catch this
bus or we shall have to walk all the way home.” He might equally well have said
“If we don't catch this bus, we shall have to walk all the way home.” It will
be seen that the antecedent of the hypothetical statement he might have made is
the negation of the first alternate of the alternative statement he did make.
Obviously, we should not regard our catching the bus as a sufficient condition
of the 'truth' of either statement; if it turns out that the bus we caught was
not the last one, we should say that the man who had made the statement had
been wrong. The truth of one of the alternates is no more a sufficient
condition of the truth of the alternative statement than the falsity of the
antecedent is a sufficient condition of the truth of the hypothetical
statement. And since 'p"Dpyq' (and, equally, * q"3p v q ') is a law
of the truth-functional system, this fact sufficiently shows a difference
between at least one standard use of “or” and the meaning given to “v.” Now in
all, or almost all, the cases where we are prepared to say something of the
form “p or q,” we are also prepared to say something of the form 4 if not-p,
then q \ And this fact may us to exaggerate the difference between “v” and “or”
to think that, since in some cases, the fulfilment of one alternate is not a
sufficient condition of the truth of the alternative statement of which It is
an alternate, the fulfilment of one alternate is a sufficient condition of the
truth of an alternative statement. And this is certainly an exaggeration. If
someone says ; “Either it was John or it was Robert but I couldn't tell which,”
we are satisfied of the truth of the alternative statement if either of the
alternates turns out to be true; and we say that the speaker was wrong only if
neither turns out to be true. Here we seem to have a puzzle ; for we seem to be
saying that * Either it was John or it was Robert ' entails 4 If it wasn't
John, it was Robert * and, at the same time, that ‘It was John’ entails the
former, but not the latter. What we are suffering from here is perhaps a
crudity in our notion of entailraent, a difficulty In applying this too undifferentiated
concept to the facts of speech ; or, if we prefer it, an ambiguity in the
notion of a sufficient condition. The statement that it was John entails the
statement that it was either John or Robert in the sense thai it confirms it;
when It turns out to have been John, the man who said that either It was John
or it was Robert is shown to have been right. But the first statement does not
entail the second in the sense that the step ‘It was John, so it was either
John or Robert’ is a logically proper step, unless the person saying this means
by it simply that the alternative statement made previously was correct, i.e.,
'it was one of the two '. For the alternative statement carries the implication
of the speaker's uncertainty as to which of the two it was, and this
implication is inconsistent with the assertion that it was John. So in this
sense of * sufficient condition ', the statement that it was John is no more a
sufficient condition of (no more entails) the statement that it was either John
or Robert than it is a sufficient condition of (entails) the statement that if
it wasn't John, it was Robert. The further resemblance, which we have already
noticed, between the alternative statement and the hypothetical statement, is
that whatever knowledge or experience renders it reasonable to assert the
alternative statement, also renders it reasonable to make the statement that
(under the condition that it wasn't John) it was Robert. But we are less happy
about saying that the hypothetical statement is confirmed by the discovery that
it was John, than we are about saying that the alternative statement is
confirmed by this discovery. For we are inclined to say that the question of
confirmation of the hypothetical statement (as opposed to the question of its
reasonableness or acceptability) arises only if the condition (that it wasn't
John) turns out to be fulfilled. This shows an asymmetry, as regards
confirmation, though not as regards acceptability, between 4 if not p, then q '
and * if not qy then p ' which is not mirrored in the forms ‘either p or q’ and
‘either q or p.’ This asymmetry is ignored in the rule that * if not p, then q
' and ‘if not q, then p’ are logically equivalent, for this rule regards
acceptability rather than confirmation. And rightly. For we may often discuss
the l truth ' of a subjunctive conditional, where the possibility of
confirmation is suggested by the form of words employed to be not envisaged. It
is a not unrelated difference between * if ' sentences and ‘or’ sentences that
whereas, whenever we use one of the latter, we should also be prepared to use
one of the former, the converse does not hold. The cases in which it does not
generally hold are those of subjunctive conditionals. There is no ‘or’ sentence
which would serve as a paraphrase of ‘If the Germans had invaded England in
1940, they would have won the war’ as this sentence would most commonly be
used. And this is connected with the fact that c either . . . or . . .' is
associated with situations involving choice or decision. 4 Either of these
roads leads to Oxford ' does not mean the same as ' Either this road leads to
Oxford or that road does’ ; but both confront us with the necessity of making a
choice. This brings us to a feature of * or ' which, unlike those so far discussed,
is commonly mentioned in discussion of its relation to * v ' ; the fact,
namely, that in certain verbal contexts, ‘either … or …’ plainly carries the
implication ‘and not both . . . and . . .', whereas in other contexts, it does
not. These are sometimes spoken of as, respectively, the exclusive and
inclusive senses of ‘or;’ and, plainly, if we are to identify 4 v’ with either,
it must be the latter. The reason why, unlike others, this feature of the
ordinary use of “or” is commonly mentioned, is that the difference can readily
be accommodated (1 Cf. footnote to p. 86.In the symbolism of the
truth-functional system: It is the difference between “(p y q) .~ (p . q)”
(exclusive sense) and “p v q” (inclusive sense). “Or,” like “and,” is commonly
used to join words and phrases as well as clauses. The 4 mutuality difficulties
attending the general expansion of 4 x and y are/ 5 into * x is /and y is/' do
not attend the expansion of 4 x or y isf into c r Is/or y is/ ? (This is not to
say that the expansion can always correctly be made. We may call “v” the
disjunctive sign and, being warned against taking the reading too seriously,
may read it as ‘or.' While he never approached the topic separately, it’s easy
to find remarks about disjunction in his oeuvre. A veritable genealogy of
disjunction can be traced along Griceian lines. Refs.: Grice uses an
illustration involving ‘or’ in the ‘implication’ excursus in “Causal Theory.”
But the systematic account comes from WoW, especially essay 4.
ditto: Grice disliked
Strawson’s ditto theory in Analysis of ‘true’ as admittive performatory. 1620s,
"in the month of the same name," Tuscan dialectal ditto "(in)
the said (month or year)," literary Italian detto, past participle of dire
"to say," from Latin dicere "speak, tell, say" (from PIE
root *deik- "to show," also "pronounce solemnly").
Italian used the word to avoid repetition of month names in a series of dates,
and in this sense it was picked up in English. Its generalized meaning of
"the aforesaid, the same thing, same as above" is attested in English
by 1670s. In early 19c. a suit of men's clothes of the same color and material
through was ditto or dittoes (1755). Dittohead, self-description of followers
of U.S. radio personality Rush Limbaugh, attested by 1995. dittoship is from
1869.
dossier: Grice’s favourite vacuous name is ‘Bellerophon.’ ‘Vacuous
names’ is an essay commissioned by Davison and Hintikka for Words and
objections: essays on the work of W. V. Quine (henceforth, W and O) for Reidel,
Dordrecht. “W and O” had appeared (without Grices contribution) as a special
issue of Synthese. Grices contribution, along with Quines Reply to Grice,
appeared only in the reprint of that special issue for Reidel in
Dordrecht. Grice cites from various philosophers (and logicians ‒
this was the time when logic was starting to be taught outside philosophy
departments, or sub-faculties), such as Mitchell, Myro, Mates, Donnellan, Strawson, Grice
was particularly proud to be able to quote Mates by mouth or book. Grice takes
the opportunity, in his tribute to Quine, to introduce one of two of his
syntactical devices to allow for conversational implicata to be given maximal
scope. The device in Vacuous Namess is a subscription device to indicate
the ordering of introduction of this or that operation. Grice wants to
give room for utterances of a special existential kind be deemed
rational/reasonable, provided the principle of conversational helfpulness is
thought of by the addressee to be followed by the utterer. Someone isnt
attending the party organised by the Merseyside Geographical Society. That
is Marmaduke Bloggs, who climbed Mt. Everest on hands and knees. But who,
as it happened, turned out to be an invention of the journalists at the
Merseyside Newsletter, “W and O,” vacuous name, identificatory use,
non-identificatory use, subscript device. Davidson and Hintikka were well aware
of the New-World impact of the Old-World ideas displayed by Grice and
Strawson in their attack to Quine. Quine had indeed addressed Grices and
Strawsons sophisticated version of the paradigm-case argument in Word and
Object. Davidson and Hintikka arranged to publish a special issue for a
periodical publication, to which Strawson had already contributed. It was only
natural, when Davidson and Hintikka were informed by Reidel of their interest
in turning the special issue into a separate volume, that they would approach
the other infamous member of the dynamic duo! Commissioned by Davidson and
Hintikka for “W and O.” Grice introduces a subscript device to account for
implicata of utterances like Marmaduke Bloggs won’t be attending the
party; he was invented by the journalists. In the later section, he
explores identificatory and non identificatory uses of the without involving
himself in the problems Donnellan did! Some philosophers, notably
Ostertag, have found the latter section the most intriguing bit, and thus
Ostertag cared to reprint the section on Descriptions for his edited MIT volume
on the topic. The essay is structured very systematically with an initial
section on a calculus alla Gentzen, followed by implicata of vacuous Namess
such as Marmaduke Bloggs, to end with definite descriptions, repr. in Ostertag,
and psychological predicates. It is best to focus on a few things here.
First his imaginary dialogues on Marmaduke Bloggs, brilliant! Second, this as a
preamble to his Presupposition and conversational implicature. There is a
quantifier phrase, the, and two uses of it: one is an identificatory use (the
haberdasher is clumsy, or THE haberdasher is clumsy, as Grice prefers) and then
theres a derived, non-identificatory use: the haberdasher (whoever she was! to
use Grices and Mitchells addendum) shows her clumsiness. The use of the numeric
subscripts were complicated enough to delay the publication of this. The whole
thing was a special issue of a journal. Grices contribution came when Reidel
turned that into a volume. Grice later replaced his numeric subscript device by
square brackets. Perhaps the square brackets are not subtle enough, though. Grices
contribution, Vacuous Namess, later repr. in part “Definite descriptions,” ed.
Ostertag, concludes with an exploration of the phrases, and further on, with
some intriguing remarks on the subtle issues surrounding the scope of an
ascription of a predicate standing for a psychological state or
attitude. Grices choice of an ascription now notably involves an
opaque (rather than factive, like know) psychological state or attitude:
wanting, which he symbolizes as W. At least Grice does not write, really,
for he knew that Austin detested a trouser word! Grice concludes that (xi) and
(xiii) will be derivable from each of (ix) and (x), while (xii) will be
derivable only from (ix).Grice had been Strawsons logic tutor at St. Johns
(Mabbott was teaching the grand stuff!) and it shows! One topic that especially
concerned Grice relates to the introduction and elimination rules, as he later
searches for generic satisfactoriness. Grice
wonders [W]hat should be said of Takeutis conjecture (roughly)
that the nature of the introduction rule determines the character of
the elimination rule? There seems to be
no particular problem about allowing an introduction rule which tells
us that, if it is established in Xs personalized system that φ, then it is
necessary with respect to X that φ is true (establishable). The accompanying
elimination rule is, however, slightly less promising. If we suppose such a
rule to tell us that, if one is committed to the idea that it is necessary with
respect to X that φ, then one is also committed to whatever is expressed by φ,
we shall be in trouble; for such a rule is not acceptable; φ will be a volitive
expression such as let it be that X eats his hat; and my commitment to the idea
that Xs system requires him to eat his hat does not ipso facto involve me in
accepting (buletically) let X eat his hat. But if we take the elimination rule
rather as telling us that, if it is necessary with respect to X that let X eat
his hat, then let X eat his hat possesses satisfactoriness-with-respect-to-X,
the situation is easier; for this version of the rule seems inoffensive, even
for Takeuti, we hope. A very interesting concept Grice introduces in the
definite-descriptor section of Vacuous Namess is that of a conversational
dossier, for which he uses δ for a definite descriptor. The key concept is that
of conversational dossier overlap, common ground, or conversational pool. Let
us say that an utterer U has a dossier for a definite description δ if there is
a set of definite descriptions which include δ, all the members of which the
utterer supposes to be satisfied by one and the same item and the utterer U
intends his addressee A to think (via the recognition that A is so intended)
that the utterer U has a dossier for the definite description δ which the
utterer uses, and that the utterer U has specifically selected (or chosen, or
picked) this specific δ from this dossier at least partly in the hope that his
addressee A has his own dossier for δ which overlaps the utterers dossier for δ,
viz. shares a substantial, or in some way specially favoured, su-bset with the
utterers dossier. Its unfortunate that the idea of a dossier is not better
known amog Oxonian philosophers. Unlike approaches to the phenomenon by other
Oxonian philosophers like Grices tutee Strawson and his three principles
(conversational relevance, presumption of conversational knowledge, and
presumption of conversational ignorance) or Urmson and his, apter than
Strawsons, principle of conversational appositeness (Mrs.Smiths husband just delivered
a letter, You mean the postman!?), only Grice took to task the idea of
formalising this in terms of set-theory and philosophical
psychology ‒ note his charming reference to the utterers hope (never
mind intention) that his choice of d from his dossier will overlap with some d
in the dossier of his his addressee. The point of adding whoever he may be for
the non-identificatory is made by Mitchell, of Worcester, in his Griceian
textbook for Hutchinson. Refs.: The main reference is Grice’s “Vacuous names,”
in “W and O” and its attending notes, BANC.
economy: and effort. This Grice also refers to as
‘maximum,’ ‘maximal,’ optimal. It is part of his principle of economy of
rational effort. Grice leaves it open as how to formulate this. Notably in
“Causal,” he allows that ‘The pillar box seems red” and “The pillar box is red”
are difficult to formalise in terms in which we legitimize the claim or
intuition that ‘The pillar box IS red” is ‘stronger’ than ‘The pillar box seems
red.’ If this were so, it would provide a rational justification for going into
the effort of uttering something STRONGER (and thus less economical, and more
effortful) under the circumstances. As in “My wife is in the kitchen or in the
bedroom, and the house has only two rooms (and no passages, etc.)” the reason
why the conversational implicatum is standardly carried is to be found in the
operation of some such general principle as that giving preference to the
making of a STRONGER rather than a weaker statement in the absence of a reason
for not so doing. The implicatum therefore is not of a part of the meaning of
the expression “seems.” There is however A VERY IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE between
the case of a ‘phenomenalist’ statement (Bar-Hillel it does not count as a
statement) and that of disjunctives, such as “My wife is in the kitchen or ind
the bedroom, and the house has only two rooms (and no passages, etc.).” A
disjunctive is weaker than either of its disjuncts in a straightforward LOGICAL
fashion, viz., a disjunctive is entailed (alla Moore) by, but does not entail,
each of its disjuncts. The statement “The pillar box is red” is NOT STRONGER
than the statement, if a statement it is, “The pillar box seems red,” in this
way. Neither statement entails the other. Grice thinks that he has,
neverthcless a strong inclination to regard the first of these statements as
STRONGER than the second. But Grice leaves it open the ‘determination’ of in
what fashion this might obtain. He suggests that there may be a way to provide
a reductive analysis of ‘strength’ THAT YIELDS that “The pillar box is red” is
a stronger conversational contribution than “The pillar box seems red.”
Recourse to ‘informativeness’ may not do, since Grice is willing to generalise
over the acceptum to cover informative and non-informative cases. While there
is an element of ‘exhibition’ in his account of the communicatum, he might not
be happy with the idea that it is the utterer’s INTENTION to INFORM his
addressee that he, the utterer, INTENDS that his addressee will believe that
he, the utterer, believes that it is raining. “Inform” seems to apply only to
the content of the propositional complexum, and not to the attending ‘animata.’
egcrateia: the
geniality of Grice was to explore theoretical akrasia. Of course, it does not
paint a good picture of the philosopher why he should be obsessed with
‘akrasia,’ when Aristotle actually opposed the notion to that of ‘enkrateia,’
or ‘continence.’ Surely a philosopher needs to provide a reductive analysis of
‘continence,’ first; and the reductive analysis of ‘incontinence’ will follow.
Aristotle, as Grice well knew, is being a Platonist here, so by ‘continence,’
he meant a power structure of the soul, with the ‘rational’ soul containing the
pre-rational or non-rational soul (animal soul, and vegetal soul). And right he
was, too! So, Grice's twist is Έγκράτεια, sic in capitals! Liddell
and Scott has it as ‘ἐγκράτεια’ [ρα^],
which they render as “mastery over,”
as used by Plato in The Republic: “ἐ. ἑαυτοῦ,”
meaning ‘self-control’ (Pl.
R.390b; ἐ. ἡδονῶν καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν control over them, ib.430e,
cf. X.Mem.2.1.1, Isoc.1.21;
“περί τι” Arist.EN1149a21,
al. Liddell and Scott go on to give a reference to Grice’s beloved “Eth. Nich.”
(1145b8) II. abs., self-control, X. Mem.1.5.1, Isoc.3.44, Arist.
