scepticism:
Grice thinks ‘dogmatic’ is the opposite of ‘sceptic,’ and he is right! Liddell
and Scott have “δόγμα,”
from “δοκέω,” and which they render as “that which seems to one, opinion or
belief;” Pl.R.538c; “δ. πόλεως κοινόν;” esp. of philosophical doctrines,
Epicur.Nat.14.7; “notion,” Pl.Tht.158d; “decision, judgement,” Pl. Lg.926d; (pl.); public decree,
ordinance, esp. of Roman
Senatus-consulta, “δ. συγκλήτου” “δ. τῆς
βουλῆς” So note that there is nothing ‘dogmatic’ about ‘dogma,’ as it derives
from ‘dokeo,’ and is rendered as ‘that which seems to one.’ So the keyword
should be later Grecian, and in the adjectival ‘dogmatic.’ Liddell and Scott
have “δογματικός,” which they render as “of or for doctrines, didactic,
[διάλογοι] Quint.Inst.2.15.26, and “of persons, δ. ἰατροί,” “physicians who go
by general principles,” opp. “ἐμπειρικοί and μεθοδικοί,” Dsc.Ther.Praef.,
Gal.1.65; in Philosophy, S.E.M.7.1, D.L.9.70, etc.; “δ. ὑπολήψεις” Id.9.83; “δ.
φιλοσοφία” S.E. P.1.4. Adv. “-κῶς” D.L.9.74, S.E.P.1.197: Comp. “-κώτερον”
Id.M. 6.4. Why is Grice interested in
scepticism. His initial concern, the one that Austin would authorize, relates
to ‘ordinary language.’ What if ‘ordinary language’ embraces scepticism? What
if it doesn’t? Strawso notes that the world of ordinary language is a world of
things, causes, and stuff. None of the good stuff for the sceptic. what is
Grice’s answer to the sceptic’s implicature? The sceptic’s implicatum is a
topic that always fascinated Girce. While Grice groups two essays as dealing
with one single theme, strictly, only this or that philosopher’s paradox (not
all) may count as sceptical. This or that philosopher’s paradox may well not be
sceptical at all but rather dogmatic. In fact, Grice defines philosophers
paradox as anything repugnant to common sense, shocking, or extravagant ‒ to
Malcolms ears, that is! While it is, strictly, slightly odd to quote this
as a given date just because, by a stroke of the pen, Grice writes that
date in the Harvard volume, we will follow his charming practice. This is
vintage Grice. Grice always takes the sceptics challenge seriously, as any
serious philosopher should. Grices takes both the sceptics explicatum and the
scepticss implicatum as self-defeating, as a very affront to our idea of rationality,
conversational or other. V: Conversations with a sceptic: Can he be slightly
more conversational helpful? Hume’ sceptical attack is partial, and
targeted only towards practical reason, though. Yet, for Grice, reason is
one. You cannot really attack practical or buletic reason without attacking
theoretical or doxastic reason. There is such thing as a general rational
acceptance, to use Grice’s term, that the sceptic is getting at. Grice likes to
play with the idea that ultimately every syllogism is buletic or practical. If,
say, a syllogism by Eddington looks doxastic, that is because Eddington cares
to omit the practical tail, as Grice puts it. And Eddington is not even a
philosopher, they say. Grice is here concerned with a Cantabrigian topic popularised
by Moore. As Grice recollects, Some like Witters, but
Moore’s my man. Unlike Cambridge analysts such as Moore, Grice sees
himself as a linguistic-turn Oxonian analyst. So it is only natural that Grice
would connect time-honoured scepticism of Pyrrhos vintage, and common sense
with ordinary language, so mis-called, the elephant in Grices room. Lewis
and Short have “σκέψις,” f. σκέπτομαι, which they render as “viewing,
perception by the senses, ἡ διὰ τῶν ὀμμάτων ςκέψις, Pl. Phd. 83a;
observation of auguries; also as examination, speculation, consideration, τὸ
εὕρημα πολλῆς σκέψιος; βραχείας ςκέψις; ϝέμειν ςκέψις take thought of a
thing; ἐνθεὶς τῇ τέχνῃ ςκέψις; ςκέψις ποιεῖσθαι; ςκέψις προβέβληκας;
ςκέψις λόγων; ςκέψις περί τινος inquiry into, speculation on a thing;
περί τι Id. Lg. 636d;ἐπὶ σκέψιν τινὸς ἐλθεῖν; speculation, inquiry,ταῦτα
ἐξωτερικωτέρας ἐστὶ σκέψεως; ἔξω τῆς νῦν ςκέψεως; οὐκ οἰκεῖα τῆς παρούσης
ςκέψις; also hesitation, doubt, esp. of the Sceptic or Pyrthonic philosophers,
AP 7. 576 (Jul.); the Sceptic philosophy, S. E. P. 1.5; οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς
ςκέψεως, the Sceptics, ib. 229. in politics, resolution, decree, συνεδρίον
Hdn. 4.3.9, cf. Poll. 6.178. If scepticism attacks common sense and fails,
Grice seems to be implicating, that ordinary language philosophy is a good
antidote to scepticism. Since what language other than ordinary language does
common sense speak? Well, strictly, common sense doesnt speak. The man in the
street does. Grice addresses this topic in a Mooreian way in a later essay,
also repr. in Studies, Moore and philosophers paradoxes, repr. in Studies.
As with his earlier Common sense and scepticism, Grice tackles Moores and
Malcolms claim that ordinary language, so-called, solves a few of philosophers
paradoxes. Philosopher is Grices witty way to generalise over your
common-or-garden, any, philosopher, especially of the type he found eccentric,
the sceptic included. Grice finds this or that problem in this overarching
Cantabrigian manoeuvre, as over-simplifying a pretty convoluted
terrain. While he cherishes Austins Some like Witters, but Moores MY man!
Grice finds Moore too Cantabrigian to his taste. While an Oxonian thoroughbred,
Grice is a bit like Austin, Some like Witters, but Moores my man, with this or
that caveat. Again, as with his treatment of Descartes or Locke, Grice is
hardly interested in finding out what Moore really means. He is a philosopher,
not a historian of philosophy, and he knows it. While Grice agrees with Austins
implicature that Moore goes well above Witters, if that is the expression (even
if some like him), we should find the Oxonian equivalent to Moore. Grice would
not Names Ryle, since he sees him, and his followers, almost every day. There
is something apostolic about Moore that Grice enjoys, which is just as well,
seeing that Moore is one of the twelve. Grice found it amusing that the
members of The Conversazione Society would still be nickNamesd apostles when
their number exceeded the initial 12. Grice spends some time exploring what
Malcolm, a follower of Witters, which does not help, as it were, has to say
about Moore in connection with that particularly Oxonian turn of phrase, such
as ordinary language is. For Malcolms Moore, a paradox by philosopher
[sic], including the sceptic, arises when philosopher [sic], including the
sceptic, fails to abide by the dictates of ordinary language. It might merit
some exploration if Moore’s defence of common sense is against: the sceptic may
be one, but also the idealist. Moore the realist, armed with ordinary language
attacks the idealists claim. The idealist is sceptical of the realists claim.
But empiricist idealism (Bradley) has at Oxford as good pedigree as empiricist
realism (Cook Wilson). Malcolm’s simplifications infuriate Grice, and ordinary
language has little to offer in the defense of common sense realism against
sceptical empiricist idealism. Surely the ordinary man says ridiculous, or
silly, as Russell prefers, things, such as Smith is lucky, Departed spirits
walk along this road on their way to Paradise, I know there are infinite stars,
and I wish I were Napoleon, or I wish that I had
been Napoleon, which does not mean that the utterer wishes that
he were like Napoleon, but that he wishes that he had lived
not in the his century but in the XVIIIth century. Grice is being specific
about this. It is true that an ordinary use of language, as Malcolm
suggests, cannot be self-contradictory unless the ordinary use of language is
defined by stipulation as not self-contradictory, in which case an appeal to
ordinary language becomes useless against this or that paradox by Philosopher.
I wish that I had been Napoleon seems to involve nothing but an ordinary use of
language by any standard but that of freedom from absurdity. I wish
that I had been Napoleon is not, as far as Grice can see, philosophical, but
something which may have been said and meant by numbers of ordinary
people. Yet, I wish that I had been Napoleon is open to the suspicion of
self-contradictoriness, absurdity, or some other kind of
meaninglessness. And in this context suspicion is all Grice needs. By
uttering I wish that I had been Napoleon U hardly means the same as he
would if he uttered I wish I were like Napoleon. I wish that I had been
Napoleon is suspiciously self-contradictory, absurd, or meaningless, if, as
uttered by an utterer in a century other than the XVIIIth century, say, the
utterer is understood as expressing the proposition that the utterer wishes
that he had lived in the XVIIIth century, and not in his century, in which case
he-1 wishes that he had not been him-1? But blame it on the
buletic. That Moore himself is not too happy with Malcolms criticism can
be witnessed by a cursory glimpse at hi reply to Malcolm. Grice is totally
against this view that Malcolm ascribes to Moore as a view that is too broad to
even claim to be true. Grices implicature is that Malcolm is appealing to
Oxonian turns of phrase, such as ordinary language, but not taking proper
Oxonian care in clarifying the nuances and stuff in dealing with, admittedly, a
non-Oxonian philosopher such as Moore. When dealing with Moore, Grice is not
necessarily concerned with scepticism. Time is unreal, e.g. is hardly a sceptic
utterance. Yet Grice lists it as one of Philosophers paradoxes. So, there are
various to consider here. Grice would start with common sense. That is what he
does when he reprints this essay in WOW, with his attending note in both the
preface and the Retrospective epilogue on how he organizes the themes and
strands. Common sense is one keyword there, with its attending realism.
Scepticism is another, with its attending empiricist idealism. It is intriguing
that in the first two essays opening Grices explorations in semantics and
metaphysics it seems its Malcolm, rather than the dryer Moore, who interests
Grice most. While he would provide exegeses of this or that dictum by Moore,
and indeed, Moore’s response to Malcolm, Grice seems to be more concerned with
applications of his own views. Notably in Philosophers paradoxes. The fatal
objection Grice finds for the paradox propounder (not necessarily a sceptic,
although a sceptic may be one of the paradox propounders) significantly rests
on Grices reductive analysis of meaning that
as ascribed to this or that utterer U. Grice elaborates on circumstances
that hell later take up in the Retrospective epilogue. I find myself not
understanding what I mean is dubiously acceptable. If meaning, Grice claims, is
about an utterer U intending to get his addressee A to believe that U ψ-s that
p, U must think there is a good chance that A will recognise what he is
supposed to believe, by, perhaps, being aware of the Us practice or by a
supplementary explanation which might come from U. In which case, U should not
be meaning what Malcolm claims U might mean. No utterer should intend his
addressee to believe what is conceptually impossible, or incoherent, or
blatantly false (Charles Is decapitation willed Charles Is death.), unless you
are Queen in Through the Looking Glass. I believe five impossible things before
breakfast, and I hope youll soon get the proper training to follow suit. Cf.
