de
sensu implicatum: vide casus obliquus. The casus rectus/casus obliquus
distinction. Peter Abelard, Kneale, Grice, Aristotle. Aquinas. de sensu
implicatum. Ariskantian quessertions on de sensu implicate. “My sometimes mischievous friend Richard Grandy once
said, in connection with some other occasion on which I was talking, that to
represent my remarks, it would be necessary to introduce a new form of
speech act, or a new operator, which was to be called the operator of
quessertion. It is to be read as “It is perhaps possible that someone might
assert that . . .” and is to be symbolized “?├”; possibly it
might even be iterable […]. Everything I shall
suggest here is highly quessertable.” Grice 1989:297. If Grice had one thing, he had linguistic creativity.
Witness his ‘implicature,’ and his ‘implicatum,’ not to mention his
‘pirotologia.’Sometime, somewhere, in the history of philosophy, a need was
felt by some Griceian philosopher, surely, for numbering intentions. The verb,
denoting the activity, out of which this ‘intention’ sprang was Latin
‘intendere,’ and somewhere, sometime, the need was felt to keep the Latinate
/t/ sound, and sometimes to make it sibilate, /s/. The source of it all seems to be Aristotle in
Soph.
Elen., 166a24–166a30, which was rendered twice om Grecian to Latin. In the
second Latinisation, ‘de sensu’ comes into view. Abelard proposes to use ‘de
rebus,’ or ‘de re,’ for what the previous translation had as ‘per divisionem.’
To make the distinction, he also proposes to use ‘de sensu’ for what the
previous translation has as ‘per compositionem,’ and ‘per conjunctionem.’ But
what did either mean? It was a subtle question, indeed. And trust Nicolai
Hartmann, in his mediaevalist revival, to add numbers and a further
distinction, now the ‘recte/’oblique’ distinction, and ‘intentio’ being
‘prima,’ ‘seconda,’ ‘tertia,’ and so on, ad infinitum. The proposal is clear.
We need a way to conceptualise first-order propositions. But we also need to
conceptualise ‘that’-clauses. The ‘that’-clause subordination is indeed
open-ended. ‘mean.’ Grice’s motivation in the presentation at the Oxford
Philosophical Society is to offer, as he calls it, a ‘proposal.’ In his words,
notice the emphasis on the Latinate ‘intend,’ – where it occurs, as applied to
an emissor, and as having as content, following that ‘that’-clause, an
‘intensional’ verb like ‘believe,’ which again, involves an ‘intentio tertia,’
now referring to a state back in the emissor expressed by yet another
intensional verb – all long for, ‘you communicate that p if you want your
addressee to realise that you hold this or that propositional attitude with
content p.’ "A meantNN something by x" is
(roughly) equivalent to "A intended the utterance of x to produce some
effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention"; and
we may add that to ask what A meant is to ask for a specification of the
intended effect (though, of course, it may not always be possible to get a
straight answer involving a "that" clause, for example, "a belief
that . . ."). (Grice 1989: 220). Grice’s motivation is to ‘reduce’ “mean”
to what has come to be known in the Griceian [sic] literature as a ‘Griceian’
[sic] ‘reflexive’ intention – he prefers M-intention -- which we will read as
involving an intentio seconda, and indeed intentio tertia, and beyond, which
makes its appearance explicitly in the second clause -- or ‘prong,’ as he’d
prefer -- of his ‘reductive’ analysis. Prong 1 then corresponds to the
intention prima or intention recta: Utterer U intends1 that
Addressee A believes that Utterer U holds psychological state or attitude ψ
with content “p.” Prong 2 corresponds to the intentio seconda or
intentio obliqua: Utterer
U intends2 that Addressee A believes (i) on the ‘rational,’ and not
just ‘causal,’ basis of (ii), i.e. of the addressee A’s recognition of the
utterer U’s intentio seconda or intentio obliqua i2, that Addressee
A comes to believe that Utterer U holds psychological state or attitude ψ with
content “p.” In Grice’s wording, “i2” acts as a ‘reason,’ and not
merely a ‘cause’ for Addressee A’s coming to believe that U holds psychological
state or attitude ψ with content “p”. Kemmerling has used “↝” to represent this
‘reason’ (i1 ↝ i2,
Kemmerling in Grandy/Warner, 1986, cf. Petrus in Petrus 2010). Prong 3 is a
closure prong, now involving a self-reflective third-order intention, there is
no ‘covert’ higher-order intention involved in (i)-(iii). Meaning-constitutive
intentions in utterer u’s meaning that p should be out there ‘in the open,’ or
‘above board,’ to count as having been ‘communicated.Grice quotes only one
author in ‘Meaning’: C. L. Stevenson, who started his career with a degree in
English from Yale. Willing to allow a ‘metabolical’ use of ‘mean’ he
recognises, he scare quotes it: “There is a
sense, to be sure, in which a groan “means“ something, just a reduced
temperature may at times ”mean” convalescence.” Stevenson 1944:38). This
remark will have Grice later attempting an ‘evolutionary’ model of how an ‘x’
causing ‘y’ may proceed from ‘natural’ to less natural ones. Consider ‘is in
pain.’ A creature is physically hurt, and the expression of pain comes up
naturally as an effect. But if the creature attains rational control over his
expressive behaviour, and the creature is in pain (or expects his addressee A
to think that he is in pain), U can now imitate or replicate, in a something
like a Peirceian iconic mode, the natural behaviour manifested by a spontaneous
response to a hurtful stimulus. The ‘simulated’ pain will be an ‘icon’ of the
natural pain. Grice is getting Peirceian by the day, and he is not telling us!
There are, Grice says, as if to simplify Peirce the most he can, two modes of
representation. The primary one is now the explicitly Peirceian iconic one. The
‘risus naturaliter significat interiorem laetitiam’ of Occam. And then, there’s
the derivative *non*-iconic representation, in that order. The first is, shall
we say, ‘natural,’ and beyond the utterer U’s voluntary control (cf. Darwin on
the expression of emotions in man and animals); the second is not. Grice is
allowing for smoke representing fire, or if one must, alla Stevenson,
‘representing’ it. In Grice’s motivation to along the right lines, his
psychologist austere views of his 1948 ‘Meaning,’ when he rather artificially
disjoins a ‘natural’ “mean” and an ‘artificial’ “mean,” when merely different
‘uses’ stand for what he then thought were senses, he wants now to re-introduce
into philosophical discourse the iconic natural representation or meaning that
he had left aside.If this is part of what he calls a ‘myth,’ even if an
evolutionary one, to account for the emergence of ‘systems of communication,’
it does starts with an utterer U expressing (very much alla Croce or Marty) a
psychological state or attitude ψ by displaying some behavioural pattern in an
unintentional way. Grice is being Wittgensteinian here, and quotes almost
verbatim from Anscombe’s rendition, “No psychological concept except when
backed in behaviour that manifests it.”
If Ockham notes that “Risus naturaliter significat interiorem
laetitiam,” Grice shows this will allow to avoid, also alla Ockham, a polysemy
to ‘mean.’In Grice’s three clauses in his 1948 conceptual analysis of ‘meaning’
– the first clause of exhibitiveness, the second clause of intentio seconda or
reflexivity, and the third clause of communicative overtness, voluntary control
on the part of the utterer U is already in order. Since the utterer’s addressee
A is intended to recognise this, no longer is it required any prior ‘iconic’
association between a simulated behaviour and the behaviour naturally displayed
as a response to a stimulus. This amounts, for Grice to deeming the system of
expression as having become a full system now of intention-based
‘communication.’‘know’’ Intentio seconda or intentio obliqua comes up nicely
when Grice delivers the third William James Lecture, later reprinted as
“Further notes on logic and conversation.” There, Grice targets one type of
anti-Gettier scenario for the use of a factive psychological state or attitude
expressed by a verb like “know,” again followed by a “that”-clause. Grice is
criticisign Austin’s hasty attempt to analyse ‘know’ in terms of the
‘performatory’ ‘guarantee.’ As Grice puts it in “Prolegomena,” “to say ‘I know’
is to give a guarantee.” (Grice 1989:9) which can be traced back to Austin,
although since, as Grice witnessed it, Austin ‘all too frequently ignored’ the
real of emissor’s communicatum, one is never sure. In any case, Grice wants to overcome this
‘performatory’ fallacy, and he expands on the ‘suspect’ example of the
Prolegomena in the Third lecture. Grice’s troubles with ‘know’ were long-dated.
In Causal Theory he lists as the third philosophical mistake, “What is known by
me to be the case is not also believed by me to be the case.” (1989: 237).
Uncredited, but he may be having in mind Ryle’s odd characterisations with
terms such as ‘occurrence,’ ‘episode,’ and so on. In the section on ‘stress,’ Grice asks us to
assume that Grice knows that p. The question is whether this claim commits the
philosopher to the further clause, ‘Grice knows that Grice knows that p, and so
on, … to use the scholastic term we started this with, ad infinitum. It is not
that Grice is adverse to a regressive analysis per se. This is, in effect, with
what the third clause or prong in his analysis of ‘meaning’ does – ‘let all
meaning-constitutive intentions be overt, including this one. Indeed, when it comes to meaning or knowing,
we are talking optimal, we are talking ‘virtue.’ Both ‘meaning,’
‘communicating, ‘and ‘knowing,’ represent an ‘ideal,’ value-paradeigmatic
concept – where value, a favourite with Hartmann, appears under the guise of a
noumenon in the topos ouranos that only realises imperfectly in the sub-lunary
world. In the third William James lecture Grice cursorily dismisses these
demanding or restrictive anti-Gettier scenarios as too stipulatory for the
colloquial, ordinary, use – and thus ‘sense’ -- of ‘know.’ The approach Gettier
is cricising ends up being too convoluted, seeing that conversationalists tend
to make a rather loose use of the verb. Grice’s example illustrates linguistic
botanising. So we have Grice bringing the examinee who does know that the
battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815, with hardly conclusive evidence, or any
‘de sensu’ knowledge that the evidence (which he does not have) is conclusive.
Grice grants that, in a specially emphatic utterance of ‘know,’ there might be
a cancellable implicatum to the effect that the knower does have conclusive
evidence for what he alleges to know. Grice’s explicit reference to this
‘regressive nature’ (p. 59) touches on the topic of intention de sensu. Grice
is contesting the strong view, as represented, according to Gettier, by
philosophers ranging from Plato’s Thaetetus to Ayer’s Problem of Empirical
Knowledge (indeed the only two loci Gettier cares to cite in his short essay)
that a claim, “Grice knows that p” entails a claim to the effect that there is
conclusive evidence for p, and which gives Grice a feeling of subjective
certainty, and that Grice knows that there is such conclusive evidence, and so
on, ad infinitum. Grice casts doubts on the intentio de sensu as applied to the
colloquial or ‘ordinary’ uses of ‘know’. If I know that p, must I know that I
know that p? Having just introduced his
“Modified Occam’s Razor” – ‘Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity’
--, Grice doesn’t think so. At this point, however, he adds a characteristic
bracket: “(cf. causal theory).” With that bracket, Grice is allowing that the
denotatum of “p,” qua content of U’s psychological state or attitude of
‘knowing,’ the state-of-affairs itself, as we may put it, should play something
like a causal role in U’s knowing that p. Grice is open-minded as to what type
of link or connection that is. It need not be strictly causal. He is merely
suggesting the open-endness of ‘know in terms of these “further conditions” as
to how Grice ‘comes’ to know that p, and refers to the ‘causal theory,’ as
later developed by philosophers like E. F. Dretske and others. As a linguistic
botanist, Grice is well aware that ‘know,’ like ‘see,’ is what the Kiparskys
(whom Grice refers to) call a ‘factive.’An ascription of “Grice knows that p,”
or, indeed, “Grice sees that p,” (unless Grice hallucinates) entails “p.” The
defeating ‘hallucination’ scenario is key. It involves what Grice calls a
dis-implicatum. The utterer is using ‘know’ or‘see’ in a loose way (and meaning
less, rather than more than he explicitly conveys. Note incidentally, as Grice
later noted in later seminars, how his analysis proves the philosopher’s adage
wrong. Surely what is known by me to be the case is believed by me to be the
case. Any divergence to the contrary is a matter of ‘implicatural’ stress – by
which he means supra-segmentation.‘want’Soon after his delivering the William
James lectures, Grice got involved in a project concerning an evaluation of
Quine’s programme, where again he touches on issues of intentio seconda or
intentio obliqua, and brings us back to Russell and ‘the author of Waverley.’
Grice’s presentation comes out in Words and Objections, edited by Davidson and
Hintikka, a pun on Quine’s Word and Object. Grice’s contribution, ‘Vacuous
Names,’ (later reprinted in part in Ostertag’s volume on Definite descriptions)
concludes with an exploration of “the” phrases, and further on, with some
intriguing remarks on the subtle issues surrounding the scope of an ascription
of a predicate standing for a psychological state or attitude. Grice’s choice
of an ascription now notably involves an ‘opaque’ (rather than ‘factive,’ like
‘know’) psychological state or attitude: ‘wanting,’ which he symbolizes as “W.”
Grice considers a quartet of utterances: Jack wants someone to marry him; Jack
wants someone or other to marry him; Jack wants a particular person to marry
him, and There is someone whom Jack wants to marry him. Grice notes that “there
are clearly at least *two* possible readings” of an utterance like our (i): a
first reading “in which,” as Grice puts it, (i) might be paraphrased by (ii).”
A second reading is one “in which it might be paraphrased by (iii) or by (iv).”
Grice goes on to symbolize the phenomenon in his own version of a first-order
predicate calculus. ‘Ja wants that p’ becomes ‘Wjap,’ where ‘ja’
stands for the individual constant “Jack” as a super-script attached to the
predicate standing for Jack’s psychological state or attitude. Grice writes:
“Using the apparatus of classical predicate logic, we might hope to represent,”
respectively, the external reading and the internal reading (involving an
intentio secunda or intentio obliqua) as ‘(Ǝx)WjaFxja’
and ‘Wja(Ǝx)Fxja.’ Grice then
goes on to discuss a slightly more complex, or oblique, scenario involving this
second internal reading, which is the one that interests us, as it involves an
‘intentio seconda.’ Grice notes: “But suppose that Jack wants a specific
individual, Jill, to marry him, and this because Jack has been “*deceived* into
thinking that his friend Joe has a highly delectable sister called Jill, though
in fact Joe is an only child.” (The Jill Jack eventually goes up the hill with
is, coincidentally, another Jill, possibly existent). Let us recall that
Grice’s main focus of the whole essay is, as the title goes, ‘emptiness’! In
these circumstances, one is inclined to say that (i) is true only on reading
(vii),” where the existential quantifier occurs within the scope of the
psychological-state or -attitude verb, “but we cannot now represent (ii) or
(iii), with ‘Jill’ being vacuous, by (vi), where the existential quantifier (Ǝx) occurs outside the scope of the
psychological-attitude verb, want, “since [well,] Jill does not really exist,”
except as a figment of Jack’s imagination. In a manoeuver that I interpret as
‘purely intentionalist,’ and thus favouring by far Suppes’s over Chomsky’s
characterisation of Grice as a mere ‘behaviourist,’ Grice hopes that “we should
be provided with distinct representations for two familiar readings” of, now:
Jack wants Jill to marry him; Jack wants ‘Jill’ to marry him. It is at this
point that Grice applies a syntactic scope notation involving sub-scripted
numerals, (ix) and (x), where the numeric values merely indicate the order of
introduction of the symbol to which it is attached in a deductive schema for
the predicate calculus in question. Only the first notation yields the internal
de sensu reading (where ‘ji’ stands for ‘Jill’): ‘W2ja4F1ji3ja4’
and ‘W3ja4F2ji1ja4.’
Note that in the alternative external notation, the individual constant for
“Jill,” ‘ji,’ is introduced prior to ‘want,’ – ‘ji’’s sub-script is 1, while
‘W’’s sub-script is the higher numerical value 3. If Russell could have avowed
of this he would have had that the Prince Regents, by issuing the invitation,
wants to confirm that ‘the author of Waverley’ isN Scott, already having
confirmed that the author of Waverley =M the author of Waverley. Grice warns
Quine. Given that Jill does not exist, only the internal reading “can be true,”
or alethically satisfactory. Similarly, we might imagine an alternative
scenario where the butler informs the Prince: ‘We are sorry to inform Your
Majesty that your invitation was returned: apparently the author of Waverley
does not SEEM to exist.’ Grice sums up his reflections on the representation of
the opaqueness of a verb standing for a psychological state or attitude like
that expressed by ‘wanting’ with one observation that further marks him as an
intentionalist, almost of a Meinongian type. If he justified a loose use of
‘know,’ he is now is ready to allow for ‘existential’ phrases in cases of ‘vacuous’
designata, which however baffling, should not lead a philosopher to the wrong
characterisation of the linguistic phenomena (as it led Austin with ‘know’).
Provided such a descriptors occur within an opaque, intensional, de sensu,
psychological-state or attitude verbs, Grice captures the nuances of ‘ordinary’
discourse, while keeping Quine happy. As Grice puts it, we should also have
available to us also three neutral, yet distinct, (Ǝx)-quantificational forms (together with their isomorphs),” as a
philosopher who thinks that Wittgenstein denies a distinction, craves for a
generality! “Jill” now becomes “x”: ‘W4ja5Ǝx3F1x2ja5,’
‘Ǝx5W2ja5F1x4ja3’,
and ‘Ǝx5W3ja4F1x2ja4
.’ Since in (xii) the individual variable ‘x’ (ranging over ‘Jill’) “does not
dominate the segment following the ‘(Ǝx)’
quantifier, the formulation does not display any ‘existential’ or de re,
‘force,’ and is suitable therefore for representing the internal readings (ii)
or (iii), “if we have to allow, as we do have, if we want to faithfully
represent ‘ordinary’ discourse, for the possibility of expressing the fact that
a particular person, Jill, does not actually exist.” At least Grice does not
write, “really,” for he knew that Austin detested a ‘trouser word.’ Grice
concludes that (xi) and (xiii) are derivable from each of (ix) and (x), while
(xii) will be “derivable only” from (ix).‘intend’By this time, Grice had been
made a Fellow of the British Academy and it was about time for the delivery of
the philosophical lecture that goes with it. It only took him six five years.
Grice choses “Intention and uncertainty” as its topic. He was provoked by two
members of his ‘playgroup’ at Oxford, Hart and Hampshire, who in an essay
published in Mind, what Grice finds, again, as he did with the anti-Gettier
cases of ‘know,’ as rather a too strong analysis of ‘intending.’ In his
British-Academy lecture, Grice plays now with the psychological state or
attitude, realised by the verbal form, ‘intend,’ when specifically followed by
a ‘that’-clause, “intends that…,” as an echo of his dealing with “meaning to”
as merely ‘natural.’ He calls himself a neo-Prichardian, reviving this ‘willing
that’ which Urmson had popularised at Oxford, bringing to publication
Prichard’s exploration of William James and his “I will that the distant chair
slides over the floor towards me. It does not.”Grice’s ‘intending that…’ is
notably a practical, boulemaic, or buletic, or desiderative, rather than
alethic or doxastic, psychological state or attitude. It involves not just an itentum,
but an intentum that involves both a desideratum AND a factum – for the ‘future
indicative’ is conceptually involved. Grice claims that, if the conceptual
analysis of “intending that…” is to represent ‘ordinary’ discourse, shows that
it contains, as one of its prongs, in the final ‘neo-Prichardian’ version that
Grice gives, also a ‘doxastic’ (rather than ‘factive’ and ‘epistemic’)
psychological state or attitude, notably a belief on the part of the ‘intender’
that his willing that p has a probability greater than 0.5 to the effect that p
be realised. Contra Hart and Hampshire, Grice acknowledges the investigations
by the playgroup member Pears on this topic. Interestingly, a polemic arose
elsewhere with Davidson, who trying to be more Griceian thatn Grice, sees this
doxastic constraint as a mere cancellable implicatum. Grice grants it may be a
dis-implicatum at most, as in loose cases of ‘know,’ or ‘see.’ Grice is adamant
in regarding the doxastic component as a conceptual ‘entailment’ in the
‘ordinary’ use of ‘intend,’ unless the verb is used in a merely
‘disimplicatural,’ loose fashion. Grice’s example, ‘Jill intends to climb
Everest next week,’ when the prohibitive conditions are all to evident to
anyone concerned with such an utterance of (xv), perhaps Jill included, and
‘intends’ has to be read only ‘internally’ and hyperbolically. At this point,
if in “Vacuous Names, he fights with Meinong while enjoying engaging in
emptiness, it should be stressed that Grice gives as an illustration of a
‘disimplicature,’ along with a use of ‘see’ in a Shakespeareian context. ‘See,’ like ‘know,’ or ‘mean,’ exhibit what
Grice calls diaphaneity. So it’s only natural Grice turns his attention to
‘see.’ Grice’s examples are ‘Macbeth saw Banquo’ and ‘Hamlet saw his father on
the ramparts of Elsinore,’ and both involve hallucination! It is worth
comparing the fortune of ‘disimplicature’ with that of ‘implicature.’ Grice
coins ‘to dis-implicate’ as an active verb, for a case where the utterer does
NOT, as in the case of implicature, mean MORE than he says, but LESS. Grice’s
point is a subtle one. It involves his concession on something like an
explicatum, but alsoo on something like Moore’s entailment. If the ‘doxastic
condition’ is entailed by “intending that…,’ an utterer U may STILL use, in an
‘ordinary’ fashion, a strong ‘intending that…’ in a scenario where it is common
ground between the utterer U and his addressee A that the probability of ‘p’
being realised is lower than 0.5. The expression of the psychological state or
attitude is loose, since the utterer is, as it were, dropping an ‘entailment’
that applies in a use of ‘intending that’ where that ‘common-ground’ assumption
is absent. One reason may be echoic. Jill may think that she can succeed in
climbing Mt. Everest; she herself has used ‘intend.’ When that information is
transmitted, the strong psychological verb is kept when the doxastic constraint
is no longer shared by the utterer U and his addressee A (Like an implicatum, a
disimplicatum has to be recognised as such to count as one. No such thing as an ‘unwanted’
disimplicatum.‘motivate’Sometimes, it would seem that, for Grice, the English
philosopher of English ‘ordinary-language’ philosophy, English is not enough!
Grice would amuse at Berkeley seminars, with things like, ‘A pirot potches o as
fang, or potches o and o’ as F-id,’ just to attract his addressee’s attention.
The full passage, in what Grice calls, after Carnap, pirotese, reads: “A pirot
can be said to potch of some obble x as fang or feng; also to cotch of x, or
some obble o, as fang or feng; or to cotch of one obble o and another obble o’
as being fid to one another.” Grice’s deciphering, with ‘pirot,” a tribute to
Carnap – and Locke -- as any agent, and an ‘obble’ as an object. Grice borrows,
but does not return, the ‘pirot’ from Carnap (for whom pirots karulise
elatically – Carnap’s example of a syntactically well-formed formula in
Introduction to Semantics). Grice uses ‘pirotese’ ‘to potch’ as a correlate for
‘perceive,’ such as the factive ‘see’ and ‘to cotch’ as a correlate for the
similarly factive ‘know.’While ‘perceive’ strictly allows for a ‘that’-clause
(as in Grice analysis of “I perceive that the pillar box is red” in “The causal
theory of perception”), for simplificatory purposes, Grice is using ‘to potch’
as applying directly to an object, which Grice rephrases as an ‘obble.’ Since
some perceptual feature or other is required in a predication of ‘perceiving’
and ‘potching,’ ‘feng’ is introduced as a perceptual predicate. And since pirots
should also be allowed to perceive an ‘obble’ o in some relation with another
‘obble’ o2, Grice introduces the dyadic ‘relational’ feature ‘fid.’ Grice’s exegesis reads: “‘To potch’ is
something like ‘to perceive,’ whereas ‘to cotch’ is something like ‘to think.’
‘Feng’ and ‘fang’ are possible descriptions, much like our adjectives; ‘fid’ is
a possible relation between ‘obbles.’”).
At this point, Grice has been made, trans-territorially, the President
of the American Philosophical Association, and is ready to give his
Presidential Address (now reprinted in his Conception of Value, for Clarendon.
He chooses ‘philosophical psychology’ It’s when Grice goes on to play now with
the neo-Wittgensteinian issues of incorrigibility and privileged access, that
issues of intentio seconda become prominent.
For any psychological attitude ψ1, if U holds it, U holds, as
a matter of what Grice calls ‘genitorial construction,’ a meta-psychological
attitude, ψ2, a seconda intentio if ever there was one, -- Grice
even uses the numeral ‘2’ -- that has, as its content followed the second
‘that’-clause, the very first psychological attitude ψ1. The general
schema being given below, with an instance of specification: ‘ψup ⊃ ψuψup,’
and ‘if U wills that p, U wills that U wills that p.’ The interesting bit, from
the perspective of our exploration of ‘intentio seconda,’ is that, if, alla
Peano, we apply this to itself, as in the anti-Gettier cases Grice discussed
earlier, we end with an ad-infinitum clause. It was Judith Baker, who earned
her doctorate under Grice at Berkeley who sees this clearlier than everyone
(She was a regular contributor to the Kant Society in Germany). Baker’s
publications are, like those of her tutor, scarce. But in a delightful
contribution to the Grice festschrift, “Do one’s motives have to be pure?” (in
Grandy/Warner 1986), Baker explores the crucial importance of that ad-infinitum
chain of intentiones secondæ as it applies to questions of not alethic but
practical value or satisfactoriness. Consider ‘ought’. Grice would say that
‘must’ is aequi-vocal, i.e. it is not that ‘must’ has an alethic ‘sense’ and a
practical ‘sense.’ Only “one” must, if one must! (As Grice jokes, “Who needs
ichthyological necessity?”). Baker notes
that the ad-infinitum chain may explain how ‘duty’ ‘cashes out’ in ‘interest.’
Both Grice and Baker are avowed Kantotelians. By allowing ‘duty’ to cash out in
interest they are merging Aristotle’s utilitarian teleology with Kant’s
deontology, and succeeding! It is possible to symbolize Grice’s and Baker’s
proposal. If there is a “p” SUCH AS, at some point in the iteration of willing
and intentiones secondæ, the agent is not willing to accept it, this blocks the
potential Kantian universalizability of the content of a teleological attitude “p,”
stripping “p” of any absolute value status that it may otherwise attain.In
Grice’s reductive analysis of ‘mean,’ ‘know,’ ‘want,’ ‘intend,’ and ‘motivate,’
we witness the subtlety of his approach that is only made possible from the
recognition of Aristotle’s insight back in “De Sophisticis Elenchis” to Kant’s
explorations on the purity of motives. It should not surprise us. It’s Grice’s
nod, no doubt, to an unjustly neglected philosopher, who should be neglected no
more.ReferencesBlackburn, S. W. 1984. Spreading the words: groundings in the
philosophy of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Darwin, Charles. 1872.
The expression of emotions in man and animals. London: Murray. Grandy, R. E.
and R. O. Warner 1986. Philosophical grounds of rationality: intentions,
categories, ends. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Grice, H. P. 1948. Meaning, The
Oxford Philosophical Society. Repr. in Grice 1989. Grice, H. P. 1961. The
causal theory of perception, The Aristotelian Society. Repr. in Grice 1989.
Grice, H. P. 1967. Logic and Conversation, The William James lectures. Repr. in
a revised 1987 form in Grice 1989. Grice, H. P. 1969. Vacuous Names, in
Davidson and Hintikka, Words and objections. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. Grice, H.
P. 1971. Intention and uncertainty, The British Academy. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Grice, H. P. 1975. How pirots karulise elatically: some
simpler ways, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley. Grice, H. P. 1982. Meaning Revisited, in N.
V. Smith, Mutual knowledge. London: Croom Helm, repr. in Grice 1989. Grice,
H.P. 1987. Retrospective epilogue, in Studies in the Way of Words. Grice, H. P.
1989. Studies in the way of words. London and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press. Hart, H. L. A. and S. N. Hampshire 1958. Intention, decision,
and certainty, Mind, 67:1-12.Kemmerling, A. M. 1986. Utterer’s meaning
revisited, in Grandy/Warner 1986. Kneale, W. C. and M. Kneale. 1966. The
development of logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Pecocke, C. A. B. 1989. Transcendental Arguments in the Theory of Content: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered
Before the University of Oxford on 16 May 1989. Oxford University Press.
Prichard, H. A. 1968. Moral Obligation and Duty and Interest. Essays and
Lectures, edited by
W. D. Ross and J. O. Urmson. Oxford: Oxford University. Stevenson,
C. L. 1944. Ethics and language. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Strawson, P. F. 1964 Intention and convention in speech acts, The Philosophical
Review, repr. in Logico-Linguistic Papers, London, Methuen, 1971, pp. 149-169 as Blackburn puts
it in his discussion of Grice in the intention-based chapter of his “Spreading
the word: groundings in the philosophy of language.” Intentio seconda or
obliqua bears heavily on Grice’s presentation for the Oxford Philosophical
Society. The motivation behind Grice’s analysis pertains to philosophical
methodology. Grice is legitimizing an ascription of ‘mean’ to a rational agent,
such as … a philosopher. This very ascription Grice finds to be ‘seemingly
denied by Wittgenstein’ (Grice 1986). As an exponent of what he would later and
in jest dub “The Post-War Oxonian School of ‘Ordinary-Language’ Philosophy,”
Grice engages in a bit of language botany, and dealing with the intricacies of ‘communicative’
uses of “mean.” Interestingly, and publicly – although a provision is in order
here – Grice acknowledges emotivist Stevenson, who apparently taught Grice
about ‘metabolic’ uses of “mean.” Stevenson, who read English as a minor at
Yale, would not venture to apply ‘mean’ to moans! Realising it as a colloquial
extension, he is allowed to use ‘mean,’ but in scare quotes only! (“Smith’s
reduced temperature ‘means’ that he is is convalescent.” “There is a sense, to be sure, in which a groan
“means“ something, just a reduced temperature may at times ”mean”
convalescence.” Stevenson 1944:38). Close enough but no cigar. Stevenson
has ‘groan,’ which at least rhymes with ‘moan.’ (As for the proviso, Grice
never ‘meant’ to ‘publish’ his talk on ‘Meaning,’ but one of his tutees
submitted for publication, and on acceptance, Grice allowed the publication).
In “Meaning” Grice does not provide a conceptual analysis for, ‘by moaning, U
means [simpliciter] that p.’ He will in his “Meaning Revisited” – the metabolical
scare quotes are justified on two counts: ‘By moaning U means that p’ is
legitimized on the basis of the generic ‘x ‘means’ y iff x is a consequence of
y.’ But it is also justified on the basis that there is a continuum between U’s
involuntarily moaning thereby meaning that he is in pain, and U’s voluntarily
moaning, thereby ‘communicating’ that he is in pain. However, and more
importantly for our exploration of the ‘intentum,’ Grice hastens to add that he
does not agree with Stevenson’s purely ‘causal’ account. The main reason is not
‘anti-naturalistic.’ It is just that Grice sees Stevenson’s proposal as as
involving a vicious circle. Typically, Grice extrapolates the relevant quote
from Stevenson, slightly out of context. Grice refers to Stevenson’s appeal to
"an elaborate process of conditioning attending …
communication."Grice: “If we have to take seriously the second part of the
qualifying phrase ("attending … communication"), Stevenson’s account
of meaning is obviously circular. We might just as well say, "U means” if
“U communicates,” which, though true, is not helpful. It MIGHT be helpful for
Cicero translating from Grecian to Roman: ‘com-municatio’ indeed translates a
Grecian turn of phrase involving ‘what is common.’ f. “con-” and root “mu-,” to
bind; cf.: immunis, munus, moenia.’And the suggestion would be helpful if we
say that to ‘communicate,’ or ‘mean,’ is just to bring some intentum to be
allotted ‘common ground,’ because of the psi-transmission it is shared between
the emissor and his intended addressee. This one hopes is both true AND
‘helpful.’ In any case, Grice’s tutee Strawson later
found Grice’s elucidation of utterer’s meaning to be ‘objection-proof’
(Starwson and Wiggins, 2001) in terms of a set of necessary and sufficient
conditions, of an utterer or emissor E meaning that p, by uttering ‘x,’ and
appealing to primary and secondary intentionality. But is Grice’s
intentionalism a sort of behaviourism? Grice denies that in “Method” calling
‘behaviourism’ ‘silly. Grice further explores intentio obliqua as it pertains
to his remarks towards a general theory of “re-presentation.” The place where
this excursus takes place is crucial. It is his Valediction to his compilation
of essays, Studies in the Way of Words, posthumously published. At this stage,
he must have felt that, what he once regarded krypto-technic in Peirce, is no
more! Grice has already identified in that ‘Valediction’ many strands of his
philosophical thought, and concludes his re-assessment of his ‘philosophy of
language’ and semiotics with an attempt to provide some general remarks about
‘to represent’ in general, perhaps to counter the allegations of vicious
circularity which his approach had received, seeing that “p” features, as a
‘gap-sign,’ as the content of both an ‘expression’ and a ‘psychological’
attitude. In trying to reconcile his austere views on “Meaning,” back in that
evening at the Oxford Philosophical Society, where he distinguished two senses
of ‘mean’ (“Smoke ‘means’ fire,” and ““Smoke” means ‘smoke’”). By focusing on
the most general of verbs for a psychological state or attitude, ‘to
represent,’ that even allows for a non-psychological reading, Grice wants to be
seen as answering the challenge of an alleged vicious circle with which his
intention-based approach is usually associated. The secondary-intentional
non-iconic mode of representation rests on a prior iconic mode and can be
understood as ‘pre-conventional,’ without any explicit recourse to the features
we associate with a developed system of communication. Grice needs no ‘language
of thought’ or sermo mentalis alla Ockham there. Grice allows that one can
communicate fully without the need to use what more conventional philosophers
call ‘a language.’ Artists do it all the time!
The passage from intentio prima to full intentio seconda is, for Grice,
gradual and complex. Grice means to adhere with ‘ordinary’ discourse, in its
implicata and dis-implicaata. The passage also adhering to a functionalist
approach qua ‘method in philosophical psychology,’ as he’d prefer, that needs
not to postulate a full-blown ‘linguistic entity’ as the object of intentional
thought. In this respect, it is worth mentioning the work of C. A. B. Peacocke,
who knew Grice from his Oxford days and later joined his seminars at Berkeley,
and who has developed this line of thought in a better fashion than less
careful philosophers. Grice’s programme has occasionally, and justly, been
compared with phenomenological approaches to expression and communication, such
as Marty’s. It is hoped that the previous notes have shed some light on those
aspects where this interface can further be elaborated. Even as we leave an
intentio seconda to resume the discussion for a longer day. In his explorations
on the embedding of intensional concepts, Grice should be inspirational to
philosophers in more than one way, but especially in the one that he favoured
most: the problematicity of it all. As he put it in another context, when
defending absolute value. “Such a defence of absolute value is
of course, bristling with unsolved or incompletely solved problems. I do not
find this thought daunting. If philosophy generated no new problems it would be
dead, because it would be finished; and if it recurrently regenerated the same
old problems it would not be alive because it could never begin. So those who
still look to philosophy for their bread-and-butter should pray that the supply
of new problems never dries up.” (Grice 1991). In the Graeco-Roman tradition,
philosophers started to use ‘intentio prima,’ ‘intentio secunda,’ ‘intentio
tertia,’ and “… ad infinitum,” as they would put it. In post-war Oxford,
English philosopher H. P. Grice felt the need. The formalist he was, he found
subscribing numbers to embedded intentions has a strong appeal for him. Grice’s
main motivation is in the philosophy of language, but as ancillary towards
solving this or that problem concerning the ‘linguistic’ methodology of his
day. To appreciate Grice’s contribution one need to abstract a little from his
own historical circumstances, or rather, place them in the proper context, and
connect it with the general history of philosophy. As a matter of
history, ‘intentio prima,’ or ‘recta,’ as opposed to ‘obliqua,’ is part of
Nicolai Hartmann’s ‘mediaeval revival,’ as a reaction to mediaevalism having
made scorn by the likes of Rabelais that amused D. P. Henry. For the mediaeval
philosopher, to use Grice’s symbolism, was concerned with whether a chimaera
could eat ‘I2,’ a second intention. The mediaeval philosopher’s
implicature seems to be that a chimaera can easily eat ‘I1.’ Such a
‘quaestio subtilissima,’ Rabelais jokes. If ‘I1,’ or, better, for
simplificatory purposes, ‘IR’ is a specific state, stance, or
attitude of the ‘soul,’ ‘ψ1’ or ‘ψR’ directed towards
its ‘de re’ ‘intentum,’ or ‘prae-sentatum,’ of the noumenon, ‘IO,’
‘intentio obliqua,’ is a state, stance, or attitude of the ‘soul,’ of the same
genus, ‘ψ2,’ or ‘ψS’ directed towards ‘ψR,’
its ‘de sensu’ ‘intentum’ now ‘re-prae-sentatum’ of the phainomenon or
ob-jectum (Abelard translates Aristotle’s ‘per divisionem’ as ‘de re’ and ‘per
compositionem’ and ‘per conjunctionem’ by ‘de sensu,’ and ‘per Soph. Elen.,
Kneale and Kneale, 1966). Grice’s intentionalism has been widely discussed, but
the defense he himself makes of intensionalism (versus extensionalism) has
proved inspiring, as when he assumes as an attending commentary to his
reductive analysis of the state of affairs by which the emissor communicates
that p, that he is putting forward “the legitimacy of [the] application of
[existential generalization] to a statement the expression of which contains
such [an] "intensional" verb[…] as "intend" (Grice 1989:
116 ). The expression ‘de sensu’ is due to Abelard, but Russell likes it. While
serving as Prince Regent of England in 1815, George IV casually remarks his
wish to meet ‘the author of Waverley’ in the flesh. The Prince was being funny,
you see. The prince would not know this, but when his press becomes embroiled
in pecuniary difficulties, Scotts set out to write a cash-cow. The result is
Waverley, a novel which did not name its author. It is a tale of the last
Jacobite rebellion in England, the “Forty-Five.” The novel meets with
considerable success. The next year, Scott. There follows a sequel, the same
general vein. Mindful of his reputation,
Scotts maintains the anonymous habit he displays with Waverley, and publishes the
sequel under “the Author of Waverley.” The identity “Author of Waverley” =
“Scott” is widely rumoured, and Scott is
given the honour of dining with George, Prince Regent, who had wished to
meet “Author of Waverley” in the flesh for a ‘snug little dinner’ at Carleton,
on hearing ‘the author of Waverley’ was in town. The use of a descriptor may
lead to the implicatum that His Majesty is p’rhaps not sure that ‘the author of
Waverley’ has a name, and isR Scott. Lack of certainty is one thing,
yet, to quote from Russell, “an interest in the law of identity can hardly be
attributed to the first gentleman of Europe.” Grice admired Russell profusely
and one of his essays is wittily entitled, “Definite descriptions in Russell
and in the Vernacular,” so his explorations of ‘intentio’ ‘de sensu’ have an
intrinsic interest. Keywords: H. Paul
Grice, intentio seconda, implicature, intentionalism, intentum, intentum de sensu, ‘that’-clause, the
recte-oblique distinction. Grice explored issues of intentum de sensu in
various areas. First, ‘meaning.’ Second, ‘knowing.’ Third, ‘wanting.’ Fourth,
‘intending,’ Fifth, pirots, with incorrigibility and privileged access. Sixth,
morality and the regressus. Seventh, the continuum and the unity. With Grice, it all
starts, roughly, when Grice comes up with a topic for a talk at The Oxford
Philosophical Society.The Society is holding one of those meetings, and Grice
thinks of presenting a few conclusions he had reached at his seminars on C. S.
Peirce.What’s the good of an Oxford don of keeping tidy lecture notes if you will
not be able to lecture to a philosophical addressee? Peirce is the philosopher
on whom Grice choses to lecture. In part, for “not being particularly popular
on these shores,” and in part because Grice noted the ‘heretic’ in Peirce with
which he could identify.Granted, at this stage, Grice disliked the
un-Englishness of some of Peirce’s over-Latinate jargon, what Grice finds the
‘krypto-technic.’ ‘Sign,’ ‘symbol,’ ‘icon,’ and the rest of them!Instead, Grice
thinks, initially for the sake of his tutees and students – he was university
lecturer -- sticking with the simpler, ‘ordinary’, short English lexeme
‘mean.’A. M. Kemmerling, of all people, who wrote the obituary for Grice for
Synthese, has precisely cast doubts on the ‘universal’ validity of Grice’s proposed
conceptual reductive analysis, notably in his Ph.D dissertation on
‘Meinen.’ Note the irony in Kemmerling’s
title: Was Grice mit "Meinen"
meint - Eine Rekonstruktion der Griceschen Analyse rationaler Kommunikation.” Nothing jocular in the
subtitle, for this indeed is a reconstruction of ‘rational’ communication. The
funny bit is in “Was mit “Meinen” Grice meint”! In that very phrase, which is
rhetorical, and allows for an answer, because ‘meinen’ is both mentioned and
used, Kemmerling allows that he is ‘buying’ Grice’s idea that his reductive
analysis of ‘mean’ applies to German ‘meinen.’ Kemmerling is also pointing to
the ‘primacy’ (to use Suppes’s phrase) of ‘utterer’s’ or ‘emissor’s
“communicatum” or ‘Meinung.” Kemmerling advertises his interest in exploring on
what _Grice_ means – by uttering ‘meinen,’ almost! As Kemmerling notes,
German ‘meinen,’ cognate via common Germanic with English ‘mean,’ (cf. Frisian
‘mein,’ – and Hazzlitt, “Bread, butter, and green cheese, very good English,
very good cheese”) is none other than ‘mean’ that Grice means. And ‘Grice
means’ is the only literal, i. e. non-metabolic use of the verb Grice allows –
as applied to a rational agent, which features in the subtitle to Kemmerling’s
dissertation. Thus one reads in Kluge, “Etymologische Wörterbuch
der deutschen Sprache, 1881, of “meinen,”
rendered by J. F. Davis as ‘to think, opine, mean,’ from a MHG used to indicate, in Davis’s rendition,
‘to direct one's thoughts to, have in view, aim at, be affected towards a
person, love,’ OHG meinen, meinan, ‘to mean, think, say,
declare.’ = OS mênian,
Du. meenen, OE mœ̂nan, E mean (to this Anglo-Saxon mœ̂nan, cf. prob. moan – I know your meaning from your moaning),
all from WGmc. meinen, mainjan, ‘mênjan,’ and cognate with ‘man,’ ‘to think’ (cf. ‘mahnen,’ ‘Mann,’ and ‘Minne’). Kemmerling is
very apropos, because Grice engaged in philosophical discussion with him, as
testified by his perceptive contribution to P. G. R. I. C. E. (Kemmerling,
1986). On top, in his presentation for the Oxford Philosophical Society, Grice
wants to restrict the philosophical interest to ‘de sensu,’ the ‘that’-clause
(cf. the recte-oblique distinction), viz. not just ‘what Grice means,’ if this
is going to be expaned as ‘something wonderful.’ Not enough for Grice. It has
to be expanded, for the thing to have philosophical interest into a
‘propositional clause,’, an ‘intensional’ context, i. e., ‘Grice means that…’
Grice cavalierly dismisses other use of ‘mean,’ – notably the ubiquitous, ‘mean
to…’ – He will later explain his reason for this. It was after William James
provoked Prichard. For William James uttered: “I will that the distant table
slides on the floor toward me. It doesn’t’. Prichard turns this into the conceptual
priority of ‘will that…’ for which Grice gives him the credit he deserved at a
later lecture now on his being appointed a Fellow of The British Academy
(Grice, 1971). Strictly, what Grice does
in the Oxford Philosophical Socieety presentation is to distinguish between
various ‘mean’ and end up focusing on ‘mean’ as followed by a ‘that’-clause. In
the typical Oxonian fashion, that Grice borrows (but never returns) from J. C.