EN. 1145b8, al., LXX Si.18.30, Act.Ap. 24.25,
etc. Richards, an emotivist, as well as Collingwood
(in “Language”) had made a stereotype of the physicist drawing a formula on the
blackboard. “Full of emotion.” So the idea that there is an UN-emotional life
is a fallacy. Emotion pervades the rational life, as does akrasia. Grice was
particularly irritated by the fact that Davidson, who lacked a background in
the humanities and the classics, could think of akrasia as “impossible”! Grice
was never too interested in emotion (or feeling) because while we do say I feel
that the cat is hungry, we also say, Im feeling byzantine. The concept of
emotion needs a philosophical elucidation. Grice was curious about a linguistic
botany for that! Akrasia for Grice covers both buletic-boulomaic and doxastic
versions. The buletic-boulomaic version may be closer to the concept of an
emotion. Grice quotes from Kennys essay on emotion. But Grice is looking for
more of a linguistic botany. As it happens, Kennys essay has Griceian
implicata. One problem Grice finds with emotion is that feel that sometimes behaves like thinks that Another is that there is no good Grecian word
for emotio. Kenny, of St. Benets, completed his essay on emotion under
Quinton (who would occasionally give seminars with Grice), and examined by two
members of Grices Play Group: Pears and Gardiner. Kenny connects an emotion to
a feeling, which brings us to Grice on feeling boringly byzantine! Grice
proposes a derivation of akrasia in conditional steps for both
buletic-boulomaic and doxastic akrasia. Liddell
and Scott have “ἐπιθυμία,” which they render as desire, yearning, “ἐ.
ἐκτελέσαι” Hdt.1.32; ἐπιθυμίᾳ by passion, oπρονοίᾳ, generally, appetite, αἱ
κατὰ τὸ σῶμα ἐ. esp. sexual desire, lust, αἱ πρὸς τοὺς παῖδας ἐ.; longing after
a thing, desire of or for it, ὕδατος, τοῦ πιεῖν;” “τοῦ πλέονος;” “τῆς
τιμωρίας;” “τῆς μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν πολιτείας;’ “τῆς παρθενίας;’ “εἰς ἐ. τινὸς ἐλθεῖν;’ ἐν
ἐ. “τινὸς εἶναι;’ “γεγονέναι;” “εἰς ἐ. τινὸς “ἀφικέσθαι θεάσασθαι;” “ἐ. τινὸς
ἐμβαλεῖν τινί;” “ἐ. ἐμποιεῖν ἔς τινα an inclination towards;” =ἐπιθύμημα, object
of desire, ἐπιθυμίας τυχεῖν;” “ἀνδρὸς ἐ., of woman, “πενήτων ἐ., of sleep. There
must be more to emotion, such as philia, than epithumia! cf. Grice on Aristotle
on philos. What is an emotion? Aristotle, Rhetoric II.1; Konstan “Pathos
and Passion” R. Roberts, “Emotion”; W. Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion; Simo
Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Aristotle, Rhet.
II.2-12; De An., Eth.N., and Top.; Emotions in Plato and Aristotle; Philosophy
of Emotion; Aristotle and the Emotions, De An. II.12 and III 1-3; De Mem. 1;
Rhet. II.5; Scheiter, “Images, Imagination, and Appearances, V. Caston, Why
Aristotle Needs Imagination” M. Nussbaum, “Aristotle on Emotions and Rational
Persuasion, J. Cooper, “An Aristotelian Theory of Emotion, G. Striker, Emotions
in Context: Aristotles Treatment of the Passions in the Rhetoric and his Moral
Psychology." Essays on Aristotles Rhetoric (J. Dow, Aristotles Theory of
the Emotions, Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle PLATO. Aristotle,
Rhetoric I.10-11; Plato Philebus 31b-50e and Republic IV, D. Frede, Mixed
feelings in Aristotles Rhetoric." Essays on Aristotles Rhetoric, J. Moss,
“Pictures and Passions in Plato”; Protagoras 352b-c, Phaedo 83b-84a, Timaeus 69c
STOICS The Hellenistic philosophers; “The Old Stoic Theory of Emotion” The
Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, eEmotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic
Agitation to Christian Temptation, Sorabji, Chrysippus Posidonius Seneca: A High-Level
Debate on Emotion. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in
Hellenistic Ethics M. Graver, Preface and Introduction to Cicero on Emotion:
Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 M. Graver, Stoicism and emotion. Tusculan
Disputations 3 Recommended: Graver, Margaret. "Philo of Alexandria and the
Origins of the Stoic Προπάθειαι." Phronesis. Tusculan Disputations; "The
Stoic doctrine of the affections of the soul; The Stoic life: Emotions, duties,
and fate”; Emotion and decision in stoic psychology, The stoics, individual
emotions: anger, friendly feeling, and hatred. Aristotle Rhetoric II.2-3;
Nicomachean Ethics IV.5; Topics 2.7 and 4.5; Konstan, Anger, Pearson, Aristotle
on Desire; Scheiter, Review of Pearsons Aristotle on Desire; S. Leighton,
Aristotles Account of Anger: Narcissism and Illusions of Self‐Sufficiency: The Complex Evaluative World of Aristotles Angry
Man,” Valuing emotions. Aristotle Rhetoric II. 4; Konstan, “Hatred”
Konstan "Aristotle on Anger and the Emotions: the Strategies of
Status." Ancient Anger: Perspectives from Homer to Galen, C. Rapp, The
emotional dimension of friendship: notes on Aristotles account of philia in
Rhetoric II 4” Grice endeavours to give an answer to the question whether
and to what extent philia (friendship), as it is treated by Aristotle in Rhet.
II.4, can be considered a genuine emotion as, for example, fear and anger are.
Three anomalies are identified in the definition and the account of philia (and
of the associated verb philein), which suggest a negative response to the
question. However, these anomalies are analysed and explained in terms of the
specific notes of philia in order to show that Rhetoric II4 does allow for a
consideration of friendship as a genuine emotion. Seneca, On Anger (De
Ira) Seneca, On Anger Seneca, On Anger (62-96); K. Vogt, “Anger, Present Injustice,
and Future Revenge in Senecas De Ira” FEAR Aristotle, Rhet. II.5; Nicomachean
Ethics III.6-9 Aristotles Courageous Passions, Platos Laws; “Pleasure,
Pain, and Anticipation in Platos Laws, Book I” Konstan, “Fear” PITY
Aristotle, Rhetoric II. 8-9; Poetics, chs. 6, 9-19 ; Konstan, “Pity” E.
Belfiore, Tragic pleasures: Aristotle on plot and emotion, Konstan, Aristotle
on the Tragic Emotions, The Soul of Tragedy: Essays on Athenian Drama SHAME
Aristotle, Rhet. II.6; Nicomachean Ethics IV.9 Konstan, Shame J. Moss, Shame, Pleasure,
and the Divided Soul, B. Williams, Shame and Necessity. Aristotle investigates
two character traits, continence and incontinence, that are not as blameworthy
as the vices but not as praiseworthy as the virtues. The Grecian expressions
are’enkrateia,’ continence, literally mastery, and krasia (“incontinence”;
literally, lack of mastery. An akratic person goes against reason as a result
of some pathos (emotion, feeling”). Like the akratic, an enkratic person
experiences a feeling that is contrary to reason; but unlike the akratic, he
acts in accordance with reason. His defect consists solely in the fact that,
more than most people, he experiences passions that conflict with his rational
choice. The akratic person has not only this defect, but has the further flaw
that he gives in to feeling rather than reason more often than the average
person. Aristotle distinguishes two
kinds of akrasia: “propeteia,” or impetuosity and “astheneia, or weakness. The
person who is weak goes through a process of deliberation and makes a choice;
but rather than act in accordance with his reasoned choice, he acts under the
influence of a passion. By contrast, the impetuous person does not go through a
process of deliberation and does not make a reasoned choice; he simply acts
under the influence of a passion. At the time of action, the impetuous person
experiences no internal conflict. But once his act has been completed, he
regrets what he has done. One could say that he deliberates, if deliberation were
something that post-dated rather than preceded action; but the thought process
he goes through after he acts comes too late to save him from error. It is important to bear in mind that when
Aristotle talks about impetuosity and weakness, he is discussing chronic
conditions. The impetuous person is someone who acts emotionally and fails to
deliberate not just once or twice but with some frequency; he makes this error
more than most people do. Because of this pattern in his actions, we would be
justified in saying of the impetuous person that had his passions not prevented
him from doing so, he would have deliberated and chosen an action different
from the one he did perform. The two
kinds of passions that Aristotle focuses on, in his treatment of akrasia, are
the appetite for pleasure and anger. Either can lead to impetuosity and
weakness. But Aristotle gives pride of place to the appetite for pleasure as
the passion that undermines reason. He calls the kind of akrasia caused by an
appetite for pleasure (hedone) “unqualified akrasia”—or, as we might say,
akrasia simpliciter, “full stop.’ Akrasia caused by anger he considers a
qualified form of akrasia and calls it akrasia ‘with respect to anger.’ We thus
have these four forms of akrasia: impetuosity caused by pleasure, impetuosity
caused by anger, weakness caused by pleasure, weakness caused by anger. It
should be noticed that Aristotle’s treatment of akrasia is heavily influenced
by Plato’s tripartite division of the soul. Plato holds that either the spirited
part (which houses anger, as well as other emotions) or the appetitive part
(which houses the desire for physical pleasures) can disrupt the dictates of
reason and result in action contrary to reason. The same threefold division of
the soul can be seen in Aristotles approach to this topic. Although Aristotle
characterizes akrasia and enkrateia in terms of a conflict between reason and
feeling, his detailed analysis of these states of mind shows that what takes
place is best described in a more complicated way. For the feeling that
undermines reason contains some thought, which may be implicitly general. As
Aristotle says, anger “reasoning as it were that one must fight against such a
thing, is immediately provoked. And although in the next sentence he denies
that our appetite for pleasure works in this way, he earlier had said that
there can be a syllogism that favors pursuing enjoyment: “Everything sweet is
pleasant, and this is sweet” leads to the pursuit of a particular pleasure.
Perhaps what he has in mind is that pleasure can operate in either way: it can
prompt action unmediated by a general premise, or it can prompt us to act on
such a syllogism. By contrast, anger always moves us by presenting itself as a
bit of general, although hasty, reasoning.
But of course Aristotle does not mean that a conflicted person has more
than one faculty of reason. Rather his idea seems to be that in addition to our
full-fledged reasoning capacity, we also have psychological mechanisms that are
capable of a limited range of reasoning. When feeling conflicts with reason,
what occurs is better described as a fight between
feeling-allied-with-limited-reasoning and full-fledged reason. Part of
us—reason—can remove itself from the distorting influence of feeling and consider
all relevant factors, positive and negative. But another part of us—feeling or
emotion—has a more limited field of reasoning—and sometimes it does not even
make use of it. Although “passion” is
sometimes used as a translation of Aristotles word pathos (other alternatives
are emotion” and feeling), it is important to bear in mind that his term does
not necessarily designate a strong psychological force. Anger is a pathos
whether it is weak or strong; so too is the appetite for bodily pleasures. And
he clearly indicates that it is possible for an akratic person to be defeated
by a weak pathos—the kind that most people would easily be able to control. So
the general explanation for the occurrence of akrasia cannot be that the
strength of a passion overwhelms reason. Aristotle should therefore be
acquitted of an accusation made against him by Austin in a well-known footnote
to ‘A Plea For Excuses.’ Plato and Aristotle, Austin says, collapsed all
succumbing to temptation into losing control of ourselves — a mistake
illustrated by this example. I am very partial to ice cream, and a bombe is
served divided into segments corresponding one to one with the persons at High
Table. I am tempted to help myself to two segments and do so, thus succumbing
to temptation and even conceivably (but why necessarily?) going against my
principles. But do I lose control of myself? Do I raven, do I snatch the
morsels from the dish and wolf them down, impervious to the consternation of my
colleagues? Not a bit of it. We often succumb to temptation with calm and even
with finesse. With this, Aristotle can agree. The pathos for the bombe can be a
weak one, and in some people that will be enough to get them to act in a way
that is disapproved by their reason at the very time of action. What is most remarkable about Aristotle’s
discussion of akrasia is that he defends a position close to that of Socrates.
When he first introduces the topic of akrasia, and surveys some of the problems
involved in understanding this phenomenon, he says that Socrates held that
there is no akrasia, and he describes this as a thesis that clearly conflicts
with the appearances (phainomena). Since he says that his goal is to preserve
as many of the appearances as possible, it may come as a surprise that when he analyzes
the conflict between reason and feeling, he arrives at the conclusion that in a
way Socrates was right after all. For, he says, the person who acts against
reason does not have what is thought to be unqualified knowledge; in a way he
has knowledge, but in a way does not.
Aristotle explains what he has in mind by comparing akrasia to the
condition of other people who might be described as knowing in a way, but not
in an unqualified way. His examples are people who are asleep, mad, or drunk;
he also compares the akratic to a student who has just begun to learn a
Subjects, or an actor on the stage. All of these people, he says, can utter the
very words used by those who have knowledge; but their talk does not prove that
they really have knowledge, strictly speaking.
These analogies can be taken to mean that the form of akrasia that
Aristotle calls weakness rather than impetuosity always results from some
diminution of cognitive or intellectual acuity at the moment of action. The
akratic says, at the time of action, that he ought not to indulge in this
particular pleasure at this time. But does he know or even believe that he
should refrain? Aristotle might be taken to reply: yes and no. He has some
degree of recognition that he must not do this now, but not full recognition.
His feeling, even if it is weak, has to some degree prevented him from
completely grasping or affirming the point that he should not do this. And so
in a way Socrates was right. When reason remains unimpaired and unclouded, its
dictates will carry us all the way to action, so long as we are able to
act. But Aristotles agreement with
Socrates is only partial, because he insists on the power of the emotions to
rival, weaken or bypass reason. Emotion challenges reason in all three of these
ways. In both the akratic and the enkratic, it competes with reason for control
over action; even when reason wins, it faces the difficult task of having to
struggle with an internal rival. Second, in the akratic, it temporarily robs
reason of its full acuity, thus handicapping it as a competitor. It is not
merely a rival force, in these cases; it is a force that keeps reason from
fully exercising its power. And third, passion can make someone impetuous; here
its victory over reason is so powerful that the latter does not even enter into
the arena of conscious reflection until it is too late to influence action.
That, at any rate, is one way of interpreting Aristotle’s statements. But it
must be admitted that his remarks are obscure and leave room for alternative
readings. It is possible that when he denies that the akratic has knowledge in
the strict sense, he is simply insisting on the point that no one should be
classified as having practical knowledge unless he actually acts in accordance
with it. A practical knower is not someone who merely has knowledge of general
premises; he must also have knowledge of particulars, and he must actually draw
the conclusion of the syllogism. Perhaps drawing such a conclusion consists in
nothing less than performing the action called for by the major and minor
premises. Since this is something the akratic does not do, he lacks knowledge;
his ignorance is constituted by his error in action. On this reading, there is
no basis for attributing to Aristotle the thesis that the kind of akrasia he
calls weakness is caused by a diminution of intellectual acuity. His
explanation of akrasia is simply that pathos is sometimes a stronger
motivational force than full-fledged reason.
This is a difficult reading to defend, however, for Aristotle says that
after someone experiences a bout of akrasia his ignorance is dissolved and he
becomes a knower again. In context, that appears to be a remark about the form
of akrasia Aristotle calls weakness rather than impetuosity. If so, he is saying
that when an akratic person is Subjects to two conflicting
influences—full-fledged reason versus the minimal rationality of emotion—his
state of knowledge is somehow temporarily undone but is later restored. Here,
knowledge cannot be constituted by the performance of an act, because that is
not the sort of thing that can be restored at a later time. What can be
restored is ones full recognition or affirmation of the fact that this act has
a certain undesirable feature, or that it should not be performed. Aristotle’s
analysis seems to be that both forms of akrasia — weakness and impetuosity
—share a common structure: in each case, ones full affirmation or grasp of what
one should do comes too late. The difference is that in the case of weakness
but not impetuosity, the akratic act is preceded by a full-fledged rational
cognition of what one should do right now. That recognition is briefly and
temporarily diminished by the onset of a less than fully rational affect. There is one other way in which Aristotle’s
treatment of akrasia is close to the Socratic thesis that what people call
akrasia is really ignorance. Aristotle holds that if one is in the special
mental condition that he calls practical wisdom, then one cannot be, nor will
one ever become, an akratic person. For practical wisdom is present only in
those who also possess the ethical virtues, and these qualities require
complete emotional mastery. Anger and appetite are fully in harmony with
reason, if one is practically wise, and so this intellectual virtue is
incompatible with the sort of inner conflict experienced by the akratic person.