Tertulian, Credo, quia absurdum est. Admittedly, Grice edits the Philosophers
paradoxes essay. It is only Grices final objection which is repr. in WOW, even
if he provides a good detailed summary of the previous sections. Grice appeals
to Moore on later occasions. In Causal theory, Grice lists, as a third
philosophical mistake, the opinion by Malcolm that Moore did not know how to
use knowin a sentence. Grice brings up the same example again in Prolegomena.
The use of factive know of Moore may well be a misuse. While at Madison,
Wisconsin, Moore lectures at a hall eccentrically-built with indirect lighting
simulating sun rays, Moore infamously utters, I know that there is a window
behind that curtain, when there is not. But it is not the factiveness Grice is
aiming at, but the otiosity Malcolm misdescribes in the true, if baffling, I
know that I have two hands. In Retrospective epilogue, Grice uses M to
abbreviate Moore’s fairy godmother – along with G (Grice), A (Austin), R (Ryle)
and Q (Quine)! One simple way to approach Grices quandary with Malcolm’s
quandary with Moore is then to focus on know. How can Malcolm claim that Moore
is guilty of misusing know? The most extensive exploration by Grice on know is
in Grices third James lecture (but cf. his seminar on Knowledge and belief, and
his remarks on some of our beliefs needing to be true, in Meaning
revisited. The examinee knows that the battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815.
Nothing odd about that, nor about Moores uttering I know that these are my
hands. Grice is perhaps the only one of the Oxonian philosophers of Austins
play group who took common sense realsim so seriously, if only to crticise
Malcoms zeal with it. For Grice, common-sense realism = ordinary language,
whereas for the typical Austinian, ordinary language = the language of the man
in the street. Back at Oxford, Grice uses Malcolm to contest the usual
criticism that Oxford ordinary-language philosophers defend common-sense
realist assumptions just because the way non-common-sense realist philosopher’s
talk is not ordinary language, and even at Oxford. Cf. Flews reference to
Joness philosophical verbal rubbish in using self as a noun. Grice is
infuriated by all this unclear chatter, and chooses Malcolms mistreatment of
Moore as an example. Grice is possibly fearful to consider Austins claims directly!
In later essays, such as ‘the learned’ and ‘the lay,’ Grice goes back to the
topic criticising now the scientists jargon as an affront to the ordinary
language of the layman that Grice qua philosopher defends. Refs.: The obvious
source is the essay on scepticism in WoW, but there are allusions in
“Prejudices and predilections, and elsewhere, in The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
semantic:
Grice would freely use ‘semantic,’ and the root for ‘semantics,’ that Grice
does use, involves the richest root of all Grecian roots: the ‘semion.’ Liddell
and Scott have “τό σημεῖον,” Ion. σημήϊον , Dor. σα_μήϊον IG12(3).452 (Thera,
iv B.C.), σα_μεῖον IPE12.352.25 (Chersonesus, ii B.C.), IG5(1).1390.16
(Andania, i B.C.), σα_μᾶον CIG5168 (Cyrene); = σῆμα in all senses, and more
common in Prose, but never in Hom. or Hes.; and which they render as “mark by
which a thing is known,” Hdt.2.38;” they also have “τό σῆμα,” Dor. σᾶμα
Berl.Sitzb.1927.161 (Cyrene), etc.; which they render as “sign, mark, token,” “
Il.10.466, 23.326, Od.19.250, etc.” Grice lectured not only on Cat. But the
next, De Int. As Arsitotle puts it, an expression is a symbol (symbolon) or
sign (semeion) of an affections or impression (pathematon) of the soul
(psyche). An affection of the soul, of which a word is primarily a sign, are the same for the whole
of mankind, as is also objects (pragmaton) of which the affections is a
representation or likenes, image, or copiy (homoiomaton). [De Int., 1.16a4] while
Grice is NOT concerned about the semantics of utterers meaning (how could he,
when he analyses means in terms of
intends , he is about the semantics of
expression-meaning. Grices second stage (expression meaing) of his
programme about meaning begins with specifications of means as applied to x, a token
of X. He is having Tarski and Davidson in their elaborations of schemata
like ‘p’ ‘means’ that p. ‘Snow is white’ ‘means’ that snow is white,
and stuff! Grice was especially concerned with combinatories, for both unary
and dyadic operators, and with multiple quantifications within a first-order
predicate calculus with identity. Since in Grice’s initial elaboration on
meaning he relies on Stevenson, it is worth exploring how ‘semantics’ and
‘semiotics’ were interpreted by Peirce and the emotivists. Stevenson’s main
source is however in the other place, though, under Stevenson. Refs.: The main
sources are his lectures on language and reality – part of them repr. in WOW.
The keywords under ‘communication,’ and ‘signification,’ that Grice
occasionally uses ‘the total signification’ of a remark, above, BANC.
semiological:
or is it semiotics? Cf. semiological, semotic. Since Grice uses ‘philosophical
psychology’ and ‘philosopical biology,’ it may do to use ‘semiology,’ indeed
‘philosophical semiology,’ here. Oxonian
semiotics is unique. Holloway published his “Language and Intelligence” and
everyone was excited. It is best to see this as Grices psychologism. Grice
would rarely use ‘intelligent,’ less so the more pretentious, ‘intelligence,’
as a keyword. If he is doing it, it is because what he saw as the misuse of it
by Ryle and Holloway. Holloway, a PPE, is a tutorial fellow in philosophy at
All Souls. He acknowledges Ryle as his mentor. (Holloway also quotes from
Austin). Grice was amused that J. N. Findlay, in his review of Holloway’s essay
in “Mind,” compares Holloway to C. W. Morris, and cares to cite the two relevant
essay by Morris: The Foundation in the theory of signs, and Signs, Language,
and Behaviour. Enough for Grice to feel warmly justified in having chosen
another New-World author, Peirce, for his earlier Oxford seminar. Morris
studied under G. H. Mead. But is ‘intelligence’ part of The Griceian
Lexicon?Well, Lewis and Short have ‘interlegere,’ to chose between. Lewis and
Short have ‘interlĕgo , lēgi, lectum, 3, v. a., I’.which they render it as “to
cull or pluck off here and there (poet. and postclass.).in tmesi) uncis
Carpendae manibus frondes, interque legendae, Verg. G. 2, 366: “poma,” Pall.
Febr. 25, 16; id. Jun. 5, 1.intellĕgo (less correctly intellĭgo), exi, ectum
(intellexti for intellexisti, Ter. Eun. 4, 6, 30; Cic. Att. 13, 32, 3:
I.“intellexes for intellexisses,” Plaut. Cist. 2, 3, 81; subj. perf.:
“intellegerint,” Sall. H. Fragm. 1, 41, 23 Dietsch); “inter-lego,” “to see
into, perceive, understand.” I. Lit. A. Lewis and Short render as “to perceive,
understand, comprehend.” Cf. Grice on his handwriting being legible to few. And
The child is an adult as being UNintelligible until the creature is produced.
In “Aspects,” he mentions flat rationality, and certain other talents that are
more difficult for the philosopher to conceptualise, such as nose (i.e.
intuitiveness), acumen, tenacity, and such. Grices approach is Pological.
If Locke had used intelligent to refer to Prince Maurices parrot, Grice wants
to find criteria for intelligent as applied to his favourite type of P, rather
(intelligent, indeed rational.). Refs.: The most specific essay is his lecture
on Peirce, listed under ‘communication, above. A reference to ‘criteria of
intelligence relates. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
sense-datum:
this is Grice on sense-datum. Cf. sensum. Lewis and Short have “sentĭo,” which they
render, aptly, as “to sense,” ‘to discern by the senses; to feel, hear, see,
etc.; to perceive, be sensible of (syn. percipio).”
Note that Price is also cited by Grice in Personal identity. Grice: That pillar
box seems red to me. The locus classicus in the philosophical literature for
Grices implicatum. Grice introduces a dout-or-denial condition for an utterance
of a phenomenalist report (That pillar-box seems red to me). Grice attacks
neo-Wittgensteinian approaches that regard the report as _false_. In a long
excursus on implication, he compares the phenomenalist report with utterances
like He has beautiful handwriting (He is hopeless at philosophy), a
particularised conversational implicatum; My wife is in the kitchen or the
garden (I have non-truth-functional grounds to utter this), a generalised
conversational implicatum; She was poor but she was honest (a Great-War
witty (her poverty and her honesty contrast), a conventional implicatum; and
Have you stopped beating your wife? an old Oxonian conundrum. You have
been beating your wife, cf. Smith has not ceased from eating iron, a
presupposition. More importantly, he considers different tests for each
concoction! Those for the conversational implicatum will become crucial: cancellability,
calculability, non-detachability, and indeterminacy. In the proceedings he
plays with something like the principle of conversational helpfulness, as
having a basis on a view of conversation as rational co-operation, and as
giving the rationale to the implicatum. Past the excursus, and back to the
issue of perception, he holds a conservative view as presented by Price at
Oxford. One interesting reprint of Grices essay is in Daviss volume on Causal
theories, since this is where it belongs! White’s response is usually ignored,
but shouldnt. White is an interesting Australian philosopher at Oxford who is
usually regarded as a practitioner of ordinary-language philosophy. However, in
his response, White hardly touches the issue of the implicature with which
Grice is primarily concerned. Grice found that a full reprint from the PAS in a
compilation also containing the James Harvard would be too repetitive.
Therefore, he omits the excursus on implication. However, the way Grice
re-formulates what that excursus covers is very interesting. There is the
conversational implicatum, particularised (Smith has beautiful handwriting) and
generalised (My wife is in the kitchen or in the garden). Then there is the
præsuppositum, or presupposition (You havent stopped beating your wife).