Wilson, Grice has the IO as ‘meaning that so-and-so’ (Grice, 1989:
217). Grice explicitly displays the primacy of a reductive analysis of the
conceptual circumstances involving an emissor (Anglo-Saxon ‘utterer’) who
‘means’ that p. It will be a longer ‘shaggy-dog’ story Grice tells when he
crosses the divide from ‘propositional’ (p) to ‘predicative’ ascriptions (“By
uttering ‘Fido is shaggy,’ Grice means that the dog is hairy-coated (Grice
1989). Grice notes that ‘metabolically,’ “mean,” at least in English, can be
applied to various other things, sometimes even involving a ‘that’-clause. “By
delivering his budget, the major means that we will have a hard year.’ Grice
finds that ‘but we won’t’ turns him into a self-contradicter. In Grice’s usage,
‘x ‘means’ y’ iff ‘y is a consequence [consequentia] of x’ --. Quite a
departure from Old Frisian. If Hume’s objection to the use of the verb ‘cause,’
is that it covers animistic beliefs (“Charles I’s decapitation willed his
death”), English allows for disimplicated or loose ‘metabolic’ uses of ‘will’
(“It ‘will’ rain”) and ‘mean’ (Grice’s moaning means that he is in pain).
desideratum:
Grice makes a double use of this. It should be thus two entries. There’s the
conversational desideratum, where a desideratum is like a maxim or an
imperative – and then there are two specific desiderata: the desideratum of
conversational clarity, and the desideratum of conversational candour. Grice
was never sure what adjective to use for the ‘desiderative.’ He liked buletic.
He liked desideratum because it has the co-relate ‘consideratum,’ for
belief. He uses ‘deriderative’ and a few
more! Of course what he means is a sub-psychological modality, or rather a
‘soul.’ So he would apply it ‘primarily’ to the soul, as Plato and Aristotle
does. The ‘psyche’, or ‘anima’ is what is ‘desiderativa.’ The Grecians are pretty
confused about this (but ‘boulemaic’ and ‘buletic’ are used), and the Romans
didn’t help. Grice is concerned with a rational-desiderative, that takes a
“that”-clause (or oratio obliqua), and qua constructivist, he is also concerned
with a pre-rational desiderative (he has an essay on “Needs and Wants,” and his
detailed example in “Method” is a squarrel (sic) who needs a nut. On top, while
Grice suggest s that it goes both ways: the doxastic can be given a reductive
analaysis in terms of the buletic, and the buletic in terms of the doxastic, he
only cares to provide the former. Basically, an agent judges that p, if his
willing that p correlates to a state of affairs that satisfies his desires.
Since he does not provide a reductive analysis for Prichard’s willing-that, one
is left wondering. Grice’s position is that ‘willing that…’ attains its ‘sense’
via the specification, as a theoretical concept, in some law in the
folk-science that agents use to explain their behaviour. Grice gets subtler
when he deals with mode-markers for the desiderative: for these are either
utterer-oriented, or addressee-oriented, and they may involve a buletic
attitude itself, or a doxastic attitude. When utterer-addressed, utterer wills
that utterer wills that p. There is no closure here, and indeed, a regressus ad
infinitum is what Grice wants, since this regressus allows him to get
univeersabilisability, in terms of conceptual, formal, and applicational kinds
of generality. In this he is being Kantian, and Hareian. While Grice praises
Kantotle, Aristotle here would stay unashamedly ‘teleological,’ and giving
priority to a will that may not be universalisable, since it’s the
communitarian ‘good’ that matters. what does Grice have to say about our
conversational practice? L and S have “πρᾶξις,” from “πράσσω,” and which they
render as ‘moral action,’ oποίησις, τέχνη;” “oποιότης,” “ἤθη καὶ πάθη καὶ π.,”
“oοἱ πολιτικοὶ λόγοι;” “ἔργῳ καὶ πράξεσιν, οὐχὶ λόγοις” Id.6.3; ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι
ὄντα τε καὶ πραττόμενα, “exhibited in actual life,” action in drama, “oλόγος;
“μία π. ὅλη καὶ τελεία.” With practical Grice means buletic. Praxis involves
acting, and surely Grice presupposes acting. By uttering, i. e. by the act of
uttering, expression x, U m-intends that p. Grice occasionally refers to action
and behaviour as the thing which an ascription of a psychological state
explains. Grice prefers the idiom of soul. Theres the ratiocinative soul.
Within the ratiocinative, theres the executive soul and the merely
administrative soul. Cicero had to translate Aristotle into prudentia, every
time Aristotle talked of phronesis. Grice was aware that the terminology
by Kant can be confusing. Kant used ‘pure’ reason for reason in the doxastic
realm. The critique by Kant of practical reason is hardly symmetrical to
his critique of doxastic reason. Grice, with his æqui-vocality thesis of
must (must crosses the buletic-boulomaic/doxastic divide), Grice is being more
of a symmetricalist. The buletic, boulomaic, or volitive, is a part of the
soul, as is the doxatic or judicative. And judicative is a trick because there
is such a thing as a value judgement, or an evaluative judgement, which is
hardly doxastic. Grice plays with two co-relative operators: desirability
versus probability. Grice invokes the exhibitive/protreptic distinction he had
introduced in the fifth James lecture, now applied to psychological attitudes
themselves. This Grice’s attempt is to tackle the Kantian problem in the
Grundlegung: how to derive the categorical imperative from a counsel of prudence.
Under the assumption that the protasis is Let the agent be happy, Grice does
not find it obtuse at all to construct a universalisable imperative out of a
mere motive-based counsel of prudence. Grice has an earlier paper on pleasure
which relates. The derivation involves seven steps. Grice proposes seven
steps in the derivation. 1. It is a fundamental law of psychology that, ceteris
paribus, for any creature R, for any P and Q, if R wills P Λ judges
if P, P as a result of Q, R wills Q. 2. Place this law within the scope of a
"willing" operator: R wills for any P Λ Q, if R wills
P Λ judges that if P, P as a result of Q, R wills Q. 3. wills turns
to should. If rational, R will have to block unsatisfactory (literally)
attitudes. R should (qua rational) judge for any P Λ Q, if it is
satisfactory to will that P Λ it is satisfactory to judge that if P,
P as a result of Q, it is sastisfactory to will that Q. 4. Marking the mode: R
should (qua rational) judge for any P Λ Q, if it is satisfactory that
!P Λ that if it .P, .P only as a result of Q, it is satisfactory that
!Q. 5. via (p & q -> r) -> (p -> (q -> r)):
R should (qua rational) judge for any P Λ Q, if it is satisfactory
that if .P, .P only because Q, i is satisfactory that, if let it be that P, let
it be that Q. 6. R should (qua rational) judge for any P Λ Q, if P, P
only because p yields if let it be that P, let it be that Q. 7. For any
P Λ Q if P, P only because Q yields if let it be that P, let it be
that Q. Grice was well aware that a philosopher, at Oxford, needs to be a
philosophical psychologist. So, wanting and needing have to be related to
willing. A plant needs water. A floor needs sweeping. So need is too broad. So
is want, a non-Anglo-Saxon root for God knows what. With willing things get
closer to the rational soul. There is willing in the animal soul. But when it
comes to rational willing, there must be, to echo Pritchard, a conjecture, some
doxastic element. You cannot will to fly, or will that the distant chair slides
over the floor toward you. So not all wants and needs are rational willings,
but then nobody said they would. Grice is interested in emotion in his power
structure of the soul. A need and a want may count as an emotion. Grice was
never too interested in needing and wanting because they do not take a
that-clause. He congratulates Urmson for having introduced him to the brilliant
willing that … by Prichard. Why is it, Grice wonders, that many ascriptions of
buletic states take to-clause, rather than a that-clause? Even mean, as
‘intend.’ In this Grice is quite different from Austin, who avoids the
that-clause. The explanation by Austin is very obscure, like those of all
grammars on the that’-clause, the ‘that’ of ‘oratio obliqua’ is not in every
way similar to the ‘that’-clause in an explicit performative formula. Here the
utterer is not reporting his own ‘oratio’ in the first person singular present
indicative active. Incidentally, of course, it is not in the least necessary
that an explicit performative verb should be followed by a ‘that’-clause. In
important classes of cases it is followed by ‘to . . .,’ or by or nothing, e.
g. ‘I apologize for…,’ ‘I salute you.’ Now many of these verbs appear to be
quite satisfactory pure performatives. Irritating though it is to have them as
such, linked with clauses that look like statements, true or false, e. g., when
I say ‘I prophesy that …,’ ‘I concede that …’,
‘I postulate that …,’ the clause following normally looks just like a
statement, but the verb itself seems to be pure performatives. One
may distinguish the performative opening part, ‘I state that …,’ which makes
clear how the utterance is to be taken, that it is a statement, as distinct
from a prediction, etc.), from the bit in the that-clause which is required to
be true or false. However, there are many cases which, as language stands at
present, we are not able to split into two parts in this way, even though the
utterance seems to have a sort of explicit performative in it. Thus, ‘I liken x
to y,’ or ‘I analyse x as y.’ Here we both do the likening and assert that
there is a likeness by means of one compendious phrase of at least a
quasi-performative character. Just to spur us on our way, we may also mention
‘I know that …’, ‘I believe that …’, etc. How complicated are these examples?
We cannot assume that they are purely descriptive, which has Grice talking of
the pseudo-descriptive. Want etymologically means absence; need should be
preferred. The squarrel (squirrel) Toby needs intake of nuts, and youll soon
see gobbling them! There is not much philosophical bibliography on these two
psychological states Grice is analysing. Their logic is interesting. Smith
wants to play cricket. Smith needs to play cricket. Grice is
concerned with the propositional content attached to the want and need
predicate. Wants that sounds harsh; so does need that. Still, there
are propositional attached to the pair above. Smith plays cricket. Grice
took a very cavalier attitude to what linguists spend their lives analysing. He
thought it was surely not the job of the philosopher, especially from a
prestigious university such as Oxford, to deal with the arbitrariness of
grammatical knots attached to this or that English verb. He rarely used
English, but stuck with ordinary language. Surely, he saw himself in the
tradition of Kantotle, and so, aiming at grand philosophical truths: not
conventions of usage, even his own! 1. Squarrel Toby has a nut, N, in
front of him. 2. Toby is short on squarrel food (observed or assumed), so, 3.
Toby wills squarrel food (by postulate of Folk Pyschological
Theory θ connecting willing with intake of N). 4. Toby prehends a nut
as in front (from (1) by Postulate of Folk Psychological Theory θ, if it
is assumed that nut and in front are familiar to Toby). 5. Toby joins squarrel
food with gobbling, nut, and in front (i.e. Toby judges gobbling, on nut in
front, for squarrel food (by Postulate of Folk Psychological
Theory θ with the aid of prior observation. So, from 3, 4 and 5, 6.
Tobby gobbles; and since a nut is in front of him, gobbles the nut in front of
him. The system of values of the society to which the agent belongs forms the
external standard for judging the relative importance of the commitments by the
agent. There are three dimensions of value: universally human, cultural that
vary with societies and times; and personal that vary with individuals. Each
dimension has a standard for judging the adequacy of the relevant values. Human
values are adequate if they satisfy basic needs; cultural values are adequate if
they provide a system of values that sustains the allegiance of the inhabitants
of a society; and personal values are adequate if the conceptions of well‐being formed out of them enable individuals to live
satisfying lives. These values conflict and our well‐being requires some way of settling their conflicts, but
there is no universal principle for settling the conflicts; it can only be done
by attending to the concrete features of particular conflicts. These features
vary with circumstances and values. Grice reads Porter.The idea of the value
chain is based on the process view of organizations, the idea of seeing a
manufacturing (or service) organization as a system, made up of subsystems each
with inputs, transformation processes and outputs. Inputs, transformation
processes, and outputs involve the acquisition and consumption of resources –
money, labour, materials, equipment, buildings, land, administration and
management. How value chain activities are carried out determines costs and
affects profits.In his choice of value system and value sub-system, Grice is
defending objectivity, since it is usually the axiological relativist who uses
such a pretentious phrasing! More than a value may co-ordinate in a system. One
such is eudæmonia (cf. system of ends). The problem for Kant is the reduction
of the categorical imperative to the hypothetical or
suppositional imperative. For Kant, a value tends towards the
Subjectsive. Grice, rather, wants to offer a metaphysical defence of objective
value. Grice called the manual of conversational maxims the Conversational
Immanuel. The keyword to search the H. P. Grice is ‘will,’ and ‘volitional,’
even ‘ill-will,’ (“Metaphysics and ill-will,” s. V, c. 7-f. 28) and
‘benevolence’ (vide below under ‘conversational benevolence”). Also
‘desirability’: “Modality, desirability, and probability,” s. V, c. 8-ff.
14-15, and the conference lecture in a different series, “Probability,
desirability, and mood operators,” s. II, c. 2-f.11). Grice makes systematic use of ‘practical’ to
contrast with the ‘alethic,’ too (“Practical reason,” s. V, c. 9-f.1), The H.
P. Grice Papers, BANC.
desideratum of conversational
candour: The term ‘desideratum’ has to be
taken seriously. It involves freedom. This includes the maximin. It should be
noted that candour is DESIRABLE. There is a desirability for candour. Candour
is not a given. Ditto for clarity. See conversational desideratum, simpliciter.
A rational desideratum is a desideratum by a rational agent and which he
expects from another rational agent. One should make the strongest move, and on
the other hand try not to mislead.Grice's Oxford "Conversation"
Lectures, 1966Grice: Between Self-Love and Benevolence As I was saying
(somewhere), Grice uses "self-love", charmingly qualified with capitals, as "Conversational
Self-Love", and, less charmingly,
"Conversational Benevolence", in lectures advertised at
Oxford, as "Logic and
Conversation" that he gave at Oxford in 1964 as
"University Lecturer in
Philosophy". He also gave seminars on "Conversational
helpfulness." A number of the lectures by Grice include discussion of
thetypes of behaviour people in general exhibit, and thereforethe types of
expectations[cfr. owings]they might bring to a venture such as a
conversation.Grice suggests that people in general both exhibitand EXPECT a
certain degree of helpfulness [-- alla Rosenschein, epistemic/boulemaic:If A
cognizes that B wills p, then A wills p.]
"from OTHERS" [-- reciprocal vs. reflexive, etc.] usually on
the understanding that such helpfulness does NOT get in the way of particular
goals and does not involve undue effort cf. least effort? - cfr. Hobbes on self-love.
It two people, even complete strangers,are going through a gate, the
expectation isthat the FIRST ONE through will hold thegate open, or at least
leave it open, for thesecond. The expectation is such that todo OTHERWISE
without particular reasonwould be interpreted as RUDE. The type of helpfulness
exhibited andexpected in conversation is more specificbecause of a particular,
although not a unique feature of conversation.It is a COLLABORATIVE venture betweenthe
participants.There is a SHARED aimGrice wonders. His words, Does "helpfulness in something WE ARE
DOING TOGETHER” equate to 'cooperation'?He seems to have decided that it
does. By the later lectures in the series, 'the principle of conversational
helpfulness'has been rebranded the expectation of 'cooperation.' During the
Oxford lectures, Grice develops his account of the precise nature of this
cooperation. It can be seen as governed by certain regularities, or principles,
detailing expected behaviour. The expression'maxim' to describe these
regularities appears relatively late in the lectures.Grice's INITIAL choices of
terms are 'objectives' and 'desiderata'.He was particularly fond of the latter.
He was interested in detailing the desirable forms of behaviour for the purpose
of achieving a joint goal of the conversation. Initially, Grice posits TWO such
desiderata. Those relating to candour on the one hand and clarity on the other.
The desideratum of candour contains his general PRINCIPLE of making the
strongest (MAX) possible statement and, as a LIMITING (MAX) factor on this, the
suggestion that speakers should try not to mislead. (Do not mislead). cfr.
our"We are brothers"-- but not mutual."We are married to each
other". "You _are_ a boor".----The desideratum of conversational
clarity concerns the manner of expression. [His later reference to Modus or
Mode as used by Kant as one of the four
categories] for any conversational contribution. It includes the IMPORTANT
expectations of relevance to understanding and also insists that the main
import of an utterance be clear and explicit. (“Explicate!”) These two factors
are constantly to be WEIGHED against two
FUNDAMENTAL and SOMETIMES COMPETING DEMANDS. Contributions to a conversation
are aimed towards the agreed current purposes by the PRINCIPLE of Conversational
Benevolence. The principle of CONVERSATIONAL SELF-LOVE ensures the assumption
on the part of both participants that neither will go to unnecessary trouble
[LEAST EFFORT] in framing their contribution. This has been a topic of interest
to Noh end. In "Conversational Immanuel" Grice tries different ways
of making sense -- it is very easy to do so -- of Grice's distinctions that go
over the head of some linguists I know! Reasonable versus rational for example.
A Rawlsian distinction of sorts. Rational is too weak. We need 'reasonable'.
So, what sort of reasonableness is that which results from this harmonious, we
hope, clash of self-love and benevolence? Grice tried, wittily, to extend the
purposes of conversation to involve MUTUALLY INFLUENCING EACH OTHER -- a
reciprocal. (WoW, ii). And there's a mythical reconstruction of this in his
"Meaning Revisited" which he contributed to this symposium organised
by N. Smith on Mutua knowledge. But issues remains, we hope. The concept of
‘candour’is especially basic for Grice since it is constitutive of what it
means to identify the ‘significatum.’ As he notes, ‘false’ information is no
information. This is serious, because it has to do with the acceptum. A contribution
which is not trustworthy is not deemed a contribution. It is conceptually
impossible to intend to PROVIDE information if you are aware that you are not
being trustworthy and not conveying it. As for the degree of explicitness, as
Grice puts it. Since in communication in a certain fashion all must be public,
if an idea or thesis is heavily obscured, it can no longer be regarded as
having been propounded. This gives acceptum justification to the correlative
desideratum of conversational clarity. On top, if there is a level of
obscurity, the thing is not deemed to have been a communicatum or significatum.
It is all about confidence, you know. U expects A will find him
confident. Thus we find in Short and Lewis, “confīdo,” wich they render as
“to trust confidently in something,” and also, “confide in, rely firmly upon,
to believe, be assured of,” as an enhancing of “sperare,” in Cicero’s Att. 6,
9, 1. Trust and rationality are pre-requisites of conversation. Urmson develops
this. They phrase in Urmson is "implied claim." Whenever U makes a
conversational contribution in a standard context, there is an implied claim to
U being trustworthy and reasonable. What do Grice and Urmson mean by an
"implied claim"? It is obvious enough, but they both love to expand.
Whenever U utters an expression which can be used to convey truth or falsehood
there is an implied claim to trustworthiness by U, unless the situation shows
that this is not so. U may be acting or reciting or incredulously echoing the
remark of another, or flouting the expectation. This, Grice and Urmson think,
may need an explanation. Suppose that U utters, in an ordinary
circumstance, ‘It will rain tomorrow,’ or ‘It rained yesterday,’ or ‘It is
raining.’ This act carries with it the claim that U should be trusted and
licenses A to believe that it will rain tomorrow. By this is meant that
just as it is understood that no U will give an order unless he is entitled to
give orders, so it is understood that no U will utter a sentence of a kind which
can be used to make a statement unless U is willing to claim that that
statement is true, and hence one would be acting in a misleading manner if one
uttered the sentence if he was not willing to make that claim. Here, the
predicate “implies that …,” Grice, Grant, Moore, Nowell-Smith, and Urmson
hasten to add, is being used in such a way that, if there is a an expectation
that a thing is done in Circumstance C, U implies that C holds if he does the
thing. The point is often made if not always in the terms Grice uses, and it
is, Urmson and Grice believe, in substance uncontroversial. Grice and Urmson
wish to make the point that, when an utterer U deploys a hedge with an
indicative sentence, there is not merely an implied claim that the whole
statement is true but also that is true. The implied or expressed claim by
the utterer to trustworthiness need not be very strong. The whole point of
a hedge is to modify or weaken (if not, as Grice would have it, flout) the
claim by U to full trustworthiness which would be implied by the unhedged
assertion. But even if U utters “He is, I suppose, at home;” or “I
guess that the penny will come down heads," U expresses, or for
Urmson plainly implies, with however little reason, that this is what U accepts
as worth the trust by A. Now Grice and Urmson meet an objection which is made
by some philosophers to this comparison. Grice and Urmson intend to meet the
objection by a fairly detailed examination of the example which they themselves
would most likely choose. In doing this Grice and Urmson further explain
the use of a parenthetical verb. The adverb is "probably" and
the verb is “I believe.” To say, that something is probable, the imaginary
objector will say, is to imply that it is reasonable to believe, that the
evidence justifies a guarded claim for the trust or trustworthiness of U and
the truth of the statement. But to say that someone else, a third person,
believes something does not imply that it is reasonable for U or A to believe
it, nor that the evidence justifies the guarded or implied claim to factivity
or truth which U makes. Therefore, the objector continues, the difference
between the use of “I believe” and “probably” is not, as Grice and Urmson
suggest, merely one of nuance and degree of impersonality. In one case,
“probably,” reasonableness is implied; in the other, “believe,” it is not. This
objection is met by Grice and Urmson. They do so by making a general
point. To use the rational-reasonable distinction in “Conversational
implicature” and “Aspects,” there is an implied claim by U to
reasonableness. Further to an implied claim to trust whenever a sentence
is uttered in a standard context, now Grice and Urmson add, to meet the
sceptical objection about the contrast between “probably” and “I believe” that,
whenever U makes a statement in a standard context there is an implied claim to
reasonableness. This contention must be explained alla Kant. Cf. Strawson
on the presumption of conversational relevance, and Austin, Moore,
Nowell-Smith, Grant, and Warnock. To use Hart’s defeasibility, and Hall’s
excluder, unless U is acting or story-telling, or preface his remarks with some
such phrase as “I know Im being silly, but …” or, “I admit it is
unreasonable, but …” it is, Grice and Urmson think, a presupposition or
expectation of communication or conversation that a communicator will not make
a statement, thereby implying this trust, unless he has some ground,
however tenuous, for the statement. To utter “The King is visiting Oxford
tomorrow,” or “The President of the BA has a corkscrew in his pocket,” and
then, when asked why the utterer is uttering that, to answer “Oh, for
no reason at all,” would be to sin, theologically, against the basic
conventions governing the use of discourse. Grice goes on to provide a Kantian justification
for that, hence his amusing talk of maxims and stuff. Therefore, Urmson
and Grice think there is an implied or expressed claim to
reasonableness which goes with all our statements, i.e. there is a mutual
expectation that a communicator will not make a statement unless he is prepared
to claim and defend its reasonablenesss. Cf. Grice’s desideratum of
conversational candour, subsumed under the over-arching principle of
conversational helpfulness (formerly conversational benevolence-cum-self-love). Grice
thinks that the principle of conversational benevolence has to be weighed
against the principle of conversational self-love. The result is the
overarching principle of conversational helpfulness. Clarity gets in the
picture. The desideratum of conversational clarity is a reasonable requirement
for conversants to abide by. Grice follows some observations by
Warnock. The logical grammar of “trust,” “candour,” “charity,”
“sincerity,” “decency,” “honesty,” is subtle, especially when we are considering
the two sub-goals of conversation: giving and receiving information/influencing
and being influenced by others. In both sub-goals, trust is paramount. The
explorations of trust has become an Oxonian hobby, with authors not such like
Warnock, but Williams, and others. Grice’s essay is entitled, “Trust,
metaphysics, value.” Trust as a corollary of the principle of conversational
helpfulness. In a given conversational setting, assuming the principle of
conversational helpfulness is operating, U is assumed by A to be trustworthy
and candid. There are two modes of trust, which relate to the buletic
sub-goal and the doxastic sub-goal which Grice assumes the principle of
conversational helpfulness captures: giving and receiving information,
and influencing and being influenced by others. In both sub-goals, trust
is key. In the doxastic realm, trust has to do, not so much or only, with
truth (with which the expression is cognate), or satisfactoriness-value, but
evidence and probability. In the buletic realm, there are the dimensions of
satisfactoriness-value (‘good’ versus ‘true’), and ‘ground’ versus evidence,
which becomes less crucial. But note that one is trustworthy regarding BOTH the
buletic attitude and the doxastic attitude. Grice mentions this or that buletic
attitudes which is not usually judged in terms of evidential support (“I vow to
thee my country.”) However, in the buletic realm, U is be assumed as
trustworthy if U has the buletic attitude he is expressing. The cheater, the
insincere, the dishonest, the untrustworthy, for Grice is not irrational, just
repugnant. How immoral is the idea that honesty is the best policy? Is Kant
right in thinking there is no right to refrain from trust? Surely it is
indecent. For Kant, there is no motivation or ‘motive,’ pure or impure, behind
telling the truth – it’s just a right, and an obligation – an imperative. Being
trustworthy for Kant is associated with a pure motive. Grice agrees. Decency
comes into the picture. An indecent agent may still be rational, but in such a
case, conversation may still be seen as rational (if not reasonable) and surely
not be seen as rational helpfulness or co-operation, but rational adversarial
competition, rather, a zero-sum game. Grice found the etymology of ‘decent’ too
obscure. Short and Lewis have “dĕcet,” which they deem cognate with Sanscrit
“dacas,” ‘fame,’ and Grecian “δοκέω,‘to seem,’ ‘to think,’ and with Latin
‘decus,’ ‘dingus.’ As an impersonal verb, Short and Lewis render it as ‘it is
seemly, comely, becoming,; it beseems, behooves, is fitting, suitable, proper
(for syn. v. debeo init.): decere quasi aptum esse consentaneumque tempori et
personae, Cic. Or. 22, 74; cf. also nunc quid aptum sit, hoc est, quid maxime
deceat in oratione videamus, id. de Or. 3, 55, 210 (very freq. and class.; not
in Caesar). Grice’s idea of decency is connected to his explorations on
rational and reasonable. To cheat may be neither unreasonable nor
rational. It is just repulsive. Indecent, in other words. In all
this, Grice is concerned with ordinary language, and treasures Austin
questioning Warnock, when Warnock was pursuing a fellowship at Magdalen. “What
would you say the difference is between ‘Smith plays cricket rather properly’
and ‘Smith plays cricket rather incorrectly’?” They spent the whole dinner over
the subtlety. By desserts, Warnock was in love with Austin. Cf. Grice on
his prim and proper Aunt Matilda. The exploration by Grice on trust is
Warnockian in character, or vice versa. In “Object of morality,” Warnock has
trust as key, as indeed, the very object of morality. Grice starts to focus on
trust in an Oxford seminars on the implicatum. If there is a desideratum of
conversational candour, and the goal of the principle of conversational
helpfulness is that of giving and receiving information, and influencing and
being influenced by others, ‘false’ ‘information’ is just no information –
Since exhibiteness trumps protrepsis, this applies to the buletic, too. Grice
loved that Latin dictum, “tuus candor.” He makes an early defence of this in
his fatal objection to Malcolm. A philosopher cannot intentionally instill a
falsehood in his tutee, such as “Decapitation willed the death of Charles I”
(the alleged paraphrase of the paradoxical philosopher saying that ‘causing’ is
‘willing’ and rephrasing “Decapitation was the cause of the death of Charles
I.” There is, for both Grice and Apel, a transcendental (if weak)
justification, not just utilitarian (honesty as the best policy), as Stalnaker
notes in his contribution to the Grice symposium for APA. Unlike Apel, the
transcendental argument is a weak one in that Grice aims to show that
conversation that did not abide by trust would be unreasonable, but surely
still ‘possible.’ It is not a transcendental justification for the ‘existence’
of conversation simpliciter, but for the existence of ‘reasonable,’ decent
conversation. If we approach charity in the first person, we trust ourselves
that some of our beliefs have to be true, and that some of our desires have to
be satisfactory valid, and we are equally trusted by our conversational
partners. This is Grice’s conversational golden rule. What would otherwise be
the point of holding that conversation is rational co-operation? What would be
the point of conversation simpliciter? Urmson follows Austin, so Austin’s
considerations on this, notably in “Other minds,” deserve careful examination.
Urmson was of course a member of Grice’s play group, and these are the
philosophers that we consider top priority. Another one was P. H. Nowell-Smith.
At least two of his three rules deserve careful examination. Nowell-Smith notes
that this
or that ‘rule’ of contextual implication is not meant to be taken as a ‘rigid
rule’. Unlike this or that rule of entailment, a conversational rule can be
broken without the utterer being involved in self-contradiction or absurdity.
When U uses an expression to make a statement, it is contextually implied that
he believes it to be true. Similarly, when he uses it to perform any of the
other jobs for which sentences are used, it is contextually implied that he is
using it for one of the jobs that it normally does. This rule is often in fact
broken. Anti-Kantian lying, Bernhard-type play-acting, Andersen-type
story-telling, and Wildeian irony is each a case in which U breaks the rule, or
flouts the expectation, either overtly or covertly. But each of these four
cases is a secondary use, i.e. a use to which an expression cannot logically or
conceptually be put unless, as Hart would have it, it has a primary use. There
is no limit to the possible uses to which an expression may be put. In many
cases a man makes his point by deliberately using an expression in a queer way
or even using it in the ‘sense’ opposite to its unique normal one, as in irony
(“He is a fine friend,” implying that he is a scoundrel). The distinction
between a primary and a secondary use is important because many an argument
used by a philosopher consists in pointing out some typical example of the way
in which some expression E is used. Such an argument is always illegitimate if
the example employed is an example of a secondary use, however common such a
use may be. U contextually implies that he has what he himself believes to be
good reasons for his statement. Once again, we often break this rule and we
have special devices for indicating when we are breaking it. Phrases such as
‘speaking offhand …,’ 'I do not really know but …,’ and ‘I should be inclined
to say that …,’ are used by scrupulous persons to warn his addressee that U has
not got what seem to him good reasons for his statement. But unless one of
these guarding phrases is used we are entitled to believe that U believes
himself to have good reasons for his statement and we soon learn to *mistrust*
people who habitually infringe this rule. It is, of course, a mistake to infer
from what someone says categorically that he has in fact good reasons for what
he says. If I tell you, or ‘inform’ to you, that the duck-billed platypus is a
bird (because I ' remember ' reading this in a book) I am unreliable; but I am
not using language improperly. But if I tell you this without using one of the
guarding phrases and without having what I think good reasons, I am. What U
says may be assumed to be relevant to the interests of his addressee. This is
the most important of the three rules; unfortunately it is also the most
frequently broken. Bores are more common than liars or careless talkers. This
rule is particularly obvious in the case of answers to questions, since it is
assumed that the answer is an answer. Not all statements are answers to
questions; information may be volunteered. Nevertheless the publication of a
text-book on trigonometry implies that the author believes that there are
people who want to learn about trigonometry, and to give advice implies a
belief that the advice is relevant to one’s addressee's problem. This rule is
of the greatest importance for ethics. For the major problem of ethics is that
of bridging the gap between a decisions, an ought-sentence, an injunction, and
a sentence used to give advice on the one hand and the statements of *fact*,
sometime regarding the U’s soul, that constitute the reasons for these on the
other. It is in order to bridge these gaps that insight into necessary
synthetic connexions is invoked. This rule of contextual implication may help
us to show that there is no gap to be bridged because the reason-giving
sentence must turn out to be also *practical* from the start and not a
statement of *fact*, even concerning the state of the U’s soul, from which a
practical sentence can somehow be deduced. This rule is, therefore, more than a
rule of good manners; or rather it shows how, in matters of ordinary language,
rules of good manners shade into logical rules. Unless we assume that it is
being observed we cannot understand the connexions between decisions, advice,
and appraisals and the reasons given in support of them. Refs.: The main reference is in the first set of ‘Logic and
conversation.’ Many keywords are useful, not just ‘candour,’ but notably
‘trust.’ (“Rationality and trust,” c. 9-f. 5, “Trust, metaphysics, and value,”
c. 9-f. 20, and “Aristotle and friendship, rationality, trust, and decency,” c.
6-f. 18), BANC.
desideratum of conversational
clarity. The word desideratum has to be
taken seriously. It involves freedom. In what way is “The pillar box seems red
to me” less perspicuous than “The pillar box is red”? In all! If mutual
expectation not to mislead and produce the stronger contribution are
characteristics of candour, expectation of mutual relevance to interests, and
being explicit and clear in your point are two characteristics of this
desideratum. “Candour” and “clarity’ are somewhat co-relative for Grice. He is
interested in identifying this or that desideratum. By having two of them, he
can play. So, how UNCLEAR can a conversationalist be provided he WANTS to be
candid? Candour trumps clarity. But too much ‘unperspicuity’ may lead to
something not being deemed an ‘implicatum’ at all. Grice is especially
concerned with philosopher’s paradoxes. Why would Strawson say that the usage
of ‘not,’ ‘and,’ ‘or,’ ‘if,’ ‘if and only if,’ ‘all,’ ‘some (at least one),
‘the,’ do not correspond to the logician’s use? Questions of candour and clarity
interact. Grice’s first application, which he grants is not original, relates
to “The pillar box seems red” versus “The pillar box is red.” “I would not like
to give the false impression that the pillar box is not red” seems less clear
than “The pillar box is red” – Yet the unperspicuous contributin is still
‘candid,’ in the sense that it expresses a truth. So one has to be careful. On
top, philosophers like Lewis were using ‘clarity is not enough’ as a battle
cry! Grice’s favourite formulations of the imperatives here are
‘self-contradictory,’ and for which he uses ‘[sic]’, notably: “Be perspicuous
[sic]’ and “Be brief. Avoid unnecessary prolixity [sic].’
desirability:
Correlative: credibility. For Grice, credibility reduces to desirability (He
suggests that the reverse may also be possible but does not give a proposal). This
Grice calls the Jeffrey operator. If Urmson likes ‘probably,’ Grice likes
‘desirably.’ This theorem is a corollary of the desirability axiom by Jeffrey,
which is: "If prob XY = 0, for a prima facie PF(A V B) A (x E w)] = PFA A (x E w)] + PfB A
(x El+ w)]. This is the account by Grice of the adaptability of a pirot to its
changeable environs. Grice borrows the notion of probability (henceforth,
“pr”) from Davidson, whose early claim to fame was to provide the logic of the
notion. Grice abbreviates probability by Pr. and compares it to a buletic operator
‘pf,’ ‘for prima facie,’ attached to ‘De’ for desirability. A rational agent
must calculate both the probability and the desirability of his
action. For both probability and desirability, the degree is crucial.
Grice symbolises this by d: probability in degree d; probability in degree d. The
topic of life Grice relates to that of adaptation and surival, and connects
with his genitorial programme of creature construction (Pology.): life as
continued operancy. Grice was fascinated with life (Aristotle, bios) because
bios is what provides for Aristotle the definition (not by genus) of
psyche. The steps are as follows. Pf(p ⊃!q)/Pr(p
⊃ q); pf((p1 ^ p2) ⊃!q)/pr(p1 ^ p2 ⊃q); pf((p1 ^ p2 ^ p3) ⊃!q)/pr(p1 ^ p2 ^ p3 ^ p4 ⊃q);
pf (all things before me ⊃!q)/pr (all things before me ⊃
q); pf (all things considered ⊃ !q)/pr(all things considered ⊃ q); !q/|- q; G wills !q/G judges q. Strictly, Grice avoids
using the noun probability (other than for the title of this or that lecture).
One has to use the sentence-modifier ‘probably,’ and ‘desirably.’ So the
specific correlative to the buletic prima facie ‘desirably’ is the doxastic ‘probably.’
Grice liked the Roman sound to ‘prima facie,’ ‘at first sight’: “exceptio, quae prima facie justa videatur.” Refs.:
The two main sources are “Probability, desirability, and mood operators,” c.
2-f. 11, and “Modality, desirability and probability,” c. 8-ff. 14-15. But most
of the material is collected in “Aspects,” especially in the third and fourth
lectures. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
deutero-esperanto:
Arbitrariness need not be a two-party thing. E communicates to himself that
there is danger by drawing a skull. Grice genially opposed to the idea of a
convention. He hated a convention. A language is not conventional. Meaning is
not conventional. Communication is not conventional. He was even unhappy with
the account of convention by Lewis in terms of an arbitrary co-ordination.
While the co-ordination bit passes rational muster, the arbitrary element is
deemed a necessary condition, and Grice hated that. For Grice there is natural,
and iconic. When a representation ceases to be iconic and becomes, for lack of
a better expression, non-iconic, things get, we may assume conventional. One
form of correlation in his last definition of meaing allows for a conventional
correlation. “Pain!,” the P cries. There is nothing in /pein/ that minimally
resembles the pain the P is suffering. So from his involuntary “Ouch” to his
simulated “Ouch,” he thinks he can say “Pain.” Bennett explored the stages after
that. The dog is shaggy is Grices example. All sorts of resultant procedures
are needed for reference and predication, which may be deemed conventional. One
may refer nonconventionally, by ostension. It seems more difficult to predicate
non-conventionally. But there may be iconic predication. Urquhart promises
twelve parts of speech: each declinable in eleven cases, four numbers, eleven
genders (including god, goddess, man, woman, animal, etc.); and conjugable in
eleven tenses, seven moods, and four voices. The language will translate any
idiom in any other language, without any alteration of the literal sense, but
fully representing the intention. Later, one day, while lying in his bath,
Grice designed deutero-esperanto. The obble is fang may be current only
for Griceian members of the class of utterers. It is only this or that
philosophers practice to utter The obble is fang in such-and-such
circumstances. In this case, the utterer U does have a readiness to utter The
obble is feng in such-and-such circumstances. There is also the scenario in
which The obble is fang is may be conceived by the philosopher not to be deemed
current at all, but the utterance of The obble is feng in such-and-such
circumstances is part of some system of communication which the utterer U
(Lockwith,, Urquart, Wilkins, Edmonds, Grice) has devised but which has never
been put into operation, like the highway code which Grice invent another day
again while lying in his bath. In that case, U does this or that basic or
resultant procedure for the obble is feng in an attenuated but philosophically
legitimate fashion. U has envisaged a possible system of practices which
involve a readiness to utter Example by Grice that does NOT involve a
convention in this usage. Surely Grice can as he indeed did, invent a
language, call it Deutero-Esperanto, Griceish, or Pirotese, which nobody
at Oxford ever uses to communicat. That makes Grice the authority - cf. arkhe,
authority, government (in plural), "authorities" - and Grice can lay
down, while lying in the tub, no doubt - what is proper. A P can be said
to potch of some obble o as fang or as feng. Also to cotch of some obble
o, as fang or feng; or to cotch of one obble o and another obble o as being fid
to one another.” In symbols: (Ex)(Ey).Px ^ Oy ^ potch(x, y, fang) (Ex)(Ey).Px ^
Oy ^ potch(x, y, feng) (Ex)(Ey).Px ^ Oy ^ cotch(x, y, fang) (Ex)(Ey).Px ^ Ox ^
cotch(x, y, feng) (Ex)(Ey).Px ^ Oz ^ Oy ^ cotch(x, fid(y,z)). Let’s say that Ps
(as Russell and Carnap conceived them) inhabit a world of obbles, material
objects, or things. To potch is something like to perceive; to cotch something
like to think. Feng and fang are possible descriptions, much like our
adjectives. Fid is a possible relation between obbles. Grice provides a
symbolisation for content internalisation. The perceiver or cognitive
Subjects perceives or cognises two objects, x, y, as holding a relation of some
type. There is a higher level that Ps can reach when the object of their
potchings and cotchings is not so much objects but states of affairs. Its
then that the truth-functional operators will be brought to existence “^”:
cotch(p ^ q) “V”: cotch(p v q) “)”: )-cotch(p ) q) A P will be able
to reject a content, refuse-thinking: ~. Cotch(~p). When P1 perceives P2, the
reciprocals get more complicated. P2 cotches that P1!-judges that
p. Grice uses ψ1 for potching and ψ2
for cotching. If P2 is co-operative, and abides by "The Ps Immanuel,"
P2 will honour, in a Kantian benevolent way, his partners goal by adopting
temporarily his partners goal potch(x (portch(y, !p)) ⊃ potch(x, !p). But by then, its hardly simpler
ways. Especially when the Ps outdo their progenitor Carnap as metaphysicians.
