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Is Grice the greatest philosopher that ever lived?

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Wednesday, April 29, 2020

H. P. Grice reads G. E. Moore's essay on 'Strachey's Entailment' (1919)

The quote by Moore, 1919 being:

"It might be suggested that we should say "p ent q" 'means' "p ) q AND this proposition is an instance of a formal implication, which is not merely true but self-evident, like the laws of formal logic." This proposed definitions would avoid the paradoxes involved in Strachey's definition, since such true formal implications as 'All the persons in this room are more than five years old' are certainly not self-evident; and, so far as I can see, it may state something which is in fact true of p and q, whenever and only whenp ent q. I do not myself think that it gives the meaning of 'p ent q,' since the kind of
relation which I see to hold between the premises and a conclusion of a syllogism seems to me
one which is purely 'objective' in the sense that no psychological term, such as is involved
in the meaning of 'self-evident' is involved in its definition (it it has one). I am not, however,
concerned to dispute that some such definition of "p ent q" as this may be true." --- and so on. So, it is apparently all Strachey's fault.

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