Furthermore, one is called practically wise not merely on the basis of what one
believes or knows, but also on the basis of what one does. Therefore, the sort
of knowledge that is lost and regained during a bout of akrasia cannot be
called practical wisdom. It is knowledge only in a loose sense. The low-level
grasp of the ordinary person of what to do is precisely the sort of thing that
can lose its acuity and motivating power, because it was never much of an
intellectual accomplishment to begin with. That is what Aristotle is getting at
when he compares it with the utterances of actors, students, sleepers, drunks,
and madmen. Grice had witnessed how Hare had suffere to try and deal with how
to combine the geniality that “The language of morals” is with his account of
akrasia. Most Oxonians were unhappy with Hares account of akrasia. Its like, in
deontic logic, you cannot actually deal with akrasia. You need buletics. You
need the desiderative, so that you can oppose what is desired with the duty,
even if both concepts are related. “Akrasia” has a nice Grecian touch about it,
and Grice and Hare, as Lit. Hum., rejoiced in being able to explore what
Aristotle had to say about it. They wouldnt go far beyond Aristotle. Plato and
Aristotle were the only Greek philosophers studied for the Lit. Hum. To venture
with the pre-socratics or the hellenistics (even if Aristotle is one) was not
classy enough! Like Pears in Motivated irrationality, Grice allows that
benevolentia may be deemed beneficentia. If Smith has the good will to give
Jones a job, he may be deemed to have given Jones the job, even if Jones never
get it. In buletic akrasia we must consider the conclusion to be desiring what
is not best for the agents own good, never mind if he refrains from doing what
is not best for his own good. Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor. We
shouldnt be saying this, but we are saying it! Grice prefers akrasia, but
he is happy to use the translation by Cicero, also negative, of this:
incontinentia, as if continentia were a virtue! For Grice, the alleged paradox
of akrasia, both alethic and practical, has to be accounted for by a theory of
rationality from the start, and not be deemed a stumbling block. Grice is
interested in both the common-or-garden buletic-boulomaic version of akrasia,
involving the volitive soul ‒ in term of desirability ‒ and doxastic
akrasia, involing the judicative soul proper ‒ in terms of
probability. Grice considers buletic akrasia and doxastic akrasia ‒ the latter
yet distinct from Moores paradox, p but I dont want to believe that p, in
symbols p and ~ψb-dp. Akarsia,
see egcrateia. Refs.: The main references here are in three folders in two
different series. H. P. Grice, “Akrasia,” The H. P. Grice Papers, S. II, c.
2-ff. 22-23 and S. V, c. 6-f. 32, BANC.
emotion: Grice enjoyed a bit of history of philosophy. Diog. Laert.
of Zeno of Citium. πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα, "πολλοί σου καταγελῶσιν,"
"ἀλλ ἐγώ," ἔφη, "οὐ κατα- γελῶμαι; to the question, who is a
friend?, Zeno’s answer is, ‘a second self (alter ego). One direct way to
approach friend is via emotion, as Aristotle did, and found it aporetic as did
Grice. Aristotle discusses philia in Eth. Nich. but it is in Rhet. where he
allows for phulia to be an emotion. Grice was very fortunate to have Hardie as
his tutor. He overused Hardies lectures on Aristotle, too, and instilled them
on his own tutees! Grice is concerned with the rather cryptic view by
Aristotle of the friend (philos, amicus) as the alter ego. In Grices
cooperative, concerted, view of things, a friend in need is a friend indeed!
Grice is interested in Aristotle finding himself in an aporia. In Nicomachean
Ethics IX.ix, Aristotle poses the question whether the happy man will need
friends or not. Kosman correctly identifies this question as asking not whether
friends are necessary in order to achieve eudæmonia, but why we require friends
even when we are happy. The question is not why we need friends to become
happy, but why we need friends when we are happy, since the eudæmon must be
self-sufficient. Philia is required for the flourishing of the life of
practical virtue. The solution by Aristotle to the aporia here, however, points
to the requirement of friendships even for the philosopher, in his life of theoretical
virtue. The olution by Aristotle to the aporia in Nicomachean Ethics IX.ix
is opaque, and the corresponding passage in Eudeiman Ethics VII.xii is scarcely
better. Aristotle thinks he has found the solution to this aporia. We must take
two things into consideration, that life is desirable and also that the good
is, and thence that it is desirable that such a nature should belong to oneself
as it belongs to them. If then, of such a pair of corresponding s. there is
always one s. of the desirable, and the known and the perceived are in general
constituted by their participation in the nature of the determined, so that to
wish to perceive ones self is to wish oneself to be of a certain definite
character,—since, then we are not in ourselves possessed of each such
characters, but only in participation in these qualities in perceiving and
knowing—for the perceiver becomes perceived in that way in respect in which he
first perceives, and according to the way in which and the object which he
perceives; and the knower becomes known in the same way— therefore it is for
this reason that one always desires to live, because one always desires to
know; and this is because he himself wishes to be the object known. Refs.:
There is an essay on “Emotions and akrasia,” but the topic is scattered in
various places, such as Grice’s reply to Davidson on intending. Grice has an
essay on ‘Kant and friendship,’ too, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
entailment: Grice thought that we probably did need an entailment. The
symposium was held in New York with Dana Scott and R. K. Meyer. The notion had
been mis-introduced (according to Strawson) in the philosophical literature by
Moore. Grice is especially interested in the entailment + implicatum pair. A
philosophical expression may be said to be co-related to an entailment (which
is rendered in terms of a reductive analysis). However, the use of the
expression may co-relate to this or that implicatum which is rendered reasonable
in the light of the assumption by the addressee that the utterer is ultimately
abiding by a principle of conversational helfpulness. Grice thinks many
philosophers take an implicatum as an entailment when they surely shouldnt!
Grice was more interested than Strawson was in the coinage by Moore of
entailment for logical consequence. As an analyst, Grice knew that a true
conceptual analysis needs to be reductive (if not reductionist). The prongs the
analyst lists are thus entailments of the concept in question. Philosophers,
however, may misidentify what is an entailment for an implicature, or vice
versa. Initially, Grice was interested in the second family of cases. With his
coinage of disimplicature, Grice expands his interest to cover the first family
of cases, too. Grice remains a philosophical methodologist. He is not so much
concerned with any area or discipline or philosophical concept per se (unless
its rationality), but with the misuses of some tools in the philosophy of
language as committed by some of his colleagues at Oxford. While entailment,
was, for Strawson mis-introduced in the philosophical literature by Moore,
entailment seems to be less involved in paradoxes than if is. Grice connects
the two, as indeed his tutee Strawson did! As it happens, Strawsons Necessary
propositions and entailment statements is his very first published essay, with
Mind, a re-write of an unpublication unwritten elsewhere, and which Grice read.
The relation of consequence may be considered a meta-conditional, where paradoxes
arise. Grices Bootstrap is a principle designed to impoverish the
metalanguage so that the philosopher can succeed in the business of pulling
himself up by his own! Grice then takes a look at Strawsons very first
publication (an unpublication he had written elsewhere). Grice finds Strawson
thought he could provide a simple solution to the so-called paradoxes of
entailment. At the time, Grice and Strawson were pretty sure that nobody then
accepted, if indeed anyone ever did and did make, the identification of the
relation symbolised by the horseshoe with the relation which Moore calls
entailment, p⊃q, i. e. ~(pΛ~q) is rejected as an analysis of p entails q
because it involves this or that allegedly paradoxical implicatum, as that any
false proposition entails any proposition and any true proposition is entailed
by any proposition. It is a commonplace that Lewiss amendment had consequences
scarcely less paradoxical in terms of the implicata. For if p is impossible,
i.e. self-contradictory, it is impossible that p and ~q. And if q is
necessary, ~q is impossible and it is impossible that p and ~q; i. e., if p
entails q means it is impossible that p and ~q any necessary proposition is
entailed by any proposition and any self-contradictory proposition entails any
proposition. On the other hand, Lewiss definition of entailment (i.e. of the
relation which holds from p to q whenever q is deducible from p) obviously
commends itself in some respects. Now, it is clear that the emphasis laid on
the expression-mentioning character of the intensional contingent statement by
writing pΛ~q is impossible instead of It is impossible that p and ~q does not
avoid the alleged paradoxes of entailment. But it is equally clear that the
addition of some provision does avoid them. One may proposes that one
should use “entails” such that no necessary statement and no negation of a
necessary statement can significantly be said to entail or be entailed by any
statement; i. e. the function p entails q cannot take necessary or self-contradictory
statements as arguments. The expression p entails q is to be used to mean p⊃q is necessary, and neither p nor q is either necessary or
self-contradictory, or pΛ~q is impossible and neither p nor q, nor either of
their contradictories, is necessary. Thus, the paradoxes are avoided. For let
us assume that p1 expresses a contingent, and q1 a necessary, proposition. p1
and ~q1 is now impossible because ~q1 is impossible. But q1 is necessary. So,
by that provision, p1 does not entail q1. We may avoid the paradoxical
assertion that p1 entails q2 as merely falling into the equally paradoxical
assertion that p1 entails q1 is necessary. For: If q is necessary, q is
necessary is, though true, not necessary, but a contingent intensional
(Latinate) statement. This becomes part of the philosophers lexicon: intensĭo,
f. intendo, which L and S render as a stretching out, straining, effort.
E. g. oculorum, Scrib. Comp. 255. Also an intensifying, increase. Calorem suum
(sol) intensionibus ac remissionibus temperando fovet,” Sen. Q. N. 7, 1, 3. The
tune: “gravis, media, acuta,” Censor. 12. Hence:~(q is necessary) is,
though false, possible. Hence “p1Λ~(q1 is necessary)” is, though false,
possible. Hence p1 does NOT entail q1 is necessary. Thus, by adopting the view
that an entailment statement, and other intensional statements, are
non-necessary, and that no necessary statement or its contradictory can entail
or be entailed by any statement, Strawson thinks he can avoid the paradox that
a necessary proposition is entailed by any proposition, and indeed all the
other associated paradoxes of entailment. Grice objected that Strawsons cure
was worse than Moores disease! The denial that a necessary proposition can
entail or be entailed by any proposition, and, therefore, that necessary
propositions can be related to each other by the entailment-relation, is too
high a price to pay for the solution of the paradoxes. And here is where Grices
implicature is meant to do the trick! Or not! When Levinson proposed + for conversationally
implicature, he is thinking of contrasting it with ⊢. But things aint that easy.
Even the grammar is more complicated: By uttering He is an adult, U explicitly
conveys that he is an adult. What U explicitly conveys entails that he is not a
child. What U implies is that he should be treated accordingly. Refs.: One
good reference is the essay on “Paradoxes of entailment,” in the Grice papers;
also his contribution to a symposium for the APA under a separate series, The
H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
eschatology: being and good, for Aristotle and Grice cover all. Good
was a favourite of Moore and Hare, as Barnes was well aware! Like Barnes, Grice
dislikes Prichards analysis of good. He leans towards the emotion-based approach
by Ogden. If Grice, like Humpty Dumpty, opposes the Establishment with his
meaning liberalism (what a word means is what I mean by uttering it), he
certainly should be concerned with category shifts. Plus, Grice was a closet
Platonist. As Plato once remarked, having the ability to see horses but not
horsehood (ἱππότης) is a mark of stupidity – rendered by Liddell and Scott as “horse-nature, the
concept of horse” (Antisth. et Pl. ap. Simp.in Cat.208.30,32,
Sch.AristId.p.167F). Grice would endure the flinty
experience of giving joint seminars at Oxford with Austin on the first two
books of Aristotles Organon, Categoriae, and De Int. Grice finds the use of a
category, κατηγορία, by Aristotle a bit of a geniality. Aristotle is using
legalese, from kata, against, on, and agoreuô [ἀγορεύω], speak in public),
and uses it to designate both the prosecution in a trial and the
attribution in a logical proposition, i. e., the questions that must be asked
with regard to a Subjects, and the answers that can be given. As a
representative of the linguistic turn in philosophy, Grice is attracted to the
idea that a category can thus be understood variously, as applying to the realm
of reality (ontology), but also to the philosophy of language (category of
expression) and to philosophical psychology (category of
representation). Grice kept his explorations on categories under two very
separate, shall we say, categories: his explorations with Austin (very
serious), and those with Strawson (more congenial). Where is Smiths altruism?
Nowhere to be seen. Should we say it is idle (otiose) to speak of altruism? No,
it is just an attribute, which, via category shift, can be made the Subjects of
your sentence, Strawson. It is not spatio-temporal, though, right. Not
really. ‒ I do not particularly like your trouser words. The essay
is easy to date since Grice notes that Strawson reproduced some of the details in
his Individuals, which we can very well date. Grice thought Aristotle was the
best! Or at any rate almost as good as Kantotle! Aristotle saw Categoriæ, along
with De Int. as part of his Organon. However, philosophers of language
tend to explore these topics without a consideration of the later parts of the
Organon dealing with the syllogism, the tropes, and the topics ‒ the boring
bits! The reason Grice is attracted to the Aristotelian category (as Austin and
Strawson equally were) is that category allows for a linguistic-turn reading.
Plus, its a nice, pretentious (in the Oxonian way) piece of philosophical
jargon! Aristotle couldnt find category in the koine, so he had to coin it.
While meant by Aristotle in a primarily ontological way, Oxonian philosophers
hasten to add that a category of expression, as Grice puts it, is just as valid
a topic for philosophical exploration. His tutee Strawson will actually publish
a book on Subjects and predicate in grammar! (Trivial, Strawson!). Grice will
later add an intermediary category, which is the Subjects of his philosophical
psychology. As such, a category can be construed ontologically, or
representationally: the latter involving philosophical psychological concepts,
and expressions themselves. For Aristotle, as Grice and Austin, and Grice and
Strawson, were well aware as they educated some of the poor at Oxford (Only the
poor learn at Oxford ‒ Arnold), there are (at least ‒ at most?) ten
categories. Grice doesnt (really) care about the number. But the first are
important. Actually the very first: theres substantia prima, such as Grice. And
then theres substantia secunda, such as Grices rationality. The essentia. Then
there are various types of attributes. But, as Grice sharply notes, even
substantia secunda may be regarded as an attribute. Grices favourite game with
Strawson was indeed Category Shift, or Subjects-ification, as Strawson
preferred. Essence may be introduced as a sub-type of an attribute. We would
have substantia prima AND attribute, which in turn gets divided into essential,
the izzing, and non-essential, the hazzing. While Austin is not so fun to play
with, Strawson is. Smith is a very altruist person. Where is his altruism?
Nowhere to be seen, really. Yet we may sensically speak of Smiths altruism. It
is just a matter of a category shift. Grice scores. Grice is slightly
disappointed, but he perfectly understands, that Strawson, who footnotes Grice
as the tutor from whom I never ceased to learn about logic in Introduction to
logical lheory, fails to acknowledge that most of the research in Strawsons
Individuals: an essay in descriptive (not revisionary) metaphysics derives from
the conclusions reached at his joint philosophical investigations at joint
seminars with Grice. Grice later elaborates on this with Code, who is keen on
Grices other game, the hazz and the hazz not, the izz. But then tutor from whom
I never ceased to learn about metaphysics sounds slightlier clumsier, as far as
the implicature goes. Categories, the Grice-Myro theory of identity, Relative
identity, Grice on =, identity, notes, with Myro, metaphysics, philosophy, with
Code, Grice izz Grice – or izz he? The idea that = is unqualified requires
qualification. Whitehead and Russell ignored this. Grice and Myro didnt. Grice
wants to allow for It is the case that a = b /t1 and it is not the case that a
= b /t2. The idea is intuitive, but philosophers of a Leibnizian bent are too
accustomed to deal with = as an absolute. Grice applies this to human vs.
person. A human may be identical to a person, but cease to be so. Indeed,
Grices earlier attempt to produce a reductive analsysis of I may be seen as
remedying a circularity he detected in Locke about same. Cf. Wiggins, Sameness
and substance. Grice makes Peano feel deeply Griceian, as Grice lists his =
postulates, here for consideration. And if you wondered why Grice prefers
Latinate individuum to the Grecian. The Grecian is “ἄτομον,” in logic, rendered
by L and S as ‘individual, of terms,’ Pl. Sph. 229d; of the εἶδος or forma,
Arist. Metaph.1034a8, de An. 414b27.2. individual, Id. APo. 96b11, al.: as a
subst., τό ἄτομον, Id. Cat. 1b6, 3a38, Metaph.1058a18 (pl.), Plot. 6.2.2,
al. subst.; latinised from Grecian. Lewis and Short have “indīvĭdŭum,” an atom,
indivisible particle: ex illis individuis, unde omnia Democritus gigni
affirmat, Cic. Ac. 2, 17 fin.: ne individuum quidem, nec quod dirimi distrahive
non possit, id. N. D. 3, 12, 29. Note the use of individuum in alethic
modalities for necessity and possibility, starting with (11). ⊢ (α izzes α). This would be the principle of
non-contradiction or identity. Grice applies it to war: War is war, as yielding
a most peculiar implicature. (α izzes β ∧ β izzes γ) ⊃ α
izzes γ. This above is transitivity, which is crucial for Grices tackling of
Reids counterexample to Locke (and which according to Flew in Locke on personal
identity was predated by Berkeley. α hazzes β ⊃ ~(α izzes β). Or, what is accidental is not essential.