The details are under “eschatology,” but the expressions are here “α izzes α.” This
would be the principle of non-contradiction or identity. P1 applies it war, and
utters War is war which yields a most peculiar implicature. “if α izzes β ∧ β izzes γ, α izz γ.” This is transitivity, which is
crucial for Ps to overcome Berkeley’s counterexample to Locke, and define their
identity over time. “if α hazzes β, α izzes β.” Or, what is accidental is not
essential. A P may allow that what is essential is accidental while misleading,
is boringly true. “α hazzes β iff α hazzes x ∧ x izzes β.” “If β is a katholou or universalium, β is
an eidos or forma.” For surely Ps need not be stupid to fail to see
squarrelhood. “if α hazzes β ∧ α
izzes a particular, γ≠α ∧ α izz β.” “α izzes predicable
of β iff ((β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α). “α izzes essentially predicable of β ⊃⊂ β izzes α α
izzes non-essentially/accidentally predicable of β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α). α = β iff α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α. “α izzes an atomon, or individuum ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(β izzes α ⊃ α
izzes β). “α izzes a particular ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(α izzes predicable of β ⊃ (α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α)). α izzes a universalium ⊃⊂ ◊(∃β)(α izzes predicable of α ∧ ~(α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α). α izzes some-thing ⊃ α
izzes an individuum. α izzes an eidos or forma ⊃ (α izzes some-thing ∧ α izzes a universalium); α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ (β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α). “ α izzes essentially predicable of α α izzes accidentally
predicable of β ⊃ α ≠ β. ~(α izzes accidentally predicable of
β) ⊃ α ≠ β. α izzes an kathekaston or particular ⊃ α izzes an individuum; α izz a particular ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x izz α). ~(∃x).(x
izzes a particular ∧ x izzes a forma) ⊢ α
izzes a forma ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x izzes α). x izzes a particular ⊃ ~(∃β)(α izzes β); α izzes a forma ⊃ ((α izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ β
hazzes α); α izzes a forma ∧ β
izzes a particular ⊃ (α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ β hazzes A); (α izzes a particular ∧ β izzes a universalium ∧ β izzes predicable of α) ⊃ (∃γ)(α ≠ γ ∧ γ
izzes essentially predicable of α). (∃x)
(∃y)(x izzes a particular ∧ y
izzes a universalium ∧ y izzes predicable of x ⊃ ~(∀x)(x izzes a universalium ∧ x izzes some-thing). (∀β)(β izzes a universalium ⊃ β izzes some-thing). α izzes a particular) ⊃ ~∃β.(α ≠ β ∧ β
izzes essentially predicable of α). (α izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ α
izzes non-essentially or accidentally predicable of β. Grice
is following a Leibnizian tradition. A philosophical language is any
constructed language that is constructed from first principles or certain
ideologies. It is considered a type of engineered language.
Philosophical languages were popular in Early Modern times, partly motivated by
the goal of recovering the lost Adamic or Divine language. The term
“ideal language” is sometimes used near-synonymously, though more modern
philosophical languages such as “Toki Pona” are less likely to involve such an
exalted claim of perfection. It may be known as a language of pure
ideology. The axioms and grammars of the languages together differ from
commonly spoken languages today. In most older philosophical languages,
and some newer ones, words are constructed from a limited set of morphemes that
are treated as "elemental" or fundamental. "Philosophical
language" is sometimes used synonymously with "taxonomic
language", though more recently there have been several conlangs
constructed on philosophical principles which are not taxonomic. Vocabularies
of oligo-synthetic communication-systems are made of compound expressions,
which are coined from a small (theoretically minimal) set of morphemes;
oligo-isolating communication-systems, such as Toki Pona, similarly use a
limited set of root words but produce phrases which remain s. of distinct
words. Toki Pona is based on minimalistic simplicity, incorporating
elements of Taoism. Láadan is designed to lexicalize and grammaticalise the
concepts and distinctions important to women, based on muted group
theory. A priori languages are constructed languages where the vocabulary
is invented directly, rather than being derived from other existing languages
(as with Esperanto, or Grices Deutero-Esperanto, or Pirotese or Ido). It all
starts when Carnap claims to know that pritos karulise elatically. Grice as
engineer. Pirotese is the philosophers engaging in Pology. Actually, Pirotese
is the lingo the Ps parrot. Ps karulise elatically. But not all of
them. Grice finds that the Pological talk allows to start from
zero. He is constructing a language, (basic) Pirotese, and the
philosophical psychology and world that that language is supposed to represent
or denote. An obble is a Ps object. Grice introduces potching and
cotching. To potch, in Pirotese, is what a P does with an obble: he perceives
it. To cotch is Pirotese for what a P can further do with an obble: know or
cognise it. Cotching, unlike potching, is factive. Pirotese would
not be the first language invented by a philosopher. Refs.: While the
reference to “Deutero-Esperanto’ comes from “Meaning revisited,” other keywords
are useful, notably “Pirotese” and “Symbolo.” Also keywords like “obble,” and “pirot.”
The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
diagoge:
Cf. Grice’s emphasis on the ‘argument’ involved in the conversational
implciatum, though. To work out an impilcatum is to reach it ‘by argument.’ No
argument, no conversational implicatum. But cf. argument in Emissor draws skull
and communicates that there is danger. ARGUMENT involved in that Emissor
intends his addressee WILL REASON. Can the lady communicate to the pigeons that
she is selling ‘twopence a bag’ for their pleasure? Grice contrasted epagoge
with diagoge. Cooperation with competition. Cooperative game with competitive
game. But epagoge is induction, so here we’ll consider his views on probability
and how it contrastds with diagoge. The diagoge is easy to identity: Grice is a
social animal, with the BA, Philosophy, conferences, discussion, The American
Philosophical Association, transcripts by Randall Parker, from the audio-tapes
contained in c. 10 within the same s. IV miscellaneous, Beanfest, transcripts
and audio-cassettes, s. IV, c. 6-f. 8, and f. 10, and s. V, c. 8-f. 4-8 Unfortunately, Parker typed carulise
for karulise, or not. Re: probability, Grice loves to reminisce an anecdote
concerning his tutor Hardie at Corpus when Hardie invoked Mills principles
to prove that Hardie was not responsible for a traffic jam. In drafts on word
play, Grice would speak of not bringing more Grice to your Mill. Mills
System of Logic was part of the reading material for his degree in Lit.
Hum.at Oxford, so he was very familiar with it. Mill represents the best
of the English empiricist tradition. Grice kept an interest on inductive methodology.
In his Life and opinions he mentions some obscure essays by Kneale and
Keynes on the topic. Grice was interested in Kneales secondary induction, since
Grice saw this as an application of a construction routine. He was also
interested in Keyness notion of a generator property, which he
found metaphysically intriguing. Induction. Induction ‒ Mill’s
Induction, induction, deduction, abduction, Mill. More Grice to the Mill.
Grice loved Hardies playing with Mill’s method of difference with an Oxford
copper. He also quotes Kneale and Keynes on induction. Note that his seven-step
derivation of akrasia relies on an inductive step! Grice was fortunate to
associate with Davidson, whose initial work is on porbability. Grice borrows
from Davidson the idea that inductive probability, or probable, attaches to the
doxastic, while prima facie attaches to desirably, or
desirability. Jeffreys notion of desirability is partition-invariant
in that if a proposition, A, can be expressed as the disjoint disjunction of
both {B1, B2, B3} and {C1, C2, C3}, ∑ Bi ∈ AProb
(Bi ∣∣ A). Des (Bi) = ∑Ci ∈ A
Prob (Ci ∣∣ A). Des (Ci). It follows that applying the rule
of desirability maximization will always lead to the same recommendation,
irrespective of how the decision problem is framed, while an alternative theory
may recommend different courses of action, depending on how the decision
problem is formulated. Here, then, is the analogue of Jeffreys
desirability axiom (D), applied to sentences rather than propositions: (D)
(prob(s and t) = 0 and prob(s or t) "# 0, ⊃ d ( ) prob(s)des(s)+ prob(t)des(t) es s or t
=-"---- prob( s) + prob(t ) (Grice writes prob(s) for the Subjectsive
probability of sand des(s) for the desirability or utility of s.) B. Jeffrey
admits that "desirability" (his terms for evidential value) does not
directly correspond to any single pre-theoretical notion of desire. Instead, it
provides the best systematic explication of the decision theoretic idea, which
is itself our best effort to make precise the intuitive idea of weighing
options. As Jeffrey remarks, it is entirely possibly to desire someone’s love
when you already have it. Therefore, as Grice would follow, Jeffrey has the
desirability operator fall under the scope of the probability operator. The
agents desire that p provided he judges that p does not obtain.
Diagoge/epagoge, Grices audio-files, the audio-files, audio-files of various
lectures and conferences, some seminars with Warner and J. Baker, audio files
of various lectures and conferences. Subjects: epagoge, diagoge. A
previous folder in the collection contains the transcripts. These are the
audio-tapes themselves, obviously not in folder. The kind of metaphysical
argument which I have in mind might be said, perhaps, to exemplify a dia-gogic
or trans-ductive as opposed to epa-gogic or in-ductive approach to
philosophical argumentation. Hence Short and Lewis have, for ‘diagoge,’ the
cognates of ‘trādūco,’ f. transduco. Now, the more emphasis is placed on
justification by elimination of the rival, the greater is the impetus given to
refutation, whether of theses or of people. And perhaps a greater emphasis on a
diagogic procedure, if it could be shown to be justifiable, would have an
eirenic effect. Cf. Aristotle on diagoge, schole, otium. Liddell and Scott
have “διαγωγή,” which they render as “literally carrying across,” -- “τριήρων”
Polyaen.5.2.6, also as “carrying through,” and “hence fig.” “ἡ διὰ πάντων αὐτῶν
δ., “taking a person through a subject by instruction, Pl. Ep.343; so, course
of instruction, lectures, ἐν τῇ ἐνεστώσῃ δ. prob. in Phld. Piet.25; also
passing of life, way or course of life, “δ. βίου” Pl. R.344e: abs., Id.
Tht.177a, etc., way of passing time, amusement, “δ. μετὰ παιδιᾶς” Arist. EN
1127b34, cf. 1177a27; “δ. ἐλευθέριος” Id. Pol.1339b5; διαγωγαὶ τοῦ συζῆν public
pastimes, ib.1280b37, cf. Plu.126b (pl.). also delay, D.C. 57.3. management,
τῶν πραγμάτων δ. dispatch of business, Id.48.5. IV. station for ships, f. l. in
Hdn.4.2.8. And there are other entries to consider: διαγωγάν: διαίρεσιν,
διανομήν, διέλευσιν. Grice knew what he was talking about! Refs.: The main
sources listed under ‘desirability,’ above. There is a specific essay on
‘probability and life.’ Good keywords, too, are epagoge and induction The H. P.
Grice Papers, BANC.
diaphaneity: Grice
unique in his subtlety. Strawson and Wiggins. 'the quality of being freely
pervious to light; transparency', OED. This is a crucial concept for Grice. He applies it
‘see,’ which which, after joint endeavours with G. J. Warnock, he was obsessed!
Grice considers the ascription, “Warnock sees that it is raining.” And then he
adds, “And it is true, I see that it is raining, too.” What’s the diference.
Then comes Strawson. “Strawson, you see that it is raining, right?” So we have
an ascription in the first, second, and third persons. When it comes to the
identification of a sense (like vision) via experience or qualia, we are at a
problem, because ‘see,’ allowing for what Ryle calls a ‘conversational avowal,’
that nobody has an authority to distrust, is what Grice calls a ‘diaphanous’
predicate. More formally. That means that “Grice sees that it is raining,” in
terms of experience, cannot really be expanded except by expanding into WHAT IS
that Grice sees, viz. that it is raining. The same with “communicating that p,”
and “meaning that p.”
dictum: Cf. dictor, and dictivenss. Not necessarily involved with
‘say,’ but with ‘deixis,’ So a dictum is involved in Emissor E drawing a skull,
communicating that there is danger. It is Hare who introduced ‘dictum’ in the
Oxonian philosophical literature in his T. H. Green Essay. Hare distinguishes
between the ‘dictum,’ that the cat is on the mat, from the ‘dictor,’ ‘I state
that the cat is on the mat, yes.’ ‘Cat, on the mat, please.’ Grice often refers
to Hare’s play with words, which he obviously enjoys. In “Epilogue,” Grice
elaborates on the ‘dictum,’ and turns it into ‘dictivitas.’ How does he coin
that word? He starts with Cicero, who has ‘dictivm,’ and creates an abstract
noun to match. Grice needs a concept of a ‘dictum’ ambiguous as it is. Grice
distinguishes between what an Utterer explicitly conveys, e. g. that Strawson
took off his boots and went to bed. Then there’s what Grice implicitly conveys,
to wit: that Strawson took off his boots and went to bed – in that order. Surely
Grice has STATED that Strawson took off his boots and went to bed. Grice has
ASSERTED that Strawson took off his boots and went to bed. But if Grice were to
order Strawson: “Put on your parachute and jump!” the implicata may differ. By
uttering that utterance, Grice has not asserted or stated anything. So Grice
needs a dummy that will do for indicatives and imperatives. ‘Convey’ usually
does – especially in the modality ‘explicitly’ convey. Because by uttering that
utterance Grice has explicitly conveyed that Strawson is to put on his
parachute and jump. Grice has implicitly conveyd that Strawson is to put on his
parachute and THEN jump, surely.
disgrice: In PGRICE, Kemmerling speaks of disgricing as the
opposite of gricing. The first way to disgrice Kemmerling calls
‘strawsonising.’For Strawson, even the resemblance (for Grice, equivalence in
terms of 'iff' -- cf. his account of what an syntactically structured
non-complete expression) between (G) There is not a single volume in
my uncle’s library which is not by an English author,’and the negatively
existential form (LFG) ~ (Ex)(Ax . ~ Bx)’ is deceptive, ‘It is not
the case that there exists an x such
that x is a book in Grice’s uncle’s library and x is written by an Englishman. FIRST, 'There is not a single volume in uncle’s
library which is not by an English author' --
as normally used, carries the presupposition -- or entails, for Grice -- (G2) Some (at least one) book is in
Grice’s uncle’s library. SECOND, 'There is not a single volume in
Grice’s uncle’s library which is not by an English author,’ is far from being
'entailed' by (G3e) It is not the case that there is some (at least one)
book in my room. If we give ‘There not a
single book in my room which is not by an English author’ the modernist
logical form ‘~ (Ex)(Ax .~ Bx),’ we see
that this is ENTAILED by the
briefer, and indeed logicall stronger (in terms of entailments) ~ (Ex)Ax. So when Grice, with a solemn face, utters, ‘There
is not a single foreign volume in my uncle’s library, to reveal later that the library is empty, Grice should expect
his addressee to get some odd feeling. Surely not the feeling of having been
lied to -- or been confronted with an initial false utterance --, because we
have not. Strawson gets the feeling of having been made "the victim of a sort
of communicative outrage." "What you say is outrageous!" This
sounds stronger than it is. An outrage is believed to be an evil deed, offense,
crime; affront, indignity, act not within established or reasonable
limits," of food, drink, dress, speech, etc., from Old French outrage "harm, damage;
insult; criminal behavior; presumption, insolence, overweening" (12c.),
earlier oltrage (11c.),
From Vulgar Latin ‘ultraticum,’
excess," from Latin ultra,
beyond" (from suffixed form of PIE root *al- "beyond"). Etymologically, "the passing
beyond reasonable bounds" in any sense. The meaning narrowed in English
toward violent excesses because of folk etymology from out + rage. Of injuries to feelings,
principles, etc., from outrage, v. outragen,
"to go to excess, act immoderately," from outrage (n.) or from Old
French oultrager. From
1580s with meaning "do violence to, attack, maltreat." Related: Outraged; outraging. But Strawson gets the
feeling of having been made "the victim of a sort of communicative
outrage.” When Grice was only trying to tutor him in The Organon. Of
course it is not the case that Grice is explicitly conveying or expressing that
there there is some (at least one) book in his uncle's room. Grice has not said
anything false. Or rather, it is not the case that Grice utters an
utterance which is not alethically or doxastically satisfactory. Yet what Grice
gives Strawson the defeasible, cancellable, license to to assume that
Grice thinks there is at least one book. Unless he goes on to cancel the
implicature, Grice may be deemed to be misleading Strawson. What Grice
explicitly conveys to be true (or false) it is necessary (though not sufficient)
that there should at least one volume in his uncle’s library -- It is not the
case that my uncle has a library and in that library all the books are
autochthonous to England, i.e. it is not the case that Grice’s uncle has a
library; for starters, it is not the case that Grice has a literate uncle. Of
this SUBTLE, nuantic, or cloudy or foggy, "slight or delicate degree of
difference in expression, feeling, opinion, etc.," from Fr. nuance "slight
difference, shade of colour,” from nuer "to
shade," from nue "cloud," from Gallo-Roman nuba, from
Latin nubes "a
cloud, mist, vapour," sneudh- "fog," source also of
Avestan snaoda "clouds,"
Latin obnubere "to
veil," Welsh nudd "fog," Greek nython, in
Hesychius "dark, dusky") According to Klein, the French usage is a
reference to "the different colours of the clouds,” in reference to color
or tone, "a slight variation in shade; of music, as a French term in
English -- 'sort' is the relation between ‘There is not a volume in my
uncle's library which is not by an English author,’ and ‘My uncle's
library is not empty. RE-ENTER GRICE. Grice suggested that Strawson see such a
fine point such as that, which Grice had the kindness to call an 'implicatum', the
result of an act of an ‘implicatura’ (they were both attending Kneale’s seminar
on the growth and ungrowth of logic) is irrelevant to the issue of
‘entailment’. It is a 'merely pragmatic’ implicatum, Grice would say, bringing
forward a couple of distinctions: logical/pragmatic point; logical/pragmatic
inference; entailment/implicatum; conveying explicitly/conveying implicitly;
stating/implicating; asserting/implying; what an utterer means/what the
expression 'means' -- but cf. Nowell-Smith, who left Oxford after being
overwhelmed by Grice, "this is how the rules of etiquette inform the rules
of logic -- on the 'rule' of relevance in "Ethics," 1955. If to call
such a point, as Grice does, as "irrelevant to logic" is vacuous in
that it may be interpreted as saying that that such a fine foggy point is not
considered in a modernist formal system of first-order predicate calculus with
identity, this Strawson wishes not to dispute, but to emphasise. Call it his
battle cry! But to 'logic' as concerned with this or that relation between this
or that general class of statement occurring in ordinary use, and the attending
general condition under which this or that statement is correctly called 'true'
or 'false,' this fine foggy nice point would hardly be irrelevant. GRICE'S
FORMALIST (MODERNIST) INTERPRETATION. Some 'pragmatic' consideration, or
assumption, or expectation, a desideratum of conversational conduct obviously underlies
and in fact 'explains' the implicatum, without having to change the ‘sense’ of
Aristotle’s syllogistics in terms of the logical forms of A, E, I, and O. If we
abide by an imperative of conversational helpfulness, enjoining the maximally
giving and receiving of information and the influencing and being influenced by
others in the institution of a decisions, the sub-imperative follows to the
effect, ‘Thou shalt NOT make a weak move compared to the stronger one that thou
canst truthfully make, and with equal or greater economy of means.’ Assume the
form ‘There is not a single … which is not . . .,’ or ‘It is not the case
that ... there is some (at least one) x that ... is not ... is introduced
in ‘ordinary’ language with the same SENSE as the expression in the
‘ideal’ language, ~(Ex)(Ax and ~Bx). Then prohibition inhibits the utterance of
the form where the utterer can truly and truthfully simply convey
explicitly ‘There is not a single ..., i. e. ~(Ex)(Fx). It is
defeasible prohibition which tends to confer on the overprolixic form ('it is
not the case that ... there is some (at least one) x that is not ...') just
that kind of an implicatum which Strawson identifies. But having
detected a nuance in a conversational phenomenon is not the same thing as rushing
ahead to try to explain it BEFORE exploring in some detail what kind of a
nuance it is. The mistake is often commited by Austin, too (in "Other Minds,"
and "A Plea for Excuses"), and by Hart (on 'carefully'), and by Hare
(on "good"), and by Strawson on 'true,' (Analysis), ‘the,’ and 'if --
just to restrict to the play group. Grice tries to respond to anti-sense-datum
in "That pillar box seems red to me,” but Strawson was not listening. The overprolixic form in the ‘ordinary’
language, ‘It is not the case that there is some (at least one x) such that ...
x is not ...’ would tend, if it does not remain otiose, to develop or generate
just that baffling effect in one's addressee ('outrage!') that Strawson identifies,
as opposed to the formal-device in the ‘ideal’ language with which the the
‘ordinary’ language counterpart is co-related. What weakens our resistance
to the negatively existential analysis in this case more than in the case of
the corresponding "All '-sentence is the powerful attraction of the negative
opening phrase There is not …'. To avoid misunderstanding one may
add a point about the neo-traditionalist interpretation of the forms of the traditional
Aristotelian system. Strawson is not claiming that it faithfully
represents this or that intention of the principal exponent of the Square of
Opposition. Appuleius, who knows, was perhaps, more interested in formulating
this or that theorem governing this or that logical relation of this or that
more imposing general statement than this or that everyday general statement
that Strawson considers. Appuleius, who knows, might have
been interested, e. g., in the logical powers of this or that
generalisation, or this or that sentence which approximates more closely to the
desired conditions that if its utterance by anyone, at any time, at any place,
results in a true statement, so does its utterance by anyone else, at any other
time, at any other place. How far the account by the neo-traditionalist
of this or that general sentence of 'ordinary' langauge is adequate for every
generalization may well be under debate. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “In defence of
Appuleius,” BANC.
disimplicatum: “We should not conclude from this that an implication of
the existence of thing said to be seen is NOT part of the conventional meaning
of ‘see’ nor even (as some philosophers have done) that there is one sense of ‘see’
which lacks this implication!” (WoW:44). If Oxonians are obsessed with ‘implication,’
do they NEED ‘disimplicature’? Grice doesn’t think so! But sometimes you have
to use it to correct a mistake. Grice does not give names, but he says he has
heard a philosopher claim that there are two SENSES of ‘see,’ one which what
one sees exists, and one in which it doesn’t! It would be good to trace that!
It relates, in any case to ‘remembers,’but not quite, and to ‘know.’ But not
quite. The issue of ‘see’ is not that central, since Grice realizes that it is
just a modality of perception, even if crucial. He coined ‘visum’ with Warnock to
play with the idea of ‘what is seen’ NOT being existent. On another occasion, when he cannot name a ridiculous
philosopher, he invents him: “A philosopher will not be given much credit if he
comes with an account of the indefinite ‘one’ as having three senses: one
proximate to the emissor (“I broke a finger”), one distant (“He’s meeting a
woman”) and one where the link is not specified (“A flower”). he target is of
course Davidson having the cheek to quote Grice’s Henriette Herz Trust lecture
for the BA! Lewis and Short have ‘intendere’ under ‘in-tendo,’ which they
render as ‘to stretch out or forth, extend, also to turn ones attention to,
exert one’s self for, to purpose, endeavour,” and finaly as “intend”! “pergin,
sceleste, intendere hanc arguere?” Plaut. Mil. 2, 4, 27 Grices tends
towards claiming that you cannot extend what you dont intend. In the James
lectures, Grice mentions the use of is to mean seem (The tie is red in this
light), and see to mean hallucinate. Denying Existence: The Logic,
Epistemology and Pragmatics of ...books.google.com › books ... then it seems
unidiomatic if not ungrammatical to speak of hallucinations as ... that
fighting people and 156 APPEARING UNREALS 4 Two Senses of "See"? A.
Chakrabarti - 1997 - Language Arts & Disciplines The Claim of
Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and ...books.google.com › books
sight, say sense-data; others will then say that there are two senses of 'see'.
... wrong because I am dreaming or hallucinating them, which of course could
... Stanley Cavell - 1999 - Philosophy Wittgenstein and
Perception - Page 37 - Google Books Resultbooks.google.com › books For example,
Gilbert Harman characterises the two senses of see as follows: see† = 'the ... which
is common to genuine cases of seeing and to hallucinations. Michael Campbell,
Michael O'Sullivan - 2015 - Philosophy The Alleged Ambiguity
of'See'www.jstor.org › stable including dreams, hallucinations and the
perception of physical objects. ... existence of at least two senses of ' see'
were his adherence to the doctrine that 'see' ... by AR White - 1963 - Cited
by 3 - Related articles Seeing and Naming - jstorwww.jstor.org ›
stable there are or aren't two senses of 'see'. If there are, I'm speaking of
... The third kind of case is illustrated by Macbeth's dagger hallucination, at
least if we assume ... by RJ Hall - 1977 - Cited by 3 - Related
articles Philosophy at LaGuardia Community
Collegewww.laguardia.edu › Philosophy › GADFLY-2011 PDF Lastly, I will
critically discuss Ayer's two senses of 'see', ... (e.g., hallucinations); it
thus seems correct to say that ... Hallucinations are hallucinations. There
are. Talking about seeing: An examination of some aspects of the
...etd.ohiolink.edu › ... I propose a distinction between delusions and
hallucinations,'and argue ... say that there are two senses of .'see* in
ordinary language or not, he does, as I will ... by KA Emmett - 1974 -
Related articles Wittgenstein and Perceptionciteseerx.ist.psu.edu
› viewdoc › download PDF 2 Two senses of 'see'. 33 ... may see things that are
not there, for example in hallucinations. ... And so, hallucinations are not
genuine perceptual experiences. by Y Arahata - Related articles
Allen Blur - University of Yorkwww-users.york.ac.uk › Publications_files PDF of
subjectively indistinguishable hallucination (e.g. Crane 2006). ... and
material objects of sight, and correlatively for a distinction between two
senses of 'see',. by K Allen - Related articles Austin and
sense-data - UBC Library Open Collectionsopen.library.ubc.ca › ... › UBC Theses
and Dissertations Sep 15, 2011 - (5) Illusions and Hallucinations It is not
enough to reject Austin's way of ... I will not deal with Austin and Ayer on
"two senses of 'see'" because I ... by DD Todd - 1967 - Cited by 1
- Related articles. Godfrey Vesey (1965, p. 73) deposes, "if a person sees
something at all it must look like something to him, even if it only looks like
'somebody doing something.' With Davidson, Grice was more cavalier,
because he could blame it on a different ‘New-World’ dialect or idiolect, about
‘intend.’ When Grice uses ‘disimplicatum’ to apply to ‘cream in coffee’ that is
a bit tangential – and refers more generally to his theory of communication.
What would the rationale of disimplicatum be? In this case, if the emissee realizes
the obvious category mistake (“She’s not the cream in your coffee”) there may
be a need to disimplicate explicitly. To consider. There is an example that he
gives that compares with ‘see’ and it is even more philosophical but he doesn’t
give examples: to use ‘is’ when one means ‘seem’ (the tie example). The reductive analyses of being and seeing
hold. We have here two cases of loose use (or disimplicature). Same now with
his example in “Intention and Uncertainty” (henceforth, “Uncertainty”): Smith
intends to climb Mt. Everest + [common-ground status: this is difficult].
Grices response to Davidsons pretty unfair use of Grices notion of
conversational implicature in Davidsons analysis of intention caught a lot of
interest. Pears loved Grices reply. Implicatum here is out of the question ‒
disimplicatum may not. Grice just saw that his theory of conversation is too
social to be true when applied to intending. The doxastic condition is one of
the entailments in an ascription of an intending. It cannot be cancelled as an
implicatum can. If it can be cancelled, it is best seen as a disimplicatum, or
a loose use by an utterer meaning less than what he says or explicitly conveys
to more careful conversants. Grice and Davidson were members of The Grice
and Davidson Mutual Admiration Society. Davidson, not being Oxonian, was
perhaps not acquainted with Grices polemics at Oxford with Hart and Hampshire
(where Grice sided with Pears, rather). Grice and Pears hold a minimalist
approach to intending. On the other hand, Davidson makes what Grice sees
as the same mistake again of building certainty into the concept. Grice
finds that to apply the idea of a conversational implicatum at this point is
too social to be true. Rather, Grice prefers to coin the conversational
disimplicatum: Marmaduke Bloggs intends to climb Mt Everest on hands and
knees. The utterance above, if merely reporting what Bloggs thinks, may
involve a loose use of intends. The certainty on the agents part on the
success of his enterprise is thus cast with doubt. Davidson was claiming
that the agents belief in the probability of the object of the agents intention
was a mere conversational implicatum on the utterers part. Grice responds
that the ascription of such a belief is an entailment of a strict use of
intend, even if, in cases where the utterer aims at a conversational
disimplicatum, it can be dropped. The addressee will still regard
the utterer as abiding by the principle of conversational helpfulness. Pears
was especially interested in the Davidson-Grice polemic on intending, disimplicature,
disimplicature. Strictly, a section of his reply to Davidson. If Grices claim
to fame is implicature, he finds disimplicature an intriguing notion to capture
those occasions when an utterer means LESS than he says. His examples include:
a loose use of intending (without the entailment of the doxastic condition), the
uses of see in Shakespeareian contexts (Macbeth saw Banquo, Hamlet saw his
father on the ramparts of Elsinore) and the use of is to mean seems (That tie
is blue under this light, but green otherwise, when both conversants know that
a change of colour is out of the question. He plays with Youre the cream in my
coffee being an utterance where the disimplicature (i.e. entailment dropping)
is total. Disimplicature does not appeal to a new principle of conversational
rationality. It is perfectly accountable by the principle of conversational
helpfulness, in particular, the desideratum of conversational candour. In everyday explanation we exploit, as Grice notes,
an immense richness in the family of expressions that might be thought of as
the wanting family. This wanting 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. As Grice
remarks, The likeness and differences within this wanting family demand careful
attention. In commenting on Davidsons treatment of wanting in
Intending, Grice notes: It seems to Grice that the picture of the soul
suggested by Davidsons treatment of wanting is remarkably tranquil and, one
might almost say, computerized. It is the picture of an ideally decorous board
meeting, at which the various heads of sections advance, from the standpoint of
their particular provinces, the case for or against some proposed course of
action. In the end the chairman passes judgement, effective for action;
normally judiciously, though sometimes he is for one reason or another
over-impressed with the presentation made by some particular member. Grices
soul doesnt seem to him, a lot of the time, to be like that at all. It is more
like a particularly unpleasant department meeting, in which some members shout,
wont listen, and suborn other members to lie on their behalf; while the
chairman, who is often himself under suspicion of cheating, endeavours to
impose some kind of order; frequently to no effect, since sometimes the meeting
breaks up in disorder, sometimes, though it appears to end comfortably, in
reality all sorts of enduring lesions are set up, and sometimes, whatever the
outcome of the meeting, individual members go off and do things unilaterally.
Could it be that Davidson, of the New World, and Grice, of the Old World, have
different idiolects regarding intend? Could well be! It is said that the New
World is prone to hyperbole, so perhaps in Grices more cautious use, intend is
restricted to the conditions HE wants it to restrict it too! Odd that for all
the generosity he displays in Post-war Oxford philosophy (Surely I can help you
analyse you concept of this or that, even if my use of the corresponding
expression does not agree with yours), he goes to attack Davidson, and just for
trying to be nice and apply the conversational implicatum to intend! Genial
Grice! It is natural Davidson, with his naturalistic tendencies, would like to
see intending as merely invoking in a weak fashion the idea of a strong
psychological state as belief. And its natural that Grice hated that! Refs.:
The source is Grice’s comment on Davidson on intending. The H. P. Grice Papers,
BANC.
disjunctum: Strangely enough Ariskant thought disjunctum, but not
conjunctum a categorial related to the category of ‘community’!Aulus Gellius
(The Attic Nights, XVI, 8) tells us about this disjunction: “There also is ■
another type of a^twpa which the Greeks call and we call disjunctum,
disjunctive sentence. Gellius notes that ‘or’ is by default ‘inclusive’: where
one or several propositions may be simultaneously true, without ex- cluding one
another, although they may also all be false. Gellius expands on the
non-default reading of exclusive disjunction: pleasure is either good or bad or
it is neither good nor bad (“Aut malum est voluplas, aut bonum, aul neque
bonum, neque malum est”). All the elements of the exclusive disjunctive exclude
one another, and their contradictory elements, Gr. avTtxs'-p.sva, are
incompatible with one another”. “Ex omnibus quae disjunguntiir, unum esse verum
debet, falsa cetera.”Grice lists ‘or’ as the second binary functor in his
response to Strawson. But both Grice and Strawson agreed that the Oxonian
expert on ‘or’ is Wood. Mitchell is good, too, though. The relations between
“v” and “or” (or “either ... or …”) are, on the whole, less intimate than those
between “.” and “and,” but less distant than those between “D” and “if.” Let us
speak of a statement made by coupling two clauses by “or” as an alternative
statement ; and let us speak of the first and second alternatesof such a
statement, on analogy with our talk of the antecedent and consequent of a
hypothetical statement. At a bus-stop, someone might say: “Either we catch this
bus or we shall have to walk all the way home.” He might equally well have said
“If we don't catch this bus, we shall have to walk all the way home.” It will
be seen that the antecedent of the hypothetical statement he might have made is
the negation of the first alternate of the alternative statement he did make.
Obviously, we should not regard our catching the bus as a sufficient condition
of the 'truth' of either statement; if it turns out that the bus we caught was
not the last one, we should say that the man who had made the statement had
been wrong. The truth of one of the alternates is no more a sufficient
condition of the truth of the alternative statement than the falsity of the
antecedent is a sufficient condition of the truth of the hypothetical
statement. And since 'p"Dpyq' (and, equally, * q"3p v q ') is a law
of the truth-functional system, this fact sufficiently shows a difference
between at least one standard use of “or” and the meaning given to “v.” Now in
all, or almost all, the cases where we are prepared to say something of the
form “p or q,” we are also prepared to say something of the form 4 if not-p,
then q \ And this fact may us to exaggerate the difference between “v” and “or”
to think that, since in some cases, the fulfilment of one alternate is not a
sufficient condition of the truth of the alternative statement of which It is
an alternate, the fulfilment of one alternate is a sufficient condition of the
truth of an alternative statement. And this is certainly an exaggeration. If
someone says ; “Either it was John or it was Robert but I couldn't tell which,”
we are satisfied of the truth of the alternative statement if either of the
alternates turns out to be true; and we say that the speaker was wrong only if
neither turns out to be true. Here we seem to have a puzzle ; for we seem to be
saying that * Either it was John or it was Robert ' entails 4 If it wasn't
John, it was Robert * and, at the same time, that ‘It was John’ entails the
former, but not the latter. What we are suffering from here is perhaps a
crudity in our notion of entailraent, a difficulty In applying this too
undifferentiated concept to the facts of speech ; or, if we prefer it, an
ambiguity in the notion of a sufficient condition. The statement that it was John
entails the statement that it was either John or Robert in the sense thai it
confirms it; when It turns out to have been John, the man who said that either
It was John or it was Robert is shown to have been right. But the first
statement does not entail the second in the sense that the step ‘It was John,
so it was either John or Robert’ is a logically proper step, unless the person
saying this means by it simply that the alternative statement made previously
was correct, i.e., 'it was one of the two '. For the alternative statement
carries the implication of the speaker's uncertainty as to which of the two it
was, and this implication is inconsistent with the assertion that it was John.
So in this sense of * sufficient condition ', the statement that it was John is
no more a sufficient condition of (no more entails) the statement that it was
either John or Robert than it is a sufficient condition of (entails) the
statement that if it wasn't John, it was Robert. The further resemblance, which
we have already noticed, between the alternative statement and the hypothetical
statement, is that whatever knowledge or experience renders it reasonable to
assert the alternative statement, also renders it reasonable to make the
statement that (under the condition that it wasn't John) it was Robert. But we
are less happy about saying that the hypothetical statement is confirmed by the
discovery that it was John, than we are about saying that the alternative
statement is confirmed by this discovery. For we are inclined to say that the
question of confirmation of the hypothetical statement (as opposed to the
question of its reasonableness or acceptability) arises only if the condition
(that it wasn't John) turns out to be fulfilled. This shows an asymmetry, as
regards confirmation, though not as regards acceptability, between 4 if not p,
then q ' and * if not qy then p ' which is not mirrored in the forms ‘either p
or q’ and ‘either q or p.’ This asymmetry is ignored in the rule that * if not
p, then q ' and ‘if not q, then p’ are logically equivalent, for this rule
regards acceptability rather than confirmation. And rightly. For we may often
discuss the l truth ' of a subjunctive conditional, where the possibility of
confirmation is suggested by the form of words employed to be not envisaged. It
is a not unrelated difference between * if ' sentences and ‘or’ sentences that
whereas, whenever we use one of the latter, we should also be prepared to use
one of the former, the converse does not hold. The cases in which it does not
generally hold are those of subjunctive conditionals. There is no ‘or’ sentence
which would serve as a paraphrase of ‘If the Germans had invaded England in
1940, they would have won the war’ as this sentence would most commonly be
used. And this is connected with the fact that c either . . . or . . .' is
associated with situations involving choice or decision. 4 Either of these
roads leads to Oxford ' does not mean the same as ' Either this road leads to
Oxford or that road does’ ; but both confront us with the necessity of making a
choice. This brings us to a feature of * or ' which, unlike those so far
discussed, is commonly mentioned in discussion of its relation to * v ' ; the
fact, namely, that in certain verbal contexts, ‘either … or …’ plainly carries
the implication ‘and not both . . . and . . .', whereas in other contexts, it
does not. These are sometimes spoken of as, respectively, the exclusive and
inclusive senses of ‘or;’ and, plainly, if we are to identify 4 v’ with either,
it must be the latter. The reason why, unlike others, this feature of the
ordinary use of “or” is commonly mentioned, is that the difference can readily
be accommodated (1 Cf. footnote to p. 86.In the symbolism of the
truth-functional system: It is the difference between “(p y q) .~ (p . q)”
(exclusive sense) and “p v q” (inclusive sense). “Or,” like “and,” is commonly
used to join words and phrases as well as clauses. The 4 mutuality difficulties
attending the general expansion of 4 x and y are/ 5 into * x is /and y is/' do
not attend the expansion of 4 x or y isf into c r Is/or y is/ ? (This is not to
say that the expansion can always correctly be made. We may call “v” the
disjunctive sign and, being warned against taking the reading too seriously,
may read it as ‘or.' While he never approached the topic separately, it’s easy
to find remarks about disjunction in his oeuvre. A veritable genealogy of
disjunction can be traced along Griceian lines. Refs.: Grice uses an
illustration involving ‘or’ in the ‘implication’ excursus in “Causal Theory.”
But the systematic account comes from WoW, especially essay 4.
distributum: distributio -- undistributed
middle: a logical fallacy in traditional syllogistic logic, resulting from the
violation of the rule that the middle term (the term that appears twice in
premises) must be distributed at least once in the premises. Any syllogism that
commits this error is invalid. Consider “All philosophers are persons,” and
“Some persons are bad.” No conclusion follows from these two premises because
“persons” in the first premise is the predicate of an affirmative proposition,
and in the second is the subject of a particular proposition. Neither of them
is distributed. “If in a syllogism the middle term is distributed in neither
premise, we are said to have a fallacy of undistributed middle.” Keynes, Formal
Logic
ditto: Or Strawson’s big mistake. Strawson quite didn’t
understand what “Analysis” was for, and submits this essay on the
perlocutionary effects of ‘true.’ Grice comes to the resuce of veritable
analysis. cf. verum. Grice disliked Strawson’s ditto theory in Analysis of
‘true’ as admittive performatory. 1620s, "in the month of the same
name," Tuscan dialectal ditto "(in) the said (month or year),"
literary Italian detto, past participle of dire "to say," from Latin
dicere "speak, tell, say" (from PIE root *deik- "to show,"
also "pronounce solemnly"). Italian used the word to avoid
repetition of month names in a series of dates, and in this sense it was picked
up in English. Its generalized meaning of "the aforesaid, the same thing,
same as above" is attested in English by 1670s. In early 19c. a suit of
men's clothes of the same color and material through was ditto or dittoes
(1755). Dittohead, self-description of followers of U.S. radio personality Rush
Limbaugh, attested by 1995. dittoship is from 1869.
dossier: Grice is not clear about the status of this – but some
philosophers have been too mentalistic. How would a genitorial programme
proceed. Is there a dossier in a handwave by which the emissor communicates
that he knows the route or that he is about to leave his emissee. It does not
seem so, because the handwave is unstructured. Unlike “Fido is shaggy.” In the
case of “Fido is shaggy,” there must be some OVERLAP between the emissor’s soul
and the emissee’s soul – in terms of dossier. So perhaps there is overlap in
the handwave. There must be an overlap as to WHICH route he means. By making
the handwave the emissor communicates that HE, the emissor, subject IS (copula)
followed by predicate “knower of the route.” So here we have a definite ‘the
route.’ Which route? To heaven, to hell. Cf. The scots ‘high road,’ ‘low road.’
To Loch Lomond. If there is not this minimal common ground nothing can be
communicated. In the alternative meaning, “I (subject) am (copula) about to
leave you – where again there must be an overlap in the identification of the
denotata of the pronouns. In the case of Blackburn’s skull or the arrow at the
fork of a road, the common ground is instituted in situu in the one-off
predicament, and there still must be some overlap of dossier. In its most
technical usage, Grice wants to demystify Donnellan’s identificatory versus
non-identificatory uses of ‘the,’ as unnecessary implications to Russell’s
otherwise neat account. The topic interested Strawson (“Principle of assumption
of ignorance, knowledge and relevance”) and Urmson’s principle of aptitude. Grice’s
favourite vacuous name is ‘Bellerophon.’ ‘Vacuous names’ is an essay
commissioned by Davison and Hintikka for Words and objections: essays on the
work of W. V. Quine (henceforth, W and O) for Reidel, Dordrecht. “W and O” had
appeared (without Grices contribution) as a special issue of Synthese. Grices
contribution, along with Quines Reply to Grice, appeared only in the reprint of
that special issue for Reidel in Dordrecht. Grice cites from various
philosophers (and logicians ‒ this was the time when logic was starting to
be taught outside philosophy departments, or sub-faculties), such as Mitchell,
Myro, Mates, Donnellan, Strawson, Grice was particularly
proud to be able to quote Mates by mouth or book. Grice takes the
opportunity, in his tribute to Quine, to introduce one of two of his
syntactical devices to allow for conversational implicata to be given maximal
scope. The device in Vacuous Namess is a subscription device to indicate
the ordering of introduction of this or that operation. Grice wants to
give room for utterances of a special existential kind be deemed
rational/reasonable, provided the principle of conversational helfpulness is
thought of by the addressee to be followed by the utterer. Someone isnt
attending the party organised by the Merseyside Geographical Society. That
is Marmaduke Bloggs, who climbed Mt. Everest on hands and knees. But who,
as it happened, turned out to be an invention of the journalists at the
Merseyside Newsletter, “W and O,” vacuous name, identificatory use,
non-identificatory use, subscript device. Davidson and Hintikka were well aware
of the New-World impact of the Old-World ideas displayed by Grice and
Strawson in their attack to Quine. Quine had indeed addressed Grices and
Strawsons sophisticated version of the paradigm-case argument in Word and
Object. Davidson and Hintikka arranged to publish a special issue for a
periodical publication, to which Strawson had already contributed. It was only
natural, when Davidson and Hintikka were informed by Reidel of their interest
in turning the special issue into a separate volume, that they would approach
the other infamous member of the dynamic duo! Commissioned by Davidson and
Hintikka for “W and O.” Grice introduces a subscript device to account for
implicata of utterances like Marmaduke Bloggs won’t be attending the
party; he was invented by the journalists. In the later section, he
explores identificatory and non identificatory uses of the without involving
himself in the problems Donnellan did! Some philosophers, notably
Ostertag, have found the latter section the most intriguing bit, and thus
Ostertag cared to reprint the section on Descriptions for his edited MIT volume
on the topic. The essay is structured very systematically with an initial
section on a calculus alla Gentzen, followed by implicata of vacuous Namess
such as Marmaduke Bloggs, to end with definite descriptions, repr. in Ostertag,
and psychological predicates. It is best to focus on a few things here.