Finally, there is the conventional implicatum (She was poor, but she was
honest). Even at Oxford, Grices implicature goes, philosophers ‒ even Oxonian
philosophers ‒ use imply for all those different animals! Warnock had attended
Austins Sense and Sensibilia (not to be confused with Sense and Sensibility by
Austen), which Grice found boring, but Warnock didnt because Austin reviews his
"Berkeley." But Warnock, for obvious reasons, preferred
philosophical investigations with Grice. Warnock reminisces that Grice once
tells him, and not on a Saturday morning, either, How clever language is, for
they find that ordinary language does not need the concept of a visum. Grice
and Warnock spent lovely occasions exploring what Oxford has as the philosophy
of perception. While Grice later came to see philosophy of perception as a bit
or an offshoot of philosophical psychology, the philosophy of perception is
concerned with that treasured bit of the Oxonian philosophers lexicon, the
sense-datum, always in the singular! The cause involved is crucial. Grice plays
with an evolutionary justification of the material thing as the denotatum of a
perceptual judgement. If a material thing causes the sense-datum of a nut, that
is because the squarrel (or squirrel) will not be nourished by the sense datum
of the nut; only by the nut! There are many other items in the Grice Collection
that address the topic of perception – notably with Warnock, and criticizing
members of the Ryle group like Roxbee-Cox (on vision, cf. visa ‒ taste, and
perception, in general – And we should not forget that Grice contributed a
splendid essay on the distinction of the senses to Butlers Analytic philosophy,
which in a way, redeemed a rather old-fashioned discipline by shifting it to
the idiom of the day, the philosophy of perception: a retrospective, with
Warnock, the philosophy of perception, : perception, the philosophy of
perception, visum. Warnock was possibly the only philosopher at Oxford
Grice felt congenial enough to engage in different explorations in the
so-called philosophy of perception. Their joint adventures involved the
disimplicature of a visum. Grice later approached sense data in more
evolutionary terms: a material thing is to be vindicated transcendentally, in
the sense that it is a material thing (and not a sense datum or collection thereof)
that nourishes a creature like a human. Grice was particularly grateful to
Warnock. By reprinting the full symposium on “Causal theory” of perception in
his influential s. of Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Warnock had spread Grices
lore of implicature all over! In some parts of the draft he uses more on visa, vision,
vision, with Warnock, vision. Of the five senses, Grice and Warnock are
particularly interested in seeing. As Grice will put it later, see is a
factive. It presupposes the existence of the event reported after the
that-clause; a visum, however, as an intermediary between the material thing
and the perceiver does not seem necessary in ordinary discourse. Warnock will
reconsider Grices views too (On what is seen, in Sibley). While Grice uses
vision, he knows he is interested in Philosophers paradox concerning seeing,
notably Witters on seeing as, vision, taste and the philosophy of perception, vision,
seeing. As an Oxonian philosopher, Grice was of course more interested in
seeing than in vision. He said that Austin would criticise even the use of
things like sensation and volition, taste, The Grice Papers, keyword: taste,
the objects of the five senses, the philosophy of perception, perception, the
philosophy of perception; philosophy of perception, vision, taste,
perception. Mainly with Warnock. Warnock repr. Grice’s “Causal theory”
in his influential Reading in Philosophy, The philosophy of perception, perception,
with Warnock, with Warner; perception. Warnock learns about perception
much more from Grice than from Austin, taste, The philosophy of perception, the
philosophy of perception, notes with Warnock on visum, : visum, Warnock, Grice,
the philosophy of perception. Grice kept the lecture notes to
a view of publishing a retrospective. Warnock recalled Grice
saying, how clever language is! Grice took the offer by Harvard University
Press, and it was a good thing he repr. part of “Causal theory.” However, the
relevant bits for his theory of conversation as rational co-operation lie in
the excursus which he omitted. What is Grices implicature: that one should
consider the topic rather than the method here, being sense datum, and
causation, rather than conversational helpfulness. After all, That pillar box
seems red to me, does not sound very helpful. But the topic of Causal theory is
central for his view of conversation as rational co-operation. Why? P1 gets
an impression of danger as caused by the danger out there. He communicates the
danger to P1, causing in P2 some behaviour. Without
causation, or causal links, the very point of offering a theory of conversation
as rational co-operation seems minimized. On top, as a metaphysician, he was
also concerned with cause simpliciter. He was especially proud that Price’s
section on the casual theory of perception, from his Belief, had been repr.
along with his essay in the influential volume by Davis on “Causal theories.” In
“Actions and events,” Grice further explores cause now in connection with Greek
aitia. As Grice notes, the original usage of this very Grecian item is the one
we find in rebel without a cause, cause-to, rather than cause-because. The
two-movement nature of causing is reproduced in the conversational exchange: a
material thing causes a sense datum which causes an expression which gets
communicated, thus causing a psychological state which will cause a behaviour.
This causation is almost representational. A material thing or a situation
cannot govern our actions and behaviours, but a re-præsentatum of it might.
Govern our actions and behaviour is Grices correlate of what a team of
North-Oxfordshire cricketers can do for North-Oxfordshire: what North
Oxfordshire cannot do for herself, Namesly, engage in a game of cricket! In
Retrospective epilogue he casts doubts on the point of his causal approach. It
is a short paragraph that merits much exploration. Basically, Grice is saying
his causalist approach is hardly an established thesis. He also proposes a
similar serious objection to his view in Some remarks about the senses, the
other essay in the philosophy of perception in Studies. As he notes, both
engage with some fundamental questions in the philosophy of perception, which
is hardly the same thing as saying that they provide an answer to each
question! Grice: The issue with which I have 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 I think need to be examined
in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis
which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general
kind. Examples which occur to me are the following six. You cannot see a knife ‘as’
a knife, though you may see what is not a knife ‘as’ a knife (keyword: ‘seeing
as’). When he said he ‘knew’ that the objects before him were human hands,
Moore was guilty of misusing ‘know.’ For an occurrence to be properly said to
have a ‘cause,’ it must be something abnormal or unusual (keyword: ‘cause’). For
an action to be properly described as one for which the agent is ‘responsible,’
it must be the sort of action for which people are condemned (keyword:
responsibility). What is actual is not also possible (keyword: actual). What is
known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to be the case (keyword:
‘know’ – cf. Urmson on ‘scalar set’). And cf. with the extra examples he
presents in “Prolegomena.” I have no doubt that there will be other candidates
besides the six which I have mentioned. I must emphasize that I am not saying that
all these examples are importantly similar to the thesis which I have been
criticizing, only that, for all I know, they may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am 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
detectcd, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuances
they are. “Causal theory”, knowledge and belief, knowledge, belief,
philosophical psychology. Grice: the doxastic implicatum. I know only
implicates I do not believe. The following is a mistake by a philosopher. What
is known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to be the case. The
topic had attracted the attention of some Oxonian philosophers such as Urmson
in Parenthetical verbs. Urmson speaks of a scale: I know can be used
parenthetically, as I believe can. For Grice, to utter I believe is obviously
to make a weaker conversational move than you would if you utter I know.
And in this case, an approach to informativeness in terms of entailment is in
order, seeing that I know entails I believe. A is thus allowed to infer that
the utterer is not in a position to make the stronger claim. The mechanism is
explained via his principle of conversational helpfulness. Philosophers tend
two over-use these two basic psychological states, attitudes, or stances. Grice
is concerned with Gettier-type cases, and also the factivity of know versus the
non-factivity of believe. Grice follows the lexicological innovations by
Hintikka: the logic of belief is doxastic; the logic of knowledge is epistemic.
The last thesis that Grice lists in Causal theory that he thinks rests on a big
mistake he formulates as: What is known by me to be the case is NOT also
believed by me to be the case. What are his attending remarks? Grice writes:
The issue with which I have 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 I think need to be examined in order to see whether
or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been
discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind. An example
which occurs to me is the following: What is known by me to be the case is not
also believed by me to be the case. I must emphasise that I am not saying that
this example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have been
criticising, only that, for all I know, it may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am 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! The ætiological implicatum. Grice. For an occurrence to be
properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual. This
is an example Grice lists in Causal theory but not in Prolegomena. But cf.
‘responsible’ – and Hart and Honoré on accusation -- accusare "call
to account, make complaint against," from ad causa, from “ad,” with regard
to, as in ‘ad-’) + causa, a cause; a lawsuit,’ v. cause. For an occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it
must be something abnormal or unusual. Similar commentary to his example on
responsible/condemnable apply. The objector may stick with the fact that he is
only concerned with proper utterances. Surely Grice wants to go to a
pre-Humeian account of causation, possible Aristotelian, aetiologia. Where
everything has a cause, except, for Aristotle, God! What are his attending
remarks? Grice writes: The issue with which I have 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 I think need to be examined
in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis
which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general
kind. An example which occurs to me is the following: What is known by me to be
the case is not also believed by me to be the case. 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 my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophising. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am 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! Causal theory, cause, causality, causation, conference, colloquium,
Stanford, cause, metaphysics, the abnormal/unusual implicatum, ætiology,
ætiological implicatum. Grice: the ætiological implicatum. Grices explorations
on cause are very rich. He is concerned with some alleged misuse of cause in
ordinary language. If as Hume suggests, to cause is to will, one would say that
the decapitation of Charles I wills his death, which sounds harsh, if not
ungrammatical, too. Grice later relates cause to the Greek aitia, as he should.
He notes collocations like rebel without a cause. For the Greeks, or Grecians,
as he called them, and the Griceians, it is a cause to which one should be
involved in elucidating. A ‘cause to’ connects with the idea of freedom.
Grice was constantly aware of the threat of mechanism, and his idea was to
provide philosophical room for the idea of finality, which is not mechanistically
derivable. This leads him to discussion of overlap and priority of, say, a
physical-cum-physiological versus a psychological theory explaining this or
that piece of rational behaviour. Grice can be Wittgensteinian when citing
Anscombes translation: No psychological concept without the behaviour the
concept is brought to explain. It is best to place his later treatment of
cause with his earlier one in Causal theory. It is surprising Grice does not
apply his example of a mistake by a philosopher to the causal bit of his causal
theory. Grice states the philosophical mistake as follows: For an occurrence to
be properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual.
This is an example Grice lists in Causal theory but not in Prolegomena. For an
occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal
or unusual. A similar commentary to his example on responsible/condemnable
applies: The objector may stick with the fact that he is only concerned with
PROPER utterances. Surely Grice wants to embrace a pre-Humeian account of
causation, possible Aristotelian. Keyword: Aitiologia, where everything has a
cause, except, for Aristotle, God! What are his attending remarks? Grice
writes: The issue with which I have 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 Grice 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.
