H. P. Grice, "Definitum"

definitum: Grice was obsessed with ‘aspects’ in verbs. There’s the ‘imperfect’ and the ‘perfect.’ These translate Aristotle’s ‘teleos’ and ‘ateleos.’ But why the change from “factum” to “fectum”? So it’s better to turn to ‘definitum,’ and ‘indefinitum, as better paraphrases of Aristotle’s jargon – keeping in mind we are talking of his ‘teleos’ and ‘ateleos.’ teleology: the objectivum. Grice speaks of the objective as a maxim. This is very Latinate. So if the maxim is an objective, the goal is the objective, or objectivum. Meaning "goal, aim" (1881) is from military term objective point (1852), reflecting a sense evolution in French. This is an expansion on the desideratum. Cf. ‘desirable,’ and ‘desirability,’ and ‘end.’ Grice feels like introducing goal-oriented conceptual machinery. In a later stage of his career he ensured that this machinery be seen as NOT mechanistically derivable. Which is odd seeing that in the ‘progression’ of the ‘soul,’ he allows for talk of adaptiveness and survival which suggest a mechanist explanation. If an agent has a desideratum that means that, to echo Bennett, A displays a goal-oriented behaviour, where the goal is the ‘telos.’ Smoke cannot ‘mean’ fire, because smoke doesn’t really behave in a goal-oriented matter. Grice does play with the idea of finality in nature, because that would allow him to justify the objectivity of his system. how does soul originate from matter? Does the vegetal soul have a telos. Purposive-behaviour is obvious in plants (phototropism). If it is present in the vegetal soul, it is present in the animal soul. If it is present in the animal soul, it is present in the rational soul. With each stage, alla Hartmann, there are distinctions in the specification of the telos. Grice could be more continental than Scheler! Grices métier. Unity of science was a very New-World expression that Grice did not quite buy. Grice was brought up in a world, the Old World, indeed, as he calls it in his Proem to the Locke lectures, of Snows two cultures. At the time of Grices philosophising, philosophers such as Winch (who indeed quotes fro Grice) were contesting the idea that science is unitary, when it comes to the explanation of rational behaviour. Since a philosophical approach to the explanation of rational behaviour, including conversational behaviour (to account for the conversational implicata) is his priority, Grice needs to distinguish himself from those who propose a unified science, which Grice regards as eliminationist and reductionist. Grice is ambivalent about science and also playful (philosophia regina scientiarum). Grice seems to presuppose, or implicate, that, since there is the devil of scientism, science cannot get at teleology. The devil is in the physiological details, which are irrelevant. The language Grice uses to describe his Ps as goal-oriented, aimed at survival and reproduction, seems teleological and somewhat scientific, though. But he means that ironically! As the scholastics use it, teleology is a science, the science of telos, or finality (cf. Aristotle on telos aitia, causa finalis. The unity of science is threatened by teleology, and vice versa. Unified science seeks for a mechanistically derivable teleology. But Grices sympathies lie for detached finality. Grice is obsessed with the Greek idea of a telos, as slightly overused by Aristotle. Grice thinks that some actions are for their own sake. What is the telos of Oscar Wilde? Can we speak of Oscar Wilde’s métier? If a tiger is to tigerise, a human is to humanise, and a person is to personise. Grice thought that teleology is a key philosophical way to contest mechanism, so popular in The New World. Strictly, and Grice knew this, teleology is constituted as a discipline. One term that Cicero was unable to translate! For the philosopher, teleology is that part of philosophy that studies the realm of the telos. Informally, teleological is opposed to mechanistic. Grice is interested in the mechanism/teleology debate, indeed jumps into it, with a goal in mind! Grice finds some New-World philosophers too mechanistic-oriented, in contrast with the more two-culture atmosphere he was familiar with at Oxford! Code is the Aristotelian, and he and Grice are especially concerned in the idea of causa finalis. For Grice only detached finality poses a threat to Mechanism, as it should! Axiological objectivity is possible only given finality or purpose in Nature, the admissibility of a final cause. Refs.: There are specific essays on ‘teleology,’ ‘final cause,’ and ‘finality,’ the The Grice Papers. Some of the material published in “Reply to Richards” (repr. in “Conception”) and “Actions and events,” The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.