First his imaginary dialogues on Marmaduke Bloggs, brilliant! Second, this as a
preamble to his Presupposition and conversational implicature. There is a
quantifier phrase, the, and two uses of it: one is an identificatory use (the
haberdasher is clumsy, or THE haberdasher is clumsy, as Grice prefers) and then
theres a derived, non-identificatory use: the haberdasher (whoever she was! to
use Grices and Mitchells addendum) shows her clumsiness. The use of the numeric
subscripts were complicated enough to delay the publication of this. The whole
thing was a special issue of a journal. Grices contribution came when Reidel
turned that into a volume. Grice later replaced his numeric subscript device by
square brackets. Perhaps the square brackets are not subtle enough,
though. Grices contribution, Vacuous Namess, later repr. in part “Definite
descriptions,” ed. Ostertag, concludes with an exploration of the phrases, and
further on, with some intriguing remarks on the subtle issues surrounding the
scope of an ascription of a predicate standing for a psychological state or
attitude. Grices choice of an ascription now notably involves an
opaque (rather than factive, like know) psychological state or attitude:
wanting, which he symbolizes as W. At least Grice does not write,
really, for he knew that Austin detested a trouser word! Grice concludes that
(xi) and (xiii) will be derivable from each of (ix) and (x), while (xii) will
be derivable only from (ix).Grice had been Strawsons logic tutor at St. Johns
(Mabbott was teaching the grand stuff!) and it shows! One topic that especially
concerned Grice relates to the introduction and elimination rules, as he later
searches for generic satisfactoriness. Grice
wonders [W]hat should be said of Takeutis conjecture (roughly)
that the nature of the introduction rule determines the character of
the elimination rule? There seems to be
no particular problem about allowing an introduction rule which tells
us that, if it is established in Xs personalized system that φ, then it is
necessary with respect to X that φ is true (establishable). The accompanying
elimination rule is, however, slightly less promising. If we suppose such a
rule to tell us that, if one is committed to the idea that it is necessary with
respect to X that φ, then one is also committed to whatever is expressed by φ,
we shall be in trouble; for such a rule is not acceptable; φ will be a volitive
expression such as let it be that X eats his hat; and my commitment to the idea
that Xs system requires him to eat his hat does not ipso facto involve me in
accepting (buletically) let X eat his hat. But if we take the elimination rule
rather as telling us that, if it is necessary with respect to X that let X eat
his hat, then let X eat his hat possesses satisfactoriness-with-respect-to-X,
the situation is easier; for this version of the rule seems inoffensive, even
for Takeuti, we hope. A very interesting concept Grice introduces in the
definite-descriptor section of Vacuous Namess is that of a conversational
dossier, for which he uses δ for a definite descriptor. The key concept is that
of conversational dossier overlap, common ground, or conversational pool. Let
us say that an utterer U has a dossier for a definite description δ if there is
a set of definite descriptions which include δ, all the members of which the
utterer supposes to be satisfied by one and the same item and the utterer U
intends his addressee A to think (via the recognition that A is so intended)
that the utterer U has a dossier for the definite description δ which the
utterer uses, and that the utterer U has specifically selected (or chosen, or
picked) this specific δ from this dossier at least partly in the hope that his
addressee A has his own dossier for δ which overlaps the utterers dossier for δ,
viz. shares a substantial, or in some way specially favoured, su-bset with the
utterers dossier. Its unfortunate that the idea of a dossier is not better
known amog Oxonian philosophers. Unlike approaches to the phenomenon by other
Oxonian philosophers like Grices tutee Strawson and his three principles
(conversational relevance, presumption of conversational knowledge, and
presumption of conversational ignorance) or Urmson and his, apter than
Strawsons, principle of conversational appositeness (Mrs.Smiths husband just
delivered a letter, You mean the postman!?), only Grice took to task the idea
of formalising this in terms of set-theory and philosophical
psychology ‒ note his charming reference to the utterers hope (never
mind intention) that his choice of d from his dossier will overlap with some d
in the dossier of his his addressee. The point of adding whoever he may be for
the non-identificatory is made by Mitchell, of Worcester, in his Griceian
textbook for Hutchinson. Refs.: The main reference is Grice’s “Vacuous names,”
in “W and O” and its attending notes, BANC.
E: the ‘universalis abdicative.’ Cf. Grice on the Square of
Opposition. Grice, “Circling the square of Opposition.”
Ǝ Ǝx. The existential
quantifier. Cited by Grice as translatable by “some (at least one)”. Noting the
divergence that Strawson identified but fails to identify as a conversational
implicatum. It relates in the case of the square of opposition to the ‘particularis’
but taking into account or NOT taking into account the ‘unnecessary
implication,’ as Russell calls it. “Take ‘every man is mortal.’ Surely we don’t
need the unnecessary implication that there is a man!”
economy: Cf. Grice on the principle of oeconomia of
rational effort. The Greeks used ‘oeconomia’ to mean thrifty. Cf. effort. There
were three branches of philosophia practica: philosophia moralis, oeconomia and
politica. Grice would often refer to ‘no
undue effort,’ ‘no unnecessary trouble,’ to go into the effort, ‘not worth the
energy,’ and so on. These utilitarian criteria suggest he is more of a
futilitarian than the avowed Kantian he says he is. This Grice also refers to
as ‘maximum,’ ‘maximal,’ optimal. It is part of his principle of economy of
rational effort. Grice leaves it open as how to formulate this. Notably in
“Causal,” he allows that ‘The pillar box seems red” and “The pillar box is red”
are difficult to formalise in terms in which we legitimize the claim or
intuition that ‘The pillar box IS red” is ‘stronger’ than ‘The pillar box seems
red.’ If this were so, it would provide a rational justification for going into
the effort of uttering something STRONGER (and thus less economical, and more
effortful) under the circumstances. As in “My wife is in the kitchen or in the
bedroom, and the house has only two rooms (and no passages, etc.)” the reason
why the conversational implicatum is standardly carried is to be found in the
operation of some such general principle as that giving preference to the
making of a STRONGER rather than a weaker statement in the absence of a reason
for not so doing. The implicatum therefore is not of a part of the meaning of
the expression “seems.” There is however A VERY IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE between
the case of a ‘phenomenalist’ statement (Bar-Hillel it does not count as a
statement) and that of disjunctives, such as “My wife is in the kitchen or ind
the bedroom, and the house has only two rooms (and no passages, etc.).” A
disjunctive is weaker than either of its disjuncts in a straightforward LOGICAL
fashion, viz., a disjunctive is entailed (alla Moore) by, but does not entail,
each of its disjuncts. The statement “The pillar box is red” is NOT STRONGER
than the statement, if a statement it is, “The pillar box seems red,” in this
way. Neither statement entails the other. Grice thinks that he has,
neverthcless a strong inclination to regard the first of these statements as
STRONGER than the second. But Grice leaves it open the ‘determination’ of in
what fashion this might obtain. He suggests that there may be a way to provide
a reductive analysis of ‘strength’ THAT YIELDS that “The pillar box is red” is
a stronger conversational contribution than “The pillar box seems red.”
Recourse to ‘informativeness’ may not do, since Grice is willing to generalise
over the acceptum to cover informative and non-informative cases. While there
is an element of ‘exhibition’ in his account of the communicatum, he might not
be happy with the idea that it is the utterer’s INTENTION to INFORM his
addressee that he, the utterer, INTENDS that his addressee will believe that
he, the utterer, believes that it is raining. “Inform” seems to apply only to
the content of the propositional complexum, and not to the attending ‘animata.’
egcrateia: or temperantia. This is a universal.
Strictly, it’s the agent who has the power – Or part of his soul – the rational
soul has the power – hence Grice’s metaphor of the ‘power structure of the
soul.’ Grice is interested in the linguistic side to it. What’s the use of
“Don’t p!” if ‘p’ is out of the emissee’s rational control? Cf. Pears on
egcreateia as ‘irrationality,’ if motivated. Cfr mesotes. the geniality of Grice was to explore theoretical akrasia. Grice’s
genius shows in seeing egcrateia and lack thereof as marks of virtue. “C hasn’t
been to prison yet” He is potentially dishonest. But you cannot be HONEST if
you are NOT potentially DISHONEST. Of course, it does not paint a good picture
of the philosopher why he should be obsessed with ‘akrasia,’ when Aristotle
actually opposed the notion to that of ‘enkrateia,’ or ‘continence.’ Surely a
philosopher needs to provide a reductive analysis of ‘continence,’ first; and
the reductive analysis of ‘incontinence’ will follow. Aristotle, as Grice well
knew, is being a Platonist here, so by ‘continence,’ he meant a power structure
of the soul, with the ‘rational’ soul containing the pre-rational or
non-rational soul (animal soul, and vegetal soul). And right he was, too! So, Grice's twist is Έγκράτεια, sic in capitals! Liddell and Scott has it as
‘ἐγκράτεια’ [ρα^], which they render as “mastery over,” as used by Plato in
The Republic: “ἐ. ἑαυτοῦ,” meaning ‘self-control’ (Pl. R.390b; ἐ. ἡδονῶν καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν control over them, ib.430e, cf. X.Mem.2.1.1, Isoc.1.21; “περί τι” Arist.EN1149a21, al. Liddell
and Scott go on to give a reference to Grice’s beloved “Eth. Nich.” (1145b8) II. abs., self-control, X. Mem.1.5.1, Isoc.3.44, Arist. EN. 1145b8, al., LXX Si.18.30, Act.Ap. 24.25, etc. Richards, an emotivist, as well as Collingwood (in
“Language”) had made a stereotype of the physicist drawing a formula on the
blackboard. “Full of emotion.” So the idea that there is an UN-emotional life
is a fallacy. Emotion pervades the rational life, as does akrasia. Grice was
particularly irritated by the fact that Davidson, who lacked a background in
the humanities and the classics, could think of akrasia as “impossible”! Grice
was never too interested in emotion (or feeling) because while we do say I feel
that the cat is hungry, we also say, Im feeling byzantine. The concept of
emotion needs a philosophical elucidation. Grice was curious about a linguistic
botany for that! Akrasia for Grice covers both buletic-boulomaic and doxastic
versions. The buletic-boulomaic version may be closer to the concept of an
emotion. Grice quotes from Kennys essay on emotion. But Grice is looking for
more of a linguistic botany. As it happens, Kennys essay has Griceian
implicata. One problem Grice finds with emotion is that feel that sometimes behaves like thinks that Another is that there is no good Grecian word
for emotio. Kenny, of St. Benets, completed his essay on emotion under
Quinton (who would occasionally give seminars with Grice), and examined by two
members of Grices Play Group: Pears and Gardiner. Kenny connects an emotion to a
feeling, which brings us to Grice on feeling boringly byzantine! Grice proposes
a derivation of akrasia in conditional steps for both buletic-boulomaic and
doxastic akrasia. Liddell and Scott have
“ἐπιθυμία,” which they render as desire, yearning, “ἐ. ἐκτελέσαι” Hdt.1.32;
ἐπιθυμίᾳ by passion, oπρονοίᾳ, generally, appetite, αἱ κατὰ τὸ σῶμα ἐ. esp.
sexual desire, lust, αἱ πρὸς τοὺς παῖδας ἐ.; longing after a thing, desire of
or for it, ὕδατος, τοῦ πιεῖν;” “τοῦ πλέονος;” “τῆς τιμωρίας;” “τῆς μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν
πολιτείας;’ “τῆς παρθενίας;’ “εἰς ἐ. τινὸς ἐλθεῖν;’ ἐν ἐ. “τινὸς εἶναι;’
“γεγονέναι;” “εἰς ἐ. τινὸς “ἀφικέσθαι θεάσασθαι;” “ἐ. τινὸς ἐμβαλεῖν τινί;” “ἐ.
ἐμποιεῖν ἔς τινα an inclination towards;” =ἐπιθύμημα, object of desire,
ἐπιθυμίας τυχεῖν;” “ἀνδρὸς ἐ., of woman, “πενήτων ἐ., of sleep. There must be
more to emotion, such as philia, than epithumia! cf. Grice on Aristotle on
philos. What is an emotion? Aristotle, Rhetoric II.1; Konstan “Pathos and
Passion” R. Roberts, “Emotion”; W. Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion; Simo
Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Aristotle, Rhet.
II.2-12; De An., Eth.N., and Top.; Emotions in Plato and Aristotle; Philosophy
of Emotion; Aristotle and the Emotions, De An. II.12 and III 1-3; De Mem. 1;
Rhet. II.5; Scheiter, “Images, Imagination, and Appearances, V. Caston, Why
Aristotle Needs Imagination” M. Nussbaum, “Aristotle on Emotions and Rational
Persuasion, J. Cooper, “An Aristotelian Theory of Emotion, G. Striker, Emotions
in Context: Aristotles Treatment of the Passions in the Rhetoric and his Moral
Psychology." Essays on Aristotles Rhetoric (J. Dow, Aristotles Theory of
the Emotions, Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle PLATO. Aristotle,
Rhetoric I.10-11; Plato Philebus 31b-50e and Republic IV, D. Frede, Mixed
feelings in Aristotles Rhetoric." Essays on Aristotles Rhetoric, J. Moss,
“Pictures and Passions in Plato”; Protagoras 352b-c, Phaedo 83b-84a, Timaeus 69c
STOICS The Hellenistic philosophers; “The Old Stoic Theory of Emotion” The
Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, eEmotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic
Agitation to Christian Temptation, Sorabji, Chrysippus Posidonius Seneca: A High-Level
Debate on Emotion. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in
Hellenistic Ethics M. Graver, Preface and Introduction to Cicero on Emotion:
Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 M. Graver, Stoicism and emotion. Tusculan
Disputations 3 Recommended: Graver, Margaret. "Philo of Alexandria and the
Origins of the Stoic Προπάθειαι." Phronesis. Tusculan Disputations; "The
Stoic doctrine of the affections of the soul; The Stoic life: Emotions, duties,
and fate”; Emotion and decision in stoic psychology, The stoics, individual
emotions: anger, friendly feeling, and hatred. Aristotle Rhetoric II.2-3;
Nicomachean Ethics IV.5; Topics 2.7 and 4.5; Konstan, Anger, Pearson, Aristotle
on Desire; Scheiter, Review of Pearsons Aristotle on Desire; S. Leighton,
Aristotles Account of Anger: Narcissism and Illusions of Self‐Sufficiency: The Complex Evaluative World of Aristotles Angry
Man,” Valuing emotions. Aristotle Rhetoric II. 4; Konstan, “Hatred”
Konstan "Aristotle on Anger and the Emotions: the Strategies of
Status." Ancient Anger: Perspectives from Homer to Galen, C. Rapp, The
emotional dimension of friendship: notes on Aristotles account of philia in
Rhetoric II 4” Grice endeavours to give an answer to the question whether
and to what extent philia (friendship), as it is treated by Aristotle in Rhet.
II.4, can be considered a genuine emotion as, for example, fear and anger are.
Three anomalies are identified in the definition and the account of philia (and
of the associated verb philein), which suggest a negative response to the
question. However, these anomalies are analysed and explained in terms of the
specific notes of philia in order to show that Rhetoric II4 does allow for a
consideration of friendship as a genuine emotion. Seneca, On Anger (De
Ira) Seneca, On Anger Seneca, On Anger (62-96); K. Vogt, “Anger, Present
Injustice, and Future Revenge in Senecas De Ira” FEAR Aristotle, Rhet. II.5;
Nicomachean Ethics III.6-9 Aristotles Courageous Passions, Platos Laws;
“Pleasure, Pain, and Anticipation in Platos Laws, Book I” Konstan, “Fear”
PITY Aristotle, Rhetoric II. 8-9; Poetics, chs. 6, 9-19 ; Konstan, “Pity”
E. Belfiore, Tragic pleasures: Aristotle on plot and emotion, Konstan,
Aristotle on the Tragic Emotions, The Soul of Tragedy: Essays on Athenian
Drama SHAME Aristotle, Rhet. II.6; Nicomachean Ethics IV.9 Konstan, Shame
J. Moss, Shame, Pleasure, and the Divided Soul, B. Williams, Shame and
Necessity. Aristotle investigates two character traits, continence and
incontinence, that are not as blameworthy as the vices but not as praiseworthy
as the virtues. The Grecian expressions are’enkrateia,’ continence, literally
mastery, and krasia (“incontinence”; literally, lack of mastery. An akratic
person goes against reason as a result of some pathos (emotion, feeling”). Like
the akratic, an enkratic person experiences a feeling that is contrary to
reason; but unlike the akratic, he acts in accordance with reason. His defect
consists solely in the fact that, more than most people, he experiences
passions that conflict with his rational choice. The akratic person has not only
this defect, but has the further flaw that he gives in to feeling rather than
reason more often than the average person.
Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of akrasia: “propeteia,” or
impetuosity and “astheneia, or weakness. The person who is weak goes through a
process of deliberation and makes a choice; but rather than act in accordance
with his reasoned choice, he acts under the influence of a passion. By
contrast, the impetuous person does not go through a process of deliberation
and does not make a reasoned choice; he simply acts under the influence of a
passion. At the time of action, the impetuous person experiences no internal
conflict. But once his act has been completed, he regrets what he has done. One
could say that he deliberates, if deliberation were something that post-dated
rather than preceded action; but the thought process he goes through after he
acts comes too late to save him from error.
It is important to bear in mind that when Aristotle talks about
impetuosity and weakness, he is discussing chronic conditions. The impetuous
person is someone who acts emotionally and fails to deliberate not just once or
twice but with some frequency; he makes this error more than most people do.
Because of this pattern in his actions, we would be justified in saying of the
impetuous person that had his passions not prevented him from doing so, he
would have deliberated and chosen an action different from the one he did
perform. The two kinds of passions that
Aristotle focuses on, in his treatment of akrasia, are the appetite for
pleasure and anger. Either can lead to impetuosity and weakness. But Aristotle
gives pride of place to the appetite for pleasure as the passion that
undermines reason. He calls the kind of akrasia caused by an appetite for pleasure
(hedone) “unqualified akrasia”—or, as we might say, akrasia simpliciter, “full
stop.’ Akrasia caused by anger he considers a qualified form of akrasia and
calls it akrasia ‘with respect to anger.’ We thus have these four forms of
akrasia: impetuosity caused by pleasure, impetuosity caused by anger, weakness
caused by pleasure, weakness caused by anger. It should be noticed that
Aristotle’s treatment of akrasia is heavily influenced by Plato’s tripartite
division of the soul. Plato holds that either the spirited part (which houses
anger, as well as other emotions) or the appetitive part (which houses the
desire for physical pleasures) can disrupt the dictates of reason and result in
action contrary to reason. The same threefold division of the soul can be seen
in Aristotles approach to this topic. Although Aristotle characterizes akrasia
and enkrateia in terms of a conflict between reason and feeling, his detailed
analysis of these states of mind shows that what takes place is best described
in a more complicated way. For the feeling that undermines reason contains some
thought, which may be implicitly general. As Aristotle says, anger “reasoning
as it were that one must fight against such a thing, is immediately provoked.
And although in the next sentence he denies that our appetite for pleasure
works in this way, he earlier had said that there can be a syllogism that
favors pursuing enjoyment: “Everything sweet is pleasant, and this is sweet”
leads to the pursuit of a particular pleasure. Perhaps what he has in mind is
that pleasure can operate in either way: it can prompt action unmediated by a
general premise, or it can prompt us to act on such a syllogism. By contrast,
anger always moves us by presenting itself as a bit of general, although hasty,
reasoning. But of course Aristotle does
not mean that a conflicted person has more than one faculty of reason. Rather
his idea seems to be that in addition to our full-fledged reasoning capacity,
we also have psychological mechanisms that are capable of a limited range of
reasoning. When feeling conflicts with reason, what occurs is better described
as a fight between feeling-allied-with-limited-reasoning and full-fledged
reason. Part of us—reason—can remove itself from the distorting influence of
feeling and consider all relevant factors, positive and negative. But another
part of us—feeling or emotion—has a more limited field of reasoning—and
sometimes it does not even make use of it.
Although “passion” is sometimes used as a translation of Aristotles word
pathos (other alternatives are emotion” and feeling), it is important to bear
in mind that his term does not necessarily designate a strong psychological
force. Anger is a pathos whether it is weak or strong; so too is the appetite
for bodily pleasures. And he clearly indicates that it is possible for an
akratic person to be defeated by a weak pathos—the kind that most people would
easily be able to control. So the general explanation for the occurrence of
akrasia cannot be that the strength of a passion overwhelms reason. Aristotle
should therefore be acquitted of an accusation made against him by Austin in a
well-known footnote to ‘A Plea For Excuses.’ Plato and Aristotle, Austin says,
collapsed all succumbing to temptation into losing control of ourselves — a
mistake illustrated by this example. I am very partial to ice cream, and a
bombe is served divided into segments corresponding one to one with the persons
at High Table. I am tempted to help myself to two segments and do so, thus
succumbing to temptation and even conceivably (but why necessarily?) going
against my principles. But do I lose control of myself? Do I raven, do I snatch
the morsels from the dish and wolf them down, impervious to the consternation
of my colleagues? Not a bit of it. We often succumb to temptation with calm and
even with finesse. With this, Aristotle can agree. The pathos for the bombe can
be a weak one, and in some people that will be enough to get them to act in a
way that is disapproved by their reason at the very time of action. What is most remarkable about Aristotle’s
discussion of akrasia is that he defends a position close to that of Socrates.
When he first introduces the topic of akrasia, and surveys some of the problems
involved in understanding this phenomenon, he says that Socrates held that
there is no akrasia, and he describes this as a thesis that clearly conflicts
with the appearances (phainomena). Since he says that his goal is to preserve
as many of the appearances as possible, it may come as a surprise that when he
analyzes the conflict between reason and feeling, he arrives at the conclusion
that in a way Socrates was right after all. For, he says, the person who acts
against reason does not have what is thought to be unqualified knowledge; in a
way he has knowledge, but in a way does not.
Aristotle explains what he has in mind by comparing akrasia to the
condition of other people who might be described as knowing in a way, but not
in an unqualified way. His examples are people who are asleep, mad, or drunk; he
also compares the akratic to a student who has just begun to learn a Subjects,
or an actor on the stage. All of these people, he says, can utter the very
words used by those who have knowledge; but their talk does not prove that they
really have knowledge, strictly speaking.
These analogies can be taken to mean that the form of akrasia that
Aristotle calls weakness rather than impetuosity always results from some
diminution of cognitive or intellectual acuity at the moment of action. The
akratic says, at the time of action, that he ought not to indulge in this
particular pleasure at this time. But does he know or even believe that he
should refrain? Aristotle might be taken to reply: yes and no. He has some
degree of recognition that he must not do this now, but not full recognition.
His feeling, even if it is weak, has to some degree prevented him from
completely grasping or affirming the point that he should not do this. And so
in a way Socrates was right. When reason remains unimpaired and unclouded, its
dictates will carry us all the way to action, so long as we are able to
act. But Aristotles agreement with
Socrates is only partial, because he insists on the power of the emotions to
rival, weaken or bypass reason. Emotion challenges reason in all three of these
ways. In both the akratic and the enkratic, it competes with reason for control
over action; even when reason wins, it faces the difficult task of having to
struggle with an internal rival. Second, in the akratic, it temporarily robs
reason of its full acuity, thus handicapping it as a competitor. It is not
merely a rival force, in these cases; it is a force that keeps reason from
fully exercising its power. And third, passion can make someone impetuous; here
its victory over reason is so powerful that the latter does not even enter into
the arena of conscious reflection until it is too late to influence action.
That, at any rate, is one way of interpreting Aristotle’s statements. But it
must be admitted that his remarks are obscure and leave room for alternative
readings. It is possible that when he denies that the akratic has knowledge in
the strict sense, he is simply insisting on the point that no one should be
classified as having practical knowledge unless he actually acts in accordance
with it. A practical knower is not someone who merely has knowledge of general
premises; he must also have knowledge of particulars, and he must actually draw
the conclusion of the syllogism. Perhaps drawing such a conclusion consists in
nothing less than performing the action called for by the major and minor
premises. Since this is something the akratic does not do, he lacks knowledge;
his ignorance is constituted by his error in action. On this reading, there is
no basis for attributing to Aristotle the thesis that the kind of akrasia he
calls weakness is caused by a diminution of intellectual acuity. His
explanation of akrasia is simply that pathos is sometimes a stronger
motivational force than full-fledged reason.
This is a difficult reading to defend, however, for Aristotle says that
after someone experiences a bout of akrasia his ignorance is dissolved and he
becomes a knower again. In context, that appears to be a remark about the form
of akrasia Aristotle calls weakness rather than impetuosity. If so, he is
saying that when an akratic person is Subjects to two conflicting
influences—full-fledged reason versus the minimal rationality of emotion—his
state of knowledge is somehow temporarily undone but is later restored. Here,
knowledge cannot be constituted by the performance of an act, because that is
not the sort of thing that can be restored at a later time. What can be
restored is ones full recognition or affirmation of the fact that this act has
a certain undesirable feature, or that it should not be performed. Aristotle’s
analysis seems to be that both forms of akrasia — weakness and impetuosity
—share a common structure: in each case, ones full affirmation or grasp of what
one should do comes too late. The difference is that in the case of weakness but
not impetuosity, the akratic act is preceded by a full-fledged rational
cognition of what one should do right now. That recognition is briefly and
temporarily diminished by the onset of a less than fully rational affect. There is one other way in which Aristotle’s
treatment of akrasia is close to the Socratic thesis that what people call
akrasia is really ignorance. Aristotle holds that if one is in the special
mental condition that he calls practical wisdom, then one cannot be, nor will
one ever become, an akratic person. For practical wisdom is present only in
those who also possess the ethical virtues, and these qualities require
complete emotional mastery. Anger and appetite are fully in harmony with
reason, if one is practically wise, and so this intellectual virtue is
incompatible with the sort of inner conflict experienced by the akratic person.
Furthermore, one is called practically wise not merely on the basis of what one
believes or knows, but also on the basis of what one does. Therefore, the sort
of knowledge that is lost and regained during a bout of akrasia cannot be
called practical wisdom. It is knowledge only in a loose sense. The low-level
grasp of the ordinary person of what to do is precisely the sort of thing that
can lose its acuity and motivating power, because it was never much of an
intellectual accomplishment to begin with. That is what Aristotle is getting at
when he compares it with the utterances of actors, students, sleepers, drunks,
and madmen. Grice had witnessed how Hare had suffere to try and deal with how
to combine the geniality that “The language of morals” is with his account of
akrasia. Most Oxonians were unhappy with Hares account of akrasia. Its like, in
deontic logic, you cannot actually deal with akrasia. You need buletics. You
need the desiderative, so that you can oppose what is desired with the duty,
even if both concepts are related. “Akrasia” has a nice Grecian touch about it,
and Grice and Hare, as Lit. Hum., rejoiced in being able to explore what
Aristotle had to say about it. They wouldnt go far beyond Aristotle. Plato and
Aristotle were the only Greek philosophers studied for the Lit. Hum. To venture
with the pre-socratics or the hellenistics (even if Aristotle is one) was not
classy enough! Like Pears in Motivated irrationality, Grice allows that
benevolentia may be deemed beneficentia. If Smith has the good will to give
Jones a job, he may be deemed to have given Jones the job, even if Jones never
get it. In buletic akrasia we must consider the conclusion to be desiring what
is not best for the agents own good, never mind if he refrains from doing what
is not best for his own good. Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor. We
shouldnt be saying this, but we are saying it! Grice prefers akrasia, but
he is happy to use the translation by Cicero, also negative, of this:
incontinentia, as if continentia were a virtue! For Grice, the alleged paradox
of akrasia, both alethic and practical, has to be accounted for by a theory of
rationality from the start, and not be deemed a stumbling block. Grice is
interested in both the common-or-garden buletic-boulomaic version of akrasia,
involving the volitive soul ‒ in term of desirability ‒ and doxastic
akrasia, involing the judicative soul proper ‒ in terms of
probability. Grice considers buletic akrasia and doxastic akrasia ‒ the latter
yet distinct from Moores paradox, p but I dont want to believe that p, in
symbols p and ~ψb-dp. Akarsia,
see egcrateia. Refs.: The main references here are in three folders in two
different series. H. P. Grice, “Akrasia,” The H. P. Grice Papers, S. II, c.
2-ff. 22-23 and S. V, c. 6-f. 32, BANC.
See
index to all Grice’s books with index – the first three of them.
Einheitswissenschaft: Used
by Grice ironically. While he was totally ANTI-Einheitwisseschaft, he was ALL
for einheitsphilosophie! The phrase is
used by Grice in a more causal way. He uses the expression ‘unity of science’
vis-à-vis the topic of teleology. Note that ‘einheitswissenschaft,’ literally
translates as unity-science – there is nothing about ‘making’ if one, which is
what –fied implies. The reason why ‘einheitswissenschaft’ was transliterated as
‘unified science’ was that Neurath thought that ‘unity-science’ would be a
yes-yes in New England, most New Englanders being Unitarians, but they would
like to include Theology there, ‘into the bargain.’ “Die Einheit von
Wissenschaft.” Die Einheit der Wissenschaft und die
neopositivistische Theorie der „Einheitswissenschaft”. O. Neurath, „Einheit der Wissenschaft als
Aufgabe“,Einheitswissenschaft oder Einheit der Wissenschaft?
| Frank F Vierter Internationaler Kongress für Einheit der Wissenschaft, Cambridge 1938
... Einheitswissenschaft als
Basis der Wissenschaftsgeschichte (pp.
positivists held
that no essential differences in aim and method exist between the various
branches of science. The scientists of all disciplines should collaborate
closely with each other and should unify the vocabulary of sciences by logical
analysis. According to this view, there is no sharp demarcation between natural sciences
and social sciences. In particular, to establish universal laws in the social
sciences may be difficult in practice, but it is not impossible in principle.
Through Otto Neurath, this ideal of scientific unity became a program for
logical positivists, who published a series of books in Vienna under the
heading Unified Science. After the dissolution of the Vienna Circle, Neurath
renamed the official journal Erkenntnis as The Journal of Unified Science, and
planned to continue publication of a series of works in the United States under
the general title The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. He thought
that the work would be similar in historical importance to the
eighteenth-century French Encyclopédie under the direction of Diderot.
Unfortunately, this work was never completed, although Carnap and Morris
published some volumes originally prepared for it under the title Foundations
of the Unity of Science. “We have repeatedly pointed out that the formation of
the constructional system as a whole is the task of unified science.” Carnap,
The Logical Structure of the World.
emissum: emissor. A construction out of ex- and ‘missum,’ cf. Grice
on psi-trans-mis-sion. Grice’s utterer, but turned Griceian, To emit, to
translate some Gricism or other. Cf. proffer. emissum. emissor-emissum distinction.
Frequently ignored by Austin. Grice usually formulates it ‘roughly.’ Strawson
for some reason denied the reducibility of the emissum to the emissor. Vide his
footnote in his Inaugural lecture at Oxford. it is a truth implicitly
acknowledged by communication theorists themselves -- this acknowledgement is
is certainly implicit in Grice's distinction between what speakers actually
say, in a favored sense of 'say', and what they imply (see "Utterer's
Meaning, SentenceMeaning and Word-Meaning," in Foundations of Language, 1968)
-- that in almost all the things we should count as sentences there is a
substantial central core of meaning which is explicable either in terms of
truth-conditions or in terms of some related notion quite simply derivable from
that of a truth-condition, for example the notion, as we might call it, of a
compliance condition in the case of an imperative sentence or a
fulfillment-condition in the case of an optative. If we suppose, therefore,
that an account can be given of the notion of a truthcondition itself, an
account which is indeed independent of reference to communicationintention,
then we may reasonably think that the greater part of the task of a general
theory of meaning has been accomplished without such reference. So let us see
if we can rephrase the distinction for a one-off predicament. By drawing a
skull, Blackburn communicates to his fellow Pembrokite that there is danger
around. The proposition is ‘There is danger around’. Of the claims, one is
literal; the other metabolical. Blackburn means that there is danger around.
Blackburn communicates that there is danger around, possibly leading to death.
The emissum, Blackburn’s drawing of the skull ‘means’ that there is danger
around. Since the fact that Blackburn communicates that p is diaphanous, we have
yet another way of posing the distinction: Blackburn communicates that there is
danger around. What is communicated by Blackburn – his emissum – is true. Note
that in this diaphanous change from ‘Blackburn communicates that there is
danger around’ and ‘What Blackburn communicates, viz. that there is danger
around, is true’ we have progressed quite a bit. There are ways of involving
‘true’ in the first stage. Blackburn communicates that there is danger around,
and he communicates something true. In the classical languages, this is done in
the accusative case. emissum. emit. V. emissor. A good
verb used by Grice. It gives us ‘emitter, and it is more Graeco-Roman than his
‘utterer,’ which Cicero would think a barbarism.
emotum: the emotum, the motum. Grice enjoyed a bit of history of
philosophy. Cf. conatum. And Urmson’s company helped. Urmson produced a
brilliant study of the ‘emotive’ theory of ethics, which is indeed linguistic
and based on Ogden. Diog. Laert. of Zeno of Citium. πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα,
"πολλοί σου καταγελῶσιν," "ἀλλ ἐγώ," ἔφη, "οὐ κατα-
γελῶμαι; to the question, who is a friend?, Zeno’s answer is, ‘a second self
(alter ego). One direct way to approach friend is via emotion, as
Aristotle did, and found it aporetic as did Grice. Aristotle discusses philia
in Eth. Nich. but it is in Rhet. where he allows for phulia to be an emotion.
Grice was very fortunate to have Hardie as his tutor. He overused Hardies
lectures on Aristotle, too, and instilled them on his own tutees! Grice is
concerned with the rather cryptic view by Aristotle of the friend (philos,
amicus) as the alter ego. In Grices cooperative, concerted, view of
things, a friend in need is a friend indeed! Grice is interested in Aristotle
finding himself in an aporia. In Nicomachean Ethics IX.ix, Aristotle poses the
question whether the happy man will need friends or not. Kosman correctly
identifies this question as asking not whether friends are necessary in order
to achieve eudæmonia, but why we require friends even when we are happy. The
question is not why we need friends to become happy, but why we need friends
when we are happy, since the eudæmon must be self-sufficient. Philia is
required for the flourishing of the life of practical virtue. The solution by
Aristotle to the aporia here, however, points to the requirement of friendships
even for the philosopher, in his life of theoretical virtue. The olution by
Aristotle to the aporia in Nicomachean Ethics IX.ix is opaque, and the corresponding
passage in Eudeiman Ethics VII.xii is scarcely better. Aristotle thinks he has
found the solution to this aporia. We must take two things into consideration,
that life is desirable and also that the good is, and thence that it is
desirable that such a nature should belong to oneself as it belongs to them. If
then, of such a pair of corresponding s. there is always one s. of the
desirable, and the known and the perceived are in general constituted by their
participation in the nature of the determined, so that to wish to perceive ones
self is to wish oneself to be of a certain definite character,—since, then we
are not in ourselves possessed of each such characters, but only in
participation in these qualities in perceiving and knowing—for the perceiver
becomes perceived in that way in respect in which he first perceives, and
according to the way in which and the object which he perceives; and the knower
becomes known in the same way— therefore it is for this reason that one always
desires to live, because one always desires to know; and this is because he
himself wishes to be the object known. Refs.: There is an essay on “Emotions
and akrasia,” but the topic is scattered in various places, such as Grice’s
reply to Davidson on intending. Grice has an essay on ‘Kant and friendship,’
too, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
English
futilitarians, The: Bergmann’s pun on H. P. Grice and
J. L. Austin. from futile. Cf. conversational futilitarianism. Can there be a
futilitarian theory of communication? Grice’s! The issue is a complex one. Some
may interpret Grice’s theory as resting “on Kantian grounds.” Not everybody was
present at Grice’s seminars at Oxford on helpfulness, where he discusses the
kind of reasoning that a participant to a conversation will display in assuming
that his co-conversationalist is being conversationally helpful,
conversationally benevolent, conversationally ‘altruist,’ almost, and
conversationally, well, co-operative. So, as to the basis for this. We can
simplify the scenario by using the plural. A conversationalist assumes that his
co-conversationalist is being co-operative on Kantian grounds. What are the
alternatives, if any? One can re-describe “Kantian grounds” as “moral grounds.”
Conversationalists abide with the principle of conversational helpfulness on
Kantian, moral grounds. Kant wrote the “Critique of practical reason,” so Kant
would allow for a rephrase of this as follows. Conversationalists abide with
the principle of conversational helpfulness on practical, indeed moral, grounds
– which is the topic of Grice’s last Kant lecture at Stanford. How to turn a
‘counsel of prudence,’ which is ‘practical’ into something that covers Kant’s
“Kategorische Imperativ.” And then there’s the utilitarian. Utilitarianism IS a
moral theory, or a meta-ethical theory. So one would have to allow for the
possibility that conversationalists abide by the principle of conversational
helpfulness on “utilitarian grounds,” which would be “practical grounds,” AND
“moral grounds,” if not Kantian grounds. In any case, the topic WAS raised, and
indeed, for someone like Grice who wrote on ‘pleasure,’ and ‘happiness,’ it
does not seem futilitarian to see him as a futilitarian. Unfortunately, you
need a serious philosophical background to appreciate all this, since it
touches on the very serious, or ‘deep,’ as Grice would say, “and fascinating,”
suburbia or practicality. But surely the keyword ‘utilitarian’ as per
“conversationalists abide by the principle of conversational helpfulness on
utilitarian grounds” is a possibility. Cf. Grice’s reference to the ‘least
effort,’ and in the Oxford lectures on helpfulness to a conversationalist not
getting involved in “undue effort,” or getting into “unnecessary trouble.”
“Undue effort” is ‘forbidden’ by the desideratum of conversational candour; the
‘unnecessary trouble’ is balanced by the ‘principle of conversational
self-love.’ And I don’t think Kant would ever considered loving himself! Grice
being keen on neuter adjectives, he saw the ‘utile’ at the root of utilitarianism.
There is much ‘of value’ in the old Roman concept of ‘utile.’ Lewis and Short
have it as Neutr.
absol.: ūtĭle , is, n., what is useful, the useful: omne tulit punctum, qui
miscuit utile dulci, Hor. A. P. 343: “bonus atque fidus Judex honestum
praetulit utili,” id. C. 4, 9, 41: “utilium tardus provisor,” id. A. P. 164:
“sententiae de utilibus honestisque,” Quint. 3, 8, 13; cf. id. 1, 2, 29. —Ultimately, Grice’s meta-ethics, like Hare’s,
Nowell-Smith’s, Austin’s, Hampshire’s, and Warnock’s derives into a qualified
utilitarianism, with notions of agreeableness and eudaemonia being crucial.
Grice well knows that for Aristotle pleasure is just one out of the three
sources for phulia; the others being profit, and virtue. As an English
utilitarian, or English futilitarian, Grice plays with Griceian
pleasures. Democritus, as Grice remarks, seems to be the earliest
philosopher to have categorically embraced a hedonistic philosophy. Democritus
claims that the supreme goal of life is contentment or cheerfulness, stating
that joy and sorrow are the distinguishing mark of things beneficial and
harmful. The Cyrenaics are an ultra-hedonist Grecoam school of philosophy
founded by Aristippus. Many of the principles of the school were set by his
grandson, Aristippus the Younger, and Theodorus. The Cyrenaic school is one of
the earliest Socratic schools. The Cyrenaics teach that the only intrinsic
‘agathon’ is pleasure ‘hedone,’ which means not just the absence of pain, but a
positively enjoyable momentary sensation. A physical pleasure is stronger than
a pleasure of anticipation or memory. The Cyrenaics do, however, recognize the
value of social obligation, and that pleasure may be gained from altruism. The
Cyrenaic school dies out within a century, and is replaced by
Epicureanism. The Cyrenaics are known for their sceptical epistemology.
The Cyrenaics reduce logic to a basic doctrine concerning the criterion of
truth. The Cyrenaics think that one can only know with certainty his immediate
sense-experience, e. g., that he is having a sweet sensation. But one can know
nothing about the nature of the object that causes this sensation, e.g., that
honey is sweet. The Cyrenaics also deny that we can have knowledge of what the
experience of others are like. All knowledge is immediate sensation. Sensation
is a motion which is purely subjective, and is painful, indifferent or
pleasant, according as it is violent, tranquil or gentle. Further, sensation is
entirely individual and can in no way be described as constituting absolute
objective knowledge. Feeling, therefore, is the only possible criterion of
knowledge and of conduct. The way of being affected is alone knowable. Thus the
sole aim for everyone should be pleasure. Cyrenaicism deduces a single,
universal aim for all which is pleasure. Furthermore, feeling is momentary and
homogeneous. It follows that past and future pleasure have no real existence
for us, and that in present pleasure there is no distinction of kind. Socrates
speaks of the higher pleasure of the intellect. The Cyrenaics denies the
validity of this distinction and say that bodily pleasure (hedone somatike),
being more simple and more intense, is preferable. Momentary pleasure,
preferably of a physical kind, is the only good for a human. However, an action
which gives immediate pleasure can create more than their equivalent of pain.