One example which occurs to Grice is the following: For an occurrence to be
properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual. Grice
feels he must emphasise that he is 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 my
objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of
more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not condemning this
kind of manoeuvre. I am 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! Re:
responsibility/condemnation. Cf. Mabbott, Flew on punishment, Philosophy. And
also Hart. At Corpus, Grice enjoys his tutor Hardies resourcefulness in the
defence of what may be a difficult position, a characteristic illustrated by an
incident which Hardie himself once told Grice about himself. Hardie had parked
his car and gone to a cinema. Unfortunately, Hardie had parked his car on top
of one of the strips on the street by means of which traffic-lights were, at
the time, controlled by the passing traffic. As a result, the lights are
jammed, and it requires four policemen to lift Hardies car off the strip. The police
decides to prosecute. Grice indicated to Hardie that this hardly surprised him
and asked him how he fared. Oh, Hardie says, I got off. Then Grice asks Hardie
how on earth he managed that! Quite simply, Hardie answers. I just invoked
Mills method of difference. The police charged me with causing an obstruction
at 4 p.m. I told the police that, since my car was parked at 2 p.m., it could
not have been my car which caused the obstruction at 4 p.m. This relates to an
example in Causal theory that he Grice does not discuss in Prolegomena, but
which may relate to Hart, and closer to Grice, to Mabbotts essay on Flew on
punishment, in Philosophy. Grice states the philosophical mistake as follows:
For an action to be properly described as one for which the agent is
responsible, it must be thc sort of action for which people are condemned. As
applied to Hardie. Is Hardie irresponsible? In any case, while condemnable, he
was not! Grice writes: The issue with which I have 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 I think need to be examined
in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis
which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general
kind. An example which occurs to me is the following: For an action to be
properly described as one for which the agent is responsible, it must be the
sort of action for which people are condemned. 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 my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am 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. The modal example, what is actual is not also possible, should discussed
under Indicative conditonals, Grice on Macbeth’s implicature: seeing a dagger
as a dagger. Grice elaborates on this in Prolegomena, but the austerity of
Causal theory is charming, since he does not give a quote or source. Obviously,
Witters. Grice writes: Witters might say that one cannot see a knife as a knife,
though one may see what is not a knife as a knife. The issue, Grice notes, with
which I have 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 I think need to be examined in order to see whether or not
they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be
amenable to treatment of the same general kind. An example which occurs to
Grice is the following: You cannot see a knife as a knife, though you may see
what is not a knife as a knife. Grice feels that he must emphasise that he is
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 my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. I am 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! Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?
Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou
not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of
the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see
thee yet, in form as palpable as this which now I draw. Thou marshallst me the
way that I was going; and such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made
the fools o the other senses, Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, and
on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before. Theres no
such thing: It is the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now oer
the one halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtaind
sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecates offerings, and witherd murder,
Alarumd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howls his watch, thus with his
stealthy pace. With Tarquins ravishing strides, towards his design Moves
like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they
walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present
horror from the time, Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives: Words
to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. I go, and it is done; the bell
invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven
or to hell. The Moore example is used both in “Causal theory” and “Prolegomena.”
But the use in “Causal Theory” is more austere: Philosophers mistake: Malcolm:
When Moore said he knew that the objects before him were human hands, he was
guilty of misusing the word know. Grice writes: The issue with which I have
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 I think need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are
sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable
to treatment of the same general kind. An example which occurs to me is the following:
When Moore said he knew that the objects before him were human hands, he was
guilty of misusing the word know. 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 my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre. Grice 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! So surely Grice is meaning: I know that the objects before me are
human hands as uttered by Moore is possibly true. Grice was amused by the fact
that while at Madison, Wisc., Moore gave the example: I know that behind those
curtains there is a window. Actually he was wrong, as he soon realised when the
educated Madisonians corrected him with a roar of unanimous laughter. You see,
the lecture hall of the University of Wisconsin at Madison is a rather, shall
we say, striking space. The architect designed the lecture hall with a parapet
running around the wall just below the ceiling, cleverly rigged with indirect
lighting to create the illusion that sun light is pouring in through windows
from outside. So, Moore comes to give a lecture one sunny day. Attracted as he
was to this eccentric architectural detail, Moore gives an illustration of
certainty as attached to common sense. Pointing to the space below the ceiling,
Moore utters. We know more things than we think we know. I know, for example,
that the sunlight shining in from outside proves At which point he was somewhat startled (in
his reserved Irish-English sort of way) when his audience burst out laughing!
Is that a proof of anything? Grice is especially concerned with I seem He needs
a paradeigmatic sense-datum utterance, and intentionalist as he was, he finds
it in I seem to see a red pillar box before me. He is relying on Paul. Grice
would generalise a sense datum by φ I seem to perceive that the alpha is phi.
He agrees that while cause may be too much, any sentence using because will do:
At a circus: You seem to be seeing that an elephant is coming down the street
because an elephant is coming down the street. Grice found the causalist theory
of perception particularly attractive since its objection commits one same
mistake twice: he mischaracterises the cancellable implicatum of both seem and
cause! While Grice is approaching the philosophical item in the
philosophical lexicon, perceptio, he is at this stage more interested in
vernacular that- clauses such as sensing that, or even more vernacular ones
like seeming that, if not seeing that! This is of course philosophical (cf.
aesthetikos vs. noetikos). L and S have “perceptĭo,” f. perceptio, as used by
Cicero (Ac. 2, 7, 22) translating catalepsis, and which they render as “a
taking, receiving; a gathering in, collecting;’ frugum fruetuumque reliquorum,
Cic. Off. 2, 3, 12: fructuum;’ also as perception, comprehension, cf.: notio,
cognition; animi perceptiones, notions, ideas; cognitio aut perceptio, aut si
verbum e verbo volumus comprehensio, quam κατάληψιν illi vocant; in philosophy,
direct apprehension of an object by the mind, Zeno Stoic.1.20, Luc. Par. 4,
al.; τῶν μετεώρων;” ἀκριβὴς κ. Certainty; pl., perceptions, Stoic.2.30, Luc.
Herm.81, etc.; introduced into Latin by Cicero, Plu. Cic. 40. As for “causa”
Grice is even more sure he was exploring a time-honoured philosophical topic.
The entry in L and S is “causa,’ perh. root “cav-“ of “caveo,” prop. that which
is defended or protected; cf. “cura,” and that they render as, unhelpfully, as “cause,”
“that by, on account of, or through which any thing takes place or is done;” “a
cause, reason, motive, inducement;” also, in gen., an occasion, opportunity;
oeffectis; factis, syn. with ratio, principium,
fons, origo, caput; excusatio, defensio; judicium, controversia, lis; partes,
actio; condicio, negotium, commodum, al.); correlated to aition, or aitia,
cause, δι᾽ ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν,” cf. Pl. Ti. 68e, Phd. 97a sq.; on the four
causes of Arist. v. Ph. 194b16, Metaph. 983a26: αἰ. τοῦ γενέσθαι or γεγονέναι
Pl. Phd. 97a; τοῦ μεγίστου ἀγαθοῦ τῇ πόλει αἰτία ἡ κοινωνία Id. R. 464b: αἰτίᾳ
for the sake of, κοινοῦ τινος ἀγαθοῦ.” Then there is “αἴτιον” (cf. ‘αἴτιος’) is
used like “αἰτία” in the sense of cause, not in that of ‘accusation.’ Grice
goes back to perception at a later stage, reminiscing on his joint endeavours
with akin Warnock, Ps karulise elatically, potching and cotching obbles, Pirotese,
Pirotese, creature construction, philosophical psychology. Grice was
fascinated by Carnaps Ps which karulise elatically. Grice adds potching for
something like perceiving and cotching for something like cognising. With
his essay Some remarks about the senses, Grice introduces the question by
which criterion we distinguish our five senses into the contemporary philosophy
of perception. The literature concerning this question is not very numerous but
the discussion is still alive and was lately inspired by the volume The
Senses2. There are four acknowledged possible answers to the question how we
distinguish the senses, all of them already stated by Grice. First, the senses
are distinguished by the properties we perceive by them. Second, the senses are
distinguished by the phenomenal qualities of the perception itself or as Grice
puts it “by the special introspectible character of the experiences” Third, the
senses are distinguished by the physical stimuli that are responsible for the
relevant perceptions. Fourth, The senses are distinguished by the sense-organs
that are (causally) involved in the production of the relevant perceptions.
Most contributions discussing this issue reject the third and fourth answers in
a very short argumentation. Nearly all philosophers writing on the topic vote
either for the first or the second answer. Accordingly, most part of the debate
regarding the initial question takes the form of a dispute between these two
positions. Or” was a big thing in Oxford philosophy. The only known
published work of Wood, our philosophy tutor at Christ Church, was an essay in
Mind, the philosophers journal, entitled “Alternative Uses of “Or” ”, a work
which was every bit as indeterminate as its title. Several years later he
published another paper, this time for the Aristotelian Society, entitled On being
forced to a conclusion. Cf. Grice and Wood on the demands of conversational
reason. Wood, The force of linguistic rules. Wood, on the implicatum of or in
review in Mind of Connor, Logic. The five senses, as Urmson notes, are to see
that the sun is shining, to hear that the car collided, to feel that her pulse
is beating, to smell that something has been smoking and to taste that. An
interesting piece in that it was commissioned by Butler, who knew Grice from
his Oxford days. Grice cites Wood and Albritton. Grice is concerned with a
special topic in the philosophy of perception, notably the identification of
the traditional five senses: vision, audition, taste, smell, and tact. He
introduces what is regarded in the philosophical literature as the first thought-experiment,
in terms of the senses that Martians may have. They have two pairs of eyes: are
we going to allow that they see with both pairs? Grice introduces a
sub-division of seeing: a Martian x-s an object with his upper pair of eyes,
but he y-s an object with the lower pair of eyes. In his exploration, he takes
a realist stance, which respects the ordinary discursive ways to approach
issues of perception. A second interesting point is that in allowing this to be
repr. in Butlers Analytic philosophy, Grice is demonstrating that analytic
philosophers should NOT be obsessed with ordinary language. Butlers
compilation, a rather dry one, is meant as a response to the more linguistic
oriented ones by Flew (Grices first tutee at St. Johns, as it happens), also
published by Blackwell, and containing pieces by Austin, and company. One
philosopher who took Grice very seriously on this was Coady, in his The senses
of the Martians. Grice provides a serious objection to his own essay in
Retrospective epilogue We see with our eyes. I.e. eye is teleologically
defined. He notes that his way of distinguishing the senses is hardly an
established thesis. Grice actually advances this topic in his earlier Causal
theory. Grice sees nothing absurd in the idea that a non-specialist concept
should contain, so to speak, a blank space to be filled in by the specialist;
that this is so, e.g., in the case of the concept of seeing is perhaps
indicated by the consideration that if we were in doubt about the correctness
of speaking of a certain creature with peculiar sense-organs as seeing objects,
we might well wish to hear from a specialist a comparative account of the human
eye and the relevant sense-organs of the creature in question. He returns to
the point in Retrospective epilogue with a bit of doxastic humility, We see
with our eyes is analytic ‒ but philosophers should take that more
seriously. Grice tested the playmates of his children, aged 7
and 9, with Nothing can be green and red all over. Instead, Morley
Bunker preferred philosophy undergrads. Aint that boring? To
give examples: Summer follows Spring was judged analytic by Morley-Bunkers
informants, as cited by Sampson, in Making sense (Clarendon) by highly
significant majorities in each group of Subjectss, while We see with our eyes
was given near-even split votes by each group. Over all, the philosophers were
somewhat more consistent with each other than the non-philosophers. But that
global finding conceals results for individual sentences that sometimes
manifested the opposed tendency. Thus, Thunderstorms are electrical
disturbances in the atmosphere is judged analytic by a highly significant
majority of the non-philosophers, while a non-significant majority of the
philosophers deemed it non-analytic or synthetic. In this case, it seems,
philosophical training, surely not brain-washing, induces the realisation that
well-established results of contemporary science are not necessary truths. In
other cases, conversely, cliches of current philosophical education impose their
own mental blinkers on those who undergo it: Nothing can be completely red
and green all over is judged analytic by a significant majority of
philosophers but only by a non-significant majority of non-philosophers. All in
all, the results argue strongly against the notion that our inability to decide
consistently whether or not some statement is a necessary truth derives
from lack of skill in articulating our underlying knowledge of the rules of our
language. Rather, the inability comes from the fact that the question as posed
is unreal. We choose to treat a given statement as open to question or as
unchallengeable in the light of the overall structure of beliefs which we
have individually evolved in order to make sense of our individual experience. Even
the cases which seem clearly analytic or synthetic are cases which individuals
judge alike because the relevant experiences are shared by the whole community,
but even for such cases one can invent hypothetical or suppositional future
experiences which, if they should be realised, would cause us to revise our
judgements. This is not intended to call into question the special status of
the truths of logic, such as either Either it is raining or it is not. He
is of course inclined to accept the traditional view according to which logical
particles such as not and or are distinct from the bulk of the vocabulary in
that the former really are governed by clear-cut inference rules. Grice
does expand on the point. Refs.: Under sense-datum, there are groups of essays.