Grice allows that what is essential is accidental is, while misleading,
true. ⊢ α hazzes β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(α hazzes x ∧ x
izzes β) ⊢ (∀β)(β izzes a universalium ⊃ β izzes a forma). This above defines a universalium as
a forma, or eidos. (α hazzes β ∧ α
izzes a particular) ⊃ (∃γ).(γ≠α ∧ α izzes β) ⊢ α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ ((β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α) ⊢ α izzes essentially predicable of β ⊃⊂ β izzes α ⊢ α
izzes non-essentially/accidentally predicable of β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α) α = β ⊃⊂ α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α ⊢ α izzes an individuum ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(β izzes α ⊃ α izzes β) ⊢ α
izzes a particular ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(α izzes predicable of β ⊃ (α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α)); α izzes a universalium ⊃⊂ ◊(∃β)(α izzes predicable of α ∧ ~(α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α) ⊢ α izzes some-thing ⊃ α
izzes an individuum. ⊢ α izzes a forma ⊃ (α izzes some-thing ∧ α izzes a universalium) 16. ⊢ α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ (β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α) ⊢ α izzes essentially predicable of α ⊢ α izzes accidentally predicable of β ⊃ α ≠ β; ~(α izzes accidentally predicable of β) ⊃ α ≠ β 20. α izzes a particular ⊃ α izzes an individuum. ⊢ α izzes a particular ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x izzes α) 22. ⊢~
(∃x).(x izzes a particular ∧ x
izzes a forma) α izzes a forma ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x
izzes α) x izzes a particular ⊃ ~(∃β)(α izz β) ⊢ α izzes a forma ⊃ ((α
izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ β hazz α); α izzes a forma ∧ β izzes a particular ⊃ (α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ β hazz A) ⊢ (α
izzes a particular ∧ β izzes a universalium ∧ β izzes predicable of α) ⊃ (∃γ)(α ≠ γ ∧ γ
izzes essentially predicable of α) ⊢ (∃x) (∃y)(x izzes a particular ∧ y
izzes a universalium ∧ y izzes predicable of x ⊃ ~(∀x)(x izzes a universalium ∧ x izzes some-thing); (∀β)(β
izzes a universalium ⊃ β izzes some-thing) ⊢ α
izzes a particular) ⊃ ~∃β.(α ≠ β ∧ β
izzes essentially predicable of α); (α izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β)⊃ α izzes non-essentially or
accidentally predicable of β. The use of this or that doxastic modality,
necessity and possibility, starting above, make this a good place to consider
one philosophical mistake Grice mentions in “Causal theory.” What is actual is
not also possible. Cf. What is essential is also accidental. He is criticising
a contemporary, if possible considered dated in the New World, form of
ordinary-language philosophy, where the philosopher detects a nuance, and
embarks risking colliding with the facts, rushing ahead to exploit it before he
can clarify it! Grice liked to see his explorations on = as belonging to
metaphysics, as the s. on his Doctrines
at the Grice Collection testifies. While Grice presupposes the use of = in his
treatment of the king of France, he also explores a relativisation of =. His
motivation was an essay by Wiggins, almost Aristotelian in spirit, against
Strawsons criterion of space-time continuancy for the identification of the
substantia prima. Grice wants to apply = to cases were the time continuancy is
made explicit. This yields that a=b in scenario S, but that it may not be the
case that a = b in a second scenario S. Myro had an occasion to expand on
Grices views in his contribution on the topic for PGRICE. Myro mentions his
System Ghp, a highly powerful/hopefully plausible version of Grices System Q,
in gratitude to to Grice. Grice explored also the logic of izzing and hazzing
with Code. Grice and Myro developed a Geach-type of qualified identity. The
formal aspects were developed by Myro, and also by Code. Grice discussed
Wigginss Sameness and substance, rather than Geach. Cf. Wiggins and Strawson on
Grice for the BA. At Oxford, Grice was more or less given free rein to teach
what he wanted. He found the New World slightly disconcerting at first. At
Oxford, he expected his tutees to be willing to read the classics in the
vernacular Greek. His approach to teaching was diagogic, as Socratess! Even in
his details of izzing and hazzing. Greek enough to me!, as a student recalled! correspondence
with Code, Grice sees in Code an excellent Aristotelian. They collaborated on
an exploration of Aristotles underlying logic of essential and non-essential
predication, for which they would freely use such verbal forms as izzing and
hazing, izzing and hazzing, Code on the significance of the middle book in
Aristotles Met. , Aristotle, metaphysics, the middle book. Very middle.
Grice never knew what was middle for Aristotle, but admired Code too much to
air this! The organisation of Aristotle’s metaphysics was a topic of much
concern for Grice. With Code, Grice coined izzing and hazzing to refer to
essential and non-essential attribution. Izzing and hazzing, “Aristotle on the
multiplicity of being” (henceforth, “Aristotle”) PPQ, Aristotle on
multiplicity, “The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly” (henceforth,
“PPQ,” posthumously ed. by Loar, Aristotle, multiplicity, izzing, hazzing,
being, good, Code. Grice offers a thorough discussion of Owens treatment of
Aristotle as leading us to the snares of ontology. Grice distinguishes between
izzing and hazzing, which he thinks help in clarifying, more axiomatico, what
Aristotle is getting at with his remarks on essential versus non-essential
predication. Surely, for Grice, being, nor indeed good, should not
be multiplied beyond necessity, but izzing and hazzing are already
multiplied. The Grice Papers contains drafts of the essay eventually
submitted for publication by Loar in memoriam Grice. Note that the Grice Papers
contains a typically Griceian un-publication, entitled Aristotle and
multiplicity simpliciter. Rather than Aristotle on, as the title for the
PPQ piece goes. Note also that, since its multiplicity simpliciter, it
refers to Aristotle on two key ideas: being and the good. As Code notes in
his contribution to PGRICE, Grice first presents his thoughts on izzing and hazzing
publicly at Vancouver. Jones has developed the axiomatic treatment favoured by
Grice. For Grice there is multiplicity in both being and good (ton
agathon), both accountable in terms of conversational implicata, of course. If
in Prolegomena, Grice was interested in criticising himself, in essays of
historical nature like these, Grice is seeing Aristotles Athenian dialectic as
a foreshadow of the Oxonian dialectic, and treating him as an equal. Grice is
yielding his razor: senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.
But then Aristotle is talking about the multiplicity of is and is
good. Surely, there are ways to turn Aristotle into the monoguist
he has to be! There is a further item in the Grice collection that
combines Aristotle on being with Aristotle on good, which is relevant in
connection with this. Aristotle on being and good
(ἀγαθόν). Aristotle, being, good (agathon), ἀγαθός. As from this f.,
the essays are ordered alphabetically, starting with Aristotle, Grice will
explore Aristotle on being or is and good (ἀγαθός) in explorations with Code.
Grice comes up with izzing and hazzing as the two counterparts to Aristotles
views on, respectively, essential and non-essential predication. Grices views
on Aristotle on the good (strictly, there is no need to restrict Arisstotles
use to the neuter form, since he employs ἀγαθός) connect with Grices
Aristotelian idea of eudaemonia, that he explores elsewhere. Strictly: Aristotle
on being and the good. If that had been Grices case, he would have used the
definite article. Otherwise, good may well translate as masculine, ἀγαθός ‒the
agathetic implicatum. He plays with Dodgson, cabbages and kings. For what
is a good cabbage as opposed to a cabbage? It does not require very sharp
eyes, but only our willingness to use the eyes one has, to see that speech is
permeated with the notion of purpose. To say what a certain kind of thing
is is only too frequently partly to say that it is for. This feature
applies to talk of, e. g., ships, shoes, sailing wax, and kings;
and, possibly and perhaps most excitingly, it extends even to cabbages!
Although Grice suspects Urmson might disagree. v. Grice on Urmsons
apples. Grice at his jocular best. If he is going to be a Kantian, he
will. He uses Kantian jargon to present his theory of conversation. This he
does only at Harvard. The implicature being that talking of vaguer assumptions
of helpfulness would not sound too convincing. So he has the maxim, the
super-maxim, and the sub-maxim. A principle and a maxim is Kantian enough. But
when he actually echoes Kant, is when he introduces what he later calls the
conversational categories – the keyword here is conversational category, as
categoria is used by Aristotle and Kant ‒ or Kantotle. Grice surely
knew that, say, his Category of Conversational Modality had nothing to do with
the Kantian Category of Modality. Still, he stuck with the idea of four
categories (versus Aristotles ten, eight or seven, as the text you consult may
tell you): category of conversational quantity (which at Oxford he had
formulated in much vaguer terms like strength and informativeness and
entailment), the category of conversational quality (keyword: principle of
conversational trust), and the category of conversational relation, where again
Kants relation has nothing to do with the maxim Grice associates with this
category. In any case, his Kantian joke may be helpful when considering the
centrality of the concept category simpliciter that Grice had to fight with
with his pupils at Oxford – he was lucky to have Austin and Strawson as
co-lecturers! Grice was irritated by L and S defining kategoria as category. I
guess I knew that. He agreed with their second shot, predicable. Ultimately,
Grices concern with category is his concern with person, or prote ousia, as
used by Aristotle, and as giving a rationale to Grices agency-based approach to
the philosophical enterprise. Aristotle used kategorein in the sense
of to predicate, assert something of something, and kategoria. The prote
ousia is exemplified by o tis anthropos. It is obvious that Grice wants to
approach Aristotles semantics and Aristotles metaphysics at one fell swoop.
Grice reads Aristotles Met. , and finds it understandable. Consider the
adjective French (which Aristotle does NOT consider) ‒ as it occurs in phrases
such as Michel Foucault is a French citizen. Grice is not a French
citizen. Michel Foucault once wrote a nice French poem. Urmson once wrote
a nice French essay on pragmatics. Michel Foucault was a French
professor. Michel Foucault is a French professor. Michel Foucault
is a French professor of philosophy. The following features are perhaps
significant. The appearance of the adjective French, or Byzantine, as the
case might be ‒ cf. I’m feeling French tonight. In these phrases is what
Grice has as adjunctive rather than conjunctive, or attributive. A French poem
is not necessarily something which combines the separate features of being a
poem and being French, as a tall philosopher would simply combine the features
of being tall and of being a philosopher. French in French poem,
occurs adverbially. French citizen standardly means citizen of
France. French poem standardly means poem in French. But it is a mistake to
suppose that this fact implies that there is this or that meaning, or, worse,
this or that Fregeian sense, of the expression French. In any case, only
metaphorically or metabolically can we say that French means this or that or
has sense. An utterer means. An utterer makes sense. Cf. R. Pauls doubts about
capitalizing major. French means, and figuratively at that, only one thing,
viz. of or pertaining to France. And English only means of or
pertaining to England. French may be what Grice (unfollowing his remarks
on The general theory of context) call context-sensitive. One might indeed
say, if you like, that while French means ‒ or means only this or that, or that
its only sense is this or that, French still means, again figuratively, a variety
of things. French means-in-context of or pertaining to
France. Symbolise that as expression E means-in-context that p.
Expression E means-in-context C2 that p2. Relative
to Context C1 French means of France; as in the phrase French
citizen. Relative to context C2, French means in the French language, as in the phrase,
French poem ‒ whereas history does not behave, like this. Whether the
focal item is a universal or a particular is, contra Aristotle, quite
irrelevant to the question of what this or that related adjective means, or
what its sense is. The medical art is no more what an utterer means when he
utters the adjective medical, as is France what an utterer means by the
adjective French. While the attachment of this or that context may suggest an
interpretation in context of this or that expression as uttered by the utterer
U, it need not be the case that such a suggestion is indefeasible. It
might be e.g. that French poem would have to mean, poem composed in French,
unless there were counter indications, that brings the utterer and the
addressee to a different context C3. In which case, perhaps
what the utterer means by French poem is poem composed by a French competitor
in this or that competition. For French professor there would be two
obvious things an utterer might mean. Disambiguation will depend on the
wider expression-context or in the situational context attaching to
the this or that circumstance of utterance. Eschatology. Some like Hegel, but
Collingwoods *my* man! ‒ Grice. Grice participated in two
consecutive evenings of the s. of programmes on metaphysics organised by Pears.
Actually, charming Pears felt pretentious enough to label the meetings to be
about the nature of metaphysics! Grice ends up discussing, as he should,
Collingwood on presupposition. Met.
remained a favourite topic for Grices philosophical explorations, as it
is evident from his essay on Met. , Philosophical Eschatology, and Platos
Republic, repr. in his WOW . Possibly Hardie is to blame, since he hardly
tutored Grice on metaphysics! Grices two BBC lectures are typically dated in
tone. It was the (good ole) days when philosophers thought they could educate
the non-elite by dropping Namess like Collingwood and stuff! The Third
Programme was extremely popular, especially among the uneducated ones at
London, as Pears almost put it, as it was a way for Londoners to get to know
what is going on down at Oxford, the only place an uneducated (or educated, for
that matter) Londoner at the time was interested in displaying some interest
about! I mean, Johnson is right: if a man is tired of the nature of
metaphysics, he is tired of life! Since the authorship is Grice, Strawson, and
Pears, Met. , in Pears, The Nature of Met., The BBC Third Programme, it is
somewhat difficult to identify what paragraphs were actually read by Grice (and
which ones by Pears and which ones by Strawson). But trust the sharp Griceian
to detect the correct implicature! There are many (too many) other items
covered by these two lectures: Kant, Aristotle, in no particular order. And in
The Grice Collection, for that matter, that cover the field of metaphysics. In
the New World, as a sort of tutor in the graduate programme, Grice was expected
to cover the discipline at various seminars. Only I dislike discipline! Perhaps
his clearest exposition is in the opening section of his Met. , philosophical
eschatology, and Platos Republic, repr. in his WOW , where he states, bluntly
that all you need is metaphysics! metaphysics,
Miscellaneous, metaphysics notes, Grice would possible see metaphysics as a
class – category figuring large. He was concerned with the methodological
aspects of the metaphysical enterprise, since he was enough of a relativist to
allow for one metaphysical scheme to apply to one area of discourse (one of
Eddingtons tables) and another metaphysical scheme to apply to another
(Eddingtons other table). In the third programme for the BBC Grice especially
enjoyed criticising John Wisdoms innovative look at metaphysics as a bunch of
self-evident falsehoods (Were all alone). Grice focuses on Wisdom on the
knowledge of other minds. He also discusses Collingwoods presuppositions, and
Bradley on the reality-appearance distinction. Grices reference to Wisdom was
due to Ewings treatment of Wisdom on metaphysics. Grices main motivation here
is defending metaphysics against Ayer. Ayer thought to win more Oxonian
philosophers than he did at Oxford, but he was soon back in London. Post-war
Oxford had become conservative and would not stand to the nonsense of Ayers
claiming that metaphysics is nonsense, especially, as Ayers implicature also
was, that philosophy is nonsense! Perhaps the best summary of Griceian
metaphysics is his From Genesis to Revelations: a new discourse on metaphysics.
It’s an ontological answer that one must give to Grices metabolic operation
from utterers meaning to expression meaning, Grice had been interested in the
methodology of metaphysics since his Oxford days. He counts as one
memorable experience in the area his participation in two episodes for the BBC
Third Programme on The nature of metaphysics with the organiser, Pears, and his
former tutee, Strawson on the panel. Grice was particularly keen on
Collingwoods views on metaphysical presuppositions, both absolute and
relative! Grice also considers John Wisdoms view of the metaphysical
proposition as a blatant falsehood. Grice considers Bradleys Hegelian
metaphysics of the absolute, in Appearance and reality. Refs.: While Grice’s
choice was ‘eschatology,’ as per WoW, Essay, other keywords are useful, notably
“metaphysics,” “ontology,” “theorizing,” and “theory-theory,” in The H. P.
Grice Papers, BANC.
explanation: Unlike Austin, who was in love with a taxonomy, Grice
loved an explanation. “Ἀρχὴν δὲ τῶν πάντων ὕδωρ ὑπεστήσατο, καὶ τὸν κόσμον
ἔμψυχον καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρη. “Arkhen de ton panton hudor hupestesato.” Thales’s
doctrine is that water is the universal primary substance, and that the world
is animate and full of divinities. “Ἀλλὰ Θαλῆς μὲν ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχηγὸς
φιλοσοφίας ὕδωρ φησὶν εἶναι (διὸ καὶ τὴν γῆν ἐφ᾽ ὕδατος ἀπεφήνατο εἶναι), λαβὼν
ἴσως τὴν ὑπόληψιν ταύτην ἐκ τοῦ πάντων ὁρᾶν τὴν τροφὴν ὑγρὰν οὖσαν καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ
θερμὸν ἐκ τούτου γιγνόμενον καὶ τούτῳ ζῶν (τὸ δ᾽ ἐξ οὗ γίγνεται, τοῦτ᾽ ἐστὶν
ἀρχὴ πάντων) – διά τε δὴ τοῦτο τὴν ὑπόληψιν λαβὼν ταύτην καὶ διὰ τὸ πάντων τὰ
σπέρματα τὴν φύσιν ὑγρὰν ἔχειν, τὸ δ᾽ ὕδωρ ἀρχὴν τῆς φύσεως εἶναι τοῖς ὑγροῖς.