The wise person should be in control (egcrateia) of pleasure rather than be
enslaved to it, otherwise pain results, and this requires judgement to evaluate
this or that pleasure of life. Regard should be paid to law and custom, because
even though neither law nor custom have an intrinsic value on its own,
violating law or custom leads to an unpleasant penalty being imposed by others.
Likewise, friendship and justice are useful because of the pleasure they
provide. Thus the Cyrenaics believe in the hedonistic value of social obligation
and altruistic behaviour. Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based
upon the teachings of Epicurus, an atomic materialist, following in the steps
of Democritus and Leucippus. Epicurus’s materialism leads him to a general
stance against superstition or the idea of divine intervention. Following
Aristippus, Epicurus believes that the greatest good is to seek modest,
sustainable pleasure in the form of a state of tranquility and freedom from
fear (ataraxia) and absence of bodily pain (aponia) through knowledge of the
workings of the world and the limits of desire. The combination of these two
states, ataraxia and aponia, is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest
form. Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, insofar as it declares
pleasure as the sole intrinsic good, its conception of absence of pain as the
greatest pleasure and its advocacy of a simple life make it different from
hedonism as it is commonly understood. In the Epicurean view, the highest
pleasure (tranquility and freedom from fear) is obtained by knowledge,
friendship and living a virtuous and temperate life. Epicurus lauds the
enjoyment of a simple pleasure, by which he means abstaining from the bodily
desire, such as sex and the appetite, verging on asceticism. Epicurus argues
that when eating, one should not eat too richly, for it could lead to
dissatisfaction later, such as the grim realization that one could not afford
such delicacies in the future. Likewise, sex could lead to increased lust and
dissatisfaction with the sexual partner. Epicurus does not articulate a broad
system of social ethics that has survived but had a unique version of the
golden rule. It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living
wisely and well and justly, agreeing neither to harm nor be harmed, and it is
impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.
Epicureanism is originally a challenge to Platonism, though later it became the
main opponent of Stoicism. Epicurus and his followers shun politics. After the
death of Epicurus, his school is headed by Hermarchus. Later many Epicurean
societies flourish in the Late Hellenistic era and during the Roman era, such
as those in Antiochia, Alexandria, Rhodes and Ercolano. The poet Lucretius is
its most known Roman proponent. By the end of the Roman Empire, having
undergone attack and repression, Epicureanism has all but died out, and would
be resurrected in the seventeenth century by the atomist Pierre Gassendi. Some
writings by Epicurus have survived. Some scholars consider the epic poem “De
natura rerum” by Lucretius to present in one unified work the core arguments
and theories of Epicureanism. Many of the papyrus scrolls unearthed at the
Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum are Epicurean texts. At least some are
thought to have belonged to the Epicurean Philodemus. Cf. Barnes on
epicures and connoiseurs. Many a controversy arising out of this or that value
judgement is settled by saying, ‘I like it and you don’t, and that s the end of
the matter.’ I am content to adopt this solution of the difficulty on matters
such as food and drink. Even here, though, we admit the existence of epicures
and connoisseurs.Why are we not content to accept the same solution on every
matter where value is concerned? The reason I am not so content lies in the
fact that the action of one man dictated by his approval of something is
frequently incompatible with the action of another man dictated by his approval
of something. This is obviously philosophical, especially for the Grecian
hedonistic Epicureians made popular by Marius and Walter Pater at Oxford. L and
S have "ἡδονή,” also “ἁδονά,” or in a chorus in tragedy, “ἡδονά,”
ultimately from "ἥδομαι,” which they render it as “enjoyment, pleasure,”
“prop. of sensual pleasure.” αἱ τοῦ σώματος or περὶ τὸ σῶμα ἡ.; αἱ κατὰ τὸ σῶμα
ἡ. Plato, Republic, 328d; σωματικαὶ ἡ. Arist. Eth. Nich. 1151a13; αἱ περὶ
πότους καὶ περὶ ἐδωδὰς ἡ. Plato, Republic, 389e; but also ἀκοῆς ἡ; ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ
εἰδέναι ἡ. Pl. R. 582b; of malicious pleasure, ἡ ἐπὶ τοῖς τῶν φίλων κακοῖς, ἐπὶ
ταῖς λοιδορίαις ἡ.; ἡδονῇ ἡσσᾶσθαι, ἡδοναῖς χαρίζεσθαι, to give way to
pleasure; Pl. Lg. 727c; κότερα ἀληθείη χρήσομαι ἢ ἡδονῆ; shall I speak truly or
so as to humour you? εἰ ὑμῖν ἡδονὴ τοῦ ἡγεμονεύειν; ἡ. εἰσέρχεταί τιϝι εἰ, “one
feels pleasure at the thought that …” ; ἡδονὴν ἔχειν τινός to be satisfied
with; ἡδονὴν ἔχει, φέρει; ἡδονὴ ἰδέσθαι (θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι), of a temple; δαίμοσιν
πρὸς ἡδονήν; ὃ μέν ἐστι πρὸς ἡ.; πρὸς ἡ.
Λέγειν, “to speak so as to please another”; δημηγορεῖν; οὐ πρὸς ἡ. οἱ ἦν τὰ
ἀγγελλόμενα; πάντα πρὸς ἡ. ἀκούοντας; later πρὸς ἡδονῆς εἶναί τινι; καθ᾽ ἡδονὴν
κλύειν; καθ᾽ ἡδονήν ἐστί μοι; καθ᾽ ἡ. τι δρᾶν, ποιεῖν; καθ᾽ ἡδονὰς τῷ δήμῳ τὰ
πράγματα ἐνδιδόναι; ἐν ἡδονῇ ἐστί τινι, it is a pleasure or delight to another;
ἐν ἡδονῇ ἔχειν τινάς, to take pleasure in them; ἐν ἡδονῇ ἄρχοντες, oοἱ λυπηροί;
μεθ᾽ ἡδονῆς; ὑφ᾽ ἡδονῆς; ὑπὸ τῆς ἡ; ἡδονᾷ with pleasure; a pleasure; ἡδοναὶ
τραγημάτων sweetmeats; plural., desires after pleasure, pleasant lusts. In
Ionic philosophers, taste, flavour, usually joined with χροιή. Note that
Aristotle uses somatike hedone. As a Lit. Hum. Oxon., and especially as a
tutee of Hardie at Corpus, Grice is almost too well aware of the centrality of
hedone in Aristotles system. Pleasure is sometimes rendered “placitum,” as in
“ad placitum,” in scholastic philosophy, but that is because scholastic
philosophy is not as Hellenic as it should be. Actually, Grice prefers
“agreeable.” One of Grices requisites for an ascription of eudaemonia (to have
a fairy godmother) precisely has the system of ends an agent chooses to realise
to be an agreeable one. One form or mode of agreeableness, Grice notes, is,
unless counteracted, automatically attached to the attainment of an object of
desire, such attainment being routinely a source of satisfaction. The
generation of such a satisfaction thus provides an independent ground for
preferring one system of ends to another. However, some other mode of
agreeableness, such as e. g. being a source of delight, which is not routinely
associated with the fulfilment of this or that desire, could discriminate,
independently of other features relevant to such a preference, between one
system of ends and another. Further, a system of ends the operation of which is
especially agreeable is stable not only vis-à-vis a rival system, but also
against the somewhat weakening effect of ‘egcrateia,’ incontinence, or akrasia,
if you mustn’t. A disturbing influence, as Aristotle knows from experience, is
more surely met by a principle in consort with a supporting attraction than by
the principle alone. Grices favourite hedonistic implicatum was “please,” as in
“please, please me,” by The Beatles. While Grice
claims to love Kantotle, he cannot hide his greater reverence for Aristotle,
instilled early on at Corpus. An Oxonian need not recite Kant in what during
the Second World War was referred to as the Hun, and while Aristotle was a
no-no at Clifton (koine!), Hardie makes Grice love him. With eudaemonia, Grice
finds a perfect synthetic futilitarian concept to balance his innate analytic
tendencies. There is Grecian eudaemonism and there is Griceian eudaemonism. L
and S are not too helpful. They have “εὐδαιμονία” (Ion. –ιη), which they render
not as happiness, but as “prosperity, good fortune, opulence;” “χρημάτων
προσόδῳ καὶ τῇ ἄλλῃ εὐ.;” of countries; “μοῖρ᾽ εὐδαιμονίας.” In a
second use, the expression is indeed rendered as “true, full happiness;”
“εὐ. οὐκ ἐν βοσκήμασιν οἰκεῖ οὐδ᾽ ἐν χρυσῷ; εὐ. ψυχῆς, oκακοδαιμονίη, cf. Pl.
Def. 412d, Arist. EN 1095a18, sometimes personified as a divinity. There is
eudaemonia and there is kakodaemonia. Of course, Grice’s locus classicus is EN
1095a18, which is Grice’s fairy godmother, almost. Cf. Austin on agathon and
eudaimonia in Aristotle’s ethics, unearthed by Urmson and Warnock, a response
to an essay by Prichard in “Philosophy” on the meaning of agathon in
Aristotle’s ethics. Pritchard argues that Aristotle regards “agathon” to mean
conducive to “eudaemonia,” and, consequently, that Aristotle maintains that
every deliberate action stems, ultimately, from the desire for eudaemonia.
Austin finds fault with this. First, agathon in Aristotle does not have a
single usage, and a fortiori not the one Pritchard suggests. Second, if one has
to summarise the usage of “agathon” in one phrase, “being desired” cannot
fulfil this function, for there are other objects of desire besides “τό
άγαθόν,” even if Davidson would disagree. Prichard endeavours to specify what
Aristotle means by αγαθον. In some contexts, “agathon” seems to mean simply
that being desired or an ultimate or non‐ultimate end or aim of a person. In other
contexts, “αγαθον” takes on a normative quality. For his statements to have
content, argues Prichard, Aristotle must hold that when we pursue something of
a certain kind, such as an honour, we pursue it as “a good.” Prichard argues
that by "αγαθον" Aristotle actually means, except in the Nicomachean
Ethics, conducive to eudaemonia, and holds that when a man acts deliberately,
he does it from a desire to attain eudaemonia. Prichard attributes this
position to Plato as well, despite the fact that both thinkers make statements
inconsistent with this view of man’s ultimate aim. Grice takes life seriously:
philosophical biology. He even writes an essay entitled “Philosophy of life,”
listed is in PGRICE. Grice bases his thought on his tutee Ackrill’s Dawes Hicks
essay for the BA, who quotes extensively from Hardie. Grice also reviews that
“serious student of Greek philosophy,” Austin, in his response to Prichard,
Grice’s fairy godmother. Much the most plausible conjecture regarding what
Grecian eudaimonia means is that eudaemonia is to be understood as the name for
that state or condition which one’s good dæmon would, if he could, ensure for
one. One’s good dæmon is a being motivated, with respect to one, solely by
concern for one’s eudaemonia, well-being or happiness. To change the idiom,
eudæmonia is the general characterisation of what a full-time and unhampered
fairy godmother would secure for one. Grice is concerned with the specific system
of ends that eudaemonia consists for Ariskant. Grice borrows, but never
returns, some reflections by his fomer tuttee at St. Johns, Ackrill. Ackrills
point is about the etymological basis for eudaemonia, from eudaemon, the good
dæmon, as Grice prefers. Grice thinks the metaphor should be disimplicated, and
taken literally. Grice concludes with a set of ends that justify our ascription
of eudaemonia to the agent. For Grice, as for Kantotle, telos and eudaemonia
are related in subtle ways. For eudaemonia we cannot deal with just one end,
but a system of ends, although such a system may be a singleton. Grice
specifies a subtle way of characterising end so that a particular ascription of
an end may entail an ascription of eudaemonia. Grice follows the textual criticism
of his tutee Ackrill, in connection with the Socratic point that eudaemonia is
literally related to the eudaemon. In PGRICE Warner explores Grice’s concept of
eudaemonia. Warner is especially helpful with the third difficult Carus lecture
by Grice, a metaphysical defence of absolute value. Warner connects with Grice
in such topics as the philosophy of perception seen in an evolutionary light
and the Kantotelian idea of eudaemonia. In response to Warner’s overview of the
oeuvre of Grice for the festschrift that Warner co-edited with Grandy, Grice
refers to the editors collectively as Richards. While he feels he has to use
“happiness,” Grice is always having Aristotle’s eudaemonia in mind. The
implicatum of Smith is ‘happy’ is more complex than Kantotle thinks. Austen
knew. For Emma, you decide if youre happy. Ultimately, for Grice, the rational
life is the happy life. Grice took life seriously: philosophical biology! Grice
is clear when reprinting the Descartes essay in WOW, where he does quote from Descartes
sources quite a bit, even if he implicates he is no Cartesian scholar – what
Oxonian would? It concerns certainty. And certainty is originally
Cantabrigian (Moore), but also Oxonian, in parts. Ayer says that to know is to
assure that one is certain or sure. So he could connect. Grice will at various
stages of his development play and explore this authoritative voice of
introspection: incorrigibility and privileged access. He surely wants to say
that a declaration of an intention is authoritative. And Grice plays with
meaning, too when provoking Malcolm in a don recollection: Grice: I want you to
bring me a paper tomorrow. Strawson: You mean a newspaper? Grice: No, a
philosophical essay. Strawson: How do you know? Are you certain you mean that?
Grice finds not being certain about what one means Strawsonian and otiose.
Tutees. Grice loved to place himself in the role of the philosophical hack,
dealing with his tutees inabilities, a whole week long – until he could find
refreshment in para-philosophy on the Saturday morning. Now, the logical form
of certain is a trick. Grice would symbolize it as numbering of operators. If
G ψs p, G ψs ψs p, and G ψs ψs ψs p, and so ad infinitum. This is a bit
like certainty. But not quite! When he explores trust, Grice considers
something like a backing for it. But does conclusive evidence yield certainty?
He doesnt think so. Certainty, for Grice should apply to any psychological
attitude, state or stance. And it is just clever of him that when he had to
deliver his BA lecture he chooses ‘intention and uncertainty’ as its topic,
just to provoke. Not surprisingly, the “Uncertainty” piece opens with the
sceptics challenge. And he will not conclude that the intender is certain. Only
that theres some good chance (p ˃0.5) that what he intends will get through!
When there is a will, there is a way, when there is a neo-Prichardian will-ing,
there is a palæo-Griceian way-ing! Perhaps by know Moore means certain. Grice was
amused by the fact that Moore thought that he knew that behind the curtains at
the lecture hall at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, there was a window,
when there wasnt. He uses Moores misuse of know – according to Malcolm – both
in Causal theory and Prolegomena. And of course this relates to the topic of
the sceptics implicature, above, with the two essays Scepticism and Common
sense and Moore and Philosophers Paradoxes repr. partially in WOW. With regard
to certainty, it is interesting to compare it, as Grice does, not so much with
privileged access, but with incorrigibility. Do we not
have privileged access to our own beliefs and desires? And, worse still,
may it not be true that at least some of our avowals of our beliefs and desires are
incorrigible? One of Grices problems is, as he puts it, how to accommodate
privileged access and, maybe, incorrigibility. This or that a
second-order state may be, in some fashion, incorrigible. On the contrary,
for Grice, this or that lower-order, first-order judging is only a
matter for privileged access. Note that while he is happy to allow
privileged access to lower-order souly states, only those who are replicated at
a higher-order or second-order may, in some fashion, be said to count as an incorrigible
avowal. It rains. P judges it rains (privileged access). P judges that P judges
that it rains (incorrigible). The justification is conversational. It rains
says the P, or expresses the P. Grice wants to be able to say that if a P
expresses that p, the P judges2 that p. If the P expresses that
it rains, the P judges that he judges that it rains. In this fashion, his
second-order, higher-order judging is incorrigible, only. Although Grice may
allow for it to be corrected by a third-order judging. It is not required that
we should stick with judging here. Let Smith return the money that he owes to
Jones. If P expresses !p, P ψ-s2 that !p. His second-order,
higher-order buletic state is incorrigible (if ceteris paribus is not corrected
by a third-order buletic or doxastic state). His first-order buletic state is a
matter only of privileged access. For a study of conversation as rational
co-operation this utilitarian revival modifies the standard exegesis of Grice
as purely Kantian, and has him more in agreement with the general Oxonian
meta-ethical scene. Refs.: Under ‘futilitarianism,’ we cover Grice’s views on
‘pleasure’ (he has an essay on “Pleasure,”) and “eudaemonia” (He has an essay
on ‘happiness’); other leads are given under ‘grecianism,’ since this is the Grecian
side to Grice’s Ariskant; for specific essays on ‘pleasure,’ and ‘eudaimonia,’
the keywords ‘pleasure’ and ‘happiness’ are useful. A good source is the essay
on happiness in “Aspects,” which combines ‘eudaemonia’ and ‘agreebleness,’ his
futilitarianism turned Kantotelian. BANC.
entailment: “entailment” is not as figurative as it sounds: it
inovolves property and limitation -- “Paradoxes of entailment,” “Paradoxes of
implication.” Philo and his teacher. Grice is not sure about ‘implicatum.’ 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. This
view as to what φA . ent . ψA means has, for instance, if I understand him
rightly, been asserted by Mr. O. Strachey in Mind, N.S., 93; since he asserts
that, in his opinion, this is what Professor C. I. Lewis means by “φA strictly
implies ψA,” and undoubtedly what Professor Lewis means by this is what I mean
by φA . ent . ψA. And the same view has been frequently suggested (though I do
not know that he has actually asserted it) by Mr. Russell himself (e.g., Principia
Mathematica, p. 21). I 1903
B. Russell Princ. Math. ii.
14 How far formal implication is definable in terms of implication
simply, or material implication as it may be called, is a difficult
question. Source : Principles : Chapter III. Implication and Formal Implication.
– Source : Principia, page 7 : "When it is necessary explicitly to
discriminate "implication" [i.e. "if p, then q" ] from
"formal implication," it is called "material implication." –
Source : Principia, page 20 : "When an implication, say ϕx.⊃.ψx, is said to
hold always, i.e. when (x):ϕx.⊃.ψx, we shall say that ϕx formally implies ψx"Many logicians did use ‘implicatum’ not necessarily to mean
‘conversational implicatum,’ but as the result of ‘implicatio’. ‘Implicatio’
was often identified with the Megarian or Philonian ‘if.’ Why? thought that we
probably did need an entailment. The symposium was held in New York with Dana
Scott and R. K. Meyer. The notion had been mis-introduced (according to
Strawson) in the philosophical literature by Moore. Grice is especially
interested in the entailment + implicatum pair. A philosophical expression may
be said to be co-related to an entailment (which is rendered in terms of a
reductive analysis). However, the use of the expression may co-relate to
this or that implicatum which is rendered reasonable in the light of the assumption
by the addressee that the utterer is ultimately abiding by a principle of
conversational helfpulness. Grice thinks many philosophers take an implicatum
as an entailment when they surely shouldnt! Grice was more interested than
Strawson was in the coinage by Moore of entailment for logical consequence. As
an analyst, Grice knew that a true conceptual analysis needs to be reductive
(if not reductionist). The prongs the analyst lists are thus entailments of the
concept in question. Philosophers, however, may misidentify what is an
entailment for an implicature, or vice versa. Initially, Grice was interested
in the second family of cases. With his coinage of disimplicature, Grice
expands his interest to cover the first family of cases, too. Grice remains a
philosophical methodologist. He is not so much concerned with any area or
discipline or philosophical concept per se (unless its rationality), but with
the misuses of some tools in the philosophy of language as committed by some of
his colleagues at Oxford. While entailment, was, for Strawson mis-introduced in
the philosophical literature by Moore, entailment seems to be less involved in
paradoxes than if is. Grice connects the two, as indeed his tutee Strawson did!
As it happens, Strawsons Necessary propositions and entailment statements is
his very first published essay, with Mind, a re-write of an unpublication
unwritten elsewhere, and which Grice read. The relation of consequence may be
considered a meta-conditional, where paradoxes arise. Grices Bootstrap is
a principle designed to impoverish the metalanguage so that the philosopher can
succeed in the business of pulling himself up by his own! Grice then takes a
look at Strawsons very first publication (an unpublication he had written
elsewhere). Grice finds Strawson thought he could provide a simple solution to
the so-called paradoxes of entailment. At the time, Grice and Strawson were
pretty sure that nobody then accepted, if indeed anyone ever did and did make,
the identification of the relation symbolised by the horseshoe with the
relation which Moore calls entailment, p⊃q,
i. e. ~(pΛ~q) is rejected as an analysis of p entails q because it involves
this or that allegedly paradoxical implicatum, as that any false proposition
entails any proposition and any true proposition is entailed by any
proposition. It is a commonplace that Lewiss amendment had consequences
scarcely less paradoxical in terms of the implicata. For if p is impossible,
i.e. self-contradictory, it is impossible that p and ~q. And if q is
necessary, ~q is impossible and it is impossible that p and ~q; i. e., if p
entails q means it is impossible that p and ~q any necessary proposition is
entailed by any proposition and any self-contradictory proposition entails any
proposition. On the other hand, Lewiss definition of entailment (i.e. of the
relation which holds from p to q whenever q is deducible from p) obviously
commends itself in some respects. Now, it is clear that the emphasis laid on
the expression-mentioning character of the intensional contingent statement by
writing pΛ~q is impossible instead of It is impossible that p and ~q does not
avoid the alleged paradoxes of entailment. But it is equally clear that the
addition of some provision does avoid them. One may proposes that one
should use “entails” such that no necessary statement and no negation of a
necessary statement can significantly be said to entail or be entailed by any
statement; i. e. the function p entails q cannot take necessary or
self-contradictory statements as arguments. The expression p entails q is to be
used to mean p⊃q is necessary, and neither p nor q is either necessary or
self-contradictory, or pΛ~q is impossible and neither p nor q, nor either of
their contradictories, is necessary. Thus, the paradoxes are avoided. For let
us assume that p1 expresses a contingent, and q1 a necessary, proposition. p1
and ~q1 is now impossible because ~q1 is impossible. But q1 is necessary. So,
by that provision, p1 does not entail q1. We may avoid the paradoxical
assertion that p1 entails q2 as merely falling into the equally paradoxical
assertion that p1 entails q1 is necessary. For: If q is necessary, q is
necessary is, though true, not necessary, but a contingent intensional
(Latinate) statement. This becomes part of the philosophers lexicon: intensĭo,
f. intendo, which L and S render as a stretching out, straining, effort.
E. g. oculorum, Scrib. Comp. 255. Also an intensifying, increase. Calorem suum
(sol) intensionibus ac remissionibus temperando fovet,” Sen. Q. N. 7, 1, 3. The
tune: “gravis, media, acuta,” Censor. 12. Hence:~(q is necessary) is,
though false, possible. Hence “p1Λ~(q1 is necessary)” is, though false,
possible. Hence p1 does NOT entail q1 is necessary. Thus, by adopting the view
that an entailment statement, and other intensional statements, are
non-necessary, and that no necessary statement or its contradictory can entail
or be entailed by any statement, Strawson thinks he can avoid the paradox that
a necessary proposition is entailed by any proposition, and indeed all the
other associated paradoxes of entailment. Grice objected that Strawsons cure
was worse than Moores disease! The denial that a necessary proposition can
entail or be entailed by any proposition, and, therefore, that necessary
propositions can be related to each other by the entailment-relation, is too
high a price to pay for the solution of the paradoxes. And here is where Grices
implicature is meant to do the trick! Or not! When Levinson proposed + for
conversationally implicature, he is thinking of contrasting it with ⊢. But things aint that easy.
Even the grammar is more complicated: By uttering He is an adult, U explicitly
conveys that he is an adult. What U explicitly conveys entails that he is not a
child. What U implies is that he should be treated accordingly. Refs.: One
good reference is the essay on “Paradoxes of entailment,” in the Grice papers;
also his contribution to a symposium for the APA under a separate series, The
H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
eschatologicum: Possibly related to Latin ‘summum, ‘as in ‘summum genus,’
and ‘summun bonum. From Greek, 5. in the Logic of Arist., τὰ ἔ. are the last or
lowest species, Metaph.1059b26, or individuals, ib.998b16, cf. AP0.96b12, al.;
“τὸ ἔ. ἄτομον” Metaph.1058b10. b. ὁ ἔ. ὅρος the minor term of a syllogism,
EN1147b14. c. last step in geom. analysis or ultimate condition of action, “τὸ
ἔ. ἀρχὴ τῆς πράξεως” de An.433a16. II. Adv. -τως to the uttermost, exceedingly,
“πῦρ ἐ. καίει” Hp.de Arte8; “ἐ. διαμάχεσθαι” Arist.HA613a11 ; “ἐ. φιλοπόλεμος”
X.An.2.6.1 ; “φοβοῦμαί σ᾽ ἐ.” Men.912, cf. Epicur.Ep. 1p.31U. b. -τως διακεῖσθαι
to be at the last extremity, Plb.1.24.2, D.S.18.48 ; “ἔχειν” Ev.Marc.5.23 ;
“ἀπορεῖν” Phld.Oec.p.72J. 2. so ἐς τὸ ἔ.,=ἐσχάτως, Hdt.7.229; “εἰς τὰ ἔ.”
X.HG5.4.33 ; “εἰς τὰ ἔ. μάλα” Id.Lac.1.2 ; “τὸ ἔ.” finally, in the end,
Pl.Grg.473c ; but, τὸ ἔ. what is worst of all, ib.508d. Why ontology is not
enough. The philosopher needs to PLAY with cross-categorial barriers. He is an
eschatologist. Socrates was. being and good, for Aristotle and Grice cover all.
Good was a favourite of Moore and Hare, as Barnes was well aware! Like Barnes,
Grice dislikes Prichards analysis of good. He leans towards the emotion-based
approach by Ogden. If Grice, like Humpty Dumpty, opposes the Establishment with
his meaning liberalism (what a word means is what I mean by uttering it), he
certainly should be concerned with category shifts. Plus, Grice was a closet
Platonist. As Plato once remarked, having the ability to see horses but not
horsehood (ἱππότης) is a mark of stupidity – rendered by Liddell and Scott as
“horse-nature, the concept of horse” (Antisth. et Pl. ap. Simp.in
Cat.208.30,32, Sch.AristId.p.167F). Grice would endure the flinty experience of
giving joint seminars at Oxford with Austin on the first two books of
Aristotles Organon, Categoriae, and De Int. Grice finds the use of a
category, κατηγορία, by Aristotle a bit of a geniality. Aristotle is using
legalese, from kata, against, on, and agoreuô [ἀγορεύω], speak in public),
and uses it to designate both the prosecution in a trial and the
attribution in a logical proposition, i. e., the questions that must be asked
with regard to a Subjects, and the answers that can be given. As a
representative of the linguistic turn in philosophy, Grice is attracted to the
idea that a category can thus be understood variously, as applying to the realm
of reality (ontology), but also to the philosophy of language (category of
expression) and to philosophical psychology (category of
representation). Grice kept his explorations on categories under two very
separate, shall we say, categories: his explorations with Austin (very
serious), and those with Strawson (more congenial). Where is Smiths altruism?
Nowhere to be seen. Should we say it is idle (otiose) to speak of altruism? No,
it is just an attribute, which, via category shift, can be made the Subjects of
your sentence, Strawson. It is not spatio-temporal, though, right. Not
really. ‒ I do not particularly like your trouser words. The essay
is easy to date since Grice notes that Strawson reproduced some of the details in
his Individuals, which we can very well date. Grice thought Aristotle was the
best! Or at any rate almost as good as Kantotle! Aristotle saw Categoriæ, along
with De Int. as part of his Organon. However, philosophers of language
tend to explore these topics without a consideration of the later parts of the
Organon dealing with the syllogism, the tropes, and the topics ‒ the boring
bits! The reason Grice is attracted to the Aristotelian category (as Austin and
Strawson equally were) is that category allows for a linguistic-turn reading.
Plus, its a nice, pretentious (in the Oxonian way) piece of philosophical
jargon! Aristotle couldnt find category in the koine, so he had to coin it.
While meant by Aristotle in a primarily ontological way, Oxonian philosophers
hasten to add that a category of expression, as Grice puts it, is just as valid
a topic for philosophical exploration. His tutee Strawson will actually publish
a book on Subjects and predicate in grammar! (Trivial, Strawson!). Grice will
later add an intermediary category, which is the Subjects of his philosophical
psychology. As such, a category can be construed ontologically, or
representationally: the latter involving philosophical psychological concepts,
and expressions themselves. For Aristotle, as Grice and Austin, and Grice and
Strawson, were well aware as they educated some of the poor at Oxford (Only the
poor learn at Oxford ‒ Arnold), there are (at least ‒ at most?) ten
categories. Grice doesnt (really) care about the number. But the first are
important. Actually the very first: theres substantia prima, such as Grice. And
then theres substantia secunda, such as Grices rationality. The essentia. Then
there are various types of attributes. But, as Grice sharply notes, even
substantia secunda may be regarded as an attribute. Grices favourite game with
Strawson was indeed Category Shift, or Subjects-ification, as Strawson preferred.
Essence may be introduced as a sub-type of an attribute. We would have
substantia prima AND attribute, which in turn gets divided into essential, the
izzing, and non-essential, the hazzing. While Austin is not so fun to play
with, Strawson is. Smith is a very altruist person. Where is his altruism?
Nowhere to be seen, really. Yet we may sensically speak of Smiths altruism. It
is just a matter of a category shift. Grice scores. Grice is slightly
disappointed, but he perfectly understands, that Strawson, who footnotes Grice
as the tutor from whom I never ceased to learn about logic in Introduction to
logical lheory, fails to acknowledge that most of the research in Strawsons
Individuals: an essay in descriptive (not revisionary) metaphysics derives from
the conclusions reached at his joint philosophical investigations at joint
seminars with Grice. Grice later elaborates on this with Code, who is keen on
Grices other game, the hazz and the hazz not, the izz. But then tutor from whom
I never ceased to learn about metaphysics sounds slightlier clumsier, as far as
the implicature goes. Categories, the Grice-Myro theory of identity, Relative
identity, Grice on =, identity, notes, with Myro, metaphysics, philosophy, with
Code, Grice izz Grice – or izz he? The idea that = is unqualified requires
qualification. Whitehead and Russell ignored this. Grice and Myro didnt. Grice
wants to allow for It is the case that a = b /t1 and it is not the case that a
= b /t2. The idea is intuitive, but philosophers of a Leibnizian bent are too
accustomed to deal with = as an absolute. Grice applies this to human vs.
person. A human may be identical to a person, but cease to be so. Indeed,
Grices earlier attempt to produce a reductive analsysis of I may be seen as
remedying a circularity he detected in Locke about same. Cf. Wiggins, Sameness
and substance. Grice makes Peano feel deeply Griceian, as Grice lists his =
postulates, here for consideration. And if you wondered why Grice prefers
Latinate individuum to the Grecian. The Grecian is “ἄτομον,” in logic, rendered
by L and S as ‘individual, of terms,’ Pl. Sph. 229d; of the εἶδος or forma,
Arist. Metaph.1034a8, de An. 414b27.2. individual, Id. APo. 96b11, al.: as a
subst., τό ἄτομον, Id. Cat. 1b6, 3a38, Metaph.1058a18 (pl.), Plot. 6.2.2,
al. subst.; latinised from Grecian. Lewis and Short have “indīvĭdŭum,” an atom,
indivisible particle: ex illis individuis, unde omnia Democritus gigni
affirmat, Cic. Ac. 2, 17 fin.: ne individuum quidem, nec quod dirimi distrahive
non possit, id. N. D. 3, 12, 29. Note the use of individuum in alethic
modalities for necessity and possibility, starting with (11). ⊢ (α izzes α). This would be the principle of
non-contradiction or identity. Grice applies it to war: War is war, as yielding
a most peculiar implicature. (α izzes β ∧ β izzes γ) ⊃ α
izzes γ. This above is transitivity, which is crucial for Grices tackling of
Reids counterexample to Locke (and which according to Flew in Locke on personal
identity was predated by Berkeley. α hazzes β ⊃ ~(α izzes β). Or, what is accidental is not essential.
Grice allows that what is essential is accidental is, while misleading,
true. ⊢ α hazzes β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(α hazzes x ∧ x
izzes β) ⊢ (∀β)(β izzes a universalium ⊃ β izzes a forma). This above defines a universalium as
a forma, or eidos. (α hazzes β ∧ α
izzes a particular) ⊃ (∃γ).(γ≠α ∧ α izzes β) ⊢ α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ ((β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α) ⊢ α izzes essentially predicable of β ⊃⊂ β izzes α ⊢ α
izzes non-essentially/accidentally predicable of β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α) α = β ⊃⊂ α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α ⊢ α izzes an individuum ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(β izzes α ⊃ α izzes β) ⊢ α
izzes a particular ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(α izzes predicable of β ⊃ (α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α)); α izzes a universalium ⊃⊂ ◊(∃β)(α izzes predicable of α ∧ ~(α izzes β ∧ β
izzes α) ⊢ α izzes some-thing ⊃ α
izzes an individuum. ⊢ α izzes a forma ⊃ (α izzes some-thing ∧ α izzes a universalium) 16. ⊢ α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ (β izzes α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazzes x ∧ x
izzes α) ⊢ α izzes essentially predicable of α ⊢ α izzes accidentally predicable of β ⊃ α ≠ β; ~(α izzes accidentally predicable of β) ⊃ α ≠ β 20. α izzes a particular ⊃ α izzes an individuum. ⊢ α izzes a particular ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x izzes α) 22. ⊢~
(∃x).(x izzes a particular ∧ x
izzes a forma) α izzes a forma ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x
izzes α) x izzes a particular ⊃ ~(∃β)(α izz β) ⊢ α izzes a forma ⊃ ((α
izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ β hazz α); α izzes a forma ∧ β izzes a particular ⊃ (α izzes predicable of β ⊃⊂ β hazz A) ⊢ (α
izzes a particular ∧ β izzes a universalium ∧ β izzes predicable of α) ⊃ (∃γ)(α ≠ γ ∧ γ
izzes essentially predicable of α) ⊢ (∃x) (∃y)(x izzes a particular ∧ y
izzes a universalium ∧ y izzes predicable of x ⊃ ~(∀x)(x izzes a universalium ∧ x izzes some-thing); (∀β)(β
izzes a universalium ⊃ β izzes some-thing) ⊢ α
izzes a particular) ⊃ ~∃β.(α ≠ β ∧ β
izzes essentially predicable of α); (α izzes predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β)⊃ α izzes non-essentially or
accidentally predicable of β. The use of this or that doxastic modality, necessity
and possibility, starting above, make this a good place to consider one
philosophical mistake Grice mentions in “Causal theory.” What is actual is not
also possible. Cf. What is essential is also accidental. He is criticising a
contemporary, if possible considered dated in the New World, form of
ordinary-language philosophy, where the philosopher detects a nuance, and
embarks risking colliding with the facts, rushing ahead to exploit it before he
can clarify it! Grice liked to see his explorations on = as belonging to
metaphysics, as the s. on his Doctrines
at the Grice Collection testifies. While Grice presupposes the use of = in his
treatment of the king of France, he also explores a relativisation of =. His
motivation was an essay by Wiggins, almost Aristotelian in spirit, against
Strawsons criterion of space-time continuancy for the identification of the
substantia prima. Grice wants to apply = to cases were the time continuancy is
made explicit. This yields that a=b in scenario S, but that it may not be the
case that a = b in a second scenario S. Myro had an occasion to expand on
Grices views in his contribution on the topic for PGRICE. Myro mentions his
System Ghp, a highly powerful/hopefully plausible version of Grices System Q,
in gratitude to to Grice. Grice explored also the logic of izzing and hazzing
with Code. Grice and Myro developed a Geach-type of qualified identity. The
formal aspects were developed by Myro, and also by Code. Grice discussed
Wigginss Sameness and substance, rather than Geach. Cf. Wiggins and Strawson on
Grice for the BA. At Oxford, Grice was more or less given free rein to teach
what he wanted. He found the New World slightly disconcerting at first. At
Oxford, he expected his tutees to be willing to read the classics in the
vernacular Greek. His approach to teaching was diagogic, as Socratess! Even in
his details of izzing and hazzing. Greek enough to me!, as a student recalled! correspondence
with Code, Grice sees in Code an excellent Aristotelian. They collaborated on
an exploration of Aristotles underlying logic of essential and non-essential
predication, for which they would freely use such verbal forms as izzing and
hazing, izzing and hazzing, Code on the significance of the middle book in
Aristotles Met. , Aristotle, metaphysics, the middle book. Very middle.
Grice never knew what was middle for Aristotle, but admired Code too much to
air this! The organisation of Aristotle’s metaphysics was a topic of much
concern for Grice. With Code, Grice coined izzing and hazzing to refer to
essential and non-essential attribution. Izzing and hazzing, “Aristotle on the
multiplicity of being” (henceforth, “Aristotle”) PPQ, Aristotle on
multiplicity, “The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly” (henceforth,
“PPQ,” posthumously ed. by Loar, Aristotle, multiplicity, izzing, hazzing,
being, good, Code. Grice offers a thorough discussion of Owens treatment of
Aristotle as leading us to the snares of ontology. Grice distinguishes between
izzing and hazzing, which he thinks help in clarifying, more axiomatico, what
Aristotle is getting at with his remarks on essential versus non-essential
predication. Surely, for Grice, being, nor indeed good, should not
be multiplied beyond necessity, but izzing and hazzing are already
multiplied. The Grice Papers contains drafts of the essay eventually
submitted for publication by Loar in memoriam Grice. Note that the Grice Papers
contains a typically Griceian un-publication, entitled Aristotle and
multiplicity simpliciter. Rather than Aristotle on, as the title for the
PPQ piece goes. Note also that, since its multiplicity simpliciter, it
refers to Aristotle on two key ideas: being and the good. As Code notes in
his contribution to PGRICE, Grice first presents his thoughts on izzing and hazzing
publicly at Vancouver. Jones has developed the axiomatic treatment favoured by
Grice. For Grice there is multiplicity in both being and good (ton
agathon), both accountable in terms of conversational implicata, of course. If
in Prolegomena, Grice was interested in criticising himself, in essays of
historical nature like these, Grice is seeing Aristotles Athenian dialectic as
a foreshadow of the Oxonian dialectic, and treating him as an equal. Grice is
yielding his razor: senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.
But then Aristotle is talking about the multiplicity of is and is
good. Surely, there are ways to turn Aristotle into the monoguist
he has to be! There is a further item in the Grice collection that
combines Aristotle on being with Aristotle on good, which is relevant in
connection with this. Aristotle on being and good
(ἀγαθόν). Aristotle, being, good (agathon), ἀγαθός. As from this f.,
the essays are ordered alphabetically, starting with Aristotle, Grice will
explore Aristotle on being or is and good (ἀγαθός) in explorations with Code.
Grice comes up with izzing and hazzing as the two counterparts to Aristotles
views on, respectively, essential and non-essential predication. Grices views
on Aristotle on the good (strictly, there is no need to restrict Arisstotles
use to the neuter form, since he employs ἀγαθός) connect with Grices
Aristotelian idea of eudaemonia, that he explores elsewhere. Strictly:
Aristotle on being and the good. If that had been Grices case, he would have
used the definite article. Otherwise, good may well translate as masculine,
ἀγαθός ‒the agathetic implicatum. He plays with Dodgson, cabbages and
kings. For what is a good cabbage as opposed to a cabbage? It does not
require very sharp eyes, but only our willingness to use the eyes one has, to
see that speech is permeated with the notion of purpose. To say what a
certain kind of thing is is only too frequently partly to say that it is
for. This feature applies to talk of, e. g., ships, shoes, sailing wax,
and kings; and, possibly and perhaps most excitingly, it extends even to
cabbages! Although Grice suspects Urmson might disagree. v. Grice on
Urmsons apples. Grice at his jocular best. If he is going to be a Kantian,
he will. He uses Kantian jargon to present his theory of conversation. This he
does only at Harvard. The implicature being that talking of vaguer assumptions
of helpfulness would not sound too convincing. So he has the maxim, the
super-maxim, and the sub-maxim. A principle and a maxim is Kantian enough. But
when he actually echoes Kant, is when he introduces what he later calls the
conversational categories – the keyword here is conversational category, as
categoria is used by Aristotle and Kant ‒ or Kantotle. Grice surely
knew that, say, his Category of Conversational Modality had nothing to do with
the Kantian Category of Modality. Still, he stuck with the idea of four
categories (versus Aristotles ten, eight or seven, as the text you consult may
tell you): category of conversational quantity (which at Oxford he had
formulated in much vaguer terms like strength and informativeness and
entailment), the category of conversational quality (keyword: principle of
conversational trust), and the category of conversational relation, where again
Kants relation has nothing to do with the maxim Grice associates with this
category. In any case, his Kantian joke may be helpful when considering the
centrality of the concept category simpliciter that Grice had to fight with
with his pupils at Oxford – he was lucky to have Austin and Strawson as co-lecturers!
