Grice's H

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.