The obvious ones are the two essays on the philosophy of perception in WOW. A
second group relates to his research with G. J. Warnock, where the keywords are
‘vision,’ ‘taste,’ and ‘perception,’ in general. There is a more recent group
with this research with R. Warner. ‘Visum’ and ‘visa’ are good keywords, and
cf. the use of ‘senses’ in “Some remarks about the senses,” in BANC.
shaggy
dog: This is the story that Grice tells in his lecture. He uses a ‘shaggy-dog’
story to explain TWO main notions: that of ‘reference’ or denotatio, and that
of predicatio. He had explored that earlier when discussing, giving an
illustration “Smith is happy”, the idea of ‘value,’ as correspondence, where he
adds the terms for ‘denote’ and ‘predicatio,’ or actually, ‘designatio’ and
‘indicatio’, need to be “explained within the theory.” In the utterance ‘Smith
is happy,’ the utterer DESIGNATES an item, Smith. The utterer also INDICATES
some class, ‘being happy.’ Grice introduces a shorthand, ‘assign’, or
‘assignatio,’ previous to the value-satisfaction, to involve both the
‘designatio’ and the ‘indicatio’. U assigns the item Smith to the class ‘being
happy.’ U’s intention involves A’s belief that U believes that “the item
belongs to the class, or that he ASSIGNS the item to the class. A
predicate, such as 'shaggy,' in my shaggy-dog story, is a part of a bottom-up,
or top-bottom, as I prefer, analysis of this or that sentences, and a
predicate, such as 'shaggy,' is the only indispensable 'part,' or 'element,' as
I prefer, since a predicate is the only 'pars orationis,' to use the old
phrase, that must appear in every sentence. In a later lecture
he ventures with ‘reference.’ Lewis and Short have “rĕferre,” rendered as “to
bear, carry, bring, draw, or give back,” in a “transf.” usage, they render as
“to make a reference, to refer (class.),” asa in “de rebus et obscuris et
incertis ad Apollinem censeo referendum; “ad quem etiam Athenienses publice de
majoribus rebus semper rettulerunt,” Cic. Div. 1, 54, 122.” While Grice uses
‘Fido,’ he could have used ‘Pegasus’ (Martin’s cat, as it happens) and apply
Quine’s adage: we could have appealed to the ex hypothesi unanalyzable,
irreducible attribute of being Pegasus, adopting, for its expression, the verb
'is-Pegasus', or 'pegasizes'. And Grice could have played with ‘predicatio’ and
‘subjectio.’ Grice on subject. Lewis and Short have “sūbĭcĭo,” (less
correctly subjĭcĭo ; post-Aug. sometimes sŭb- ), jēci, jectum, 3, v. a.
sub-jacio. which they render as “to
throw, lay, place, or bring under or near (cf. subdo),” and in philosophy, “subjectum
, i, n. (sc. verbum), as “that which is spoken of, the foundation or subject of
a proposition;” “omne quicquid dicimus
aut subjectum est aut de subjecto aut in subjecto est. Subjectum est prima
substantia, quod ipsum nulli accidit alii inseparabiliter, etc.,” Mart. Cap. 4,
§ 361; App. Dogm. Plat. 3, p. 34, 4 et saep.—.” Note that for Mart. Cap. the
‘subject,’ unlike the ‘predicate’ is not a ‘syntactical category.’ “Subjectum
est prima substantia,” The subject is a prote ousia. As for correlation, Grice
ends up with a reductive analysis. By uttering utterance-token V, the
utterer U correlates predicate P1 with (and only with) each member of
P2 ≡ (∃R)(∃R') (1) U effects that (∀x)(R P1x ≡
x ∈ P1) and (2) U
intends (1), and (3) U intends that (∀y)(R'
P1y ≡ y ∈
P1), where R' P1 is an expression-type such that utterance-token V is a
sequence consisting of an expression-token p1 of expression-type P1 and an
expression-token p2 of expression-type P2, the R-co-relatum of which is a
set of which y is a member. And he is back with ‘denotare. Lewis and Short have
“dēnŏtare,” which they render as “to mark, set a mark on, with chalk, color,
etc.: “pedes venalium creta,”
It is interesting to trace Grice’s earliest investigations on this. Grice and
Strawson stage a number of joint seminars on topics related to the notions of
meaning, categories, and logical form. Grice and Strawson engage in systematic
and unsystematic philosophical exploration. From these discussions springs work
on predication and categories, one or two reflections of which are acknowledge
at two places (re: the reductive analysis of a ‘particular,’ “the tallest man
that did, does, or will exist” --) in Strawson’s “Particular and general” for
The Aristotelian Society – and “visible” as Grice puts it, but not
acknowledged, in Strawson’s “Individuals: an essay in descriptive
metaphysics.””
soul: Grice was not a psychologist. 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 ‘psyche’ is life!, as per “ψυχή, 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. The third problem concerns some respect
for Grices 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. B and D are is
each predicate-constant in some law L in some psychological theory θ. This
or that instantiable of B or D may well be a set or a property or neither. Way
of Ramseyified naming and way of Ramseyified definition. Grices way of
Ramseyified naming: There is just one predicate-constant boule and just
one predicate-consant doxa such that nomological generalization L introducing
this or that predicate constant via implicit definition in
theory θ obtains and let boule be Namesd buletic and doxa be Namesd doxastic. Uniqueness is
essential since the buletic and the doxastic are assigned as this or that
Namess for this or that particular instantiable. But one can dispense with
uniqueness. Grices way of Ramseyified description. x holds a buletic
attitude just in case there is a predicate-constant boule introduced via
implicit definition by nomological generalisation or law within
theory θ such that nomological generalization L obtains and x
instantiates the boule and x holds a doxastic attitude just in case there is a
doxa introduced by implicit definition by nomological generalisation L in
theory θ such that nomological generalization L obtains and G
instantiates the doxa. 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 very many 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 had warned that his interpretation of Prichards willing
that as a state should not preclude a physicalist analysis, but in Method it is
all against physicalism. Grices concern
is with every-day psychological explanation, an explanation which employs this
or that every-day psychological principle. By such a principle Grice means a
relatively stable body of generally-accepted principles, of which the following
are examples. If G desires p, and believes (if p, q) other things being equal,
G desires q. If G desires p and desires q, other things being equal, G acts on
the stronger of the two desires if G acts on either. If G stares at a coloured
surface and subsequently stares at a white surface, other things being equal, G
will have an after-image. Grice do not intend to suggest that every-day
principle is as simple and easy to formulate as these examples. As Grice
repeatedly emphasises, the principles we explicitly or implicitly employ are
many, varied, rich, and subtle. Take desire. In every-day explanation we
exploit an immense richness in the family of expressions that might be thought
of as the wanting family; this Jeffrey-type 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. Grice remarks that the likeness and
differences within this family demand careful attention. The systematic
exposition of these likenesses and differences is itself an important and not
unpleasant philosophical task. But we are concerned with Grices overall view of
psychological explanation, and, to see what Grice thinks, it will be useful
first to consider how we would explain the behaviour of a certain sort of
robot. Suppose we are presented with a rather peculiar robot, and a diagram
that we can use to predict and explain its behaviour. The robot is peculiar in
that it has a panel of lights on its forehead ‒ say 64 lights in an 8x8
pattern. Each square represents a possible configuration of lights, and the
diagram correlates possible configurations with each other. Some squares are
correlated with more than one other square. E. g. ClcC2 means that configuration
C is followed by C1 or C2. The diagram describes a finite, non-deterministic
automaton. No transition probabilities are given. We can use the diagram to
predict and explain the configurations that appear on the robots forehead
because the robot is so constructed that the configurations succeed one
another in the ways represented in the diagram. So, if we observe configuration
C, we can predict that C1 or C2 will follow. If we observe Cl, we can explain
its occurrence by pointing out that C must have preceded it. All we can explain
so far are configurations of lights. Can we explain behaviour, e. g., the
robots raising its left arm? Suppose we are provided with a table which has
entries like: if configuraton C occurs at t, the robot raises its arm at t+1.