εἰσὶ δέ τινες οἳ καὶ τοὺς παμπαλαίους καὶ πολὺ πρὸ τῆς νῦν γενέσεως καὶ πρώτους
θεολογήσαντας οὕτως οἴονται περὶ τῆς φύσεως ὑπολαβεῖν‧ Ὠκεανόν τε γὰρ καὶ Τηθὺν ἐποίησαν τῆς γενέσεως πατέρας
[Hom. Ξ 201], καὶ τὸν ὅρκον τῶν θεῶν ὕδωρ, τὴν καλουμένην ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν Στύγα τῶν
ποιητῶν‧ τιμιώτατον μὲν γὰρ τὸ πρεσβύτατον,
ὅρκος δὲ τὸ τιμιώτατόν ἐστιν. εἰ μὲν οὖν [984a] ἀρχαία τις αὕτη καὶ παλαιὰ
τετύχηκεν οὖσα περὶ τῆς φύσεως ἡ δόξα, τάχ᾽ ἂν ἄδηλον εἴη, Θαλῆς μέντοι λέγεται
οὕτως ἀποφήνασθαι περὶ τῆς πρώτης αἰτίας. (Ἵππωνα γὰρ οὐκ ἄν τις ἀξιώσειε
θεῖναι μετὰ τούτων διὰ τὴν εὐτέλειαν αὐτοῦ τῆς διανοίας)‧ Ἀναξιμένης δὲ ἀέρα καὶ Διογένης πρότερον ὕδατος καὶ μάλιστ᾽
ἀρχὴν τιθέασι τῶν ἁπλῶν σωμάτων.” De caelo: “Οἱ δ᾽ ἐφ᾽ ὕδατος κεῖσθαι [sc. τὴν
γὴν]. τοῦτον γὰρ ἀρχαιότατον παρειλήφαμεν τὸν λόγον, ὅν φασιν εἰπεῖν Θαλῆν τὸν
Μιλήσιον, ὡς διὰ τὸ πλωτὴν εἶναι μένουσαν ὥσπερ ξύλον ἤ τι τοιοῦτον ἕτερον (καὶ
γὰρ τούτων ἐπ᾽ ἀέρος μὲν οὐθὲν πέφυκε μένειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐφ᾽ ὕδατος), ὥσπερ οὐ τὸν
αὐτὸν λόγον ὄντα περὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ τοῦ ὕδατος τοῦ ὀχοῦντος τὴν γῆν‧ οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸ ὕδωρ πέφυκε μένειν μετέωρον, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπί τινός
[294b] ἐστιν. ἔτι δ᾽ ὥσπερ ἀὴρ ὕδατος κουφότερον, καὶ γῆς ὕδωρ‧ ὥστε πῶς οἷόν τε τὸ κουφότερον κατωτέρω κεῖσθαι τοῦ
βαρυτέρου τὴν φύσιν; ἔτι δ᾽ εἴπερ ὅλη πέφυκε μένειν ἐφ᾽ ὕδατος, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ
τῶν μορίων ἕκαστον [αὐτῆς]‧
νῦν δ᾽ οὐ φαίνεται τοῦτο γιγνόμενον, ἀλλὰ τὸ τυχὸν μόριον φέρεται εἰς βυθόν,
καὶ θᾶττον τὸ μεῖζον. The problem of the nature of matter, and its
transformation into the myriad things of which the universe is made, engaged
the natural philosophers, commencing with Thales. For his hypothesis to be
credible, it was essential that he could explain how all things could come into
being from water, and return ultimately to the originating material. It is
inherent in Thaless hypotheses that water had the potentiality to change to the
myriad things of which the universe is made, the botanical, physiological,
meteorological and geological states. In Timaeus, 49B-C, Plato had Timaeus
relate a cyclic process. The passage commences with that which we now call
“water” and describes a theory which was possibly that of Thales. Thales would
have recognized evaporation, and have been familiar with traditional views,
such as the nutritive capacity of mist and ancient theories about spontaneous
generation, phenomena which he may have observed, just as Aristotle believed
he, himself had, and about which Diodorus Siculus, Epicurus (ap. Censorinus,
D.N. IV.9), Lucretius (De Rerum Natura) and Ovid (Met. I.416-437) wrote. When
Aristotle reported Thales’s pronouncement that the primary principle is water,
he made a precise statement: Thales says that it [the nature of things] is
water, but he became tentative when he proposed reasons which might have
justified Thaless decision. Thales’s supposition may have arisen from
observation. It is Aristotle’s opinion that Thales may have observed, that the
nurture of all creatures is moist, and that warmth itself is generated from
moisture and lives by it; and that from which all things come to be is their
first principle. Then, Aristotles tone changed towards greater confidence. He
declared: Besides this, another reason for the supposition would be that the semina
of all things have a moist nature. In continuing the criticism of Thales,
Aristotle wrote: That from which all things come to be is their first principle
(Metaph. 983 b25). Simple metallurgy had
been practised long before Thales presented his hypotheses, so Thales knew that
heat could return metals to a liquid state. Water exhibits sensible changes
more obviously than any of the other so-called elements, and can readily be
observed in the three states of liquid, vapour and ice. The understanding that
water could generate into earth is basic to Thaless watery thesis. At Miletus
it could readily be observed that water had the capacity to thicken into earth.
Miletus stood on the Gulf of Lade through which the Maeander river emptied its
waters. Within living memory, older Milesians had witnessed the island of Lade
increasing in size within the Gulf, and the river banks encroaching into the
river to such an extent that at Priene, across the gulf from Miletus the
warehouses had to be rebuilt closer to the waters edge. The ruins of the once
prosperous city-port of Miletus are now ten kilometres distant from the coast
and the Island of Lade now forms part of a rich agricultural plain. There would
have been opportunity to observe other areas where earth generated from water,
for example, the deltas of the Halys, the Ister, about which Hesiod wrote
(Theogony, 341), now called the Danube, the Tigris-Euphrates, and almost
certainly the Nile. This coming-into-being of land would have provided
substantiation of Thaless doctrine. To Thales water held the potentialities for
the nourishment and generation of the entire cosmos. Aëtius attributed to
Thales the concept that even the very fire of the sun and the stars, and indeed
the cosmos itself is nourished by evaporation of the waters (Aëtius, Placita). It is not known how Thales explained his
watery thesis, but Aristotle believed that the reasons he proposed were
probably the persuasive factors in Thaless considerations. Thales gave no role
to the Olympian gods. Belief in generation of earth from water was not proven
to be wrong until A.D. 1769 following experiments of Antoine Lavoisier, and
spontaneous generation was not disproved until the nineteenth century as a
result of the work of Louis Pasteur.The first philosophical explanation of the
world was speculative not practical. has its intelligibility in being
identified with one of its parts (the world is water). First philosophical
explanation for Universe human is rational and the world in independent; He
said the arché is water; Monist: He believed reality is one Thales of Miletus, first philosophical
explanation of the origin and nature of justice (and Why after all, did a Thales is Water.” Without the millions of species
that make up the biosphere, and the billions of interactions between them that
go on day by day,.Oddly, Grice had spent some time on x-questions in the Kant
lectures. And why is an x-question. A philosophical explanation of
conversation. A philosophical explanation of implicature. Description vs. explanation.
Grice quotes from Fisher, Never contradict. Never explain. Taxonomy, is worse
than explanation, always. Grice is exploring the taxonomy-description vs.
explanation dichotomy. He would often criticise ordinary-language philosopher
Austin for spending too much valuable time on linguistic botany, without an aim
in his head. Instead, his inclination, a dissenting one, is to look for
the big picture of it all, and disregard a piece-meal
analysis. Conversation is a good example. While Austin would Subjectsify
Language (Linguistic Nature), Grice rather places rationality squarely on the
behaviour displayed by utterers as they make conversational moves that their
addressees will judge as rational along specific lines. Observation of the
principle of conversational helpfulness is rational (reasonable) along the
following lines: anyone who cares about the two goals which are central to
conversation, viz. giving and receiving information, and influencing and being
influenced by others, is expected to have an interest in taking part in a
conversation which will only be profitable (if not possible) under the
assumption that it is conducted along the lines of the principle of
conversational helpfulness. Grice is not interested in conversation per se, but
as a basis for a theory that explains the mistakes ordinary-language
philosophers are making. The case of What is known to be the case is not
believed to be the case. Refs.: One good source is the “Prejudices and
predilections.” Also the first set of ‘Logic and conversation.” There is also
an essay on the ‘that’ versus the ‘why.’ The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
expressum: Grice
liked an abbreviation, especially because he loved subscripts. So, he starts to
analyse the ‘ordinary-language’ philosohper’s mistake by using a few symbols:
there’s the phrase, or utterance, and there’s the expression, for which Grice
uses ‘e’ for a ‘token,’ and ‘E’ for a type. So, suppose we are considering
Hart’s use of ‘carefully.’ ‘Carefully’ would be the ‘expression,’ occurring
within an utterance. Surely, since Grice uses ‘expression’ in that way, he also
uses to say what Hart is doing, Hart is expressing. Grice notes that
‘expressing’ may be too strong. Hart is expressing the belief THAT if you utter
an utterance containing the ‘expression’ ‘carefully,’ there is an implicatum to
the effect that the agent referred to is taking RATIONAL steps towards
something. IRRATIONAL behaviour does not count as ‘careful’ behaviour. Grice
uses the same abbreviations in discussing philosophy as the ‘conceptual
analysis’ of this or that expression. It is all different with Ogden,
Collingwood, and Croce, that Collingwood loved! "Ideas, we may say generally, are
symbols, as serving to express some actual moment or phase of experience and
guiding towards fuller actualization of what is, or seems to be, involved in
its existence or MEANING . That no idea is ever wholly adequate MEANS that the
suggestiveness of experience is inexhaustible" Forsyth, English
Philosophy, 1910, . Thus the significance of sound, the meaning of an utterance
is here identical with the active response to surroundings and with the natural
expression of emotions
According to Husserl, the function of
expression is only directly and immediately adapted to what is usually
described as the meaning (Bedeutung) or the sense (Sinn) of the speech or parts
of speech. Only because the meaning associated with a wordsowid expresses
something, is that word-sound called 'expres- sion' (Ideen, p. 256 f).
"Between the ,nearnng and the what is meant, or what it expresses, there
exists an essential relation, because the meaning is the expression of the meant
through its own content (Gehalt) What is meant (dieses Bedeutete) lies in the
'object' of the thought or speech. We must therefore distinguish these
three-Word, Meaning, Object "1 Geyser, Gp cit p z8 PDF compression, OCR,
web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompresso
These complexities are mentioned here to show how vague are most of the terms
which are commonly thought satisfactory in this topic. Such a word as
'understand' is, unless specially treated, far too vague to serve except
provisionally or at levels of discourse where a real understanding of the
matter (in the reference sense) is not possible. The multiple functions of
speech will be classified and discussed in the following chapter. There it will
be seen that the expression of the speaker's intention is one of the five
regular language functions.
Grice hated Austin’s joke, the utteratum, “I
use ‘utterance’ only as equivalent to 'utteratum;' for 'utteratio' I use ‘the
issue of an utterance,’” so he needed something for ‘what is said’ in general,
not just linguistic, ‘what is expressed,’ what is explicitly conveyed,’ ex-prĭmo
, pressi, pressum, 3, v. a. premo. express (mostly poet. and in postAug. prose;
“freq. in the elder Pliny): (faber) et ungues exprimet et molles imitabitur
aere capillos,” Hor. A. P. 33; cf.: “alicujus furorem ... verecundiae ruborem,”
Plin. 34, 14, 40, § 140: “expressa in cera ex anulo imago,” Plaut. Ps. 1, 1,
54: “imaginem hominis gypso e facie ipsa,” Plin. 35, 12, 44, § 153; cf.:
“effigiem de signis,” id. ib.: “optime Herculem Delphis et Alexandrum, etc.,”
id. 34, 8, 19, § 66 et saep.: “vestis stricta et singulos artus exprimens,”
exhibiting, showing, Tac. G. 17: “pulcher aspectu sit athleta, cujus lacertos
exercitatio expressit,” has well developed, made muscular, Quint. 8, 3, 10.
freedom: Grice was especially concerned with Kants having brought
back the old Greek idea of eleutheria for philosophical discussion. Refs.: the
obvious keywords are “freedom” and “free,” but most of the material is in
“Actions and events,” in PPQ, and below under ‘kantianism’ – The H. P. Grice
Papers, BANC.Bratman,
of Stanford, much influenced by Grice (at Berkeley then) thanks to their
Hands-Across-the-Bay programme, helps us to understand this Pological
progression towards the idea of strong autonomy or freedom. Recall that Grices
Ps combine Lockes very intelligent parrots with Russells and Carnaps
nonsensical Ps of which nothing we are told other than they karulise
elatically. Grices purpose is to give a little thought to a question. What are
the general principles exemplified, in creature-construction, in progressing
from one type of P to a higher type? What kinds of steps are being made? The
kinds of step with which Grice deals are those which culminate in a licence to
include, within the specification of the content of the psychological state of
this or that type of P, a range of expressions which would be inappropriate
with respect to this lower-type P. Such expressions include this or that connective,
this or that quantifier, this or that temporal modifier, this or that mode
indicator, this or that modal operator, and (importantly) this or that
expression to refer to this or that souly state like … judges that … and … will that … This or that
expression, that is, the availability of which leads to the structural
enrichment of the specification of content. In general, these steps will be
ones by which this or that item or idea which has, initially, a legitimate
place outside the scope of this or that souly instantiable (or, if you will,
the expressions for which occur legitimately outside the scope of this or that
souly predicate) come to have a legitimate place within the scope of such an
instantiable, a step by which, one might say, this or that item or ideas comes
to be internalised. Grice is disposed to regard as prototypical the sort of
natural disposition or propension which Hume attributes to a person, and which
is very important to Hume, viz. the tendency of the soul to spread itself upon
objects, i.e. to project into the world items which, properly or primitively
considered, is a feature of this or that souly state. Grice sets out in stages
the application of aspects of the genitorial programme. We then start with a
zero-order, with a P equipped to satisfy unnested, or logically amorphous,
judging and willing, i.e. whose contents do not involve judging or willing. We
soon reach our first P, G1. It would be advantageous to a P0 if
it could have this or that judging and this or that willing, which relate to
its own judging or willing. Such G1 could be equipped to
control or regulate its own judgings and willings. It will presumably be
already constituted so as to conform to the law that, cæteris paribus, if it
wills that p and judge that ~p, if it can, it makes it the case that p in its
soul To give it some control over its judgings and willings, we need only
extend the application of this law to the Ps judging and willing. We equip the
P so that, cæteris paribus, if it wills that it is not the case that it wills
that p and it judges that they do will that p, if it can, it makes it the case
that it does not will that p. And we somehow ensure that sometimes it can do
this. It may be that the installation of this kind of control would go hand in
had with the installation of the capacity for evaluation. Now, unlike it is the
case with a G1, a G2s intentional effort depends on the motivational strength
of its considered desire at the time of action. There is a process by which
this or that conflicting considered desire motivates action as a broadly causal
process, a process that reveals motivational strength. But a G2 might itself
try to weigh considerations provided by such a conflicting desire B1 and B2 in
deliberation about this or that pro and this or that con of various
alternatives. In the simplest case, such weighing treats each of the things
desired as a prima facie justifying end. In the face of conflict, it weighs
this and that desired end, where the weights correspond to the motivational
strength of the associated considered desire. The outcome of such deliberation,
Aristotle’s prohairesis, matches the outcome of the causal motivational process
envisioned in the description of G2. But, since the weights it
invokes in such deliberation correspond to the motivational strength of this or
that relevant considered desire (though perhaps not to the motivational
strength of this or that relevant considered desire), the resultant activitiy
matches those of a corresponding G2 (each of whose desires, we
are assuming, are considered). To be more realistic, we might limit ourselves
to saying that a P2 has the capacity to make the transition
from this or that unconsidered desire to this or that considered desire, but
does not always do this. But it will keep the discussion more manageable to
simplify and to suppose that each desire is considered. We shall not want this
G2 to depend, in each will and act in ways that reveal the motivational
strength of this or that considered desire at the time of action, but for a G3 it
will also be the case that in this or that, though not each) case, it acts on
the basis of how it weights this or that end favoured by this or that
conflicting considered desire. This or that considered desire will concern
matters that cannot be achieved simply by action at a single time. E. g. G3 may
want to nurture a vegetable garden, or build a house. Such matters will require
organized and coordinated action that extends over time. What the G3 does now
will depend not only on what it now desires but also on what it now expects it
will do later given what it does now. It needs a way of settling now what it
will do later given what it does now. The point is even clearer when we remind
ourselves that G3 is not alone. It is, we may assume, one of some number of G3;
and in many cases it needs to coordinate what it does with what other G3 do so
as to achieve ends desired by all participants, itself included. These
costs are magnified for G4 whose various plans are interwoven so that a change
in one element can have significant ripple effects that will need to be
considered. Let us suppose that the general strategies G4 has for responding to
new information about its circumstances are sensitive to these kinds of costs.