Grice was irritated by L and S defining kategoria as category. I guess I knew
that. He agreed with their second shot, predicable. Ultimately, Grices concern
with category is his concern with person, or prote ousia, as used by Aristotle,
and as giving a rationale to Grices agency-based approach to the philosophical
enterprise. Aristotle used kategorein in the sense of to predicate,
assert something of something, and kategoria. The prote ousia is
exemplified by o tis anthropos. It is obvious that Grice wants to approach
Aristotles semantics and Aristotles metaphysics at one fell swoop. Grice reads
Aristotles Met. , and finds it understandable. Consider the adjective French
(which Aristotle does NOT consider) ‒ as it occurs in phrases such as Michel
Foucault is a French citizen. Grice is not a French citizen. Michel
Foucault once wrote a nice French poem. Urmson once wrote a nice French
essay on pragmatics. Michel Foucault was a French professor. Michel
Foucault is a French professor. Michel Foucault is a French professor of
philosophy. The following features are perhaps significant. The appearance
of the adjective French, or Byzantine, as the case might be ‒ cf. I’m
feeling French tonight. In these phrases is what Grice has as adjunctive rather
than conjunctive, or attributive. A French poem is not necessarily something
which combines the separate features of being a poem and being French, as a
tall philosopher would simply combine the features of being tall and of being a
philosopher. French in French poem, occurs adverbially. French
citizen standardly means citizen of France. French poem standardly means poem
in French. But it is a mistake to suppose that this fact implies that there is
this or that meaning, or, worse, this or that Fregeian sense, of the expression
French. In any case, only metaphorically or metabolically can we say that
French means this or that or has sense. An utterer means. An utterer makes
sense. Cf. R. Pauls doubts about capitalizing major. French means, and
figuratively at that, only one thing, viz. of or pertaining to France. And
English only means of or pertaining to England. French may be what
Grice (unfollowing his remarks on The general theory of context) call
context-sensitive. One might indeed say, if you like, that while French
means ‒ or means only this or that, or that its only sense is this or that,
French still means, again figuratively, a variety of things. French
means-in-context of or pertaining to France. Symbolise that
as expression E means-in-context that p. Expression E means-in-context C2 that
p2. Relative to Context C1 French means of France;
as in the phrase French citizen. Relative to context C2, French
means in the French language, as in the
phrase, French poem ‒ whereas history does not behave, like this. Whether
the focal item is a universal or a particular is, contra Aristotle, quite
irrelevant to the question of what this or that related adjective means, or
what its sense is. The medical art is no more what an utterer means when he
utters the adjective medical, as is France what an utterer means by the
adjective French. While the attachment of this or that context may suggest an
interpretation in context of this or that expression as uttered by the utterer
U, it need not be the case that such a suggestion is indefeasible. It
might be e.g. that French poem would have to mean, poem composed in French,
unless there were counter indications, that brings the utterer and the
addressee to a different context C3. In which case, perhaps
what the utterer means by French poem is poem composed by a French competitor
in this or that competition. For French professor there would be two
obvious things an utterer might mean. Disambiguation will depend on the
wider expression-context or in the situational context attaching to
the this or that circumstance of utterance. Eschatology. Some like Hegel, but
Collingwoods *my* man! ‒ Grice. Grice participated in two
consecutive evenings of the s. of programmes on metaphysics organised by Pears.
Actually, charming Pears felt pretentious enough to label the meetings to be
about the nature of metaphysics! Grice ends up discussing, as he should,
Collingwood on presupposition. Met.
remained a favourite topic for Grices philosophical explorations, as it
is evident from his essay on Met. , Philosophical Eschatology, and Platos
Republic, repr. in his WOW . Possibly Hardie is to blame, since he hardly
tutored Grice on metaphysics! Grices two BBC lectures are typically dated in
tone. It was the (good ole) days when philosophers thought they could educate
the non-elite by dropping Namess like Collingwood and stuff! The Third
Programme was extremely popular, especially among the uneducated ones at
London, as Pears almost put it, as it was a way for Londoners to get to know
what is going on down at Oxford, the only place an uneducated (or educated, for
that matter) Londoner at the time was interested in displaying some interest
about! I mean, Johnson is right: if a man is tired of the nature of
metaphysics, he is tired of life! Since the authorship is Grice, Strawson, and
Pears, Met. , in Pears, The Nature of Met., The BBC Third Programme, it is
somewhat difficult to identify what paragraphs were actually read by Grice (and
which ones by Pears and which ones by Strawson). But trust the sharp Griceian
to detect the correct implicature! There are many (too many) other items
covered by these two lectures: Kant, Aristotle, in no particular order. And in
The Grice Collection, for that matter, that cover the field of metaphysics. In
the New World, as a sort of tutor in the graduate programme, Grice was expected
to cover the discipline at various seminars. Only I dislike discipline! Perhaps
his clearest exposition is in the opening section of his Met. , philosophical
eschatology, and Platos Republic, repr. in his WOW , where he states, bluntly
that all you need is metaphysics! metaphysics,
Miscellaneous, metaphysics notes, Grice would possible see metaphysics as a
class – category figuring large. He was concerned with the methodological
aspects of the metaphysical enterprise, since he was enough of a relativist to
allow for one metaphysical scheme to apply to one area of discourse (one of
Eddingtons tables) and another metaphysical scheme to apply to another
(Eddingtons other table). In the third programme for the BBC Grice especially
enjoyed criticising John Wisdoms innovative look at metaphysics as a bunch of
self-evident falsehoods (Were all alone). Grice focuses on Wisdom on the
knowledge of other minds. He also discusses Collingwoods presuppositions, and
Bradley on the reality-appearance distinction. Grices reference to Wisdom was
due to Ewings treatment of Wisdom on metaphysics. Grices main motivation here
is defending metaphysics against Ayer. Ayer thought to win more Oxonian
philosophers than he did at Oxford, but he was soon back in London. Post-war
Oxford had become conservative and would not stand to the nonsense of Ayers
claiming that metaphysics is nonsense, especially, as Ayers implicature also
was, that philosophy is nonsense! Perhaps the best summary of Griceian
metaphysics is his From Genesis to Revelations: a new discourse on metaphysics.
It’s an ontological answer that one must give to Grices metabolic operation
from utterers meaning to expression meaning, Grice had been interested in the
methodology of metaphysics since his Oxford days. He counts as one
memorable experience in the area his participation in two episodes for the BBC
Third Programme on The nature of metaphysics with the organiser, Pears, and his
former tutee, Strawson on the panel. Grice was particularly keen on
Collingwoods views on metaphysical presuppositions, both absolute and
relative! Grice also considers John Wisdoms view of the metaphysical
proposition as a blatant falsehood. Grice considers Bradleys Hegelian metaphysics
of the absolute, in Appearance and reality. Refs.: While Grice’s choice was
‘eschatology,’ as per WoW, Essay, other keywords are useful, notably
“metaphysics,” “ontology,” “theorizing,” and “theory-theory,” in The H. P.
Grice Papers, BANC.
explicatum. At Oxford, nobody was interested in the explication.
That’s too explicit. It was, being English, all about the ‘innuendo,’ the
‘understatement,’ the implication. The first Oxonian was C. K. Grant, with his
‘pragmatic implication.’ Then came Nowell-Smith with his ‘contextual
implication.’ Urmson was there with his ‘implied’ claims. And Strawson was
saying that ‘the king of France is not bald’ implies that thereis a king of
France. So, it was enough, Grice thought! We have to analyse what we imply by imply,
or at least what _I_ do. He thought publishing was always vulgar. But when he
was invited for one of those popularisations, when he was invited to contribute
to a symposium on a topic of his choice – he chose “The causal theory of
perception” and dedicates an ‘extensum excursus’ on ‘implication.’ The
conclusion is simple: “The pillar box seems red” implies. And implies a LOT. So
much so that neo-Wittgensteinians were saying that what Grice implies is part
of what Grice is committed in terms of ‘satisfactoriness’ of what he is
expressing. Not so! What Grice implies is, surely, that the pillar box may not
be red. But surely he can cancel that EXPLICITLY “The pillar box seems red and
is red.” So, what he implies is not part of what he explicitly commits in terms
of value satisfactoriness. In terms of value satisfactoriness, Grice
distinguishes between the subperceptual (“The pillar box seems red”) and the
perceptual proper (“Grice perceives that the pillar box is red”). The causal
theory merely states that “Grice perceives that the pillar box is red” (a
perceptum for the subperceptum, “the pillar box seems red”) if and only if,
first, the pillar box is red; second,
the subperceptum: the pillar box seems red; and third and last, the fact that
the pillar box is red CAUSES the pillar box seeming red. None of that is
explicit, but none of it is implicit. It is merely a philosophical reductive
analysis which has cleared away an unnecessary implication out of the picture.
The philosopher, involved in conceptual analysis, has freed from the ‘pragmatic
implication’ and can provide, for his clearly stated ‘analysans,’ three
different prongs which together constitute the necessary and sufficient
conditions – the analysandum. And his problem is resolved. Grice’s cavalier
attitude towards the explicit is obvious in the way he treats “Wilson is a
great man,” versus “the prime minister is a great man” “I don’t care if I’m not
sure if I want to say that an emissor of (i) and an emissor of (ii) have put
forward, in an explicit fashion, the same proposition. His account of
‘disambiguation’ is meant even more jocularly. He knows that in the New World,
they spell ‘vice’ as ‘vyse’ – So Wilson
being in the grip of a vyse is possibly the same thing put forward as the prime
minister being caught in the grip of either a carpenter’s tool or a sort of
something like a sin – if not both. (Etymologically, ‘vice’ and ‘vice’ are
cognate, since they are ‘violent’ things – cf. violence. While ‘implicare’
developed into vulgar Engish as ‘employ,’ “it’s funny explicature did not
develop into ‘exploy.’”A logical construction is an explication. A reductive
analysis is an explication. Cf. Grice on Reductionism as a bete noire,
sometimes misquoted as Reductivism. Grice used both ‘explanation’ and ‘explication’,
so one has to be careful. When he said that he looked for a theory that would
explain conversation or the implicatum, he did not mean explication. What is
the difference, etymologically, between
explicate and explain? Well, explain is from ‘explanare,’ which gives
‘explanatum.’Trop., of speech, to make plain or clear, to explain
(class.:“syn.: explico, expono, interpretor): qualis differentia sit honesti et
decori, facilius intelligi quam explanari potest,” Cic.Off. 1, 27, 94; cf.
Quint. 5, 10, 4: “rem latentem explicare definiendo, obscuram explanare
interpretando, etc.,” Cic. Brut. 42, 152: “explanare apertiusque dicere
aliquid,” id. Fin. 2, 19, 60: “docere et explanare,” id. Off. 1, 28, 101:
“aliquid conjecturā,” id. de Or. 2, 69, 280: “rem,” id. Or. 24, 80: “quem
amicum tuum ais fuisse istum, explana mihi,” Ter. Ph. 2, 3, 33: “de cujus
hominis moribus pauca prius explananda sunt, quam initium narrandi faciam,”
Sall. C. 4, 5.—Pass.impers.: “juxta quod flumen, aut ubi fuerit, non satis
explanatur,” Plin. 6, 23, 26, § 97.—2. To utter distinctly: “et ille juravit,
expressit, explanavitque verba, quibus, etc.,” Plin. Pan. 64, 3.Hence,
explānātus , a, um, P. a. (acc. to II.), plain, distinct (rare): “claritas in
voce, in lingua etiam explanata vocum impressio,” i. e. an articulate
pronunciation, Cic. Ac. 1, 5, 19: parum explanatis vocibus sermo praeruptus,
Sen. de Ira, 1, 1, 4. Adv. ex-plānāte , plainly, clearly, distinctly:
“scriptum,” Gell. 16, 8, 3.—Comp.: “ut definire rem cum explanatius, tum etiam
uberius (opp. presse et anguste),” Cic. Or. 33, 117.Cr. Occam. M. O. R. the
necessity is explanatory necessity. Senses or conventional implicatata (not
reachable by ‘argument’) and Strawson do not explain. G. A. Paul does not
explain. Unlike Austin, who was in love with a taxonomy, Grice loved an
explanation. “Ἀρχὴν δὲ τῶν πάντων ὕδωρ ὑπεστήσατο, καὶ τὸν κόσμον ἔμψυχον καὶ
δαιμόνων πλήρη. “Arkhen de ton panton hudor hupestesato.” Thales’s doctrine is
that water is the universal primary substance, and that the world is animate
and full of divinities. “Ἀλλὰ Θαλῆς μὲν ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχηγὸς φιλοσοφίας ὕδωρ
φησὶν εἶναι (διὸ καὶ τὴν γῆν ἐφ᾽ ὕδατος ἀπεφήνατο εἶναι), λαβὼν ἴσως τὴν
ὑπόληψιν ταύτην ἐκ τοῦ πάντων ὁρᾶν τὴν τροφὴν ὑγρὰν οὖσαν καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ θερμὸν ἐκ
τούτου γιγνόμενον καὶ τούτῳ ζῶν (τὸ δ᾽ ἐξ οὗ γίγνεται, τοῦτ᾽ ἐστὶν ἀρχὴ πάντων)
– διά τε δὴ τοῦτο τὴν ὑπόληψιν λαβὼν ταύτην καὶ διὰ τὸ πάντων τὰ σπέρματα τὴν
φύσιν ὑγρὰν ἔχειν, τὸ δ᾽ ὕδωρ ἀρχὴν τῆς φύσεως εἶναι τοῖς ὑγροῖς. εἰσὶ δέ τινες
οἳ καὶ τοὺς παμπαλαίους καὶ πολὺ πρὸ τῆς νῦν γενέσεως καὶ πρώτους θεολογήσαντας
οὕτως οἴονται περὶ τῆς φύσεως ὑπολαβεῖν‧ Ὠκεανόν τε γὰρ καὶ Τηθὺν ἐποίησαν τῆς γενέσεως πατέρας
[Hom. Ξ 201], καὶ τὸν ὅρκον τῶν θεῶν ὕδωρ, τὴν καλουμένην ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν Στύγα τῶν
ποιητῶν‧ τιμιώτατον μὲν γὰρ τὸ πρεσβύτατον,
ὅρκος δὲ τὸ τιμιώτατόν ἐστιν. εἰ μὲν οὖν [984a] ἀρχαία τις αὕτη καὶ παλαιὰ
τετύχηκεν οὖσα περὶ τῆς φύσεως ἡ δόξα, τάχ᾽ ἂν ἄδηλον εἴη, Θαλῆς μέντοι λέγεται
οὕτως ἀποφήνασθαι περὶ τῆς πρώτης αἰτίας. (Ἵππωνα γὰρ οὐκ ἄν τις ἀξιώσειε
θεῖναι μετὰ τούτων διὰ τὴν εὐτέλειαν αὐτοῦ τῆς διανοίας)‧ Ἀναξιμένης δὲ ἀέρα καὶ Διογένης πρότερον ὕδατος καὶ μάλιστ᾽
ἀρχὴν τιθέασι τῶν ἁπλῶν σωμάτων.” De caelo: “Οἱ δ᾽ ἐφ᾽ ὕδατος κεῖσθαι [sc. τὴν
γὴν]. τοῦτον γὰρ ἀρχαιότατον παρειλήφαμεν τὸν λόγον, ὅν φασιν εἰπεῖν Θαλῆν τὸν
Μιλήσιον, ὡς διὰ τὸ πλωτὴν εἶναι μένουσαν ὥσπερ ξύλον ἤ τι τοιοῦτον ἕτερον (καὶ
γὰρ τούτων ἐπ᾽ ἀέρος μὲν οὐθὲν πέφυκε μένειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐφ᾽ ὕδατος), ὥσπερ οὐ τὸν
αὐτὸν λόγον ὄντα περὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ τοῦ ὕδατος τοῦ ὀχοῦντος τὴν γῆν‧ οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸ ὕδωρ πέφυκε μένειν μετέωρον, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπί τινός
[294b] ἐστιν. ἔτι δ᾽ ὥσπερ ἀὴρ ὕδατος κουφότερον, καὶ γῆς ὕδωρ‧ ὥστε πῶς οἷόν τε τὸ κουφότερον κατωτέρω κεῖσθαι τοῦ
βαρυτέρου τὴν φύσιν; ἔτι δ᾽ εἴπερ ὅλη πέφυκε μένειν ἐφ᾽ ὕδατος, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ
τῶν μορίων ἕκαστον [αὐτῆς]‧
νῦν δ᾽ οὐ φαίνεται τοῦτο γιγνόμενον, ἀλλὰ τὸ τυχὸν μόριον φέρεται εἰς βυθόν, καὶ
θᾶττον τὸ μεῖζον. The problem of the nature of matter, and its transformation
into the myriad things of which the universe is made, engaged the natural
philosophers, commencing with Thales. For his hypothesis to be credible, it was
essential that he could explain how all things could come into being from
water, and return ultimately to the originating material. It is inherent in
Thaless hypotheses that water had the potentiality to change to the myriad
things of which the universe is made, the botanical, physiological,
meteorological and geological states. In Timaeus, 49B-C, Plato had Timaeus
relate a cyclic process. The passage commences with that which we now call
“water” and describes a theory which was possibly that of Thales. Thales would
have recognized evaporation, and have been familiar with traditional views,
such as the nutritive capacity of mist and ancient theories about spontaneous
generation, phenomena which he may have observed, just as Aristotle believed
he, himself had, and about which Diodorus Siculus, Epicurus (ap. Censorinus,
D.N. IV.9), Lucretius (De Rerum Natura) and Ovid (Met. I.416-437) wrote. When
Aristotle reported Thales’s pronouncement that the primary principle is water,
he made a precise statement: Thales says that it [the nature of things] is
water, but he became tentative when he proposed reasons which might have
justified Thaless decision. Thales’s supposition may have arisen from
observation. It is Aristotle’s opinion that Thales may have observed, that the
nurture of all creatures is moist, and that warmth itself is generated from
moisture and lives by it; and that from which all things come to be is their
first principle. Then, Aristotles tone changed towards greater confidence. He
declared: Besides this, another reason for the supposition would be that the
semina of all things have a moist nature. In continuing the criticism of
Thales, Aristotle wrote: That from which all things come to be is their first
principle (Metaph. 983 b25). Simple
metallurgy had been practised long before Thales presented his hypotheses, so
Thales knew that heat could return metals to a liquid state. Water exhibits
sensible changes more obviously than any of the other so-called elements, and
can readily be observed in the three states of liquid, vapour and ice. The
understanding that water could generate into earth is basic to Thaless watery
thesis. At Miletus it could readily be observed that water had the capacity to
thicken into earth. Miletus stood on the Gulf of Lade through which the
Maeander river emptied its waters. Within living memory, older Milesians had
witnessed the island of Lade increasing in size within the Gulf, and the river
banks encroaching into the river to such an extent that at Priene, across the
gulf from Miletus the warehouses had to be rebuilt closer to the waters edge.
The ruins of the once prosperous city-port of Miletus are now ten kilometres
distant from the coast and the Island of Lade now forms part of a rich
agricultural plain. There would have been opportunity to observe other areas
where earth generated from water, for example, the deltas of the Halys, the
Ister, about which Hesiod wrote (Theogony, 341), now called the Danube, the
Tigris-Euphrates, and almost certainly the Nile. This coming-into-being of land
would have provided substantiation of Thaless doctrine. To Thales water held
the potentialities for the nourishment and generation of the entire cosmos.
Aëtius attributed to Thales the concept that even the very fire of the sun and
the stars, and indeed the cosmos itself is nourished by evaporation of the
waters (Aëtius, Placita). It is not
known how Thales explained his watery thesis, but Aristotle believed that the
reasons he proposed were probably the persuasive factors in Thaless
considerations. Thales gave no role to the Olympian gods. Belief in generation
of earth from water was not proven to be wrong until A.D. 1769 following
experiments of Antoine Lavoisier, and spontaneous generation was not disproved
until the nineteenth century as a result of the work of Louis Pasteur.The first
philosophical explanation of the world was speculative not practical. has its
intelligibility in being identified with one of its parts (the world is water).
First philosophical explanation for Universe human is rational and the world in
independent; He said the arché is water; Monist: He believed reality is
one Thales of Miletus, first
philosophical explanation of the origin and nature of justice (and Why after all, did a Thales is Water.” Without the millions of species
that make up the biosphere, and the billions of interactions between them that
go on day by day,.Oddly, Grice had spent some time on x-questions in the Kant
lectures. And why is an x-question. A philosophical explanation of
conversation. A philosophical explanation of implicature. Description vs.
explanation. Grice quotes from Fisher, Never contradict. Never explain.
Taxonomy, is worse than explanation, always. Grice is exploring the
taxonomy-description vs. explanation dichotomy. He would often criticise ordinary-language
philosopher Austin for spending too much valuable time on linguistic botany,
without an aim in his head. Instead, his inclination, a dissenting one, is
to look for the big picture of it all, and disregard a piece-meal
analysis. Conversation is a good example. While Austin would Subjectsify
Language (Linguistic Nature), Grice rather places rationality squarely on the
behaviour displayed by utterers as they make conversational moves that their
addressees will judge as rational along specific lines. Observation of the
principle of conversational helpfulness is rational (reasonable) along the
following lines: anyone who cares about the two goals which are central to
conversation, viz. giving and receiving information, and influencing and being
influenced by others, is expected to have an interest in taking part in a
conversation which will only be profitable (if not possible) under the
assumption that it is conducted along the lines of the principle of
conversational helpfulness. Grice is not interested in conversation per se, but
as a basis for a theory that explains the mistakes ordinary-language
philosophers are making. The case of What is known to be the case is not
believed to be the case. Refs.: One good source is the “Prejudices and
predilections.” Also the first set of ‘Logic and conversation.” There is also
an essay on the ‘that’ versus the ‘why.’ The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
expressum: At
one time, Oxford was all about the Croceans! It all changed! The oppositum is
the impressum, or sense-datum. In a functionalist model, you have perceptual
INPUT and behavioural OUTPUT, the expressum. In between, the black box of the
soul. Darwin, Eckman. Drawing a skull
meaning there is danger. cf. impressum. Inside out. Expression of Impressions. As
an empiricist, Grice was into ‘impress.’ But it’s always good to have a
correlatum. Grice liked an abbreviation, especially because he loved
subscripts. So, he starts to analyse the ‘ordinary-language’ philosohper’s
mistake by using a few symbols: there’s the phrase, or utterance, and there’s
the expression, for which Grice uses ‘e’ for a ‘token,’ and ‘E’ for a type. So,
suppose we are considering Hart’s use of ‘carefully.’ ‘Carefully’ would be the
‘expression,’ occurring within an utterance. Surely, since Grice uses
‘expression’ in that way, he also uses to say what Hart is doing, Hart is
expressing. Grice notes that ‘expressing’ may be too strong. Hart is expressing
the belief THAT if you utter an utterance containing the ‘expression’
‘carefully,’ there is an implicatum to the effect that the agent referred to is
taking RATIONAL steps towards something. IRRATIONAL behaviour does not count as
‘careful’ behaviour. Grice uses the same abbreviations in discussing philosophy
as the ‘conceptual analysis’ of this or that expression. It is all different
with Ogden, Collingwood, and Croce, that Collingwood loved! "Ideas, we may say generally, are
symbols, as serving to express some actual moment or phase of experience and
guiding towards fuller actualization of what is, or seems to be, involved in
its existence or MEANING . That no idea is ever wholly adequate MEANS that the
suggestiveness of experience is inexhaustible" Forsyth, English
Philosophy, 1910, . Thus the significance of sound, the meaning of an utterance
is here identical with the active response to surroundings and with the natural
expression of emotions According to Husserl, the function of expression is only
directly and immediately adapted to what is usually described as the meaning
(Bedeutung) or the sense (Sinn) of the speech or parts of speech. Only because
the meaning associated with a wordsowid expresses something, is that word-sound
called 'expres- sion' (Ideen, p. 256 f). "Between the ,nearnng and the
what is meant, or what it expresses, there exists an essential relation,
because the meaning is the expression of the meant through its own content
(Gehalt) What is meant (dieses Bedeutete) lies in the 'object' of the thought
or speech. We must therefore distinguish these three-Word, Meaning, Object "1
Geyser, Gp cit p z8 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked
evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompresso These complexities are mentioned here
to show how vague are most of the terms which are commonly thought satisfactory
in this topic. Such a word as 'understand' is, unless specially treated, far
too vague to serve except provisionally or at levels of discourse where a real
understanding of the matter (in the reference sense) is not possible. The
multiple functions of speech will be classified and discussed in the following
chapter. There it will be seen that the expression of the speaker's intention
is one of the five regular language functions. Grice hated Austin’s joke, the
utteratum, “I use ‘utterance’ only as equivalent to 'utteratum;' for 'utteratio'
I use ‘the issue of an utterance,’” so he needed something for ‘what is said’
in general, not just linguistic, ‘what is expressed,’ what is explicitly
conveyed,’ ex-prĭmo , pressi, pressum, 3, v. a. premo. express (mostly poet.
and in postAug. prose; “freq. in the elder Pliny): (faber) et ungues exprimet
et molles imitabitur aere capillos,” Hor. A. P. 33; cf.: “alicujus furorem ...
verecundiae ruborem,” Plin. 34, 14, 40, § 140: “expressa in cera ex anulo
imago,” Plaut. Ps. 1, 1, 54: “imaginem hominis gypso e facie ipsa,” Plin. 35,
12, 44, § 153; cf.: “effigiem de signis,” id. ib.: “optime Herculem Delphis et
Alexandrum, etc.,” id. 34, 8, 19, § 66 et saep.: “vestis stricta et singulos
artus exprimens,” exhibiting, showing, Tac. G. 17: “pulcher aspectu sit
athleta, cujus lacertos exercitatio expressit,” has well developed, made
muscular, Quint. 8, 3, 10.
farquharsonism – Grice enjoyed reading Cook Wilson, and was grateful to A
S L Farquharson for making that possible.
find
play
– where Grice’s implicature finds play Strawson Wiggins p. 523
Freges
Sättigung:
Frege’s original Sinn. Fregeian saturation. Grice was once at the Bodleian
assisting Austin in his translation of Frege’s Grundlegung – and browsing
through the old-style library fiches, Grice exclaims: “All these essays in
German journals about Fregeian saturation can surely saturate one!’ Austin was
not amused. Neben mathematischen und physikalischen Vorlesungen sowie einer in
Philosophie hat Frege in Jena Vorlesungen in Chemie besucht und in diesem Fach
auch an einem einsemestrigen Praktikum teilgenommen. In seiner wohlbekannten
Rede über Bindung und Sättigung von Ausdrücken klingt davon noch etwas
nach.Betrachten wir nun die Konsequenzen der Fregeschen Auffassung der
prädikativen Natur der Begriffe. Hierfür ist es zunächst erforderlich,
abschließend einige Besonderheiten anzumerken, die daraus folgen, daß auch
Begriffsausdrücke bedeutungsvoll sein sollen. Zunächst hatten wir ja mit Hilfe
der Analogie festgestellt, daß in einem Satz dasjenige, was Begriffsausdrücke
bedeuten, denselben ontologischen Status haben muß wie das, was Eigennamen
bedeuten. Insofern scheinen sowohl Eigennamen als auch Begriffsausdrücke
jeweils bestimmte (wenn auch hinsichtlich ihrer Sättigung oder
Bindungsfähigkeit unterschiedene) Entitäten als Bedeutung zu haben. Und Frege
erklärt auch explizit „Begriff ist Bedeutung eines Prädikates“ [BG, 198]. Frege’s distinction between saturated
expressions and unsaturated expressions corresponds to the distinction between
objects and concepts. A saturated expression refers to an object or argument
and has a complete sense in itself, while an unsaturated expression refers to a
concept or function and does not have a complete sense. For example, in the
sentence “Socrates is the teacher of Plato,” “Socrates” and “Plato” are proper
names and are saturated, while “. . . is the teacher of . . .” is unsaturated,
for it has empty spaces that must be filled with saturated expressions before it
gains a complete sense. “Statements in general . . . can be imagined to be
split up into two parts; one complete in itself, and the other in need of
supplementation, or ‘unsaturated’.” Frege, “Function and Concept,”
Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege.
liberatum – liberum arbitrium – vide ‘arbitrium’ How can arbitrium
not be free? Oddly this concerns rationality. For Grice, as for almost
everyone, a rational agent is an autonomous agent. Freewill is proved
grammatically. The Romans had a ‘modus deliberativus’, and even a ‘modus
optativus’ (ortike ktesis) “in imitationem Graecis.”If you utter “Close the
door!” you rely on free will. It would be otiose for a language or system of
communication to have as its goal to inform/get informed, and influence/being
influenced if determinism and fatalism were true. freedom: Like identity, crucial in philosophy
in covering everything. E cannot communicate that p, unless E is FREE. An
amoeba cannot communicate thatp. End setting, unweighed rationality,
rationality about the ends, autonomy. Grice was especially concerned with Kants
having brought back the old Greek idea of eleutheria for philosophical
discussion. Refs.: the obvious keywords are “freedom” and “free,” but most of
the material is in “Actions and events,” in PPQ, and below under ‘kantianism’ –
The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.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.
futurum
indicativum:
The Grecians called it just ‘horistike klesis.’ The Romans transliterated as
modus definitivus, inclination anima affectations demonstrans.’ But they had
other terms, indicativus, finitus, finitivus, and pronuntiativus. f. H. P.
Grice and D. F. Pears, “Predicting and deciding.” The future is essentially
involved in “E communicates that p,” i. e. E, the emissor, intends that his
addressee, in a time later than t, will come to believe this or that. Grice is especially concerned with the future
for his analysis of the communicatum. “Close the door!” By uttering “Close the
door!,” U means that A is to close the door – in the future. So Grice spends
HOURS exploring how one can have justification to have an intention about a
future event. Grice is aware of the ‘shall.’ Grice uses ‘shall’ in the first
person to mean wha the calls ‘futurum indicativum.’ (He considers the case of
the ‘shall’ in the second and third persons in his analysis of mode). What are
the conditions for the use of “shall” in the first person. “I shall close the
door” may be predictable. It is in the indicative mode. “Thou shalt close the
door,” and “He shall close the door” are in the imperative mode, or rather they
correspond to the ‘futurum intentionale.’
Since Grice is an analytic
philosopher, he specifies the analysis in the third person (“U means that…”)
one has to be careful. For ‘futurum indicativum’ we have ‘shall’ in the first
person, and ‘will’ in the second and third persons. So for the first group, U
means that he will go. In the second group, U means that his addressee or a
third party shall go. Grice adopts a subscript variant, stick with ‘will,’ but
add the mode afterwards: so will-ind. will be ‘futurum indicativum,’ and
will-int. will be futurum intentionale. The OED has it as “shall,”
and defines as a Germanic preterite-present strong verb. In Old English,
it is “sceal,” and which the OED renders as “to owe (money,” 1425 Hoccleve Min.
Poems, The leeste ferthyng þat y men shal. To owe (allegiance); 1649 And by
that feyth I shal to god and yow; followed by an infinitive, without to. Except
for a few instances of shall will, shall may (mowe), "shall conne" in
the 15th c., the infinitive after shall is always either that of a principal
verb or of have or be; The present tense shall; in general statements of what
is right or becoming, = ought, superseded by the past subjunctive should; in
OE. the subjunctive present sometimes occurs in this use; 1460 Fortescue Abs.
and Lim. Mon. The king shall often times send his judges to punish rioters and
risers. 1562 Legh Armory; Whether are Roundells of all suche coloures, as ye
haue spoken of here before? or shall they be Namesd Roundelles of those
coloures? In OE. and occas. in Middle English used to express necessity of
various kinds. For the many shades of meaning in Old English see Bosworth and
Toller), = must, "must needs", "have to", "am
compelled to", etc.; in stating a necessary condition: = `will have to,
`must (if something else is to happen). 1596 Shaks. Merch. V. i. i. 116 You
shall seeke all day ere you finde them, & when you haue them they are
not worth the search. 1605 Shaks. Lear. He that parts vs, shall bring a Brand
from Heauen. c In hypothetical clause, accompanying the statement of a
necessary condition: = `is to. 1612 Bacon Ess., Greatn. Kingd., Neither must
they be too much broken of it, if they shall be preserued in vigor; ndicating
what is appointed or settled to take place = the mod. `is to, `am to, etc. 1600
Shaks. A.Y.L. What is he that shall buy his flocke and pasture? 1625 in Ellis
Orig. Lett. Ser. "Tomorrow His Majesty will be present to begin the Parliament which is thought
shall be removed to Oxford; in commands or instructions; n the second person,
“shall” is equivalent to an imperative. Chiefly in Biblical language, of divine
commandments, rendering the jussive future of the Hebrew and Vulgate. In Old
English the imperative mode is used in the ten commandments. 1382 Wyclif Exod.
Thow shalt not tak the Names of the Lord thi God in veyn. So Coverdale, etc. b)
In expositions: you shall understand, etc. (that). c) In the formula you shall
excuse (pardon) me. (now "must"). 1595 Shaks. John. Your Grace shall pardon
me, I will not backe. 1630 R. Johnsons Kingd. and Commw. 191 You shall excuse
me, for I eat no flesh on Fridayes; n the *third* person. 1744 in Atkyns Chanc.
Cases (1782) III. 166 The words shall and may in general acts of parliament, or
in private constitutions, are to be construed imperatively, they must remove
them; in the second and third persons, expressing the determination by the
Griceian utterer to bring about some action, event, or state of things in the
future, or (occasionally) to refrain from hindering what is otherwise certain
to take place, or is intended by another person; n the second person. 1891 J.
S. Winter Lumley. If you would rather not stay then, you shall go down to South
Kensington Square then; in third person. 1591 Shaks. Two Gent. Verona shall not
hold thee. 1604 Shaks. Oth. If there be any cunning Crueltie, That can torment
him much, It shall be his. 1891 J. S. Winter Lumley xiv, `Oh, yes, sir, she
shall come back, said the nurse. `Ill take care of that. `I will come back,
said Vere; in special interrogative uses, a) in the *first* person, used in
questions to which the expected answer is a command, direction, or counsel, or
a resolve on the speakers own part. a) in questions introduced by an
interrogative pronoun (in oblique case), adverb, or adverbial phrase. 1600
Fairfax Tasso. What shall we doe? shall we be gouernd still, By this false
hand? 1865 Kingsley Herew. Where shall we stow the mare? b) in categorical
questions, often expressing indignant reprobation of a suggested course of action,
the implication (or implicature, or entailment) being that only a negative (or,
with negative question an affirmative) answer is conceivable. 1611 Shaks. Wint.
T. Shall I draw the Curtaine? 1802 Wordsw. To the Cuckoo i, O Cuckoo! shall I
call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice? 1891 J. S. Winter Lumley `Are you
driving, or shall I call you a cab? `Oh, no; Im driving, thanks. c) In
*ironical* affirmative in exclamatory sentence, equivalent to the above
interrogative use, cf. Ger. soll. 1741 Richardson Pamela, A pretty thing truly!
Here I, a poor helpless Girl, raised from Poverty and Distress, shall put on
Lady-airs to a Gentlewoman born. d) to stand shall I, shall I (later shill I,
shall I: v. shilly-shally), to be at shall I, shall I (not): to be vacillating,
to shilly-shally. 1674 R. Godfrey Inj. and Ab. Physic Such Medicines. that will
not stand shall I? shall I? but will fall to work on the Disease presently. b
Similarly in the *third* person, where the Subjects represents or includes the
utterer, or when the utterer is placing himself at anothers point of view. 1610
Shaks. Temp., Hast thou (which art but aire) a touch, a feeling Of their
afflictions, and shall not my selfe, One of their kinde be kindlier moud then
thou art? In the second and third person, where the expected answer is a
decision on the part of the utterer or of some person OTHER than the Subjects.
The question often serves as an impassioned repudiation of a suggestion (or
implicature) that something shall be permitted. 1450 Merlin `What shal be his
Names? `I will, quod she, `that it haue Names after my fader. 1600 Shaks.
A.Y.L.; What shall he haue that kild the Deare? 1737 Alexander Pope,
translating Horaces Epistle, And say, to which shall our applause belong, this
new court jargon, or the good old song? 1812 Crabbe Tales, Shall a wife
complain? In indirect question. 1865 Kingsley Herew, Let her say what shall be
done with it; as a mere auxiliary, forming, with present infinitive, the
future, and (with perfect infinitive) the future perfect tense. In Old English,
the notion of the future tense is ordinarily expressed by the present tense. To
prevent ambiguity, wile (will) is not unfrequently used as a future auxiliary,
sometimes retaining no trace of its initial usage, connected with the faculty
of volition, and cognate indeed with volition. On the other hand, sceal
(shall), even when rendering a Latin future, can hardly be said to have been
ever a mere future tense-sign in Old English. It always expressed something of
its original notion of obligation or necessity, so Hampshire is wrong in saying
I shall climb Mt. Everest is predictable. In Middle English, the present early
ceases to be commonly employed in futural usage, and the future is expressed by
shall or will, the former being much more common. The usage as to the
choice between the two auxiliaries, shall and will, has varied from time to
time. Since the middle of the seventeenth century, with Wallis, mere
predictable futurity is expressed in the *first* person by shall, in the second
and third by will, and vice versa. In oratio obliqua, usage allows either the
retention of the auxiliary actually used by the original utterer, or the
substitution of that which is appropriate to the point of view of the uttering
reporting; in Old English, ‘sceal,; while retaining its primary usage, serves
as a tense-sign in announcing a future event as fated or divinely decreed, cf.
Those spots mean measle. Hence shall has always been the auxiliary used, in all
persons, for prophetic or oracular announcements of the future, and for solemn
assertions of the certainty of a future event. 1577 in Allen Martyrdom Campion;
The queene neither ever was, nor is, nor ever shall be the head of the Church
of England. 1601 Shaks. Jul. C. Now do I Prophesie. A Curse shall light vpon
the limbes of men. b In the first person, "shall" has, from the early
ME. period, been the normal auxiliary for expressing mere futurity, without any
adventitious notion. (a) Of events conceived as independent of the volition of
the utterer. To use will in these cases is now a mark of, not
public-school-educated Oxonian, but Scottish, Irish, provincial, or
extra-British idiom. 1595 in Cath. Rec. Soc. Publ. V. 357 My frend, yow and I
shall play no more at Tables now. 1605 Shaks. Macb. When shall we three meet
againe? 1613 Shaks. Hen. VIII, Then wee shall haue em, Talke vs to silence.
1852 Mrs. Stowe Uncle Toms C.; `But what if you dont hit? `I shall hit, said
George coolly; of voluntary action or its intended result. Here I shall or we
shall is always admissible except where the notion of a present, as
distinguished from a previous, decision or consent is to be expressed, in which
case ‘will’ shall be used. Further, I shall often expresses a determination
insisted on in spite of opposition. In the 16th c. and earlier, I shall often
occurs where I will would now be used. 1559 W. Cunningham Cosmogr. Glasse, This
now shall I alway kepe surely in memorye. 1601 Shaks. Alls Well; Informe him so
tis our will he should.-I shall my liege. 1885 Ruskin On Old Road, note:
Henceforward I shall continue to spell `Ryme without our wrongly added h. c In
the *second* person, shall as a mere future auxiliary appears never to have
been usual, but in categorical questions it is normal, e.g. Shall you miss your
train? I am afraid you will. d In the *third* person, superseded by will,
except when anothers statement or expectation respecting himself is reported in
the third person, e.g. He conveys that he shall not have time to write. Even in
this case will is still not uncommon, but in some contexts leads to serious
ambiguity. It might be therefore preferable, to some, to use ‘he shall’ as the
indirect rendering of ‘I shall.’ 1489 Caxton Sonnes of Aymon ii. 64 Yf your
fader come agayn from the courte, he shall wyll yelde you to the kynge
Charlemayne. 1799 J. Robertson Agric. Perth, The effect of the statute
labour has always been, now is, and
probably shall continue to be, less productive than it might. Down to the
eighteenth century, shall, the auxiliary appropriate to the first person, is
sometimes used when the utterer refers to himself in the third person. Cf. the
formula: `And your petitioner shall ever pray. 1798 Kemble Let. in Pearsons
Catal. Mr. Kemble presents his respectful compliments to the Proprietors of the
`Monthly Mirror, and shall have great pleasure at being at all able to aid
them; in negative, or virtually negative, and interrogative use, shall often =
will be able to. 1600 Shaks. Sonn. lxv: How with this rage shall beautie hold a
plea. g) Used after a hypothetical clause or an imperative sentence in a
statementsof a result to be expected from some action or occurrence. Now (exc.
in the *first* person) usually replaced by will. But shall survives in literary
use. 1851 Dasent Jest and Earnest, Visit Rome and you shall find him [the Pope]
mere carrion. h) In clause expressing the object of a promise, or of an
expectation accompanied by hope or fear, now only where shall is the ordinary
future auxiliary, but down to the nineteenth century shall is often preferred
to will in the second and third persons. 1628 in Ellis Orig. Lett. Ser., He is
confident that the blood of Christ shall wash away his sins. 1654 E. Nicholas
in N. Papers, I hope neither your Cosen Wat. Montagu nor Walsingham shall be permitted to
discourse with the D. of Gloucester; in impersonal phrases,
"it shall be well, needful", etc. (to do so and so). (now
"will"). j) shall be, added to a future date in clauses measuring
time. 1617 Sir T. Wentworth in Fortescue Papers. To which purpose my late Lord
Chancelour gave his direction about the 3. of Decembre shallbe-two-yeares; in
the idiomatic use of the future to denote what ordinarily or occasionally
occurs under specified conditions, shall was formerly the usual auxiliary. In
the *second* and *third* persons, this is now somewhat formal or rhetorical.
Ordinary language substitutes will or may. Often in antithetic statements
coupled by an adversative conjunction or by and with adversative force. a in
the first person. 1712 Steele Spect. In spite of all my Care, I shall every now
and then have a saucy Rascal ride by reconnoitring under my Windows. b) in the *second* person.
1852 Spencer Ess. After knowing him for years, you shall suddenly discover that
your friends nose is slightly awry. c) in the *third* person. 1793 W. Roberts
Looker-On, One man shall approve the same thing that another man shall condemn.