We succeed in predicting and explaining the robots behaviour, except that
occasionally our predictions are falsified. The robot does not always work
according to the diagram. Temporary electronic defects and vagaries account for
the falsified predications. The diagram and table represent the way the robot
is designed to work, not the way it always does work. Apart from the infrequent
electronically-explained lapses, explanation and prediction proceed untroubled
until one day a large number of our predictions are falsified. Suspecting a
massive electronic disorder, we return the robot. The manufacturer explains
that the robot was programmed to be self-regulating. The robot has an internal
representation of the diagram and table we were given, and it was also
programmed to use this or that evaluative principle to determine whether to
operate in accord with the diagram and table. E.g., suppose the robot is in
configuration C and that the immediate successor of C is C 1. The robot
determines by this or that evaluative principle not to move into Cl, but to
arrive at C2 instead. The robot was engineered so that it will in certain
situations employ this or that evaluative principle, and so its states will
change, in accord with the results of its evaluations. When we ask for the
evaluative principle, it is given to us, but it does not improve our predictive
power as much as we may have hoped. The robot has the power to formulate a new
subsidiary evaluative principle. It formulates this new principle using its original
evaluative principle plus information about the environment and the
consequences of its past actions. We may simply not know, at any given time,
exactly what subsidiary principle the robot is employing. The robot may to some
extent revise or replace its original evaluative principle, i.e., it may, in
the light of a principles, original or subsidiary, plus information about its
environment and past actions, revise or replace its original principle. So we
may not know exactly what original principles the robot is using. When we
complain that we have lost our ability to predict and explain the robots
behaviour, we are told that the situation is not so bad. First, in programming
the robot, an evaluative principle is made immune to revision and replacement,
so we can always count on the robots operating with this principle. Second, we
are not at a total loss to determine what evaluative principle-subsidiary or
otherwise-the robot employs. We possess the diagram and table as well as
knowledge of the original evaluative principle. The robot uses the diagram,
table, and principles to arrive at a new principle, and we can replicate this
process. We can replicate the processes that lead the robot to deviate from the
diagram and table. To the extent that we have identified the robots evaluative
procedure, we can use it just as the robot does to determine whether it will
act in accord with the diagram and table. Of course, there is the problem of
determining when the robot will employ its evaluative principle, but we might
be provided with a new table with entries like: if C occurs at t, the robot
will employ its evaluative principle at t+1. We can often predict and explain
the robots behaviour just as we did before the evaluative principle complicated
the picture, for the robot does not always employ its evaluative principle to
diverge from the diagram and table. On the contrary, it was designed to
minimize the use of the principle since their use requires significant time and
energy. An important part of Grices view of every-day psychological explanation
can be put this way. Such explanation is similar to the explanation and
prediction of the robots behaviour. There are a few points to note here. An
every-day psychological principle plays a role in explanation and prediction
that is similar to the role of the diagram and table. Think of the robots
lights as representing a psychological state. Then the diagram and table
express relations among complexes consisting of a psychological state and
behaviour. An everyday psychological principle clearly expresses such a
relations, although this is not all it does. People use an evaluative
principle in ways analogous to the use the robot makes of his. This point is an
essential part of Grices view of rationality. Grice holds that the picture of
rationality given us by Kantotle as something which essentially functions to
regulate, direct, and control a pre-rational impulse, an inclination, and a
disposition, is the right picture. One of the things an everyday psychological
principle give us is a specification of how a pre-rational soul impulse,
inclination, or disposition operates, just as the diagram and table represent
how the robot operates apart from employing its evaluative principle. People
can, through deliberation, rationally regulate, direct, control and monitor a
pre-rational pattern of thought or action just as the robot can regulate,
direct, control and monitor its operation in accord with the diagram and table.
So what is this evaluative principle people employ? It is included among what
we have been calling an everyday psychological principle, for it does not
merely specify how our pre-rational part operates. Consider e.g: if a G
believes p and that (if p, q) and G believes ~q, G should stop believing
p or stop believing q. Conformity to this principle is a criterion of
rationality, although this is not to say that the principle may not have
exceptions in quite special circumstances. One important evaluative principle
is the conception of eudæmonia. Grice suggests that eudæmonia consists in
having a set of ends meeting certain conditions ‒ where an important
necessary condition is that the set of ends be suitable for the direction of
life, and much of the reflection by Grice is devoted to explaining this
condition. Grice suggests that if an individual asks what it is for him to be
happy, the answer consists in identifying a system of ends which is a specific
and personalized derivative, determined by that individuals character,
abilities, and situation in the world, of the system constitutive of eudæmonia
in general. This specific and personalized derivative figures prominently in
deliberation, for a person may use it to regulate, direct, control, and monitor
the inclination of his pre-rational soul. . Third, recall that we imagined that
the robot could replace and revise its evaluative principle. Analogously, a
person may change his conception of what it is for him to be happy. But we also
imagined that the robot had some evaluative principles it could not change. On
Grices view, a person has this evaluative principle that cannot change. Not
because a person programmed in; rather, it is a principle a person cannot
abandon if he is to count as rational. E. g. it is plausible to suggest that a
person must, to count as rational, have and employ in deliberation at least
some minimal conception of what it is for him to be happy. Also it is plausible
to suggest that this conception counts as a conception of happiness only if it
is a specific and personalized derivative of a conception of eudæmonia in
general. So to count as happy, a person would have to have and employ such a
conception. These examples do not, of course, exhaust the range of things one
might hope to show necessary to counting as rational. We should note here that
our use of rational may be a looser use than Grice himself would indulge in.
Grice regards rational as a label for a cluster of notions he would
distinguish. Our looseness is an expositional convenience. Fourth, everday
psychological predictions and explanations are sometimes falsified-like the
prediction and explanations of the robots behaviour. And, just as in the case
of the robot, this reveals no defect in everyday psychological explanation. How
can this be? In the robot example, the diagram and table specify how the robot
is designed to function; obviously, minor deviations from the design do not
justify regarding the information in the diagram and table as either false or
useless. Can anything similar be true of people? Something somewhat similar is
true, according to Grice, and this because everyday psychology has special
status. Grice argues that the psychological theory which I envisage 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 a strong motivation on the part of the
creature Subjects to the theory against the abandonment of the central concepts
of the theory, and so of the theory itself, a motivation which the creature
would or should regard as justified. Indeed, only from within the framework of
such a theory Girce think that matters of evaluation, and so, of the evaluation
of modes of explanation, can be raised at all. If he conjectures aright, 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. Suppose 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. Then while everyday psychology, or some
preferred part of it, may not specify how we are designed to think and
act, it does specify how we ought to think and act; for there can be no justification
for failure to conform to the preferred part of everyday psychology. There
is another point which it is worth noting here in passing. If everyday
psychology is uniquely self-justifying in the way Grice suggests, we must
reject the suggestion that everyday psychology is just a rough and ready theory
that we will or could eventually abandon without loss in favour of a more
accurate and complete scientific theory of behaviour. Grice remarks that we
must be ever watchful against the Devil of Scientism, who would lead us into
myopic over-concentration on the nature and importance of knowledge, and of
scientific knowledge in particular; the Devil who is even so audacious as to
tempt us to call in question the very system of ideas required to make intelligible
the idea of calling in question anything at all; and who would even prompt us,
in effect, to suggest that since we do not really think but only think that we
think, we had better change our minds without undue delay. Now let us turn to
meaning. In Meaning revisited, Grice sets out to put one or two of the thoughts
he had at various times into some kind of focus, so that there might emerge
some sort of sense about not merely what kind of views about the nature of
meaning he is inclined to endorse, but also why it should be antecedently
plausible to accept this kind of view. When Grice says antecedently plausible,
he means plausible for some reasons other than that the view in question offers
some prospects of dealing with the intuitive data: the facts about how Grice
uses mean, and so on. So he digs just a little bit into the background of the
analysis of meaning and its roots in such things as philosophical psychology.
It is worth emphasizing the point that the analysis has its roots in
philosophical psychology, for one trend in Oxford philosophy has been to regard
the study of meaning as first philosophy (Dummett), as providing the framework
and the tools for any other philosophical investigation. This is clearly not
Grices view. How can the roots of the study of meaning be in philosophical
psychology? Consider the utterers meaning. Grice employs his conception of
everyday psychological explanation to provide a certain kind of rationale for
his account of utterers meaning. The rationale consists essentially of three
claims. First, given our general psychological make-up, specified by everyday
psychology, and given our environment, it is frequently highly conducive to
realizing our ends that we be able to produce beliefs in each other. E. g.
suppose I need your help to escape the riptide that is carrying me out to sea.
You will help me if you believe I am caught in the riptide. How can I ensure
that you will believe that? Second, an especially effective way to produce this
belief is to do something m-intending thereby that I am caught in the riptide.
Consider what might happen if I do not have such an m-intention. Suppose I just
thrash about in the water. I intend you to see that my swimming is ineffective,
and to infer therefrom that I am caught. But you might think that I was simply
having a good time splashing about, or that I was just pretending to be in
trouble. If I can get you to realise that I intend by what I am doing to
produce in you the belief that I am caught, that realization will give you a decisive
reason to believe that I need help. So I do have a good and decisive reason to
m-intend that I am caught. And ‒ and this is the third claim ‒ I have the
ability to m-intend that I am caught. It is an everday psychological fact that
we can perform actions with the intention-1 that the addressee A believe p; the
intention-2a that the audience recognize the intention-1 and the intention-2b
that this recognition be part of the audiences reason for accepting p. This is
a fact about our pre-rational soul part, analogous to the facts about the
robots behaviour which we can read off solely from the diagram and table
without any appeal to its evaluative procedures. We are just so designed that
we M-intend things at various times. E. g., in the riptide case, I would utter
I am caught in the riptide, m-intending you to think that I am caught. These
three points show that it is rational for us to be so designed. That is, it is
rational for us to be pre-rationally soul structured so as to employ
m-intentions. To see why, consider what we are doing in working through the
three claims in question. We note that we have a certain pre-rational soul
structure involving an m-intention, and we ask what can be said in favour of
it. Given our ends and our environment, there is a good decisive reason to have
such a pre-rational soul structure. So we discover that the m-intending
structure passes rational muster. It does not have to be inhibited. Rather it
should be reinforced and guided. The air of paradox in a pre-rational soul
structures being rational is easily dispelled. To label a structure
pre-rational soul is merely to see it as present and operative independently of
any attempt to evaluate whether and how it should be regulated, directed, and
controlled. To call such a structure rational is to say that on evaluation one
finds a good decisive reason to allow the structure to remain operative
instead of trying to inhibit or eliminate it. Grice sometimes expresses the
fact that a pre-rational structure is rational by saying that it has a
genitorial justification. Suppose we are demi-gods, genitors, as Grice
says, designing creatures. We are constructing them out of animal stuff, so we
are making creatures that will perceive, desire, hope, fear, think, feel, and
so on. The question before us is: exactly what psychological principles should
our creatures obey? We want, so to speak, to decide on a specific diagram and
table for them. As we work on this problem, we discover that we have a good and
decisive reason to make them such that they employ an m-intention, for we have
built into them a desire for eudæmonia, and as we survey their environment and
their physical powers, it is clear that they have little chance for eudæmonia
or even survival unless they employ an m-intention. And, as benevolent
genitors, we want them to have every chance of eudæmonia. In appealing to
happiness in this way we have departed somewhat from Grices treatment of
creature construction. This deviation, which is expositionally convenient here,
is corrected in the section on ethics. So as genitors we have a good and
decisive reason to make our creatures m-intend. Grice infers from this
genitorial myth that it really is rational ‒ or, if one likes, that we really
have a good reason-to be so pre-rationally structured that we M-intend. And the
inference is a good one, for the technique of genitorial creature construction
is a more picturesque way of establishing that M-intending passes rational
muster. Grice sometimes uses this creature construction technique to discover
what aspects of our pre-rational structure are rational. The idea is that the
question as what should we as genitors build into creatures with human
psychological capacities living in a human environment is easier to answer than
the question as to what aspects of our pre-rational structure are rational.
m-intending is one structure that we can cite in answer to both questions.