Promoting in the long run the satisfaction of its considered desires and
preferences. G4 is a somewhat sophisticated planning agent but
it has a problem. It can expect that its desires and preferences may well
change over time and undermine its efforts at organizing and coordinating its
activities over time. Perhaps in many cases this is due to the kind of temporal
discounting. So for example G4 may have a plan to exercise every day but may
tend to prefer a sequence of not exercising on the present day but exercising
all days in the future, to a uniform sequence the present day included. At the
end of the day it returns to its earlier considered preference in favour of
exercising on each and every day. Though G4, unlike G3, has the
capacity to settle on prior plans or plaices concerning exercise, this capacity
does not yet help in such a case. A creature whose plans were stable in ways in
part shaped by such a no-regret principle would be more likely than G4 to
resist temporary temptations. So let us build such a principle into the
stability of the plans of a G5, whose plans and policies are not derived solely
from facts about its limits of time, attention, and the like. It is also
grounded in the central concerns of a planning agent with its own future,
concerns that lend special significance to anticipated future regret. So let us
add to G5 the capacity and disposition to arrive at such hierarchies of
higher-order desires concerning its will. This gives us creature G6. There
is a problem with G6, one that has been much discussed. It is not clear why a
higher-order desire ‒ even a higher-order desire that a certain
desire be ones will ‒ is not simply one more desire in the pool of
desires (Berkeley Gods will problem). Why does it have the authority to constitute
or ensure the agents (i. e. the creatures) endorsement or rejection of a
first-order desire? Applied to G6 this is the question of whether, by virtue
solely of its hierarchies of desires, it really does succeed in taking its own
stand of endorsement or rejection of various first-order desires. Since it was
the ability to take its own stand that we are trying to provide in the move to
P6, we need some response to this challenge. The basic point is that
G6 is not merely a time-slice agent. It is, rather, and
understands itself to be, a temporally persisting planning agent, one who
begins, and continues, and completes temporally extended projects. On a broadly
Lockean view, its persistence over time consists in relevant psychological
continuities (e.g., the persistence of attitudes of belief and intention) and
connections (e.g., memory of a past event, or the later intentional execution
of an intention formed earlier). Certain attitudes have as a primary role the
constitution and support of such Lockean continuities and connections. In
particular, policies that favour or reject various desires have it as their
role to constitute and support various continuities both of ordinary desires
and of the politicos themselves. For this reason such policies are not merely
additional wiggles in the psychic stew. Instead, these policies have a claim to
help determine where the agent ‒ i.e., the temporally persisting agent ‒
stands with respect to its desires, or so it seems to me reasonable to say. The
psychology of G7 continues to have the hierarchical structure of pro-attitudes
introduced with G6. The difference is that the higher-order pro-attitudes of G6
were simply characterized as desires in a broad, generic sense, and no appeal
was made to the distinctive species of pro-attitude constituted by plan-like
attitudes. That is the sense in which the psychology of G7 is an extension of
the psychology of G6. Let us then give G7 such higher-order policies with the
capacity to take a stand with respect to its desires by arriving at relevant
higher-order policies concerning the functioning of those desires over time. G7 exhibits
a merger of hierarchical and planning structures. Appealing to planning theory
and ground in connection to the temporally extended structure of agency to be
ones will. G7 has higher-order policies that favour or challenge motivational
roles of its considered desires. When G7 engages in deliberative weighing of
conflicting, desired ends it seems that the assigned weights should reflect the
policies that determine where it stands with respect to relevant desires. But
the policies we have so far appealed to ‒ policies concerning what desires are
to be ones will ‒ do not quite address this concern. The problem is that one
can in certain cases have policies concerning which desires are to motivate and
yet these not be policies that accord what those desires are for a
corresponding justifying role in deliberation. G8. A solution is to give our
creature, G8, the capacity to arrive at policies that express
its commitment to be motivated by a desire by way of its treatment of that
desire as providing, in deliberation, a justifying end for action. G8 has
policies for treating (or not treating) certain desires as providing justifying
ends, as, in this way, reason-providing, in motivationally effective
deliberation. Let us call such policies self-governing policies. We will
suppose that these policies are mutually compatible and do not challenge each
other. In this way G8 involves an extension of structures already present in
G7. The grounds on which G8 arrives at (and on occasion revises) such
self-governing policies will be many and varied. We can see these policies as
crystallizing complex pressures and concerns, some of which are grounded in
other policies or desires. These self-governing policies may be tentative and
will normally not be immune to change. If we ask what G8 values in this case,
the answer seems to be: what it values is constituted in part by its
higher-order self-governing policies. In particular, it values exercise over nonexercise
even right now, and even given that it has a considered, though temporary,
preference to the contrary. Unlike lower Ps, what P8 now values
is not simply a matter of its present, considered desires and preferences. Now
this model of P8 seems in relevant aspects to be a partial) model of us, in our
better moments, of course. So we arrive at the conjecture that one important
kind of valuing of which we are capable involves, in the cited ways, both our
first-order desires and our higher order self-governing policies. In an
important sub-class of cases our valuing involves reflexive polices that are
both first-order policies of action and higher-order policies to treat the
first-order policy as reason providing in motivationally effective deliberation.
This may seem odd. Valuing seems normally to be a first-order attitude. One
values honesty, say. The proposal is that an important kind of valuing involves
higher-order policies. Does this mean that, strictly speaking, what one values
(in this sense) is itself a desire ‒ not honesty, say, but a desire for
honesty? No, it does not. What I value in the present case is honesty; but, on
the theory, my valuing honesty in art consists in certain higher-order
self-governing policies. An agents reflective valuing involves a kind of
higher-order willing. Freud challenged the power structure of the soul in
Plato: it is the libido that takes control, not the logos. Grice takes up this
polemic. Aristotle takes up Platos challenge, each type of soul is united to
the next by the idea of life. The animal soul, between the vegetative and the
rational, is not detachable.
futurum
indicativum:
Grice is especially concerned with the future for his analysis of the
communicatum. “Close the door!” By uttering “Close the door!,” U means that A
is to close the door – in the future. So Grice spends HOURS exploring how one
can have justification to have an intention about a future event. Grice is
aware of the ‘shall.’ Grice uses ‘shall’ in the first person to mean wha the
calls ‘futurum indicativum.’ (He considers the case of the ‘shall’ in the
second and third persons in his analysis of mode). What are the conditions for
the use of “shall” in the first person. “I shall close the door” may be
predictable. It is in the indicative mode. “Thou shalt close the door,” and “He
shall close the door” are in the imperative mode, or rather they correspond to
the ‘futurum intentionale.’ Since Grice is an analytic philosopher, he specifies the
analysis in the third person (“U means that…”) one has to be careful. For
‘futurum indicativum’ we have ‘shall’ in the first person, and ‘will’ in the
second and third persons. So for the first group, U means that he will go. In
the second group, U means that his addressee or a third party shall go. Grice
adopts a subscript variant, stick with ‘will,’ but add the mode afterwards: so
will-ind. will be ‘futurum indicativum,’ and will-int. will be futurum
intentionale. The OED has it as “shall,” and defines as a Germanic
preterite-present strong verb. In Old English, it is “sceal,” and which the OED
renders as “to owe (money,” 1425 Hoccleve Min. Poems, The leeste ferthyng þat y
men shal. To owe (allegiance); 1649 And by that feyth I shal to god and yow;
followed by an infinitive, without to. Except for a few instances of shall
will, shall may (mowe), "shall conne" in the 15th c., the infinitive
after shall is always either that of a principal verb or of have or be; The
present tense shall; in general statements of what is right or becoming, =
ought, superseded by the past subjunctive should; in OE. the subjunctive
present sometimes occurs in this use; 1460 Fortescue Abs. and Lim. Mon. The
king shall often times send his judges to punish rioters and risers. 1562 Legh
Armory; Whether are Roundells of all suche coloures, as ye haue spoken of here
before? or shall they be Namesd Roundelles of those coloures? In OE. and occas.
in Middle English used to express necessity of various kinds. For the many
shades of meaning in Old English see Bosworth and Toller), = must, "must
needs", "have to", "am compelled to", etc.; in stating
a necessary condition: = `will have to, `must (if something else is to happen).
1596 Shaks. Merch. V. i. i. 116 You shall seeke all day ere you finde them,
& when you haue them they are not worth the search. 1605 Shaks. Lear.
He that parts vs, shall bring a Brand from Heauen. c In hypothetical clause,
accompanying the statement of a necessary condition: = `is to. 1612 Bacon Ess.,
Greatn. Kingd., Neither must they be too much broken of it, if they shall be
preserued in vigor; ndicating what is appointed or settled to take place = the
mod. `is to, `am to, etc. 1600 Shaks. A.Y.L. What is he that shall buy his
flocke and pasture? 1625 in Ellis Orig. Lett. Ser. "Tomorrow His Majesty
will be present to begin the Parliament
which is thought shall be removed to Oxford; in commands or instructions; n the
second person, “shall” is equivalent to an imperative. Chiefly in Biblical
language, of divine commandments, rendering the jussive future of the Hebrew and
Vulgate. In Old English the imperative mode is used in the ten commandments.
1382 Wyclif Exod. Thow shalt not tak the Names of the Lord thi God in veyn. So
Coverdale, etc. b) In expositions: you shall understand, etc. (that). c) In the
formula you shall excuse (pardon) me. (now "must"). 1595 Shaks. John.
Your Grace shall pardon me, I will not backe. 1630 R. Johnsons Kingd. and
Commw. 191 You shall excuse me, for I eat no flesh on Fridayes; n the *third*
person. 1744 in Atkyns Chanc. Cases (1782) III. 166 The words shall and may in
general acts of parliament, or in private constitutions, are to be construed
imperatively, they must remove them; in the second and third persons,
expressing the determination by the Griceian utterer to bring about some
action, event, or state of things in the future, or (occasionally) to refrain
from hindering what is otherwise certain to take place, or is intended by
another person; n the second person. 1891 J. S. Winter Lumley. If you would
rather not stay then, you shall go down to South Kensington Square then; in
third person. 1591 Shaks. Two Gent. Verona shall not hold thee. 1604 Shaks.
Oth. If there be any cunning Crueltie, That can torment him much, It shall be
his. 1891 J. S. Winter Lumley xiv, `Oh, yes, sir, she shall come back, said the
nurse. `Ill take care of that. `I will come back, said Vere; in special
interrogative uses, a) in the *first* person, used in questions to which the
expected answer is a command, direction, or counsel, or a resolve on the
speakers own part. a) in questions introduced by an interrogative pronoun (in
oblique case), adverb, or adverbial phrase. 1600 Fairfax Tasso. What shall we
doe? shall we be gouernd still, By this false hand? 1865 Kingsley Herew. Where
shall we stow the mare? b) in categorical questions, often expressing indignant
reprobation of a suggested course of action, the implication (or implicature,
or entailment) being that only a negative (or, with negative question an
affirmative) answer is conceivable. 1611 Shaks. Wint. T. Shall I draw the
Curtaine? 1802 Wordsw. To the Cuckoo i, O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or
but a wandering Voice? 1891 J. S. Winter Lumley `Are you driving, or shall I
call you a cab? `Oh, no; Im driving, thanks. c) In *ironical* affirmative in
exclamatory sentence, equivalent to the above interrogative use, cf. Ger. soll.
1741 Richardson Pamela, A pretty thing truly! Here I, a poor helpless Girl,
raised from Poverty and Distress, shall put on Lady-airs to a Gentlewoman born.
d) to stand shall I, shall I (later shill I, shall I: v. shilly-shally), to be
at shall I, shall I (not): to be vacillating, to shilly-shally. 1674 R. Godfrey
Inj. and Ab. Physic Such Medicines. that will not stand shall I? shall I? but
will fall to work on the Disease presently. b Similarly in the *third* person,
where the Subjects represents or includes the utterer, or when the utterer is
placing himself at anothers point of view. 1610 Shaks. Temp., Hast thou (which
art but aire) a touch, a feeling Of their afflictions, and shall not my selfe,
One of their kinde be kindlier moud then thou art? In the second and third
person, where the expected answer is a decision on the part of the utterer or
of some person OTHER than the Subjects. The question often serves as an
impassioned repudiation of a suggestion (or implicature) that something shall
be permitted. 1450 Merlin `What shal be his Names? `I will, quod she, `that it
haue Names after my fader. 1600 Shaks. A.Y.L.; What shall he haue that kild the
Deare? 1737 Alexander Pope, translating Horaces Epistle, And say, to which
shall our applause belong, this new court jargon, or the good old song? 1812
Crabbe Tales, Shall a wife complain? In indirect question. 1865 Kingsley Herew,
Let her say what shall be done with it; as a mere auxiliary, forming, with
present infinitive, the future, and (with perfect infinitive) the future
perfect tense. In Old English, the notion of the future tense is ordinarily
expressed by the present tense. To prevent ambiguity, wile (will) is not
unfrequently used as a future auxiliary, sometimes retaining no trace of its
initial usage, connected with the faculty of volition, and cognate indeed with
volition. On the other hand, sceal (shall), even when rendering a Latin future,
can hardly be said to have been ever a mere future tense-sign in Old English.
It always expressed something of its original notion of obligation or
necessity, so Hampshire is wrong in saying I shall climb Mt. Everest is
predictable. In Middle English, the present early ceases to be commonly
employed in futural usage, and the future is expressed by shall or
will, the former being much more common. The usage as to the choice
between the two auxiliaries, shall and will, has varied from time to time.
Since the middle of the seventeenth century, with Wallis, mere predictable
futurity is expressed in the *first* person by shall, in the second and third
by will, and vice versa. In oratio obliqua, usage allows either the retention
of the auxiliary actually used by the original utterer, or the substitution of
that which is appropriate to the point of view of the uttering reporting; in
Old English, ‘sceal,; while retaining its primary usage, serves as a tense-sign
in announcing a future event as fated or divinely decreed, cf. Those spots mean
measle. Hence shall has always been the auxiliary used, in all persons, for
prophetic or oracular announcements of the future, and for solemn assertions of
the certainty of a future event. 1577 in Allen Martyrdom Campion; The queene
neither ever was, nor is, nor ever shall be the head of the Church of England.
1601 Shaks. Jul. C. Now do I Prophesie. A Curse shall light vpon the limbes of
men. b In the first person, "shall" has, from the early ME. period,
been the normal auxiliary for expressing mere futurity, without any adventitious
notion. (a) Of events conceived as independent of the volition of the utterer.
To use will in these cases is now a mark of, not public-school-educated
Oxonian, but Scottish, Irish, provincial, or extra-British idiom. 1595 in Cath.
Rec. Soc. Publ. V. 357 My frend, yow and I shall play no more at Tables now.
1605 Shaks. Macb. When shall we three meet againe? 1613 Shaks. Hen. VIII, Then
wee shall haue em, Talke vs to silence. 1852 Mrs. Stowe Uncle Toms C.; `But
what if you dont hit? `I shall hit, said George coolly; of voluntary action or
its intended result. Here I shall or we shall is always admissible except where
the notion of a present, as distinguished from a previous, decision or consent
is to be expressed, in which case ‘will’ shall be used. Further, I shall often
expresses a determination insisted on in spite of opposition. In the 16th c.
and earlier, I shall often occurs where I will would now be used. 1559 W.
Cunningham Cosmogr. Glasse, This now shall I alway kepe surely in memorye. 1601
Shaks. Alls Well; Informe him so tis our will he should.-I shall my liege. 1885
Ruskin On Old Road, note: Henceforward I shall continue to spell `Ryme without
our wrongly added h. c In the *second* person, shall as a mere future auxiliary
appears never to have been usual, but in categorical questions it is normal,
e.g. Shall you miss your train? I am afraid you will. d In the *third* person,
superseded by will, except when anothers statement or expectation respecting
himself is reported in the third person, e.g. He conveys that he shall not have
time to write. Even in this case will is still not uncommon, but in some
contexts leads to serious ambiguity. It might be therefore preferable, to some,
to use ‘he shall’ as the indirect rendering of ‘I shall.’ 1489 Caxton Sonnes of
Aymon ii. 64 Yf your fader come agayn from the courte, he shall wyll yelde you
to the kynge Charlemayne. 1799 J. Robertson Agric. Perth, The effect of the
statute labour has always been, now is,
and probably shall continue to be, less productive than it might. Down to the
eighteenth century, shall, the auxiliary appropriate to the first person, is
sometimes used when the utterer refers to himself in the third person. Cf. the
formula: `And your petitioner shall ever pray. 1798 Kemble Let. in Pearsons
Catal. Mr. Kemble presents his respectful compliments to the Proprietors of the
`Monthly Mirror, and shall have great pleasure at being at all able to aid
them; in negative, or virtually negative, and interrogative use, shall often =
will be able to. 1600 Shaks. Sonn. lxv: How with this rage shall beautie hold a
plea. g) Used after a hypothetical clause or an imperative sentence in a
statementsof a result to be expected from some action or occurrence. Now (exc.
in the *first* person) usually replaced by will. But shall survives in literary
use. 1851 Dasent Jest and Earnest, Visit Rome and you shall find him [the Pope]
mere carrion. h) In clause expressing the object of a promise, or of an
expectation accompanied by hope or fear, now only where shall is the ordinary
future auxiliary, but down to the nineteenth century shall is often preferred
to will in the second and third persons. 1628 in Ellis Orig. Lett. Ser., He is
confident that the blood of Christ shall wash away his sins. 1654 E. Nicholas
in N. Papers, I hope neither your Cosen Wat. Montagu nor Walsingham shall be permitted to
discourse with the D. of Gloucester; in impersonal phrases,
"it shall be well, needful", etc. (to do so and so). (now
"will"). j) shall be, added to a future date in clauses measuring
time. 1617 Sir T. Wentworth in Fortescue Papers. To which purpose my late Lord
Chancelour gave his direction about the 3. of Decembre shallbe-two-yeares; in
the idiomatic use of the future to denote what ordinarily or occasionally
occurs under specified conditions, shall was formerly the usual auxiliary. In
the *second* and *third* persons, this is now somewhat formal or rhetorical.
Ordinary language substitutes will or may. Often in antithetic statements
coupled by an adversative conjunction or by and with adversative force. a in
the first person. 1712 Steele Spect. In spite of all my Care, I shall every now
and then have a saucy Rascal ride by reconnoitring under my Windows. b) in the *second* person.