1870 M. Arnold St. Paul and Prot. It may well happen that a man who lives and
thrives under a monarchy shall yet theoretically disapprove the principle of
monarchy. Usage No. 10: in hypothetical, relative, and temporal clauses
denoting a future contingency, the future auxiliary is shall for all persons
alike. Where no ambiguity results, however, the present tense is commonly used
for the future, and the perfect for the future-perfect. The use of shall, when
not required for clearness, is, Grice grants, apt to sound pedantic by non
Oxonians. Formerly sometimes used to express the sense of a present
subjunctive. a) in hypothetical clauses. (shall I = if I shall) 1680 New
Hampsh. Prov. Papers, If any Christian shall speak contempteously of the Holy
Scriptures, such person shall be
punished. b) in relative clauses, where the antecedent denotes an as yet undetermined
person or thing: 1811 Southey Let., The minister who shall first become a
believer in that book will obtain a
higher reputation than ever statesman did before him. 1874 R. Congreve Ess. We
extend our sympathies to the unborn generations which shall follow us on this
earth; in temporal clauses: 1830 Laws of Cricket in Nyren Yng. Cricketers
Tutor, If in striking, or at any other time, while the ball shall be in play,
both his feet be over the popping-crease; in clauses expressing the purposed
result of some action, or the object of a desire, intention, command, or
request, often admitting of being replaced by may. In Old English, and
occasionally as late as the seventeenth century, the present subjunctive was
used exactly as in Latin. a) in final clause usually introduced by that. In
this use modern idiom prefers should (22 a): see quot. 1611 below, and the
appended remarks. 1879 M. Pattison Milton At the age of nine and twenty, Milton
has already determined that this lifework shall be an epic poem; in relative
clause: 1599 Shaks. Hen. V, ii. iv. 40: As Gardeners doe with Ordure hide those
Roots that shall first spring. The choice between should and would follows the
same as shall and will as future auxiliaries, except that should must sometimes
be avoided on account of liability to be misinterpreted as = `ought to. In
present usage, should occurs mainly in the first person. In the other persons
it follows the use of shall. III Elliptical and quasi-elliptical uses. Usage
No. 24: with ellipsis of verb of motion: = `shall go; he use is common in OHG.
and OS., and in later HG., LG., and Du. In the Scandinavian languages it is
also common, and instances occur in MSw.] 1596 Shaks. 1 Hen. IV, That with our
small coniunction we should on. 1598 Shaks. Merry W. If the bottome were as
deepe as hell, I shold down; n questions, what shall = `what shall (it) profit,
`what good shall (I) do. Usage No. 26: with the sense `is due, `is proper, `is
to be given or applied. Cf. G. soll. Usage No. 27: a) with ellipsis of active
infinitive to be supplied from the context. 1892 Mrs. H. Ward David Grieve,
`No, indeed, I havnt got all I want, said Lucy `I never shall, neither; if I
shall. Now dial. 1390 Gower Conf. II. 96: Doun knelende on mi kne I take leve,
and if I schal, I kisse hire. 1390 Gower Conf., II. 96: I wolde kisse hire
eftsones if I scholde. 1871 Earle Philol. Engl. Tongue 203: The familiar
proposal to carry a basket, I will if I shall, that is, I am willing if you
will command me; I will if so required. 1886 W. Somerset Word-bk. Ill warn our
Tomll do it vor ee, nif he shall-i.e. if you wish. c) with generalized ellipsis
in proverbial phrase: needs must that needs shall = `he must whom fate compels.
Usage No. 28: a) with ellipsis of do (not occurring in the context). 1477
Norton Ord. Alch., O King that shall These Workes! b) the place of the inf. is
sometimes supplied by that or so placed at the beginning of the sentence. The
construction may be regarded as an ellipsis of "do". It is distinct
from the use (belonging to 27) in which so has the sense of `thus, `likewise,
or `also. In the latter there is usually inversion, as so shall I. 1888 J. S.
Winter Bootles Childr. iv: I should like to see her now shes grown up. `So you
shall. Usage No. 29: with ellipsis of be or passive inf., or with so in place
of this (where the preceding context has is, was, etc.). 1615 J. Chamberlain in
Crt. And Times Jas.; He is not yet executed, nor I hear not when he shall.
Surely he may not will that he be executed.
futurum intentionale: Surely intention has nothing to do with predictable truth.
If Smith promises Jones a job – he intends that Jones get a job. Then the world
explodes, so Jones does not get the job. Kant, Austin, or Grice, don’t care. A
philosopher is not a scientist. He is into ‘conceptual matters,’ about what is
to have a good intention, not whether the intention, in a future scenario, is
realised or not. If they are interested in ‘tense,’ as Prior was as Grice was
with his time-relative identity, it’s still because in the PRESENT, the emissor
emits a future-tense utterance. The future figures more prominently than
anything because in “Emissor communicates that p” there is the FUTURE
ESSENTIAL. The emissor intends that his addressee in a time later than the
present will do this or that. While Grice is always looking to cross the
credibility/desirability divide, there is a feature that is difficult to cross
in the bridge of asses. This is the shall vs. will. Grice is aware that ‘will,’
in the FIRST person, is not a matter of prediction. When Grice says “I will go
to Harborne,” that’s not a prediction. He firmly contrasts it with “I shall go
to Harborne” which is a perfect prediction in the indicative mode. “I will go
to Harborne” is in the ‘futurum intentionale.’ Grice is also aware that in the
SECOND and THIRD persons, ‘will’ reports something that the utterer must judge
unpredictable. An utterance like “Thou wilt go to London” and “He will go to
London” is in the ‘futurum indicativus.’ This is one nuance that Prichard
forgets in the analysis of ‘willing’ that Grice eventually adopts. Prichard
uses ‘will’ derivatively, and followed by a ‘that’-clause. Prichard quotes from
the New-World, where the dialect is slightly different. For William James had
said, “I will that the distant table slides over the floor toward me. And it
does not.” Since James is using ‘will’ in the first person, the utterance is
indeed NOT in the indicative, but the ‘intentional’ mode. In the case of the
‘communicatum,’ things get complicated, since U intends that A will believe
that… In which case, U’s intention (and thus will) is directed towards the
‘will’ of his addressee, too, even if it is merely to adopt a ‘belief.’ So what
would be the primary uses of the ‘will.’ In the first person, “I will go to
Harborne” is in the futurum intentionale. It is used to report the utterer’s
will. In the second and third person – “Thou will go to Harborne” and “He will
go to Harborne,” the utterer uses the futurum indicativum and utters a statement
which is predictable. Since analytic
philosophers specify the analysis in the third person (“U means that…”) one has
to be careful. For ‘futurum intentionale’ we have ‘will’ in the first person,
and ‘shall’ in the second and third persons. So for the first group, U means
that he SHALL go. In the second group, U means that his addressee or a third
party WILL go. Grice adopts a subscript variant, stick with ‘will,’ but add the
mode afterwards: so will-ind. will be ‘futurum indicativum,’ and will-int. will
be futurum intentionale. Grice distinguishes the ‘futurum imperativum.’ This
may be seen as a sub-class of the ‘futurum intentionale,’ as applied to the
second and third persons, to avoid the idea that one can issue a
‘self-command.’ Grice has a futurum imperativum, in Latin ending in -tō(te),
used to request someone to do something, or if something else happens first.
“Sī quid acciderit, scrībitō. If anything happens, write to me' (Cicero). ‘Ubi
nōs lāverimus, lavātō.’ 'When*we* have finished washing, *you* get washed.’
(Terence). ‘Crūdam si edēs, in acētum intinguitō.’ ‘If you eat cabbage raw, dip
it in vinegar.’ (Cato). ‘Rīdētō multum quī tē, Sextille, cinaedum dīxerit et
digitum porrigitō medium.’ 'Laugh loudly at anyone who calls you camp,
Sextillus, and stick up your middle finger at him.' (Martial). In Latin, some verbs have only a futurum
imperativum, e. g., scītō 'know', mementō 'remember'. In Latin, there is also a
third person imperative also ending in -tō, plural -ntō exists. It is used in
very formal contexts such as laws. ‘Iūsta imperia suntō, īsque cīvēs pārentō.’
'Orders must be just, and citizens must obey them' (Cicero). Other ways of
expressing a command or request are made with expressions such as cūrā ut 'take
care to...', fac ut 'see to it that...' or cavē nē 'be careful that you
don't...' Cūrā ut valeās. 'Make sure you keep well' (Cicero). Oddly, in Roman,
the futurum indicativum can be used for a polite commands. ‘Pīliae salūtem dīcēs
et Atticae.’ 'Will you please give my
regards to Pilia and Attica?' (Cicero. The OED has will, would. It is traced to
Old English willan, pres.t. wille, willaþ, pa. t. wolde. Grice was especially
interested to check Jamess and Prichards use of willing that, Prichards shall
will and the will/shall distinction; the present tense will; transitive uses,
with simple obj. or obj. clause; occas. intr. 1 trans. with simple obj.:
desire, wish for, have a mind to, `want (something); sometimes implying also
`intend, purpose. 1601 Shaks. (title) Twelfe Night, Or what you will. 1654
Whitlock Zootomia 44 Will what befalleth, and befall what will. 1734 tr.
Rollins Anc. Hist. V. 31 He that can do what ever he will is in great danger of
willing what he ought not. b intr. with well or ill, or trans. with sbs. of
similar meaning (e.g. good, health), usually with dat. of person: Wish (or
intend) well or ill (to some one), feel or cherish good-will or ill-will. Obs.
(cf. will v.2 1 b). See also well-willing; to will well that: to be willing
that. 1483 Caxton Gold. Leg. I wyl wel that thou say, and yf thou say ony good,
thou shalt be pesybly herde. Usage No. 2: trans. with obj. clause (with vb. in
pres. subj., or in periphrastic form with should), or acc. and inf.: Desire,
wish; sometimes implying also `intend, purpose (that something be done or
happen). 1548 Hutten Sum of Diuinitie K viij, God wylle all men to be saued;
enoting expression (usually authoritative) of a wish or intention: Determine,
decree, ordain, enjoin, give order (that something be done). 1528 Cromwell in
Merriman Life and Lett. (1902) I. 320 His grace then wille that thellection of a
new Dean shalbe emonges them of the colledge; spec. in a direction or
instruction in ones will or testament; hence, to direct by will (that something
be done). 1820 Giffords Compl. Engl. Lawyer. I do hereby will and direct that
my executrix..do excuse and release the said sum of 100l. to him; figurative usage. of an abstract thing (e.g.
reason, law): Demands, requires. 1597 Shaks. 2 Hen. IV, Our Battaile is more
full of Namess then yours Then Reason will, our hearts should be as good. Usage
No. 4 transf. (from 2). Intends to express, means; affirms, maintains. 1602
Dolman La Primaud. Fr. Acad. Hee will that this authority should be for a
principle of demonstration. 2 With dependent infinitive (normally without
"to"); desire to, wish to, have a mind to (do something); often also
implying intention. 1697 Ctess DAunoys Trav. I will not write to you often,
because I will always have a stock of News to tell you, which..is pretty long
in picking up. 1704 Locke Hum. Und. The
great Encomiasts of the Chineses, do all to a man agree and will convince us
that the Sect of the Literati are Atheists. 6 In relation to anothers desire or
requirement, or to an obligation of some kind: Am (is, are) disposed or willing
to, consent to; †in early use sometimes = deign or condescend to.With the (rare
and obs.) imper. use, as in quot. 1490, cf. b and the corresponding negative
use in 12 b. 1921 Times Lit. Suppl. 10 Feb. 88/3 Literature thrives where
people will read what they do not agree with, if it is good. b In 2nd person, interrog.,
or in a dependent clause after beg or the like, expressing a request (usually
courteous; with emphasis, impatient). 1599 Shaks. Hen. V, ii. i. 47 Will you
shogge off? 1605 1878 Hardy Ret. Native v. iii, O, O, O,..O, will you have
done! Usage No. 7 Expressing voluntary action, or conscious intention directed
to the doing of what is expressed by the principal verb (without temporal
reference as in 11, and without emphasis as in 10): = choose to (choose v. B. 3
a). The proper word for this idea, which cannot be so precisely expressed by
any other. 1685 Baxter Paraphr., When God will tell us we shall know. Usage No.
8 Expressing natural disposition to do something, and hence habitual action:
Has the habit, or `a way, of --ing; is addicted or accustomed to --ing;
habitually does; sometimes connoting `may be expected to (cf. 15). 1865 Ruskin
Sesame, Men, by their nature, are prone to fight; they will fight for any
cause, or for none; expressing potentiality, capacity, or sufficiency: Can,
may, is able to, is capable of --ing; is (large) enough or sufficient to.†it
will not be: it cannot be done or brought to pass; it is all in vain. So, †will
it not be? 1833 N. Arnott Physics, The heart will beat after removal from the
body. Usage No. 10 As a strengthening of sense 7, expressing determination,
persistence, and the like (without temporal reference as in 11); purposes to,
is determined to. 1539 Bible (Great) Isa. lxvi. 6, I heare ye voyce of the
Lorde, that wyll rewarde, etc; recompence his enemyes; emphatically. Is fully
determined to; insists on or persists in --ing: sometimes with mixture of sense
8. (In 1st pers. with implication of futurity, as a strengthening of sense 11
a. Also fig. = must inevitably, is sure to. 1892 E. Reeves Homeward Bound viii.
239, I have spent 6,000 francs to come here..and I will see it! c In phr. of
ironical or critical force referring to anothers assertion or opinion. Now
arch. exc. in will have it; 1591 Shaks. 1 Hen. VI, This is a Riddling Merchant
for the nonce, He will be here, and yet he is not here. 1728 Chambers Cycl.,
Honey, Some naturalists will have honey to be of a different quality, according
to the difference of the flowers..the bees suck it from. Also, as auxiliary of
the future tense with implication (entailment rather than cancellable
implicatum) of intention, thus distinguished from ‘shall,’ v. B. 8, where see
note); in 1st person: sometimes in slightly stronger sense = intend to, mean
to. 1600 Shaks. A.Y.L., To morrow will we be married. 1607 Shaks. Cor., Ile run
away Till I am bigger, but then Ile fight. 1777 Clara Reeve Champion of Virtue,
Never fear it..I will speak to Joseph about it. b In 2nd and 3rd pers., in
questions or indirect statements. 1839 Lane Arab. Nts., I will cure thee without giving thee to drink
any potion When King Yoonán heard his words, he..said.., How wilt thou do this?
c will do (with omission of "I"): an expression of willingness to
carry out a request. Cf. wilco. colloq. 1967 L. White Crimshaw Memorandum, `And
find out where the bastard was `Will do, Jim said. 13 In 1st pers., expressing
immediate intention: "I will" = `I am now going to, `I proceed at
once to. 1885 Mrs. Alexander At Bay, Very well; I will wish you good-evening. b
In 1st pers. pl., expressing a proposal: we will (†wule we) = `let us. 1798
Coleridge Nightingale 4 Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!, c
figurative, as in It will rain, (in 3rd pers.) of a thing: Is ready to, is on
the point of --ing. 1225 Ancr. R. A treou þet wule uallen, me underset hit mid
on oðer treou. 14 In 2nd and 3rd pers., as auxiliary expressing mere futurity,
forming (with pres. inf.) the future, and (with pf. inf.) the future pf. tense:
corresponding to "shall" in the 1st pers. (see note s.v. shall v. B.
8). 1847 Tennyson Princess iii. 12 Rest, rest, on mothers breast, Father will
come to thee soon. b As auxiliary of future substituted for the imper. in mild
injunctions or requests. 1876 Ruskin St. Marks Rest. That they should use their
own balances, weights, and measures; (not by any means false ones, you will
please to observe). 15 As auxiliary of future expressing a contingent event, or
a result to be expected, in a supposed case or under particular conditions
(with the condition expressed by a conditional, temporal, or imper. clause, or
otherwise implied). 1861 M. Pattison Ess.
The lover of the Elizabethan drama will readily recal many such
allusions; b with pers.sSubjects (usually 1st pers. sing.), expressing a
voluntary act or choice in a supposed case, or a conditional promise or
undertaking: esp. in asseverations, e.g. I will die sooner than, I’ll be hanged
if, etc.). 1898 H. S. Merriman Rodens Corner. But I will be hanged if I see
what it all means, now; xpressing a determinate or necessary consequence
(without the notion of futurity). 1887 Fowler Deductive Logic, From what has
been said it will be seen that I do not agree with Mr. Mill. Mod. If, in a
syllogism, the middle term be not distributed in either premiss, there will be
no conclusion; ith the notion of futurity obscured or lost: = will prove or
turn out to, will be found on inquiry to; may be supposed to, presumably does.
Hence (chiefly Sc. and north. dial.) in estimates of amount, or in uncertain or
approximate statements, the future becoming equivalent to a present with
qualification: e.g. it will be = `I think it is or `it is about; what will that
be? = `what do you think that is? 1584 Hornby Priory in Craven Gloss. Where on
40 Acres there will be xiij.s. iv.d. per acre yerely for rent. 1791 Grose Olio
(1792) 106, I believe he will be an Irishman. 1791 Grose Olio. C. How far is it
to Dumfries? W. It will be twenty miles. 1812 Brackenridge Views Louisiana, The
agriculture of this territory will be very similar to that of Kentucky. 1876
Whitby Gloss. sThis word we have only once heard, and that will be twenty years
ago. 16 Used where "shall" is now the normal auxiliary, chiefly in
expressing mere futurity: since 17th c. almost exclusively in Scottish, Irish,
provincial, or extra-British use (see shall. 1602 Shaks. Ham. I will win for
him if I can: if not, Ile gaine nothing but my shame, and the odde hits. 1825
Scott in Lockhart Ballantyne-humbug. I expect we will have some good singing.
1875 E. H. Dering Sherborne. `Will I start, sir? asked the Irish groom. Usage
No. 3 Elliptical and quasi-elliptical uses; n absol. use, or with ellipsis of
obj. clause as in 2: in meaning corresponding to senses 5-7.if you will is
sometimes used parenthetically to qualify a word or phrase: = `if you wish it
to be so called, `if you choose or prefer to call it so. 1696 Whiston The.
Earth. Gravity depends entirely on the constant and efficacious, and, if you
will, the supernatural and miraculous Influence of Almighty God. 1876 Ruskin
St. Marks Rest. Very savage! monstrous! if you will. b In parenthetic phr. if
God will (†also will God, rarely God will), God willing: if it be the will of
God, `D.V.In OE. Gode willi&asg.ende (will v.2) = L. Deo volente. 1716
Strype in Thoresbys Lett. Next week, God willing, I take my journey to my
Rectory in Sussex; fig. Demands, requires (absol. or ellipt. use of 3 c). 1511
Reg. Privy Seal Scot. That na seculare personis have intrometting with thaim
uther wais than law will; I will well: I assent, `I should think so indeed.
(Cf. F. je veux bien.) Usage No. 18: with ellipsis of a vb. of motion. 1885
Bridges Eros and Psyche Aug. I will to thee oer the stream afloat. Usage No.
19: with ellipsis of active inf. to be supplied from the context. 1836 Dickens
Sk. Boz, Steam Excurs., `Will you go on deck? `No, I will not. This was said
with a most determined air. 1853 Dickens Bleak Ho. lii, I cant believe it. Its
not that I dont or I wont. I cant! 1885 Mrs. Alexander Valeries Fate vi, `Do
you know that all the people in the house will think it very shocking of me to
walk with you?.. `The deuce they will!; With generalized ellipsis, esp. in
proverbial saying (now usually as in quot. 1562, with will for would). 1639 J.
Clarke Paroem. 237 He that may and will not, when he would he shall not. c With
so or that substituted for the omitted inf. phr.: now usually placed at the
beginning of the sentence. 1596 Shaks. Tam. Shr. Hor. I promist we would beare
his charge of wooing Gremio. And so we wil. d Idiomatically used in a
qualifying phr. with relative, equivalent to a phr. with indef. relative in
-ever; often with a thing as subj., becoming a mere synonym of may: e.g. shout
as loud as you will = `however loud you (choose to) shout; come what will =
`whatever may come; be that as it will = `however that may be. 1732 Pope Mor.
Ess. The ruling Passion, be it what it will, The ruling Passion conquers Reason
still. 20 With ellipsis of pass. inf. A. 1774 Goldsm. Surv. Exp. Philos. The
airs force is compounded of its swiftness and density, and as these are
encreased, so will the force of the wind; in const. where the ellipsis may be
either of an obj. clause or of an inf. a In a disjunctive qualifying clause or
phr. usually parenthetic, as whether he will or no, will he or not, (with pron.
omitted) will or no, (with or omitted) will he will he not, will he nill he
(see VI. below and willy-nilly), etc.In quot. 1592 vaguely = `one way or
another, `in any case. For the distinction between should and would, v. note
s.v. shall; in a noun-clause expressing the object of desire, advice, or
request, usually with a person as subj., implying voluntary action as the
desired end: thus distinguished from should, which may be used when the persons
will is not in view. Also (almost always after wish) with a thing as Subjects,
in which case should can never be substituted because it would suggest the idea
of command or compulsion instead of mere desire. Cf. shall; will; willest;
willeth; wills; willed (wIld); also: willian, willi, wyll, wille, wil, will,
willode, will, wyllede, wylled, willyd, ied, -it, -id, willed; wijld, wilde,
wild, willid, -yd, wylled,willet, willed; willd(e, wild., OE. willian wk. vb. =
German “willen.” f. will sb.1, 1 trans. to wish, desire; sometimes with
implication of intention: = will. 1400 Lat. and Eng. Prov. He þt a lytul me
3euyth to me wyllyth optat longe lyffe. 1548 Udall, etc. Erasm. Par. Matt. v.
21-24 Who so euer hath gotten to hymselfe the charitie of the gospell, whyche
wylleth wel to them that wylleth yll. 1581 A. Hall Iliad, By Mineruas helpe,
who willes you all the ill she may. A. 1875 Tennyson Q. Mary i. iv, A great
party in the state Wills me to wed her; To assert, affirm: = will v.1 B. 4.
1614 Selden Titles Hon. None of this excludes Vnction before, but only wils him
the first annointed by the Pope. 2 a to direct by ones will or testament (that
something be done, or something to be done); to dispose of by will; to bequeath
or devise; to determine by the will; to attempt to cause, aim at effecting by
exercise of will; to set the mind with conscious intention to the performance
or occurrence of something; to choose or decide to do something, or that
something shall be done or happen. Const. with simple obj., acc. and inf.,
simple inf. (now always with to), or obj. clause; also absol. or intr. (with as
or so). Nearly coinciding in meaning with will v.1 7, but with more explicit
reference to the mental process of volition. 1630 Prynne Anti-Armin. 119 He had
onely a power, not to fall into sinne vnlesse he willed it. 1667 Milton P.L. So
absolute she seems..that what she wills to do or say, Seems wisest. 1710 J.
Clarke tr. Rohaults Nat. Philos. If I will to move my Arm, it is presently
moved. 1712 Berkeley Pass. Obed. He that willeth the end, doth will the
necessary means conducive to that end. 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. All shall be as
God wills. 1880 Meredith Tragic Com. So great, heroical, giant-like, that what
he wills must be. 1896 Housman Shropsh. Lad xxx, Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst; intr. to exercise the will; to
perform the mental act of volition. 1594 Hooker Eccl. Pol. To will, is to bend
our soules to the hauing or doing of that which they see to be good. 1830
Mackintosh Eth. Philos. Wks.. But what could induce such a being to will or to
act? 1867 A. P. Forbes Explan. Is this infinitely powerful and intelligent
Being free? wills He? loves He? c trans. To bring or get (into, out of, etc.)
by exercise of will. 1850 L. Hunt Table-t. (1882) 184 Victims of opium have
been known to be unable to will themselves out of the chair in which they were
sitting. d To control (another person), or induce (another) to do something, by
the mere exercise of ones will, as in hypnotism. 1882 Proc. Soc. Psych.
Research I. The one to be `willed would go to the other end of the house, if
desired, whilst we agreed upon the thing to be done. 1886 19th Cent. They are
what is called `willed to do certain things desired by the ladies or gentlemen
who have hold of them. 1897 A. Lang Dreams & Ghosts iii. 59 A young
lady, who believed that she could play the `willing game successfully without
touching the person `willed; to express or communicate ones will or wish with
regard to something, with various shades of meaning, cf. will, v.1 3.,
specifically: a to enjoin, order; to decree, ordain, a) with personal obj.,
usually with inf. or clause. 1481 Cov. Leet Bk. 496 We desire and also will you
that vnto oure seid seruaunt ye yeue your aid. 1547 Edw. VI in Rymer Foedera,
We Wyll and Commaunde yowe to Procede in the seid Matters. 1568 Grafton Chron.,
Their sute was smally regarded, and shortly after they were willed to silence.
1588 Lambarde Eiren. If a man do lie in awaite to rob me, and (drawing his
sword upon me) he willeth me to deliver my money. 1591 Shaks. 1 Hen. VI We doe
no otherwise then wee are willd. 1596 Nashe Saffron Walden P 4, Vp he was had
and.willed to deliuer vp his weapon. 1656 Hales Gold. Rem. The King in the
Gospel, that made a Feast, and..willed his servants to go out to the high-ways
side. 1799 Nelson in Nicolas Disp., Willing and requiring all Officers and men
to obey you; 1565 Cooper Thesaurus s.v. Classicum, By sounde of trumpet to will
scilence. 1612 Bacon Ess., Of Empire. It is common with Princes (saith Tacitus)
to will contradictories. 1697 Dryden Æneis i. 112 Tis yours, O Queen! to will
The Work, which Duty binds me to fulfil. 1877 Tennyson Harold vi. i, Get thou
into thy cloister as the king Willd it.; to pray, request, entreat; = desire v.
6. 1454 Paston Lett. Suppl. As for the questyon that ye wylled me to aske my
lord, I fond hym yet at no good leyser. 1564 Haward tr. Eutropius. The Romaines
sent ambassadoures to him, to wyll him to cease from battayle. 1581 A. Hall
Iliad, His errand done, as he was willde, he toke his flight from thence. 1631
[Mabbe] Celestina. Did I not will you I should not be wakened? 1690 Dryden
Amphitryon i. i, He has sent me to will and require you to make a swinging long
Night for him; fig. of a thing, to require, demand; also, to induce, persuade a
person to do something. 1445 in Anglia. Constaunce willeth also that thou doo noughte
with weyke corage. Cable and Baugh note that one important s. of prescriptions
that now form part of all our grammars -- that governing the use of will and
shall -- has its origin in this period. Previous to 1622 no grammar recognized
any distinction between will and shall. In 1653 Wallis in his Grammatica
Linguae Anglicanae states in Latin and for the benefit of Europeans that
Subjectsive intention is expressed by will in the first person, by shall in the
second and third, while simple factual indicative predictable futurity is
expressed by shall in the first person, by will in the second and third. It is
not until the second half of the eighteenth century that the use in questions
and subordinate clauses is explicitly defined. In 1755 Johnson, in his
Dictionary, states the rule for questions, and in 1765 William Ward, in his
Grammar, draws up for the first time the full set of prescriptions that
underlies, with individual variations, the rules found in later tracts. Wards
pronouncements are not followed generally by other grammarians until Lindley
Murray gives them greater currency in 1795. Since about 1825 they have often
been repeated in grammars, v. Fries, The periphrastic future with will and
shall. Will qua modal auxiliary never had an s. The absence of conjugation is a
very old common Germanic phenomenon. OE 3rd person present indicative of willan
(and of the preterite-present verbs) is not distinct from the 1st person
present indicative. That dates back at least to CGmc, or further if one looks just
as the forms and ignore tense and/or mood). Re: Prichard: "Prichard wills
that he go to London. This is Prichards example, admired by Grice ("but I
expect not pleasing to Maucaulays ears"). The -s is introduced to indicate
a difference between the modal and main verb use (as in Prichard and Grice) of
will. In fact, will, qua modal, has never been used with a to-infinitive. OE
uses present-tense forms to refer to future events as well as willan and
sculan. willan would give a volitional nuance; sculan, an obligational nuance.
Its difficult to find an example of weorthan used to express the future, but
that doesnt mean it didnt happen. In insensitive utterers, will has very little
of volition about it, unless one follows Walliss observation for for I
will vs. I shall. Most probably use ll, or be going to for the future.
grammar: Sometimes geography, sometimes botany – “Grammatica” the
Romans never cared to translate. Although ‘literature’ is the cognate. – For
some reasons, the Greeks were obsessed with the alphabet – It was a trivial
‘art’. Like ‘logic,’ and philosophy is NOT an art or ‘techne.’ A philosopher is
not a technician – and hardly an artist like William Morris (his ‘arts and
crafts’ is a joke since it translates in Latin to ‘ars et ars,’ and ‘techne kai
techne’). The sad thing is that at MIT, as Grice knew, Chomsky is appointed
professor of philosophy, and he mainly writes about ‘grammar’! Later, Chomsky
tries to get more philosophical, but chooses the wrong paradigm – Cartesianism,
the ghost in the machine, in Ryle’s parlance. Odly, Oxonians, who rarely go to
grammar schools, see ‘grammar’ as a divinity, and talk of the logical grammar
of a Ryleian agitation, say. It sounds high class because there is the irony
that an Oxonian philosopher is surely not a common-or-garden grammarian,
involved in the grammar of, say, “Die Deutsche Sprache.” The Oxonian is into
the logical grammar. It is more of a ‘linguistic turn’ expression than the
duller ‘conceptual analysis,’ or ‘linguistic philosophy.’ cf. logical form, and
Russell, “grammar is a pretty good guide to logical form.” while philosophers
would use grammar jocularly, Chomsky didnt. The problem, as Grice notes, is
that Chomsky never tells us where grammar ends (“or begins for that matter.”)
“Consider the P, karulising elatically.” When Carnap introduces the P, he talks
syntax, not grammar. But philosophers always took semiotics more seriously than
others. So Carnap is well aware of Morriss triad of the syntactics, the
semantics, and the pragmatics. Philosophers always disliked grammar, because
back in the days of Aelfric, philosophia was supposed to embrace dialectica and
grammatica, and rhetorica. “It is all part of philosophy.” Truth-conditional
semantics and implicata. Refs.: One source is an essay on ‘grammar’ in the H.
P. Grice Papers, BANC.
gricese: english,
being English or the genius of the ordinary. H. P. Grice refers to “The English
tongue.” A refusal to rise above the facts of ordinary life is characteristic
of classical Eng. Phil. from Ireland-born
Berkeley to Scotland-born Hume, Scotland-born Reid, and very English Jeremy
Bentham and New-World Phil. , whether in transcendentalism Emerson, Thoreau or
in pragmatism from James to Rorty. But this orientation did not become truly
explicit until after the linguistic turn carried out by Vienna-born Witters,
translated by C. K. Ogden, very English Brighton-born Ryle, and especially J.
L. Austin and his best companion at the Play Group, H. P. Grice, when it was
radicalized and systematized under the name of a phrase Grice lauged at:
“‘ordinary’-language philosophy.” This preponderant recourse to the ordinary
seems inseparable from certain peculiar characteristics of the English
Midlanders such as H. P. Grice, such as the gerund that often make it difficult
if not impossible to translate. It is all the more important to emphasize this
paradox because English Midlander philosopher, such as H. P. Grice, claims to
be as simple as it is universal, and it established itself as an important
philosophical language in the second half of the twentieth century, due mainly
to the efforts of H. P. Grice. English, but especially Oxonian Phil. has a specific relationship to ‘ordinary’
language (even though for Grice, “Greek and Latin were always more ordinary to
me – and people who came to read Eng. at Oxford were laughed at!”), as well as
to the requirements of everyday life, that is not limited to the theories of
the Phil. of language, in which an Eng.
philosopher such as H. P. Grice appears as a pioneer. It rejects the artificial
linguistic constructions of philosophical speculation that is, Met. and always
prefers to return to its original home, as Witters puts it: the natural
environment of everyday words Philosophical Investigations. Thus we can discern
a continuity between the recourse to the ordinary in Scots Hume, Irish
Berkeley, Scots Reid, and very English Jeremy Bentham and what will become in
Irish London-born G. E. Moore and Witters after he started using English, at
least orally and then J. L. Austin’s and H. P. Grice’s ‘ordinary’-language
philosophy. This continuity can be seen in several areas. First, in the
exploitation of all the resources of the language, which is considered as a
source of information and is valid in itself. Second, in the attention given to
the specificities—and even the defects, or ‘implicata,’ as Grice calls them —of
the vernacular -- which become so many
philosophical characteristics from which one can learn. Finally, in the
affirmation of the naturalness of the distinctions made in and by ordinary
language, seeking to challenge the superiority of the technical language of
Philosophy —the former being the object of an agreement deeper than the latter.
Then there’s The Variety of Modes of Action. The passive. There are several modes
of agency, and these constitute both part of the genius of the language and a
main source of its problems in tr.. Agency is a strange intersection of points
of view that makes it possible to designate the person who is acting while at
the same time concealing the actor behind the act—and thus locating agency in
the passive subject itself v. AGENCY. A classic difficulty is illustrated by
the following sentence from J. Stuart Mill’s To gauge the naturalness of the
passive construction in English, it suffices to examine a couple of newspaper
headlines. “Killer’s Car Found” On a retrouvé la voiture du tueur, “Kennedy Jr.
Feared Dead.” On craint la mort du fils Kennedy; or the titles of a
philosophical essay, “Epistemology Naturalized,” L’Épistémologie naturalisée;
Tr. J. Largeault as L’Épistémologie
devenue naturelle; a famous article by Quine that was the origin of the
naturalistic turn in American Phil. and
“Consciousness Explained” La conscience expliquée by Daniel Dennett. We might
then better understand why this PASSIVE VOICE kind of construction—which seems
so awkward in Fr. compared with the
active voice— is perceived by its Eng. users as a more direct and effective way
of speaking. More generally, the ellipsis of the agent seems to be a tendency
of Eng. so profound that one can maintain that the phenomenon Lucien Tesnière
called diathèse récessive the loss of the agent has become a characteristic of
the Eng. language itself, and not only of the passive. Thus, e. g. , a Fr. reader irresistibly gains the impression that
a reflexive pronoun is lacking in the following expressions. “This book reads
well.” ce livre se lit agréablement. “His poems do not translate well.” ses
poèmes se traduisent difficilement. “The door opens.” la porte s’ouvre. “The
man will hang.” l’homme sera pendu. In reality, here again, Eng. simply does
not need to mark by means of the reflexive pronoun se the presence of an active
agent. Do, make, have Eng. has several terms to translate the single Fr. word faire, which it can render by to do, to
make, or to have, depending on the type of agency required by the context.
Because of its attenuation of the meaning of action, its value as emphasis and
repetition, the verb “to do” has become omnipresent in English, and it plays a
particularly important role in philosophical texts. We can find a couple of
examples of tr. problems in the Oxonian seminars by J. L. Austin. In Sense and
Considerations on Representative Government: “I must not be understood to say
that” p. To translate such a passive construction, Fr. is forced to resort to the impersonal pronoun
on and to put it in the position of an observer of the “I” je as if it were
considered from the outside: On ne doit pas comprendre que je dis que p. But at
the same time, the network of relations internal to the sentence is modified,
and the meaning transformed. Necessity is no longer associated with the subject
of the sentence and the author; it is made impersonal. Philosophical language
also makes frequent use of the diverse characteristics of the passive. Here we
can mention the crucial turning point in the history of linguistics represented
by Chomsky’s discovery Syntactic Structures,
of the paradigm of the active/ passive relation, which proves the
necessity of the transformational component in grammar. A passive utterance is
not always a reversal of the active and only rarely describes an undergoing, as
is shown by the example She was offered a bunch of flowers. In particular,
language makes use of the fact that this kind of construction authorizes the
ellipsis of the agent as is shown by the common expression Eng. spoken. For a
philosopher, the passive is thus the privileged form of an action when its
agent is unknown, indeterminate, unimportant, or, inversely, too obvious. Thus
without making his prose too turgid, in Sense and Sensibilia Austin can use
five passives in less than a page, and these can be translated in Fr. only by on, an indeterminate subject defined
as differentiated from moi. “It is clearly implied, that “Now this, at least if
it is taken to mean The expression is here put forward We are given, as
examples, familiar objects The expression is not further defined On sous-entend
clairement que Quant à cela, du moins si on l’entend au sens de On avance ici
l’expression On nous donne, comme exemples, des objets familiers On
n’approfondit pas la définition de l’expression . . . 1 Langage, langue,
parole: A virtual distinction. Contrary to what is too often believed, the Eng.
language does not conflate under the term language what Fr. distinguishes following Saussure with the
terms langage, langue, and parole. In reality, Eng. also has a series of three
terms whose semantic distribution makes possible exactly the same trichotomy as
Fr. : First there’s Grice’s “tongue,”which serves to designate a specific
language by opposition to another; speech, which refers more specifically to
parole but which is often translated in Fr.
by discours; and language in the sense of faculté de langage. Nonetheless,
Fr. ’s set of systematic distinctions can only remain fundamentally virtual in
English, notably because the latter refuses to radically detach langue from
parole. Thus in Chrestomathia, Bentham uses “tongue” (Bentham’s tongue – in
Chrestomathia) and language interchangeably and sometimes uses language in the
sense of langue: “Of all known languages the Grecian [Griceian] is assuredly,
in its structure, the most plastic and most manageable. Bentham even uses
speech and language as equivalents, since he speaks of parts of speech. But on
the contrary, he sometimes emphasizes differences that he ignores here. And he
proceeds exactly like Hume in his essay Of the Standard of Taste, where we
find, e. g. , But it must also be allowed, that some part of the seeming
harmony in morals may be accounted for from the very nature of language. The
word, virtue, with its equivalent in every tongue, implies praise; as that of
vice does blame. REFS.: Bentham, Jeremy. ChrestomathiEd. by M. J. Smith and W. H. Burston. Oxford:
Clarendon, . Hume, D. . Of the Standard of Taste. In Four Dissertations.
London: Thoemmes Continuum, . First published in 175 Saussure, F. de. Course in
General Linguistics. Ed. by Bally and
Sechehaye. Tr. R. Harris. LaSalle, IL:
Open Court, . First published in circulation among these forms. This formal
continuity promotes a great methodological inventiveness through the interplay
among the various grammatical entities that it enables. The gerund: The form of -ing that is the most
difficult to translate Eng. is a nominalizing language. Any verb can be
nominalized, and this ability gives the Eng. philosophical language great
creative power. “Nominalization,” as Grice calls it, is in fact a
substantivization without substantivization: the verb is not substantivized in
order to refer to action, to make it an object of discourse which is possible
in any language, notably in philosophical Fr.
and G. , but rather to nominalize the verb while at the same time
preserving its quality as a verb, and even to nominalize whole clauses.
Fr. can, of course, nominalize faire,
toucher, and sentir le faire, le toucher, even le sentir, and one can do the
same, in a still more systematic manner, in G. . However, these forms will not
have the naturalness of the Eng. expressions: the making and unmaking the doing
and undoing, the feeling, the feeling Byzantine, the meaning. Above all, in
these languages it is hard to construct expressions parallel to, e. g. , the
making of, the making use of, my doing wrongly, “my meaning this,”
(SIGNIFICATUM, COMMUNICATUM), his feeling pain, etc., that is, mixtures of noun
and verb having—and this is the grammatical characteristic of the gerund — the
external distribution of a nominal expression and the internal distribution of
a verbal expression. These forms are so common that they characterize, in
addition to a large proportion of book titles e. g. , The Making of the Eng.
Working Class, by E. P. Thomson; or, in Phil. , The Taming of Chance, or The
taming of the true, by I. Hacking, the language of classical Eng. Phil. . The
gerund functions as a sort of general equivalent or exchanger between
grammatical forms. In that way, it not only makes the language dynamic by
introducing into it a permanent temporal flux, but also helps create, in the
language itself, a kind of indeterminacy in the way it is parsed, which the
translator finds awkward when he understands the message without being able to
retain its lightness. Thus, in A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume speaks,
regarding the idea, of the manner of its being conceived, which a Fr. translator might render as sa façon d’être
conçue or perhaps, la façon dont il lui appartient d’être conçue, which is not
quite the same thing. And we v. agency and the gerund connected in a language
like that of Bentham, who minimizes the gaps between subject and object, verb
and noun: much regret has been suggested at the thoughts of its never having
yet been brought within the reach of the Eng. reader ChrestomathiTranslators
often feel obliged to render the act expressed by a gerund by the expression le
fait de, but this has a meaning almost contrary to the English. With its
gerund, Eng. avoids the discourse of fact by retaining only the event and
arguing only on that basis. The inevitable confusion suggested by Fr. when it translates the Eng. gerund is all the
more unfortunate in this case because it becomes impossible to distinguish when
Eng. uses the fact or the case from when it uses the gerund. The importance of
the event, along with the distinction between trial, case, and event, on the
one hand and happening on the other, is Sensibilia, he has criticized the claim
that we never perceive objects directly and is preparing to criticize its
negation as well: I am not going to maintain that we ought to embrace the
doctrine that we do perceive material things. Je ne vais pas soutenir que nous
devons embrasser la doctrine selon laquelle nous percevons vraiment les choses
matérielles. Finally, let us recall Austin’s first example of the performative,
which plays simultaneously on the anaphoric value of do and on its sense of
action, a duality that v.ms to be at the origin of the theory of the
performative, I do take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife—as uttered in
the course of the marriage ceremony Oui à savoir: je prends cette femme pour épouse’énoncé
lors d’une cérémonie de mariage; How to Do Things with Words. On the other
hand, whereas faire is colored by a causative sense, Eng. uses to make and to
have—He made Mary open her bags il lui fit ouvrir sa valise; He had Mary pour
him a drink il se fit verser un verre—with this difference: that make can
indicate, as we v., coercion, whereas have presupposes that there is no
resistance, a difference that Fr. can
only leave implicit or explain by awkward periphrases. Twentieth-century Eng.
philosophers from Austin to Geach and Anscombe have examined these differences
and their philosophical implications very closely. Thus, in A Plea for Excuses,
Austin emphasizes the elusive meaning of the expression doing something, and
the correlative difficulty of determining the limits of the concept of
action—Is to sneeze to do an action? There is indeed a vague and comforting
idea that doing an action must come down to the making of physical movements.
Further, we need to ask what is the detail of the complicated internal
machinery we use in acting. Philosophical Papers No matter how partial they may
be, these opening remarks show that there is a specific, intimate relation
between ordinary language and philosophical language in English language Phil.