Consider how surprising it would be if language had no word that stood for
m-intending. Our considerations reveal it not only as a rational, but as a very
important, pre-rational soul structure. Of course, Grice does think we have an
expression here: viz., mean. This linguistic thesis combined with the
identification of m-intending as a rational pre-rational structure provides a
justification of Grices account of utterers meaning. The concluding
section of Grices Meaning revisited is relevant here, as it further
illuminates the rational aspect of m-intending (or utterer meaning as Grice
calls it in Meaning Revisited). Grice begins by saying that the general idea
that he wants to explore, and which seems to me to have some plausibility, is
that something has been left out, by me and perhaps by others too, in the
analyses, definitions, expansions and so on, of semantic notions, and
particularly various notions of meaning. What has been left out has in fact
been left out because it is something which everyone regards with horror, at
least when in a scientific or theoretical frame of mind: the notion of value.
Though I think that in general we want to keep value notions out of our
philosophical and scientific enquiries, and some would say out of everything
else, we might consider what would happen if we relaxed this prohibition to
some extent. If we did, there is a whole range of different kinds of value
predicates or expressions which might be admitted in different types of case.
To avoid having to choose between them, I am just going to use as a predicate
the word optimal the meaning of which could of course be more precisely characterized
later. Applying this idea to utterers meaning, Grice makes two suggestions. As
a first approximation, what we mean by saying that an utterer, by something he
utters, on a particular occasion, means that p, is that he is in the optimal
state with respect to communicating, or if you like, to communicating that p.
The optimal state, the state in which he has an infinite set of intentions, is
in principle unrealisable, so that the utterer U does not strictly speaking
mean that p, he is deemed to mean that p. However, he is in a situation which
is such that it is legitimate, or perhaps even mandatory, for us to deem him to
satisfy the unfulfillable condition. The optimal state is what the analysis of
speaker meaning specifies. Counter-examples advanced by Schiffer in Meaning
suggest that this state is one in which a speaker has an infinite number of
intentions. We will not discuss the counter-examples; we want to consider why
it is reasonable to respond to them by granting that the analysis of utterers meaning
specifies an unrealizable-but none the less ideal or optimal-state involving
having an infinite number of intentions. Consider an analogy. There is in
sailing an optimal setting for the sails-a setting that maximizes forward
thrust. Any reasonably complete text on sailing will explain at least some
of the relevant ærodynamic theory. Now this optimal setting is difficult if not
impossible to achieve while actually sailing-given continual shifts in wind
direction, the sudden changes of direction caused by waves, and the difficulty
in determining airflow patterns by sight. To deal with these practical
difficulties, the text supplies numerous rules of thumb which are relatively
easy to apply while sailing. Why not just drop the ærodynamic theory altogether
and just provide the reader/sailor with the rules of thumb? Because they are
rules of thumb. They hold at best other things being equal. To spot exceptions
and resolve conflicts as well as to handle situations not covered by the rules,
one needs to know what the ærodynamic optimum is. This optimum plays a crucial
role in guiding the use of the rules of thumb. Why should common sense
psychology not avail itself of various optima in this way? It is plausible to
think that it does given Grices view of rationality as something that plays an
evaluative and guiding role with respect to pre-rational inclinations and
dispositions. Various optima would be especially suited to such a role. And why
should utterers meaning not be such an optimum? Indeed, there is some reason to
think it is. As for a resultant procedures, what can we say about sentence
meaning? Is it possible to provide a rationale for the treatment of sentence
meaning in the context of Grices philosophical psychology? The account of
sentence meaning has an explanatory role. Consider that a speaker of this or
that language can M-intend an extremely wide range of things, and typically his
audience will know what he M-intends as soon as the audience hears what is
uttered. Attributing resultant procedures to language-users explains these
facts. There are a few points to note. Suppose U has the procedure of uttering
I know the route if U wants A to think U thinks U knows the route. What does it
mean to suppose this? We can understand it as an everday psychological
principle. More precisely, the proposed principle is: if a competent
communicator wants his addressee A to think the utterer U knows the route,
other things being equal, utterer U utters I know the route. This qualifies as
an every-day psychological principle and, perhaps most important, like at least
some other everyday psychological principles, this principle has a normative
aspect. Both knowledge of and conformity to this principle are required if one
is to count as a competent speaker. Turning from utterers to audiences, it
is, for similar reasons, plausible to suggest that it is an everyday
psychological fact that if a competent English speaker hears I know the route,
then he will-other things being equal-think the utterer thinks he knows the route.
This principle could be derived from the first plus the assumption that
speakers are, about certain things, trustworthy. There is nothing mysterious
about such everyday psychological principles. They specify part of our
psychological make-up, the way we are designed -part of our pre-rational
structure, and the fact that we are so designed, certainly explains the range
of things we can m-intend and the ease with which we employ such m-intentions.
But, and this is the second point, we might have hoped for much more by way of
explanation, for there are mysteries here. In particular, what is it for a
person to have a resultant procedure? To see what the question asks, imagine
having an answer of the form. The utterer U has a resultant procedure P if and
only if where the dots are filled out by specification of certain psychological
and behavioural features. This would provide us with an informative
characterization of the psychological and behavioural capacities underlying
language use. Since there are infinitely many resultant procedures, a
reasonable way to provide answers would be (given any language) to specify a
finite set of basic procedures for that language, from which the infinitely
many resultant procedures could be derived (in some suitable sense of derived).
Then we would provide a finite set of conditions of the form: U has basic
procedure Pb if and only if where the dots are replaced by a
suitable condition. But what counts as a suitable condition? What
psychological, behavioural, or other properties does one have to have to count
as possessing a certain basic procedure P? As we said, Grice regards this as an
open question. Of course, this is not to say that the question is unimportant;
on the contrary, it is of fundamental importance if we want to know what
capacities underlie language use. One problem about Grices account of meaning
still remains: does the appeal to propositions not vitiate the whole project? One
crucial point to consider is the primacy, to use Suppess qualification, of the
buletic over the doxastic. Grice was playing with this for some time (Journal
of Philosophy). 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”). 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. Soul. In the New World, Grice had to engage in the
great figures: Kantotle. At Oxford, there was no such need, and he could play
wtih Duncan-Joness fugitive propositions. PGRICE cites Kants ethics, and
it is under this that most of Grices material on Kant should be placed ‒ with a
caveat to the occasional reference to Kants epistemology, elsewhere.
Aristotle’s ethics, Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics and Aristotles
Ethics. From Hardie. Freedom in Kants Grundlegung, freedom and
morality in Kants Grundlegung, Freedom and Morality in Kants Foundations, Why
was Grice attracted to Kants theory? First, the logical analysis of the
imperatives. Second, as he explored the Grundlegung, the metaphysical
foundation of freedom, and finality. While teleology is usually NOT associated
with Kant, Grice did! Grice would refer to this, as Kantians do, as the
Grundlegung. Grice was never happy with eleutheria, qua Greek
philosophical notion. To literal to be true? By Foundations, Grice
obviously means Kants essay.Grice preferred to quote Kant in English. The
reason being that Grice was practising ordinary-language philosophy; and you
cannot expect much linguistic botany in a language other than your
own! Kant was not too ordinary in his use of German, either! The
English translations that Grice used captured, in a way, all that Grice thought
was worth capturing in Kants philosophy. Kant was not your standard
philosopher in the programme Grice was familiar with: Lit. Hum. Oxon. However,
Kant was popular in The New World, where Grice lectured profusely, Kant’s
ethics, Kants Ethical Theory. An exploration of the categorial imperative and
its reduction to the hypothetical or suppositional one; Kant’s
ethics, philosophy, Kant, Notably the categorical
imperative. Cf. Kants Ethics. The crucial belief about a thing in
itself that Kant thinks only practical reason can justify concerns freedom.
Freedom is crucial because, on Kants view, any moral appraisal presupposes that
a human is free in that he has the ability to do otherwise. To see why,
consider Kants example of a man who commits a theft. Kant holds that for this
mans action to be morally wrong and condemnable) it must have been within his
voluntary control (he is deemed responsible) in a way that it was within his
power at the time not to have committed the theft. If it is not within
his control at the time, while it may be useful to punish him in order to shape
his behaviour or to influence others, it nevertheless would be incorrect to say
that his action is morally wrong. Moral rightness and wrongness apply
only to a free agent who controls his action and has it in his power, at the
time of his action, either to act rightly or not. According to Kant and
Grice, this is just common sense. On these grounds, Kant rejects a type of
compatibilism, which he calls the comparative concept of freedom and associates
with Leibniz. Kant has a specific type of compatibilism in mind. There may be
types of compatibilism that do not fit Kants characterization of that view. On
the compatibilist view, as Kant understands it, an agent is free whenever the
cause of his action is within him. So an agent is not free only when something
external to him pushes or moves him, but he is free whenever the proximate
cause of his bodys movement is internal to him as an acting being. If we
distinguish between an involuntary convulsion and a voluntary bodily movement,
a free action is just a voluntary bodily movement. Kant and Grice ridicule
this view as a wretched subterfuge that tries to solve an ancient philosophical
problem with a little quibbling about words. This view, Kant and Grice
say, assimilates freedom to the freedom of a turnspit, or a projectile in
flight, or the motion of a clocks hands. Grices favourite phrase was the otiose
English free fall. And he knew all the Grecian he needed to recognise the
figurative concept of eleutheria as applied to ill as very figurative, almost
implicatural. The proximate cause of this movement is internal to the turnspit,
the projectile, and the clock at the time of the movement. This cannot be
sufficient for moral, rational responsibility. Why not? The reason, Kant
and Grice say, is ultimately that the cause of this movement occurs in time.