1852 Spencer Ess. After knowing him for years, you shall suddenly discover that
your friends nose is slightly awry. c) in the *third* person. 1793 W. Roberts
Looker-On, One man shall approve the same thing that another man shall condemn.
1870 M. Arnold St. Paul and Prot. It may well happen that a man who lives and
thrives under a monarchy shall yet theoretically disapprove the principle of
monarchy. Usage No. 10: in hypothetical, relative, and temporal clauses
denoting a future contingency, the future auxiliary is shall for all persons
alike. Where no ambiguity results, however, the present tense is commonly used
for the future, and the perfect for the future-perfect. The use of shall, when
not required for clearness, is, Grice grants, apt to sound pedantic by non
Oxonians. Formerly sometimes used to express the sense of a present
subjunctive. a) in hypothetical clauses. (shall I = if I shall) 1680 New
Hampsh. Prov. Papers, If any Christian shall speak contempteously of the Holy
Scriptures, such person shall be
punished. b) in relative clauses, where the antecedent denotes an as yet
undetermined person or thing: 1811 Southey Let., The minister who shall first
become a believer in that book will
obtain a higher reputation than ever statesman did before him. 1874 R. Congreve
Ess. We extend our sympathies to the unborn generations which shall follow us
on this earth; in temporal clauses: 1830 Laws of Cricket in Nyren Yng.
Cricketers Tutor, If in striking, or at any other time, while the ball shall be
in play, both his feet be over the popping-crease; in clauses expressing the
purposed result of some action, or the object of a desire, intention, command,
or request, often admitting of being replaced by may. In Old English, and
occasionally as late as the seventeenth century, the present subjunctive was used
exactly as in Latin. a) in final clause usually introduced by that. In this use
modern idiom prefers should (22 a): see quot. 1611 below, and the appended
remarks. 1879 M. Pattison Milton At the age of nine and twenty, Milton has
already determined that this lifework shall be an epic poem; in relative
clause: 1599 Shaks. Hen. V, ii. iv. 40: As Gardeners doe with Ordure hide those
Roots that shall first spring. The choice between should and would follows the
same as shall and will as future auxiliaries, except that should must sometimes
be avoided on account of liability to be misinterpreted as = `ought to. In
present usage, should occurs mainly in the first person. In the other persons
it follows the use of shall. III Elliptical and quasi-elliptical uses. Usage
No. 24: with ellipsis of verb of motion: = `shall go; he use is common in OHG.
and OS., and in later HG., LG., and Du. In the Scandinavian languages it is
also common, and instances occur in MSw.] 1596 Shaks. 1 Hen. IV, That with our
small coniunction we should on. 1598 Shaks. Merry W. If the bottome were as
deepe as hell, I shold down; n questions, what shall = `what shall (it) profit,
`what good shall (I) do. Usage No. 26: with the sense `is due, `is proper, `is
to be given or applied. Cf. G. soll. Usage No. 27: a) with ellipsis of active
infinitive to be supplied from the context. 1892 Mrs. H. Ward David Grieve,
`No, indeed, I havnt got all I want, said Lucy `I never shall, neither; if I
shall. Now dial. 1390 Gower Conf. II. 96: Doun knelende on mi kne I take leve,
and if I schal, I kisse hire. 1390 Gower Conf., II. 96: I wolde kisse hire
eftsones if I scholde. 1871 Earle Philol. Engl. Tongue 203: The familiar
proposal to carry a basket, I will if I shall, that is, I am willing if you
will command me; I will if so required. 1886 W. Somerset Word-bk. Ill warn our
Tomll do it vor ee, nif he shall-i.e. if you wish. c) with generalized ellipsis
in proverbial phrase: needs must that needs shall = `he must whom fate compels.
Usage No. 28: a) with ellipsis of do (not occurring in the context). 1477
Norton Ord. Alch., O King that shall These Workes! b) the place of the inf. is
sometimes supplied by that or so placed at the beginning of the sentence. The
construction may be regarded as an ellipsis of "do". It is distinct
from the use (belonging to 27) in which so has the sense of `thus, `likewise,
or `also. In the latter there is usually inversion, as so shall I. 1888 J. S.
Winter Bootles Childr. iv: I should like to see her now shes grown up. `So you
shall. Usage No. 29: with ellipsis of be or passive inf., or with so in place
of this (where the preceding context has is, was, etc.). 1615 J. Chamberlain in
Crt. And Times Jas.; He is not yet executed, nor I hear not when he shall.
Surely he may not will that he be executed.
futurum intentionale: While Grice is always looking to cross the
credibility/desirability divide, there is a feature that is difficult to cross
in the bridge of asses. This is the shall vs. will. Grice is aware that ‘will,’
in the FIRST person, is not a matter of prediction. When Grice says “I will go
to Harborne,” that’s not a prediction. He firmly contrasts it with “I shall go
to Harborne” which is a perfect prediction in the indicative mode. “I will go
to Harborne” is in the ‘futurum intentionale.’ Grice is also aware that in the
SECOND and THIRD persons, ‘will’ reports something that the utterer must judge
unpredictable. An utterance like “Thou wilt go to London” and “He will go to
London” is in the ‘futurum indicativus.’ This is one nuance that Prichard
forgets in the analysis of ‘willing’ that Grice eventually adopts. Prichard
uses ‘will’ derivatively, and followed by a ‘that’-clause. Prichard quotes from
the New-World, where the dialect is slightly different. For William James had
said, “I will that the distant table slides over the floor toward me. And it
does not.” Since James is using ‘will’ in the first person, the utterance is
indeed NOT in the indicative, but the ‘intentional’ mode. In the case of the
‘communicatum,’ things get complicated, since U intends that A will believe
that… In which case, U’s intention (and thus will) is directed towards the
‘will’ of his addressee, too, even if it is merely to adopt a ‘belief.’ So what
would be the primary uses of the ‘will.’ In the first person, “I will go to
Harborne” is in the futurum intentionale. It is used to report the utterer’s
will. In the second and third person – “Thou will go to Harborne” and “He will
go to Harborne,” the utterer uses the futurum indicativum and utters a statement
which is predictable. Since analytic
philosophers specify the analysis in the third person (“U means that…”) one has
to be careful. For ‘futurum intentionale’ we have ‘will’ in the first person,
and ‘shall’ in the second and third persons. So for the first group, U means
that he SHALL go. In the second group, U means that his addressee or a third
party WILL go. Grice adopts a subscript variant, stick with ‘will,’ but add the
mode afterwards: so will-ind. will be ‘futurum indicativum,’ and will-int. will
be futurum intentionale. Grice distinguishes the ‘futurum imperativum.’ This
may be seen as a sub-class of the ‘futurum intentionale,’ as applied to the
second and third persons, to avoid the idea that one can issue a
‘self-command.’ Grice has a futurum imperativum, in Latin ending in -tō(te),
used to request someone to do something, or if something else happens first.
“Sī quid acciderit, scrībitō. If anything happens, write to me' (Cicero). ‘Ubi
nōs lāverimus, lavātō.’ 'When*we* have finished washing, *you* get washed.’
(Terence). ‘Crūdam si edēs, in acētum intinguitō.’ ‘If you eat cabbage raw, dip
it in vinegar.’ (Cato). ‘Rīdētō multum quī tē, Sextille, cinaedum dīxerit et
digitum porrigitō medium.’ 'Laugh loudly at anyone who calls you camp,
Sextillus, and stick up your middle finger at him.' (Martial). In Latin, some verbs have only a futurum
imperativum, e. g., scītō 'know', mementō 'remember'. In Latin, there is also a
third person imperative also ending in -tō, plural -ntō exists. It is used in
very formal contexts such as laws. ‘Iūsta imperia suntō, īsque cīvēs pārentō.’
'Orders must be just, and citizens must obey them' (Cicero). Other ways of
expressing a command or request are made with expressions such as cūrā ut 'take
care to...', fac ut 'see to it that...' or cavē nē 'be careful that you
don't...' Cūrā ut valeās. 'Make sure you keep well' (Cicero). Oddly, in Roman,
the futurum indicativum can be used for a polite commands. ‘Pīliae salūtem dīcēs
et Atticae.’ 'Will you please give my
regards to Pilia and Attica?' (Cicero. The OED has will, would. It is traced to
Old English willan, pres.t. wille, willaþ, pa. t. wolde. Grice was especially interested
to check Jamess and Prichards use of willing that, Prichards shall will and the
will/shall distinction; the present tense will; transitive uses, with simple
obj. or obj. clause; occas. intr. 1 trans. with simple obj.: desire, wish for,
have a mind to, `want (something); sometimes implying also `intend, purpose.
1601 Shaks. (title) Twelfe Night, Or what you will. 1654 Whitlock Zootomia 44
Will what befalleth, and befall what will. 1734 tr. Rollins Anc. Hist. V. 31 He
that can do what ever he will is in great danger of willing what he ought not.
b intr. with well or ill, or trans. with sbs. of similar meaning (e.g. good,
health), usually with dat. of person: Wish (or intend) well or ill (to some
one), feel or cherish good-will or ill-will. Obs. (cf. will v.2 1 b). See also
well-willing; to will well that: to be willing that. 1483 Caxton Gold. Leg. I
wyl wel that thou say, and yf thou say ony good, thou shalt be pesybly herde.
Usage No. 2: trans. with obj. clause (with vb. in pres. subj., or in periphrastic
form with should), or acc. and inf.: Desire, wish; sometimes implying also
`intend, purpose (that something be done or happen). 1548 Hutten Sum of
Diuinitie K viij, God wylle all men to be saued; enoting expression (usually
authoritative) of a wish or intention: Determine, decree, ordain, enjoin, give
order (that something be done). 1528 Cromwell in Merriman Life and Lett. (1902)
I. 320 His grace then wille that thellection of a new Dean shalbe emonges them
of the colledge; spec. in a direction or instruction in ones will or testament;
hence, to direct by will (that something be done). 1820 Giffords Compl. Engl.
Lawyer. I do hereby will and direct that my executrix..do excuse and release
the said sum of 100l. to him; figurative
usage. of an abstract thing (e.g. reason, law): Demands, requires. 1597 Shaks.
2 Hen. IV, Our Battaile is more full of Namess then yours Then Reason will, our
hearts should be as good. Usage No. 4 transf. (from 2). Intends to express,
means; affirms, maintains. 1602 Dolman La Primaud. Fr. Acad. Hee will that this
authority should be for a principle of demonstration. 2 With dependent
infinitive (normally without "to"); desire to, wish to, have a mind
to (do something); often also implying intention. 1697 Ctess DAunoys Trav. I
will not write to you often, because I will always have a stock of News to tell
you, which..is pretty long in picking up. 1704 Locke Hum. Und. The great Encomiasts of the Chineses, do all
to a man agree and will convince us that the Sect of the Literati are Atheists.
6 In relation to anothers desire or requirement, or to an obligation of some
kind: Am (is, are) disposed or willing to, consent to; †in early use sometimes
= deign or condescend to.With the (rare and obs.) imper. use, as in quot. 1490,
cf. b and the corresponding negative use in 12 b. 1921 Times Lit. Suppl. 10
Feb. 88/3 Literature thrives where people will read what they do not agree
with, if it is good. b In 2nd person, interrog., or in a dependent clause after
beg or the like, expressing a request (usually courteous; with emphasis,
impatient). 1599 Shaks. Hen. V, ii. i. 47 Will you shogge off? 1605 1878 Hardy
Ret. Native v. iii, O, O, O,..O, will you have done! Usage No. 7 Expressing
voluntary action, or conscious intention directed to the doing of what is
expressed by the principal verb (without temporal reference as in 11, and
without emphasis as in 10): = choose to (choose v. B. 3 a). The proper word for
this idea, which cannot be so precisely expressed by any other. 1685 Baxter
Paraphr., When God will tell us we shall know. Usage No. 8 Expressing natural
disposition to do something, and hence habitual action: Has the habit, or `a
way, of --ing; is addicted or accustomed to --ing; habitually does; sometimes
connoting `may be expected to (cf. 15). 1865 Ruskin Sesame, Men, by their
nature, are prone to fight; they will fight for any cause, or for none;
expressing potentiality, capacity, or sufficiency: Can, may, is able to, is
capable of --ing; is (large) enough or sufficient to.†it will not be: it cannot
be done or brought to pass; it is all in vain. So, †will it not be? 1833 N.
Arnott Physics, The heart will beat after removal from the body. Usage No. 10
As a strengthening of sense 7, expressing determination, persistence, and the
like (without temporal reference as in 11); purposes to, is determined to. 1539
Bible (Great) Isa. lxvi. 6, I heare ye voyce of the Lorde, that wyll rewarde,
etc; recompence his enemyes; emphatically. Is fully determined to; insists on
or persists in --ing: sometimes with mixture of sense 8. (In 1st pers. with
implication of futurity, as a strengthening of sense 11 a. Also fig. = must
inevitably, is sure to. 1892 E. Reeves Homeward Bound viii. 239, I have spent
6,000 francs to come here..and I will see it! c In phr. of ironical or critical
force referring to anothers assertion or opinion. Now arch. exc. in will have
it; 1591 Shaks. 1 Hen. VI, This is a Riddling Merchant for the nonce, He will
be here, and yet he is not here. 1728 Chambers Cycl., Honey, Some naturalists
will have honey to be of a different quality, according to the difference of
the flowers..the bees suck it from. Also, as auxiliary of the future tense with
implication (entailment rather than cancellable implicatum) of intention, thus
distinguished from ‘shall,’ v. B. 8, where see note); in 1st person: sometimes
in slightly stronger sense = intend to, mean to. 1600 Shaks. A.Y.L., To morrow
will we be married. 1607 Shaks. Cor., Ile run away Till I am bigger, but then
Ile fight. 1777 Clara Reeve Champion of Virtue, Never fear it..I will speak to
Joseph about it. b In 2nd and 3rd pers., in questions or indirect statements.
1839 Lane Arab. Nts., I will cure thee
without giving thee to drink any potion When King Yoonán heard his words,
he..said.., How wilt thou do this? c will do (with omission of "I"):
an expression of willingness to carry out a request. Cf. wilco. colloq. 1967 L.
White Crimshaw Memorandum, `And find out where the bastard was `Will do, Jim
said. 13 In 1st pers., expressing immediate intention: "I will" = `I
am now going to, `I proceed at once to. 1885 Mrs. Alexander At Bay, Very well;
I will wish you good-evening. b In 1st pers. pl., expressing a proposal: we
will (†wule we) = `let us. 1798 Coleridge Nightingale 4 Come, we will rest on
this old mossy bridge!, c figurative, as in It will rain, (in 3rd pers.) of a
thing: Is ready to, is on the point of --ing. 1225 Ancr. R. A treou þet wule
uallen, me underset hit mid on oðer treou. 14 In 2nd and 3rd pers., as
auxiliary expressing mere futurity, forming (with pres. inf.) the future, and
(with pf. inf.) the future pf. tense: corresponding to "shall" in the
1st pers. (see note s.v. shall v. B. 8). 1847 Tennyson Princess iii. 12 Rest,
rest, on mothers breast, Father will come to thee soon. b As auxiliary of future
substituted for the imper. in mild injunctions or requests. 1876 Ruskin St.
Marks Rest. That they should use their own balances, weights, and measures;
(not by any means false ones, you will please to observe). 15 As auxiliary of
future expressing a contingent event, or a result to be expected, in a supposed
case or under particular conditions (with the condition expressed by a
conditional, temporal, or imper. clause, or otherwise implied). 1861 M.
Pattison Ess. The lover of the
Elizabethan drama will readily recal many such allusions; b with pers.sSubjects
(usually 1st pers. sing.), expressing a voluntary act or choice in a supposed
case, or a conditional promise or undertaking: esp. in asseverations, e.g. I
will die sooner than, I’ll be hanged if, etc.). 1898 H. S. Merriman Rodens
Corner. But I will be hanged if I see what it all means, now; xpressing a
determinate or necessary consequence (without the notion of futurity). 1887
Fowler Deductive Logic, From what has been said it will be seen that I do not
agree with Mr. Mill. Mod. If, in a syllogism, the middle term be not
distributed in either premiss, there will be no conclusion; ith the notion of
futurity obscured or lost: = will prove or turn out to, will be found on
inquiry to; may be supposed to, presumably does. Hence (chiefly Sc. and north.
dial.) in estimates of amount, or in uncertain or approximate statements, the
future becoming equivalent to a present with qualification: e.g. it will be =
`I think it is or `it is about; what will that be? = `what do you think that
is? 1584 Hornby Priory in Craven Gloss. Where on 40 Acres there will be xiij.s.
iv.d. per acre yerely for rent. 1791 Grose Olio (1792) 106, I believe he will
be an Irishman. 1791 Grose Olio. C. How far is it to Dumfries? W. It will be
twenty miles. 1812 Brackenridge Views Louisiana, The agriculture of this
territory will be very similar to that of Kentucky. 1876 Whitby Gloss. sThis
word we have only once heard, and that will be twenty years ago. 16 Used where
"shall" is now the normal auxiliary, chiefly in expressing mere
futurity: since 17th c. almost exclusively in Scottish, Irish, provincial, or
extra-British use (see shall. 1602 Shaks. Ham. I will win for him if I can: if
not, Ile gaine nothing but my shame, and the odde hits. 1825 Scott in Lockhart
Ballantyne-humbug. I expect we will have some good singing. 1875 E. H. Dering
Sherborne. `Will I start, sir? asked the Irish groom. Usage No. 3 Elliptical
and quasi-elliptical uses; n absol. use, or with ellipsis of obj. clause as in 2:
in meaning corresponding to senses 5-7.if you will is sometimes used
parenthetically to qualify a word or phrase: = `if you wish it to be so called,
`if you choose or prefer to call it so. 1696 Whiston The. Earth. Gravity
depends entirely on the constant and efficacious, and, if you will, the
supernatural and miraculous Influence of Almighty God. 1876 Ruskin St. Marks
Rest. Very savage! monstrous! if you will. b In parenthetic phr. if God will
(†also will God, rarely God will), God willing: if it be the will of God,
`D.V.In OE. Gode willi&asg.ende (will v.2) = L. Deo volente. 1716
Strype in Thoresbys Lett. Next week, God willing, I take my journey to my
Rectory in Sussex; fig. Demands, requires (absol. or ellipt. use of 3 c). 1511
Reg. Privy Seal Scot. That na seculare personis have intrometting with thaim
uther wais than law will; I will well: I assent, `I should think so indeed.
