"pearsianism" -- from THESAVRVS GRICEIANVM

Pearsianism – after D. F. Pears, one of Grice’s collaborators in the Play Group. “In them days, we would never publish, since the only philosophers we were interested in communicating with we saw at least every Saturday!” – With D. F. Pears, and J. F. Thomson, H. P. Grice explored topics in the philosophy of action and ‘philosophical psychology.’ Actually, Grice carefully writes ‘philosophy of action.’ Why? Well, because while with Pears and Thomson he explored toopics like ‘intending’ and ‘deciding,’ it was always with a vew towards ‘acting,’ or ‘doing.’  Grice is very clear on this, “even fastidiously so,” as Blackburn puts it. In the utterance of an imperative, or an intention, which may well be other-directed, the immediate response or effect in your co-conversationalist is a ‘recognition,’ i. e. what Grice calls an ‘uptake,’ some sort of ‘understanding.’ In the case of these ‘desiderative’ moves, the recognition is that the communicator WILLS something. Grice uses a ‘that’-clause attached to ‘will,’ so that he can formulate the proposition “p” – whose realization is in question. Now, this ‘will’ on the part of the ‘communicator’ needs to be ‘transmitted.’ So the communicator’s will includes his will that his emissee will adopt this will. “And eventually act upon it!” So, you see, while it looks as if Pears and Thomson and Grice are into ‘philosophical psychology,’ they are into ‘praxis.’ Not alla Althuser, but almost!