Return to the theft example. A compatibilist would say that the thiefs
action is free because its proximate cause is inside him, and because the theft
is not an involuntary convulsion but a voluntary action. The thief decides
to commit the theft, and his action flows from this decision. According to
Kant, however, if the thiefs decision is a natural, and thus predictable,
phenomenon that occurs in time, it must be the effect of some cause that
occurred in a previous time. This is an essential part of Kants (if not Grice’s
‒ Grice quotes Eddington) Newtonian worldview and is grounded in the a priori
laws (specifically, the category of cause and effect) in accordance with which
our understanding constructs experience. Every event has a cause that begins in
an earlier time. If that cause too is an event occurring in time, it must
also have a cause beginning in a still earlier time, etc. Every natural
event occurs in time and is thoroughly determined by a causal chain that
stretches backwards into the distant past. So there is no room for
freedom in nature, which is deterministic in a strong way. The root of the
problem, for Kant, if not Grice, is time. For Grice its space and time!
Again, if the thiefs choice to commit the theft is a natural event in time, it
is the effect of a causal chain extending into the distant past. But the
past is out of his control now, in the present. Once the past is past, he
cannot change it. On Kants view, that is why his action would not be in
his control in the present if it is determined by events in the past.
Even if he could control those past events in the past, he cannot control them
now. But in fact past events were not in his control in the past either if they
too were determined by events in the more distant past, because eventually the
causal antecedents of his action stretch back before his birth, and obviously
events that occurred before his birth are not in his control. So if the
thiefs choice to commit the theft is a natural event in time, it is not now and
never was in his control, and he could not have done otherwise than to commit
the theft. In that case, it would be a mistake to hold him morally responsible
for it. Compatibilism, as Kant and Grice understand it, therefore locates the
issue in the wrong place. Even if the cause of the action is internal to
the agent, if it is in the past – e. g., if the action today is determined by a
decision the agent made yesterday, or from the character I developed in
childhood, it is not within the agents control now. The real issue is not
whether the cause of the action is internal or external to the agent, but
whether it is in the agents control now. For Kant, however, the cause of action
can be within the agents control now only if it is not in time. This is
why Kant and Grice think that transcendental idealism is the only way to make
sense of the kind of freedom that morality requires. For transcendental
idealism allows that the cause of an action may be a thing in itself outside of
time: Namesly, the agetns noumenal self, which is free because it is not part
of nature. No matter what kind of character the agent have developed or what
external influences act on him, on Kants view every intentional, voluntary
action is an immediate effect of the agent’s noumenal self, which is causally
undetermined. The agent’s noumenal self is an uncaused cause outside of time,
which therefore is not Subjects to the deterministic laws of nature in
accordance with which understanding and pure reason constructs experience. Many
puzzles arise on this picture that Kant does not resolve, and Grice tries. E.g.
if understanding constructs every appearance in the experience of nature,
not only an appearance of an action, why is the agent responsible only for his
action but not for everything that happens in the natural world? Moreover,
if I am not alone in the world but there is another noumenal self acting freely
and incorporating his free action into the experience he constructs, how do two
transcendentally free agents interact? How do you integrate ones free
action into the experience that the others understanding constructs? In spite
of these unsolved puzzles, Kant holds that we can make sense of moral appraisal
and responsibility only by thinking about human freedom in this way, because it
is the only way to prevent natural necessity from undermining both. Since Kant
invokes transcendental idealism to make sense of freedom, interpreting his
thinking about freedom leads one back to disputes between the two-objects and
two-aspects interpretations of transcendental idealism. On the face of
it, the two-objects interpretation seems to make better sense of Kants view of
transcendental freedom than the two-aspect interpretation. If morality requires
that the agent be transcendentally free, it seems that his true self, and not
just an aspect of his self, must be outside of time, according to Kant’ argument.
But applying the two-objects interpretation to freedom raises problems of its
own, since it involves making a distinction between the noumenal self and the
phenomenal self that does not arise on the two-aspects view. If only one
noumenal self is free, and freedom is required for moral responsibility, ones
phenomenal self is not morally responsible. But how are the noumenal self and
the phenomenal self related, and why is punishment inflicted on the phenomenal
self? It is unclear whether and to what extent appealing to Kants theory of
freedom can help to settle disputes about the proper interpretation of
transcendental idealism, since there are serious questions about the coherence
of Kants theory on either interpretation! Which is good, Grice would end his
lecture with! 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.
subjectification: Grice plays with this. It is a
derivation of the ‘subjectum,’ which Grice knows it is Aristotelian. Liddell
and Scott have the verb first, and the neuter singular later. “τὸ ὑποκείμενον,”
Liddell and Scott note “has three main applications.” The first is “to the
matter (hyle) which underlies the form (eidos), as opp. To both “εἶδος” and
“ἐντελέχεια” Met. 983a30; second, to the substantia (hyle + morphe) which
underlies the accidents, and as opposed to “πάθη,” and “συμβεβηκότα,” as in
Cat. 1a20,27 and Met.1037b16, 983b16; third, and this is the use that
‘linguistic’ turn Grice and Strawson are interested in, “to the logical subject
to which attributes are ascribed,” and here opp. “τὸ κατηγορούμενον,” (which
would be the ‘praedicatum’), as per Cat.1b10,21, Ph.189a31.
subjectivism:
Grice was concerned with intending folloed by a that-clause. Jeffrey defines
desirability as doxastically modified. It is entirely possible for someone to
desire the love that he already has. It is what he thinks that matters. Cf. his
dispositional account to intending. A Subjectsive condition takes into
account the intenders, rather than the ascribers, point of view: Marmaduke
Bloggs intends to climb Mt. Everest on hands and knees. Bloggs might
reason: Given my present state, I should do what is fun. Given my
present state, the best thing for me to do would be to do what is fun. For
me in my present state it would make for my well-being, to have
fun. Having fun is good, or, a good. Climbing a mountain would be fun.
Climbing the Everest would be/make for climbing fun. So, I shall climb the
Everest. Even if a critic insisted that a practical syllogism is the way
to represent Bloggs finding something to be appealing, and that it should be
regarded as a respectable evaluation, the assembled propositions dont do the
work of a standard argument. The premises do not support or yield the
conclusion as in a standard argument. The premises may be said to yield the
conclusion, or directive, for the particular agent whose reasoning process it
is, only on the basis of a Subjectsive condition: that the agent is in a
certain Subjectsive state, e.g. feels like going out for dinner-fun. Rational
beings (the agent at some other time, or other individuals) who do not have
that feeling, will not accept the conclusion. They may well accept as true. It
is fun to climb Everest, but will not accept it as a directive unless they feel
like it now. Someone wondering what to do for the summer might think that if he
were to climb Everest he would find it fun or pleasant, but right now she does
not feel like it. That is in general the end of the matter. The alleged
argument lacks normativity. It is not authoritative or directive unless there
is a supportive argument that he needs/ought to do something diverting/pleasant
in the summer. A practical argument is different. Even if an agent did not feel
like going to the doctor, an agent would think I ought to have a medical check
up yearly, now is the time, so I should see my doctor to be a directive with
some force. It articulates a practical argument. Perhaps the strongest
attempt to reconstruct an (acceptable or rational) thought
transition as a standard arguments is to treat the Subjectsive
condition, I feel like having climbing fun in the summer, as a premise, for
then the premises would support the conclusion. But the individual, whose
thought transition we are examining, does not regard a description of his psychological
state as a consideration that supports the conclusion. It will be useful
to look more closely at a variant of the example to note when it is appropriate
to reconstruct thinking in the form of argument. Bloggs, now hiking with a
friend in the Everest, comes to a difficult spot and says: I dont like the look
of that, I am frightened. I am going back. That is usually enough for
Bloggs to return, and for the friend to turn back with him. Bloggss action of
turning back, admittedly motivated by fear, is, while not acting on reasons,
nonetheless rational unless we judge his fear to be irrational.
Bloggss Subjectsive condition can serve as a premise, but only
in a very different situation. Bloggs resorts to reasons. Suppose that, while
his friend does not think Bloggss fear irrational, the friend still attempts to
dissuade Bloggs from going back. After listening and reflecting, Bloggs may say
I am so frightened it is not worth it. I am not enjoying this climbing anymore.
Or I am too frightened to be able to safely go on. Or I often climb the Everest
and dont usually get frightened. The fact that I am now is a good indication
that this is a dangerous trail and I should turn back. These are reasons,
considerations implicitly backed by principles, and they could be the initial
motivations of someone. But in Bloggss case they emerged when he was challenged
by his friend. They do not express his initial practical reasoning. Bloggs was
frightened by the trail ahead, wanted to go back, and didnt have any reason not
to. Note that there is no general rational requirement to always act on
reasons, and no general truth that a rational individual would be better off
the more often he acted on reasons. Faced with his friends objections,
however, Bloggs needed justification for acting on his fear. He reflected and
found reason(s) to act on his fear. Grice plays with Subjectsivity already in
Prolegomena. Consider the use of carefully. Surely we must include the agents
own idea of this. Or consider the use of phi and phi – surely we dont want the
addressee to regard himself under the same guise with which the utterer regards
him. Or consider “Aspects”: Nixon must be appointed professor of theology at
Oxford. Does he feel the need? Grice raises the topic of Subjectsivity again in
the Kant lectures just after his discussion of mode, in a sub-section entitled,
Modalities: relative and absolute. He finds the topic central for his
æqui-vocality thesis: Subjectsive conditions seem necessary to both practical
and alethic considerations. Refs.: The source is his essay on intentions and
the subjective condition, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
syntactics:
Grice loved two devices of the syntactic kind: subscripts and square brackets
(for the assignment of common-ground status). Grice is a conservative
(dissenting rationalist) when it comes to syntax and semantics. He hardly uses
pragmatics albeit in a loose way (pragmatic import, pragmatic inference), but
was aware of Morriss triangle. Syntax is presented along the lines of
Gentzen, i.e. a system of natural deduction in terms of inference rules of
introduction and elimination for each formal device. Semantics pertains
rather to Witterss truth-values, i.e. the assignment of a
satisfactory-valuation: the true and the good. Refs.: The most direct source is
“Vacuous names,” but the keyword ‘syntax’ is helpful. The H. P. Grice Papers,
BANC.
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