(Cf. F. je veux bien.) Usage No. 18: with ellipsis of a vb. of motion. 1885
Bridges Eros and Psyche Aug. I will to thee oer the stream afloat. Usage No.
19: with ellipsis of active inf. to be supplied from the context. 1836 Dickens
Sk. Boz, Steam Excurs., `Will you go on deck? `No, I will not. This was said
with a most determined air. 1853 Dickens Bleak Ho. lii, I cant believe it. Its
not that I dont or I wont. I cant! 1885 Mrs. Alexander Valeries Fate vi, `Do
you know that all the people in the house will think it very shocking of me to
walk with you?.. `The deuce they will!; With generalized ellipsis, esp. in
proverbial saying (now usually as in quot. 1562, with will for would). 1639 J.
Clarke Paroem. 237 He that may and will not, when he would he shall not. c With
so or that substituted for the omitted inf. phr.: now usually placed at the
beginning of the sentence. 1596 Shaks. Tam. Shr. Hor. I promist we would beare
his charge of wooing Gremio. And so we wil. d Idiomatically used in a
qualifying phr. with relative, equivalent to a phr. with indef. relative in
-ever; often with a thing as subj., becoming a mere synonym of may: e.g. shout
as loud as you will = `however loud you (choose to) shout; come what will =
`whatever may come; be that as it will = `however that may be. 1732 Pope Mor.
Ess. The ruling Passion, be it what it will, The ruling Passion conquers Reason
still. 20 With ellipsis of pass. inf. A. 1774 Goldsm. Surv. Exp. Philos. The
airs force is compounded of its swiftness and density, and as these are
encreased, so will the force of the wind; in const. where the ellipsis may be
either of an obj. clause or of an inf. a In a disjunctive qualifying clause or
phr. usually parenthetic, as whether he will or no, will he or not, (with pron.
omitted) will or no, (with or omitted) will he will he not, will he nill he
(see VI. below and willy-nilly), etc.In quot. 1592 vaguely = `one way or
another, `in any case. For the distinction between should and would, v. note
s.v. shall; in a noun-clause expressing the object of desire, advice, or
request, usually with a person as subj., implying voluntary action as the
desired end: thus distinguished from should, which may be used when the persons
will is not in view. Also (almost always after wish) with a thing as Subjects,
in which case should can never be substituted because it would suggest the idea
of command or compulsion instead of mere desire. Cf. shall; will; willest;
willeth; wills; willed (wIld); also: willian, willi, wyll, wille, wil, will,
willode, will, wyllede, wylled, willyd, ied, -it, -id, willed; wijld, wilde,
wild, willid, -yd, wylled,willet, willed; willd(e, wild., OE. willian wk. vb. =
German “willen.” f. will sb.1, 1 trans. to wish, desire; sometimes with
implication of intention: = will. 1400 Lat. and Eng. Prov. He þt a lytul me
3euyth to me wyllyth optat longe lyffe. 1548 Udall, etc. Erasm. Par. Matt. v.
21-24 Who so euer hath gotten to hymselfe the charitie of the gospell, whyche
wylleth wel to them that wylleth yll. 1581 A. Hall Iliad, By Mineruas helpe,
who willes you all the ill she may. A. 1875 Tennyson Q. Mary i. iv, A great
party in the state Wills me to wed her; To assert, affirm: = will v.1 B. 4.
1614 Selden Titles Hon. None of this excludes Vnction before, but only wils him
the first annointed by the Pope. 2 a to direct by ones will or testament (that
something be done, or something to be done); to dispose of by will; to bequeath
or devise; to determine by the will; to attempt to cause, aim at effecting by
exercise of will; to set the mind with conscious intention to the performance
or occurrence of something; to choose or decide to do something, or that something
shall be done or happen. Const. with simple obj., acc. and inf., simple inf.
(now always with to), or obj. clause; also absol. or intr. (with as or so).
Nearly coinciding in meaning with will v.1 7, but with more explicit reference
to the mental process of volition. 1630 Prynne Anti-Armin. 119 He had onely a
power, not to fall into sinne vnlesse he willed it. 1667 Milton P.L. So
absolute she seems..that what she wills to do or say, Seems wisest. 1710 J.
Clarke tr. Rohaults Nat. Philos. If I will to move my Arm, it is presently
moved. 1712 Berkeley Pass. Obed. He that willeth the end, doth will the
necessary means conducive to that end. 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. All shall be as
God wills. 1880 Meredith Tragic Com. So great, heroical, giant-like, that what
he wills must be. 1896 Housman Shropsh. Lad xxx, Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst; intr. to exercise the will; to
perform the mental act of volition. 1594 Hooker Eccl. Pol. To will, is to bend
our soules to the hauing or doing of that which they see to be good. 1830
Mackintosh Eth. Philos. Wks.. But what could induce such a being to will or to
act? 1867 A. P. Forbes Explan. Is this infinitely powerful and intelligent
Being free? wills He? loves He? c trans. To bring or get (into, out of, etc.)
by exercise of will. 1850 L. Hunt Table-t. (1882) 184 Victims of opium have
been known to be unable to will themselves out of the chair in which they were
sitting. d To control (another person), or induce (another) to do something, by
the mere exercise of ones will, as in hypnotism. 1882 Proc. Soc. Psych.
Research I. The one to be `willed would go to the other end of the house, if
desired, whilst we agreed upon the thing to be done. 1886 19th Cent. They are
what is called `willed to do certain things desired by the ladies or gentlemen
who have hold of them. 1897 A. Lang Dreams & Ghosts iii. 59 A young
lady, who believed that she could play the `willing game successfully without
touching the person `willed; to express or communicate ones will or wish with
regard to something, with various shades of meaning, cf. will, v.1 3.,
specifically: a to enjoin, order; to decree, ordain, a) with personal obj.,
usually with inf. or clause. 1481 Cov. Leet Bk. 496 We desire and also will you
that vnto oure seid seruaunt ye yeue your aid. 1547 Edw. VI in Rymer Foedera,
We Wyll and Commaunde yowe to Procede in the seid Matters. 1568 Grafton Chron.,
Their sute was smally regarded, and shortly after they were willed to silence.
1588 Lambarde Eiren. If a man do lie in awaite to rob me, and (drawing his
sword upon me) he willeth me to deliver my money. 1591 Shaks. 1 Hen. VI We doe
no otherwise then wee are willd. 1596 Nashe Saffron Walden P 4, Vp he was had
and.willed to deliuer vp his weapon. 1656 Hales Gold. Rem. The King in the
Gospel, that made a Feast, and..willed his servants to go out to the high-ways
side. 1799 Nelson in Nicolas Disp., Willing and requiring all Officers and men
to obey you; 1565 Cooper Thesaurus s.v. Classicum, By sounde of trumpet to will
scilence. 1612 Bacon Ess., Of Empire. It is common with Princes (saith Tacitus)
to will contradictories. 1697 Dryden Æneis i. 112 Tis yours, O Queen! to will
The Work, which Duty binds me to fulfil. 1877 Tennyson Harold vi. i, Get thou
into thy cloister as the king Willd it.; to pray, request, entreat; = desire v.
6. 1454 Paston Lett. Suppl. As for the questyon that ye wylled me to aske my
lord, I fond hym yet at no good leyser. 1564 Haward tr. Eutropius. The Romaines
sent ambassadoures to him, to wyll him to cease from battayle. 1581 A. Hall
Iliad, His errand done, as he was willde, he toke his flight from thence. 1631
[Mabbe] Celestina. Did I not will you I should not be wakened? 1690 Dryden
Amphitryon i. i, He has sent me to will and require you to make a swinging long
Night for him; fig. of a thing, to require, demand; also, to induce, persuade a
person to do something. 1445 in Anglia. Constaunce willeth also that thou doo
noughte with weyke corage. Cable and Baugh note that one important s. of prescriptions
that now form part of all our grammars -- that governing the use of will and
shall -- has its origin in this period. Previous to 1622 no grammar recognized
any distinction between will and shall. In 1653 Wallis in his Grammatica
Linguae Anglicanae states in Latin and for the benefit of Europeans that
Subjectsive intention is expressed by will in the first person, by shall in the
second and third, while simple factual indicative predictable futurity is
expressed by shall in the first person, by will in the second and third. It is
not until the second half of the eighteenth century that the use in questions
and subordinate clauses is explicitly defined. In 1755 Johnson, in his
Dictionary, states the rule for questions, and in 1765 William Ward, in his
Grammar, draws up for the first time the full set of prescriptions that
underlies, with individual variations, the rules found in later tracts. Wards
pronouncements are not followed generally by other grammarians until Lindley
Murray gives them greater currency in 1795. Since about 1825 they have often
been repeated in grammars, v. Fries, The periphrastic future with will and
shall. Will qua modal auxiliary never had an s. The absence of conjugation is a
very old common Germanic phenomenon. OE 3rd person present indicative of willan
(and of the preterite-present verbs) is not distinct from the 1st person
present indicative. That dates back at least to CGmc, or further if one looks
just as the forms and ignore tense and/or mood). Re: Prichard: "Prichard
wills that he go to London. This is Prichards example, admired by Grice
("but I expect not pleasing to Maucaulays ears"). The -s is
introduced to indicate a difference between the modal and main verb use (as in
Prichard and Grice) of will. In fact, will, qua modal, has never been used with
a to-infinitive. OE uses present-tense forms to refer to future events as well
as willan and sculan. willan would give a volitional nuance; sculan, an
obligational nuance. Its difficult to find an example of weorthan used to
express the future, but that doesnt mean it didnt happen. In insensitive
utterers, will has very little of volition about it, unless one follows Walliss
observation for for I will vs. I shall. Most probably use ll, or be going
to for the future.
grammar: while philosophers would use grammar jocularly, Chomsky
didnt. The problem, as Grice notes, is that Chomsky never tells us where
grammar ends (“or begins for that matter.”) “Consider the P, karulising
elatically.” When Carnap introduces the P, he talks syntax, not grammar. But
philosophers always took semiotics more seriously than others. So Carnap is
well aware of Morriss triad of the syntactics, the semantics, and the
pragmatics. Philosophers always disliked grammar, because back in the days of
Aelfric, philosophia was supposed to embrace dialectica and grammatica, and
rhetorica. “It is all part of philosophy.” Truth-conditional semantics and
implicata. Refs.: One source is an essay on ‘grammar’ in the H. P. Grice
Papers, BANC.
grecianism: why was Grice obsessed with Socrates’s convesations? He
does not say. But he implicates it. For the Athenian dialecticians, it is all a
matter of ta legomena. Ditto for the Oxonian dialecticians. Ta legomena becomes
ordinary language. And the task of the philosopher is to provide reductive
analysis of this or that concept in terms of necessary and sufficient
conditions. Cf. Hospers. Grices review of the history of philosophy (Philosophy
is but footnotes to Zeno.). Grice enjoyed Zenos answer, What is a friend? Alter
ego, Allego. ("Only it was the other Zeno." Grice tried to apply the
Socratic method during his tutorials. "Nothing like a heartfelt dedication
to the Socratic art of mid-wifery, seeking to bring forth error and to strangle
it at birth.” μαιεύομαι (A.“μαῖα”), ‘to serve as a midwife, act a; “ἡ
Ἄρτεμις μ.” Luc. D Deor.26.2. 2. cause delivery to take place, “ἱκανὴ ἔκπληξις
μαιεύσασθαι πρὸ τῆς ὥρας” Philostr. VA1.5. 3. c. acc., bring to the birth,
Marin.Procl.6; ὄρνιθας μ. hatch chickens, Anon. ap. Suid.; αἰετὸν κάνθαρος
μαιεύσομαι, prov. of taking vengeance on a powerful enemy, Ar. Lys.695 (cf.
Sch.). 4. deliver a woman, esp. metaph. in Pl. of the Socratic method, Tht.
149b. II. Act., Poll. 4.208, Sch. OH.4.506. Pass., τὰ ὑπ᾽ ἐμοῦ μαιευθέντα
brought into the world by me, Pl. Tht. 150e, cf. Philostr.VA5.13. Refs.: the
obvious references are Grice’s allusions to Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Zeno,
The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
heterological: Grice and Thomson go heterological. Grice was
fascinated by Baron Russell’s remarks on heterological and its implicate. Grice
is particularly interested in Russell’s philosophy because of the usual Oxonian
antipathy towards his type of philosophising. Being an irreverent
conservative rationalist, Grice found in Russell a good point for
dissent! If paradoxes were always sets of propositions or arguments or
conclusions, they would always be meaningful. But some paradoxes are
semantically flawed and some have answers that are backed by a pseudo-argument
employing a defective lemma that lacks a truth-value. Grellings paradox,
for instance, opens with a distinction between autological and heterological
words. An autological word describes itself, e.g., polysyllabic is
polysllabic, English is English, noun is a noun, etc. A heterological word
does not describe itself, e.g., monosyllabic is not monosyllabic, Chinese is
not Chinese, verb is not a verb, etc. Now for the riddle: Is
heterological heterological or autological? If heterological is
heterological, since it describes itself, it is autological. But if
heterological is autological, since it is a word that does not describe itself,
it is heterological. The common solution to this puzzle is that
heterological, as defined by Grelling, is not what Grice a genuine predicate ‒
Gricing is!In other words, Is heterological heterological? is without meaning.
That does not mean that an utterer, such as Baron Russell, may implicate that
he is being very witty by uttering the Grelling paradox! There can be no
predicate that applies to all and only those predicates it does not apply to
for the same reason that there can be no barber who shaves all and only those
people who do not shave themselves. Grice seems to be relying on his
friend at Christ Church, Thomson in On Some Paradoxes, in the same volume
where Grice published his Remarks about the senses, Analytical Philosophy,
Butler (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford, 104–119. Grice thought that Thomson was a
genius, if ever there is one! Plus, Grice thought that, after St. Johns, Christ
Church was the second most beautiful venue in the city of dreaming spires. On
top, it is what makes Oxford a city, and not, as villagers call it, a town.
Refs.: the main source is Grice’s essay on ‘heterologicality,’ but the keyword
‘paradox’ is useful, too, especially as applied to Grice’s own paradox and to
what, after Moore, Grice refers to as the philosopher’s paradoxes. The H. P.
Grice Papers, BANC.
ideationalism. Alston calls Grice an ideationalist, and Grice takes it as
a term of abuse. Grice would occasionally use ‘mental.’ Short and Lewis have
"mens.” “terra corpus est, at mentis ignis est;” so too, “istic est de
sole sumptus; isque totus mentis est;” f. from the root ‘men,’ whence ‘memini,’ and ‘comminiscor.’ Lewis and Short render
‘mens’ as ‘the mind, disposition; the heart, soul.’ Lewis and Short have
‘commĭniscor,’ originally conminiscor ), mentus, from ‘miniscor,’ whence also ‘reminiscor,’
stem ‘men,’ whence ‘mens’ and ‘memini,’
cf. Varro, Lingua Latina 6, § 44. Lewis and Short render the verb as,
literally, ‘to ponder carefully, to reflect upon;’ ‘hence, as a result of
reflection; cf. 1. commentor, II.), to devise something by careful thought, to
contrive, invent, feign. Myro is perhaps unaware of the implicata of ‘mental’
when he qualifies his -ism with ‘modest.’ Grice would seldom use mind (Grecian
nous) or mental (Grecian noetikos vs. æsthetikos). His sympathies go for more
over-arching Grecian terms like the very Aristotelian soul, the anima, i. e.
the psyche and the psychological. Grice discusses G. Myro’s essay, ‘In defence
of a modal mentalism,’ with attending commentary by R. Albritton and S. Cavell.
Grice himself would hardly use mental, mentalist, or mentalism himself, but
perhaps psychologism. Grice would use mental, on occasion, but his Grecianism
was deeply rooted, unlike Myro’s. At Clifton and under Hardie (let us recall he
came up to Oxford under a classics scholarship to enrol in the Lit. Hum.) he
knows that mental translates mentalis translates nous, only ONE part, one
third, actually, of the soul, and even then it may not include the ‘practical
rational’ one! Cf. below on ‘telementational.’ Refs.: The reference to mentalism
in the essay on ‘modest mentalism,’ after Myro, in The H. P. Grice Papers,
BANC.
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