. This enables us to better understand why the most Oxonian philosophers are so
comfortable resorting to idiomatic expressions cf. H. Putnam and even to
clearly popular usage: “Meanings ain’t in the head.” It ain’t necessarily so.As
for the title of Manx-ancestry Quine’s famous book From a Logical Point of
View, which at first seems austere, it is taken from a calypso song: “From a
logical point of view, Always marry women uglier than you. The Operator -ing:
Properties and Antimetaphysical Consequences -ing: A multifunctional operator
Although grammarians think it important to distinguish among the forms of
-ing—present participles, adjectives, the progressive, and the gerund—what
strikes the reader of scientific and philosophical texts is first of all the
free in Phil. , You are v.ing something Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, regarding
a stick in water; I really am perceiving the familiar objects Ayer, Foundations
of Empirical Knowledge. The passage to the form be + verb + -ing indicates,
then, not the progressiveness of the action but rather the transition into the
metalanguage peculiar to the philosophical description of phenomena of
perception. The sole exception is, curiously, to know, which is practically
never used in the progressive: even if we explore the philosophical and
epistemological literature, we do not find “I am knowing” or he was knowing, as
if knowledge could not be conceived as a process. In English, there is a great
variety of what are customarily called aspects, through which the status of the
action is marked and differentiated in a more systematic way than in Fr. or G. , once again because of the -ing
ending: he is working / he works / he worked / he has been working. Unlike what
happens in Slavic languages, aspect is marked at the outset not by a duality of
verbal forms but instead by the use of the verb to be with a verb ending in
-ing imperfect or progressive, by opposition to the simple present or past
perfect. Moreover, Grice mixes several aspects in a single expression:
iterativity, progressivity, completion, as in it cannot fail to have been
noticed Austin, How to Do Things. These are nuances, or implicate, as Labov and
then Pinker recently observed, that are not peculiar to classical or written
Eng. but also exist in certain vernaculars that appear to be familiar or
allegedly ungrammatical. The vernacular seems particularly sophisticated on
this point, distinguishing “he be working” from “he working” —that is, between
having a regular job and being engaged in working at a particular moment, standard
usage being limited to “he is working” Pinker, Language Instinct. Whether or
not the notion of aspect is used, it seems clear that in Eng. there is a
particularly subtle distinction between the different degrees of completion, of
the iterativity or development of an action, that leads Oxonian philosophers to
pay more attention to these questions and even to surprising inventions, such
as that of ‘implicatum,’ or ‘visum,’ or ‘disimplicatum.’ The linguistic
dissolution of the idea of substance
Fictive entities Thus the verb + -ing operation simply gives the verb
the temporary status of a noun while at the same time preserving some of its
syntactic and semantic properties as a verb, that is, by avoiding
substantivization. It is no accident that the substantiality of the I think
asserted by Descartes was opposed by virtually all the Eng. philosophers of the
seventeenth century. If a personal identity can be constituted by the making
our distant perceptions influence each other, and by giving us a present
concern for our past or future pains or pleasures Hume, Treatise of Human
Nature, it does not require positing a substance: the substantivization of
making and giving meets the need. We can also consider the way in which Russell
Analysis of Matter, ch.27 makes his reader understand far more easily than does
Bachelard, and without having to resort to the category of an epistemological
obstacle, that one can perfectly well posit an atom as a series of events
without according it the status of a substance. crucial in discussions of
probability. The very definition of probability with which Bayes operates in An
Essay towards Solving a Problem, the first great treatise on subjective
probability, is based on this status of the happening, the event conceived not in
terms of its realization or accomplishment but in terms of its expectation: The
probability of any event is the ratio between the value at which an expectation
depending on the happening of the event ought to be computed, and the value of
the thing expected upon its happening.
The progressive: Tense and aspect If we now pass from the gerund to the
progressive, another construction that uses -ing, a new kind of problem
appears: that of the aspect and temporality of actions. An interesting case of
tr. difficulty is, e. g. , the one posed by Austin precisely when he attempts,
in his presentation of performatives, to distinguish between the sentence and
the act of saying it, between statement and utterance: there are utterances,
such as the uttering of the sentence is, or is part of, the doing of an action
How to Do Things. The tr. difficulty here is caused by the combination in the
construction in -ing of the syntactical flexibility of the gerund and a
progressive meaning. Does the -ing construction indicate the act, or the
progressiveness of the act? Similarly, it is hard to choose to translate “On
Referring” P. F. Strawson as De la référence rather than as De l’action de
référer. Should one translate On Denoting Russell as De la dénotation the usual
tr. or as Du dénoter? The progressive in the strict sense—be + verb + -ing—
indicates an action at a specific moment, when it has already begun but is not
yet finished. A little farther on, Austin allows us to gauge the ease of Eng.
in the whole of these operations. “To utter the sentence is not to describe my
doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing. The Fr. tr. gives, correctly: Énoncer la phrase, ce
n’est pas décrire ce qu’il faut bien reconnaître que je suis en train de faire
en parlant ainsi, but this remains unsatisfying at best, because of the
awkwardness of en train de. Moreover, in many cases, en train de is simply not
suitable insofar as the -ing does not indicate duration: e. g. , in At last I
am v.ing . It is interesting to examine from this point of view the famous
category of verbs of perception, verbum percipiendi. It is remarkable that
these verbs v., hear can be in some cases used with the construction be + verb
+ -ing, since it is generally said even in grammar books that they can be used
only in the present or simple past and not in the progressive. This rule
probably is thought to be connected with something like the immediacy of
perception, and it can be compared with the fact that the verbs to know and to
understand are also almost always in the present or the simple past, as if the
operations of the understanding could not be presented in the progressive form
and were by definition instantaneous; or as if, on the contrary, they
transcended the course of time. In reality, there are counterexamples. “I don’t
know if I’m understanding you correctly”; You are hearing voices; and often
Oxonian Phil. , which makes their tr. particularly indigestible, especially in
Fr. , where -ismes gives a very Scholastic feel to the classifications translated.
In addition to the famous term realism, which has been the object of so many
contradictory definitions and so many debates over past decades that it has
been almost emptied of meaning, we may mention some common but particularly
obscure for anyone not familiar with the theoretical context terms:
“cognitivism,” noncognitivism, coherentism, eliminativism, consequentialism,
connectionism, etSuch terms in which moral Phil. is particularly fertile are in general
transposed into Fr. without change in a
sort of new, international philosophical language that has almost forgone tr..
More generally, in Eng. as in G. , words can be composed by joining two other
words far more easily than in Fr. —without specifying the logical connections
between the terms: toothbrush, pickpocket, lowlife, knownothing; or, for more
philosophical terms: aspect-blind, language-dependent, rule-following,
meaning-holism, observer-relative, which are translatable, of course, but not
without considerable awkwardness.
Oxonian philosophese. Oxonian
Phil. seems to establish a language that
is stylistically neutral and appears to be transparently translatable. Certain
specific problems—the tr. of compound words and constructions that are more
flexible in Eng. and omnipresent in current philosophical discourse, such as
the thesis that la thèse selon laquelle, the question whether la question de
savoir si, and my saying that le fait que je dise que—make Fr. tr.s of contemporary Eng. philosophical texts
very awkward, even when the author writes in a neutral, commonplace style.
Instead, these difficulties, along with the ease of construction peculiar to
English, tend to encourage non-Oxonian analytical philosophers to write
directly in Gricese, following the example of many of their European
colleagues, or else to make use of a technical vernacular we have noted the
-isms and compounds that is frequently heavy going and not very inventive when
transRomang terms which are usually transliterated. This situation is certainly
attributable to the paradoxical character of Gricese, which established itself
as a philosophical language in the second half of the twentieth century: it is
a language that is apparently simple and accessible and that thus claims a kind
of universality but that is structured, both linguistically and
philosophically, around major stumbling blocks to do, -ing, etthat often make
it untranslatable. It is paradoxically this untranslatability, and not its
pseudo-transparency, that plays a crucial role in the process of universalization.
. IThe Austinian Paradigm: Ordinary Language and Phil. The proximity of ordinary language and
philosophical language, which is rooted in classical English-language Phil. ,
was theorized in the twentieth century by Austin and can be summed up in the
expression “‘ordinary’-language philosophy”. Ordinary language Phil. is interested This sort of overall
preeminence in Eng. of the verbal and the subjective over the nominal and the
objective is clear in the difference in the logic that governs the discourse of
affectivity in Fr. and in English. How
would something that one is correspond to something that one has, as in the
case of fear in Fr. avoir peur? It
follows that a Fr. man—who takes it for granted that fear is something that one
feels or senses—cannot feel at home with the difference that Eng. naturally
makes between something that has no objective correlative because it concerns
only feeling like fear; and what is available to sensation, implying that what
is felt through it has the status of an object. Thus in Eng. something is
immediately grasped that in Fr. v.ms a
strange paradox, viz. that passion, as Bentham notes in Deontology, is a
fictive entity. Thus what sounds in Fr.
like a nominalist provocation is implicated in the folds of the Eng.
language. A symbolic theory of affectivity is thus more easily undertaken in
Eng. than in Fr. , and if an ontological conception of affectivity had to be
formulated in English, symmetrical difficulties would be encountered. Reversible derivations Another particularity
of English, which is not without consequences in Phil. , is that its poverty
from the point of view of inflectional morphology is compensated for by the
freedom and facility it offers for the construction of all sorts of
derivatives. Nominal derivatives based on adjectives and using suffixes such as
-ity, -hood, -ness, -y. The resulting compounds are very difficult to
differentiate in Fr. and to translate in
general, which has led, in contemporary Fr.
tr.s, to various incoherent makeshifts. To list the most common
stumbling blocks: privacy privé-ité, innerness intériorité, not in the same
sense as interiority, vagueness caractère vague, goodness bonté, in the sense
of caractère bon, rightness justesse, “sameness,” similarité, in the sense of
mêmeté, ordinariness, “appropriateness,” caractère ordinaire, approprié,
unaccountability caractère de ce dont il est impossible de rendre compte.
Adjectival derivatives based on nouns, using numerous suffixes: -ful, -ous, -y,
-ic, -ish, -al e.g., meaningful, realistic, holistic, attitudinal, behavioral.
Verbal derivatives based on nouns or adjectives, with the suffixes -ize, -ify,
-ate naturalize, mentalize, falsify, and even without suffixes when possible
e.g., the title of an article “How Not to Russell Carnap’s Aufbau,” i.e., how
not to Russell Carnap’s Aufbau. d. Polycategorial derivatives based on verbs,
using suffixes such as -able, -er, -age, -ismrefutable, truthmaker. The
reversibility of these nominalizations and verbalizations has the essential
result of preventing the reification of qualities or acts. The latter is more
difficult to avoid in Fr. and G. , where
nominalization hardens and freezes notions compare intériorité and innerness,
which designates more a quality, or even, paradoxically, an effect, than an
entity or a domain. But this kind of ease in making compounds has its flip
side: the proliferation of -isms in liberties with the natural uses of the
language. The philosophers ask, e. g. , how they can know that there is a real
object there, but the question How do I know? can be asked in ordinary language
only in certain contexts, that is, where it is always possible, at least in
theory, to eliminate doubt. The doubt or question But is it a real one? has
always must have a special basis, there must be some reason for suggesting that
it isn’t real, in the sense of some specific way in which it is suggested that
this experience or item may be phoney. The wile of the metaphysician consists
in asking Is it a real table? a kind of object which has no obvious way of
being phoney and not specifying or limiting what may be wrong with it, so that
I feel at a loss how to prove it is a real one. It is the use of the word real
in this manner that leads us on to the supposition that real has a single
meaning the real world, material objects, and that a highly profound and
puzzling one. Austin, Philosophical Papers This analysis of real is taken up
again in Sense and Sensibilia, where Austin criticizes the notion of a sense
datum and also a certain way of raising problems supposedly on the basis of
common opinion e. g. , the common opinion that we really perceive things—but in
reality on the basis of a pure construction. To state the case in this way,
Austin says, is simply to soften up the plain man’s alleged views for the
subsequent treatment; it is preparing the way for, by practically attributing
to him, the so-called philosophers’ view. Phil. ’s frequent recourse to the
ordinary is characterized by a certain condescension toward the common man. The
error or deception consists in arguing the philosopher’s position against the
ordinary position, because if the in what we should say when. It is, in other words,
a Phil. of language, but on the
condition that we never forget that we are looking not merely at words or
‘meanings,’ whatever they may be but also at the realities we use the words to
talk about, as Austin emphasizes A Plea for Excuses, in Philosophical Papers.
During the twentieth century or more precisely, between the 1940s and the s,
there was a division of the paradigms of the Phil. of language between the logical clarification
of ordinary language, on the one hand, and the immanent examination of ordinary
language, on the other. The question of ordinary language and the type of
treatment that it should be given—a normative clarification or an internal
examination—is present in and even constitutive of the legacy of logical
positivism. Wittgenstein’s work testifies to this through the movement that it
manifests and performs, from the first task of the Phil. of language the creation of an ideal or
formal language to clarify everyday language to the second the concern to
examine the multiplicity of ordinary language’s uses. The break thus
accomplished is such that one can only agree with Rorty’s statement in his
preface to The Linguistic Turn that the only difference between Ideal Language
Philosophers and Ordinary Language Philosophers is a disagreement about which
language is ideal. In the renunciation of the idea of an ideal language, or a
norm outside language, there is a radical change in perspective that consists
in abandoning the idea of something beyond language: an idea that is
omnipresent in the whole philosophical tradition, and even in current
analytical Phil. . Critique of language and Phil. More generally, Austin criticizes traditional
Phil. for its perverse use of ordinary
language. He constantly denounces Phil. ’s abuse of ordinary language—not so
much that it forgets it, but rather that it exploits it by taking 2 A defect in
the Eng. language? Between according to Bentham Eng. philosophers are not very
inclined toward etymology—no doubt because it is often less traceable than it
is in G. or even in Fr. and discourages a certain kind of commentary.
There are, however, certain exceptions, like Jeremy Bentham’s analysis of the
words “in,” “or,” “between,” “and,” etc., -- cf. Grice on “to” and “or” – “Does
it make sense to speak of the ‘sense’ of ‘to’?” -- through which Eng.
constructs the kinds of space that belong to a very specific topiLet us take
the case of between, which Fr. can
render only by the word entre. Both the semantics and the etymology of entre
imply the number three in Fr. , since what is entre intervenes as a third term
between two others which it separates or brings closer in Lat., in-ter; in Fr.,
en tiers; as a third. This is not the case in English, which constructs between
in accord with the number two in conformity with the etymology of this word, by
tween, in pairs, to the point that it can imagine an ordering, even when it
involves three or more classes, only in the binary mode: comon between three?
relation between three?—the hue of selfcontradictoriness presents itself on the
very face of the phrase. By one of the words in it, the number of objects is
asserted to be three: by another, it is asserted to be no more than two. To the
use thus exclusively made of the word between, what could have given rise, but
a sort of general, howsoever indistinct, perception, that it is only one to one
that objects can, in any continued manner, be commodiously and effectually
compared. The Eng. language labours under a defect, which, when it is compared
in this particular with other European langues, may perhaps be found peculiar
to it. By the derivation, and thence by the inexcludible import, of the word
between i.e., by twain, the number of the objects, to which this operation is
represented as capable of being applied, is confined to two. By the Roman
inter—by its Fr. derivation entre—no
such limitation v.ms to be expressed. Chrestomathia REFS.: Bentham, Jeremy.
ChrestomathiEd. by M. J. Smith and W. H.
Burston. Oxford: Clarendon, To my mind, experience proves amply that we do come
to an agreement on what we should say when such and such a thing, though I
grant you it is often long and difficult. I should add that too often this is
what is missing in Phil. : a preliminary datum on which one might agree at the
outset. We do not claim in this way to discover all the truth that exists
regarding everything. We discover simply the facts that those who have been
using our language for centuries have taken the trouble to notice.
Performatif-Constatif Austinian agreement is possible for two reasons: Ordinary language cannot claim to have the
last word. Only remember, it is the first word Philosophical Papers. The
exploration of language is also an exploration of the inherited experience and
acumen of many generations of men ibid..
Ordinary language is a rich treasury of differences and embodies all the
distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connections they have found
worth marking, in the lifetimes of many generations. These are certainly more
subtle and solid than any that you or I are likely to think up in our
arm-chairs of an afternoon ibid.. It is this ability to indicate differences
that makes language a common instrument adequate for speaking things in the
world. Who is we? Cavell’s question It is clear that analytical Phil. ,
especially as it has developed in the United States since the 1940s, has moved
away from the Austinian paradigm and has at the same time abandoned a certain
kind of philosophical writing and linguistic subtlety. But that only makes all
the more powerful and surprising the return to Austin advocated by Stanley
Cavell and the new sense of ordinary language Phil. that is emerging in his work and in
contemporary American Phil. . What right do we have to refer to our uses? And
who is this we so crucial for Austin that it constantly recurs in his work? All
we have, as we have said, is what we say and our linguistic agreements. We
determine the meaning of a given word by its uses, and for Austin, it is
nonsensical to ask the question of meaning for instance, in a general way or
looking for an entity; v. NONSENSE. The quest for agreement is founded on
something quite different from signification or the determination of the common
meaning. The agreement Austin is talking about has nothing to do with an intersubjective
consensus; it is not founded on a convention or on actual agreements. It is an
agreement that is as objective as possible and that bears as much on language
as on reality. But what is the precise nature of this agreement? Where does it
come from, and why should so much importance be accorded to it? That is the
question Cavell asks, first in Must We Mean What We Say? and then in The Claim
of Reason: what is it that allows Austin and Witters to say what they say about
what we say? A claim is certainly involved here. That is what Witters means by
our agreement in judgments, and in language it is based only on itself, on the
latter exists, it is not on the same level. The philosopher introduces into the
opinion of the common man particular entities, in order then to reject, amend,
or explain it. The method of ordinary language: Be your size. Small Men.
Austin’s immanent method comes down to examining our ordinary use of ordinary
words that have been confiscated by Phil. , such as ‘true’ and ‘real,’ in order
to raise the question of truth: Fact that is a phrase designed for use in
situations where the distinction between a true statement and the state of
affairs about which it is a truth is neglected; as it often is with advantage
in ordinary life, though seldom in Phil. . So speaking about the fact that is a
compendious way of speaking about a situation involving both words and world.
Philosophical Papers We can, of course, maintain along with a whole trend in
analytical Phil. from Frege to Quine
that these are considerations too small and too trivial from which to draw any
conclusions at all. But it is this notion of fact that Austin relies on to
determine the nature of truth and thus to indicate the pertinence of ordinary
language as a relationship to the world. This is the nature of Austin’s
approach: the foot of the letter is the foot of the ladder ibid.. For Austin,
ordinary words are part of the world: we use words, and what makes words useful
objects is their complexity, their refinement as tools ibid.: We use words to
inform ourselves about the things we talk about when we use these words. Or, if
that v.ms too naïve: we use words as a way of better understanding the
situation in which we find ourselves led to make use of words. What makes this
claim possible is the proximity of dimension, of size, between words and
ordinary objects. Thus philosophers should, instead of asking whether truth is
a substance, a quality, or a relation, take something more nearly their own
size to strain at ibid.. The Fr. translators
render size by mesure, which v.ms excessively theoretical; the reference is to
size in the material, ordinary sense. One cannot know everything, so why not
try something else? Advantages of slowness and cooperation. Be your size. Small
Men. Conversation cited by Urmson in A Symposium Austin emphasizes that this
technique of examining words which he ended up calling linguistic phenomenology
(and Grice linguistic botany) is not new and that it has existed since
Socrates, producing its slow successes. But Grice is the first to make a
systematic application of such a method, which is based, on the one hand, on
the manageability and familiarity of the objects concerned and, on the other
hand, on the common agreement at which it arrives in each of its stages. The
problem is how to agree on a starting point, that is, on a given. This given or
datum, for Grice, is Gricese, not as a corpus consisting of utterances or
words, but as the site of agreement about what we should say when. Austin
regards language as an empirical datum or experimental dat -- Bayes, T. . An
Essay towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances, with Richard
Price’s Foreword and Discussion. In Facsimiles of Two Papers by Bayes. :
Hafner, . First published in 176 Bentham, Jeremy. ChrestomathiEd. by M. J. Smith and W. H. Burston. Oxford:
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Goldworth. Oxford: Clarendon, . . Essay on Language. In The Works of Jeremy
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In Quest of the Ordinary. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, . . Must We
Mean What We Say? Cambridge: Cambridge , . . This New Yet Unapproachable
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Library of America, . Hacking, Jan. Why Does Language Matter to Phil. ?
Cambridge: Cambridge , . Hume, D. . Dialogues concerning Natural Religion.
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published in 195 . Philosophical Investigations. Tr. G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 195 we,
as Cavell says in a passage that illustrates many of the difficulties of tr. we
have discussed up to this point: We learn and teach words in certain contexts,
and then we are expected, and expect others, to be able to project them into
further contexts. Nothing ensures that this projection will take place in
particular, not the grasping of universals nor the grasping of books of rules,
just as nothing ensures that we will make, and understand, the same
projections. That we do, on the whole, is a matter of our sharing routes of
interest and feeling, modes of response, senses of humor and ‑of significance
and of fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else,
what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an
appeal, when an explanation—all the whirl of organism Witterscalls forms of
life. Human speech and activity, sanity and community, rest upon nothing more,
but nothing less, than this. It is a vision as simple as it is and because it
is terrifying. Must We Mean What We Say?
The fact that our ordinary language is based only on itself is not only a
reason for concern regarding the validity of what we do and say, but also the
revelation of a truth about ourselves that we do not always want to recognize:
the fact that I am the only possible source of such a validity. That is a new
understanding of the fact that language is our form of life, precisely its
ordinary form. Cavell’s originality lies in his reinvention of the nature of
ordinary language in American thought and in the connection he
establishes—notably through his reference to Emerson and Thoreau, American
thinkers of the ordinary—between this nature of language and human nature,
finitude. It is also in this sense that the question of linguistic agreements
reformulates that of the ordinary human condition and that the acceptance of
the latter goes hand in hand with the recognition of the former. In Cavell’s
Americanization of ordinary language Phil.
there thus emerges a radical form of the return to the ordinary. But
isn’t this ordinary, e. g. , that of Emerson in his Essays, precisely the one
that the whole of Eng. Phil. has been
trying to find, or rather to feel or taste, since its origins? Thus we can
compare the writing of Emerson or James, in texts like Experience or Essays in
Radical Empiricism, with that of the British empiricists when they discuss
experience, the given, and the sensible. This is no doubt one of the principal
dimensions of philosophical writing in English: always to make the meaning more
available to the senses. J.-Pierre Cléro Sandra Laugier REFS.: Austin, J. L.
How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon, . . Performatif-Constatif. In
La philosophie analytique, ed. by J.
Wahl and L. Beck. : Editions du Minuit, . Tr. in Performative-Constative. In
Phil. and Ordinary Language, ed. by E. Caton. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, . . Philosophical Papers. Ed. by
J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford: Clarendon, . . Sense and
SensibiliOxford: Clarendon, . Ayer, J. The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge.
London: Macmillan, 1940. ENTREPRENEUR 265 form the basis of the kingdom by
means of calculated plans; to the legal domain: someone who contravenes the
hierarchical order of the professions and subverts their rules; finally, to the
economic domain: someone who agrees, on the basis of a prior contract an
established price to execute a project collection of taxes, supply of an army,
a merchant expedition, construction, production, transaction, assuming the
hazards related to exchange and time. This last usage corresponds to practices
that became more and more socially prominent starting in the sixteenth century.
Let us focus on the term in economics. The engagement of the entrepreneur in
his project may be understood in various ways, and the noun entrepreneur
translated in various ways into English: by contractor if the stress is placed
on the engagement with regard to the client to execute the task according to
conditions negotiated in advance a certain time, a fixed price, firm price,
tenant farming; by undertaker now rare in this sense when we focus on the
engagement in the activity, taking charge of the project, its practical
realization, the setting in motion of the transaction; and by adventurer,
enterpriser, and projector, to emphasize the risks related to speculation. At
the end of the eighteenth century, the Fr.
word entreprise acquired the new meaning of an industrial establishment.
Entrepreneur accordingly acquired the sense of the head or direction of a
business of production superintendent, employer, manager. In France, at the
beginning of the eighteenth century, the noun entrepreneur had strong political
connotations, in particular in the abundant pamphlets containing mazarinades
denouncing the entrepreneurs of tax farming. The economist Pierre de
Boisguilbert wrote the Factum de la France, the largest trial ever conducted by
pen against the big financiers, entrepreneurs of the wealth of the kingdom, who
take advantage of its good administration its political economy in the name of
the entrepreneurs of commerce and industry, who contribute to the increase in
its wealth. Boisguilbert failed in his project of reforming the tax farm, or
tax business, and it was left to a clever financier, Richard Cantillon, to
create the economic concept of the entrepreneur. Chance in Business: Risk and
Uncertainty There is no trace of Boisguilbert’s moral indignation in
Cantillon’s Essai sur la nature du commerce en générale Essay on the nature of
commerce in general. Having shown that all the classes and all the men of a
State live or acquire wealth at the expense of the owners of the land bk. 1,
ch.12, he suggests that the circulation and barter of goods and merchandise,
like their production, are conducted in Europe by entrepreneurs and haphazardly
bk. 1, of ch.1 He then describes in detail what composes the uncertain aspect
of the action of an entrepreneur, in which he acts according to his ideas and
without being able to predict, in which he conceives and executes his plans
surrounded by the hazard of events. The uncertainty related to business profits
turns especially on the fact that it is dependent on the forms of consumption
of the owners, the only members of society who are independent—naturally
independent, Cantillon specified. Entrepreneurs are those who are capable of
breaking ÉNONCÉ Énoncé, from the Roman enuntiare to express, divulge; from ex
out and nuntiare to make known; a nuntius is a messenger, a nuncio, ranges over
the same type of entity as do proposition and phrase: it is a basic unit of
syntax, the relevant question being whether or not it is the bearer of truth
values. An examination of the differences among these entities, and the
networks they constitute in different languages especially in English:
sentence, statement, utterance, appears under PROPOSITION. V. also DICTUM and
LOGOS, both of which may be acceptably Tr.
énoncé. Cf. PRINCIPLE, SACHVERHALT, TRUTH, WORD especially WORD,
Box The essential feature of an énoncé
is that it is considered to be a singular occurrence and thus is paired with
its énonciation: v. SPEECH ACT; cf. ENGLISH, LANGUAGE, SENSE, SIGN,
SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED, WITTICISM. v. DISCOURSE ENTREPRENEUR FR. ENG. adventurer, contractor, employer,
enterpriser, entrepreneur, manager, projector, undertaker, superintendent v. ACT, AGENCY, BERUF, ECONOMY, LIBERAL,
OIKONOMIA, PRAXIS, UTILITY. Refs.: G. J. Warnock, “English philosophy,” H. P.
Grice, “Gricese,” BANC.
Grice’s handwave. A sort of handwave can mean in a one-off act of
communication something. It’s the example he uses. By a sort of handwave, the emissor
communicates either that he knows the route or that he is about to leave the
addressee. Handwave signals. Code. Cfr. the Beatles’s HELP. Explicatum: We need
some body – Implicatum: Not just Any Body. Why does this matter to the
philosopher? The thing is as follows. Grice was provoked by Austin. To defeat
Austin, Grice needs a ‘theory of communication.’ This theory applies his early
reflections on the intentional side to an act of communication. This allows him
to explain the explicatum versus the implicatum. By analysing each, Grice notes
that there is no need to refer to linguistic entities. So, the centrality of
the handwave is an offshoot of his theory designed to defeat Austin.
Grice’s myth. Or Griceian myths – The Handbook of Griceian mythology. At
one point Grice suggests that his ‘genitorial programme’ a kind of
ideal-observer theory is meant as ‘didactic,’ and for expository purposes. It
seems easier, as , as Grice and Plato would agree, to answer a question
about the genitorial programme rather than use a first-person approach and
appeal to introspection. Grice refers to the social
contract as a ‘myth,’ which may still explain, as ‘meaning’ does. G. R. Grice
built his career on this myth. This is G. R. Grice, of the social-contract
fame. Cf. Strawson and Wiggins comparing Grice’s myth with Plato’s, and they
know what they are talking about.
Grice’s predicament. S draws a pic- "one-off predicament"). ...
Clarendon, 1976); and Simon
Blackburn, Spreading the Word (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) ... But
there is an obvious way of emending the account. Grice points out. ... Blackburn helpfully
suggests that we can cut through much of this complexity by ... The above
account is intended to capture the notion of one-off meaning. Walking in a
forest, having gone some way ahead of the rest of the party, I draw an arrow at
a fork of a path, meaning that those who are following me should go straight
on. Gricean considerations
may be safely ignored. Only when trying to communicate by nonconventional means
("one-off predicament," Blackburn,
1984, chap. Blackburn's mission
is to promote the philosophy of language as a pivotal enquiry ... and
dismissed; the Gricean model
might be suitable to explain one-off acts. The Gricean mechanism
with its complex communicative intentions has a clear point in what Blackburn calls
“a one-off predicament”
- a situation in which an ...
Grice’s shaggy-dog story: While Grice would like to say that it should be in the
range of a rational creature to refer and to predicate, what about the hand
wave? By his handwave, the emissor means that _HE_ (subject) is a knower of the
road (or roate), the predicate after the copula or that he, the emissor,
subject, is (the copula) about to leave his emissee – but there is nothing IN
THE MATTER (the handwave) that can be ‘de-composed’ like that. The FORM
attaches to the communicatum directly. This is strange, but not impossible, and
shows Grice’s programme. Because his idea is that a communicatum need not a
vehicile which is syntactically structured (as “Fido is shaggy”). 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.””
Grice’s
theory-theory: Grice’s
theory-theory: A theory of mind concerning how we come to know about the
propositional attitudes of others. It tries to explain the nature of ascribing
certain thoughts, beliefs, or intentions to other persons in order to explain
their actions. The theory-theory holds that in ascribing beliefs to others we
are tacitly applying a theory that enables us to make inferences about the
beliefs behind the actions of others. The theory that is applied is a set of
rules embedded in folk psychology. Hence, to anticipate and predict the
behavior of others, one engages in an intellectual process moving by inference from one set of beliefs
to another. This position contrasts with another theory of mind, the simulation
theory, which holds that we need to make use of our own motivational and
emotional resources and capacities for practical reasoning in explaining
actions of others. “So called ‘theory-theorists’ maintain that the ability to
explain and predict behaviour is underpinned by a folk-psychological theory of
the structure and functioning of the mind – where the theory in question may be
innate and modularised, learned individually, or acquired through a process of
enculturation.” Carruthers and Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind. Grice
needs a theory. For those into implicata and conversation as rational
cooperation, when introducing the implicatum he mentions ‘pre-theoretical
adequacy’ of the model. So he is thinking of the conversational theory as a
theory in the strict sense, with ‘explanatory’ and not merely taxonomical
power. So one task is to examine in which way the conversational theory is a
theory that explains, rather than merely ad hoc ex post facto commentary. Not so much for his approach to mean. He
polemises with Rountree, of Somerville, that you dont need a thory to analyse
mean. Indeed, you cannot have a theory to analyse mean, because mean is a
matter of intuition, not a theoretical concept. But Grice appeals to theory,
when dealing with willing. He knows what willing means because he relies on a
concept of folk-science. In this folk-science, willing is a theoretical
concept. Grice arrived at this conclusion by avoiding the adjective souly, and
seeing that there is no word to describe willing other than by saying it is a
psychoLOGICAL concept, i.e. part of a law within that theory of folk-science.
That law will include, by way of ramsified naming or describing willing as a
predicate-constant. Now, this is related to metaphysics. His liberal or
ecunmenical metaphysics is best developed in terms of his ontological marxism
presented just after he has expanded on this idea of willing as a theoretical
concept, within a law involving willing (say, Grices Optimism-cum-Pesimism
law), within the folk-science of psychology that explains his behaviour. For
Aristotle, a theoria, was quite a different animal, but it had to do with
contemplatio, hence the theoretical (vita contemplativa) versus the practical
(vita activa). Grices sticking to Aristotle’srare use of theory inspires him to
develop his fascinating theory of the theory-theory. Grice realised that there is no way to refer
to things like intending except with psychological, which he takes to mean,
belonging to a pscyhological theory. Grice was keen to theorise on
theorising. He thought that Aristotle’s first philosophy (prote
philosophia) is best rendered as Theory-theory. Grice kept using Oxonian
English spelling, theorising, except when he did not! Grice calls himself
folksy: his theories, even if Subjects to various types of Ramseyfication, are
popular in kind! And ceteris paribus! Metaphysical construction is
disciplined and the best theorising the philosopher can hope for! The way
Grice conceives of his theory-theory is interesting to revisit. A route by
which Grice hopes to show the centrality of metaphysics (as prote philosophia)
involves taking seriously a few ideas. If any region of enquiry is to be
successful as a rational enterprise, its deliverance must be
expressable in the shape of one or another of the possibly different types of
theory. A characterisation of the nature and range of a possible kind of
theory θ is needed. Such a body of characterisation must itself
be the outcome of rational enquiry, and so must itself exemplify
whatever requirement it lays down for any theory θ in
general. The characterisation must itself be
expressible as a theory θ, to be called, if you like, Grice
politely puts it, theory-theory, or meta-theory, θ2. Now, the
specification and justification of the ideas and material presupposed
by any theory θ, whether such account falls within the bounds of
Theory-theory, θ2 would be properly called prote philosophia (first
philosophy) and may turn out to relate to what is generally accepted as
belonging to the Subjects matter of metaphysics. It might, for example,
turn out to be establishable that any theory θ has to relate to a
certain range of this or that Subjects item, has to attribute to each item this
or that predicate or attribute, which in turn has to fall within one or another
of the range of types or categories. In this way, the enquiry might lead
to recognised metaphysical topics, such as the nature of being, its range of
application, the nature of predication and a systematic account of categories. Met.
, philosophical eschatology, and Platos Republic, Thrasymachus, social justice,
Socrates, along with notes on Zeno, and topics for pursuit, repr.in Part II,
Explorations in semantics and metaphysics to WOW , metaphysics,
philosophical eschatology, Platos Republic, Socrates, Thrasymachus, justice,
moral right, legal right, Athenian dialectic. Philosophical eschatology is a
sub-discipline of metaphysics concerned with what Grice calls a category shift.
Grice, having applied such a technique to Aristotle’s aporia on philos (friend)
as alter ego, uses it now to tackle Socratess view, against Thrasymachus, that
right applies primarily to morality, and secondarily to legality. Grice has a
specific reason to include this in his WOW Grices exegesis of Plato on justice
displays Grices take on the fact that metaphysics needs to be subdivided into
ontology proper and what he calls philosophical eschatology, for the study of
things like category shift and other construction routines. The exploration of
Platos Politeia thus becomes an application of Grices philosophically
eschatological approach to the item just, as used by Socrates (morally just)
and Thrasymachus (legally just). Grice has one specific essay on Aristotle in
PPQ. So he thought Plato merited his own essay, too! Grices focus is on Plato’s
exploration of dike. Grice is concerned with a neo-Socratic (versus
neo-Thrasymachean) account of moral justice as conceptually (or axiologically)
prior to legal justice. In the proceeding, he creates philosophical eschatology
as the other branch to metaphysics, along with good ol ontology. To say
that just crosses a categorial barrier (from the moral to the legal) is to make
a metaphysical, strictly eschatological, pronouncement. The Grice Papers locate
the Plato essay in s. II, the Socrates
essay in s. III, and the Thrasymachus
essay, under social justice, in s. V. Grice is well aware that in his account
of fairness, Rawls makes use of his ideas on personal identity. The
philosophical elucidation of fairness is of great concern for Grice. He had
been in touch with such explorations as Nozicks and Nagels along anti-Rawlsian
lines. Grices ideas on rationality guide his exploration of social justice.
Grice keeps revising the Socrates notes. The Plato essay he actually dates. As
it happens, Grices most extensive published account of Socrates is in this
commentary on Platos Republic: an eschatological commentary, as he puts it. In
an entertaining fashion, Grice has Socrates, and neo-Socrates, exploring the
logic and grammar of just against the attack by Thrasymachus and
neo-Thrasymachus. Grices point is that, while the legal just may be
conceptually prior to the moral just, the moral just is evaluationally or
axiologically prior. Refs.: There is a specific essay on ‘theorising’ in the Grice
Papers, but there are scattered sources elsewhere, such as “Method” (repr. in
“Conception”), BANC.
Grice’s three-year-old’s guide to Russell’s theory of types, with an
advice to parents by Strawson: Grice put forward the empirical hypothesis that a three-year
old CAN understand Russell’s theory of types. “In more than one way.” This
brought confusion in the household, with some members saying they could not –
“And I trust few of your tutees do!” Russell’s influential solution to the
problem of logical paradoxes. The theory was developed in particular to
overcome Russell’s paradox, which seemed to destroy the possibility of Frege’s
logicist program of deriving mathematics from logic. Suppose we ask whether the
set of all sets which are not members of themselves is a member of itself. If
it is, then it is not, but if it is not, then it is. The theory of types
suggests classifying objects, properties, relations, and sets into a hierarchy
of types. For example, a class of type 0 has members that are ordinary objects;
type 1 has members that are properties of objects of type 0; type 2 has members
that are properties of the properties in type 1; and so on. What can be true or
false of items of one type can not significantly be said about those of another
type and is simply nonsense. If we observe the prohibitions against classes
containing members of different types, Russell’s paradox and similar paradoxes
can be avoided. The theory of types has two variants. The simple theory of
types classifies different objects and properties, while the ramified theory of
types further sorts types into levels and adds a hierarchy of levels to that of
types. By restricting predicates to those that relate to items of lower types
or lower levels within their own type, predicates giving rise to paradox are
excluded. The simple theory of types is sufficient for solving logical
paradoxes, while the ramified theory of type is introduced to solve semantic
paradoxes, that is, paradoxes depending on notions such as reference and truth.
“Any expression containing an apparent variable is of higher type than that
variable. This is the fundamental principles of the doctrines of types.”
Russell, Logic and Knowledge. Grice’s
commentary in “In defense of a dogma,” The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
griceism. Gricese. At Oxford, it was usual to refer to Austin’s
idiolect as Austinese. In analogy with Grecism, we have a Gricism, a Griceian
cliché. Cf. a ‘grice’ and ‘griceful’ in ‘philosopher’s lexicon.’ Gricese is a
Latinism, from -ese, word-forming element, from Old French -eis (Modern French -ois, -ais), from Vulgar Latin, from Latin -ensem, -ensis "belonging
to" or "originating in."
grecianism: why was Grice obsessed with Socrates’s convesations? He
does not say. But he implicates it. For the Athenian dialecticians, it is all a
matter of ta legomena. Ditto for the Oxonian dialecticians. Ta legomena becomes
ordinary language. And the task of the philosopher is to provide reductive
analysis of this or that concept in terms of necessary and sufficient
conditions. Cf. Hospers. Grices review of the history of philosophy (Philosophy
is but footnotes to Zeno.). Grice enjoyed Zenos answer, What is a friend? Alter
ego, Allego. ("Only it was the other Zeno." Grice tried to apply the
Socratic method during his tutorials. "Nothing like a heartfelt dedication
to the Socratic art of mid-wifery, seeking to bring forth error and to strangle
it at birth.” μαιεύομαι (A.“μαῖα”), ‘to serve as a midwife, act a; “ἡ
Ἄρτεμις μ.” Luc. D Deor.26.2. 2. cause delivery to take place, “ἱκανὴ ἔκπληξις
μαιεύσασθαι πρὸ τῆς ὥρας” Philostr. VA1.5. 3. c. acc., bring to the birth,
Marin.Procl.6; ὄρνιθας μ. hatch chickens, Anon. ap. Suid.; αἰετὸν κάνθαρος
μαιεύσομαι, prov. of taking vengeance on a powerful enemy, Ar. Lys.695 (cf.
Sch.). 4. deliver a woman, esp. metaph. in Pl. of the Socratic method, Tht.
149b. II. Act., Poll. 4.208, Sch. OH.4.506. Pass., τὰ ὑπ᾽ ἐμοῦ μαιευθέντα
brought into the world by me, Pl. Tht. 150e, cf. Philostr.VA5.13. Refs.: the
obvious references are Grice’s allusions to Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Zeno,
The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
Hampshireism: To add to the philosophers’ mistakes. There’s Austin (in
“Plea for Excuses” and “Other Minds”), Strawson (in “Truth” and “Introduction
to Logical Theory,” and “On referring”), Hart (in conversation, on
‘carefully,”), Hare (“To say ‘x is good’ is to recommend x”) and Hampshire
(“Intention and certainty”). For Grice, the certainty is merely implicated and
on occasion, only. Cited by Grice as a
member of the play group. Hampshire would dine once a week with Grice. He would
discuss and find very amusing to discuss with Grice on post-war Oxford
philosophy. Unlike Grice, Hampshire attended Austin’s Thursday evening meetings
at All Souls. Grice wrote “Intention and uncertainty” in part as a response to
Hampshire and Hart, Intention and certainty. But Grice brought the issue back
to an earlier generation, to a polemic between Stout (who held a
certainty-based view) and Prichard.
hazzing: under conjunctum, we see that the terminology is varied.
There is the copulatum. But Grice prefers to restrict to use of the copulatum
to izzing and hazzing. Oddly Grice sees hazzing as a predicate which he
formalizes as Hxy. To be read x hazzes y, although sometimes he uses ‘x hazz
y.’ Vide ‘accidentia.’ For Grice the role of métier is basic since it shows
finality in nature. Homo sapiens, qua pirot, is to be rational.
hint hinting. Don’t expect Cicero used this. It’s Germanic and
related to ‘hunt,’ to ‘seize.’ As if you throw something in the air, and expect
your recipient will seize it. Grice spends quite a long section in
“Retrospective epilogue” to elucidate “Emissor E communicates that p via a
hint,” versus “Emissor E communicates that p via a suggestion.” Some level of
explicitness (vide candour) is necessary. If it is too obscure it cannot be
held to have been ‘communicated’ in the first place! Cf. Holdcroft, “Some forms
of indirect communication” for the Journal of Rhetoric. Grice had to do a bit
of linguistic botany for his “E implicates that p”: To do duty for ‘imply,’
suggest, indicate, hint, mean, -- “etc.” indirectly or implicitly convey.
heterological: Grice and Thomson go heterological. Grice was
fascinated by Baron Russell’s remarks on heterological and its implicate. Grice
is particularly interested in Russell’s philosophy because of the usual Oxonian
antipathy towards his type of philosophising. Being an irreverent
conservative rationalist, Grice found in Russell a good point for
dissent! If paradoxes were always sets of propositions or arguments or
conclusions, they would always be meaningful. But some paradoxes are
semantically flawed and some have answers that are backed by a pseudo-argument
employing a defective lemma that lacks a truth-value. Grellings paradox,
for instance, opens with a distinction between autological and heterological
words. An autological word describes itself, e.g., polysyllabic is polysllabic,
English is English, noun is a noun, etc. A heterological word does not
describe itself, e.g., monosyllabic is not monosyllabic, Chinese is not
Chinese, verb is not a verb, etc. Now for the riddle: Is
heterological heterological or autological? If heterological is
heterological, since it describes itself, it is autological. But if
heterological is autological, since it is a word that does not describe itself,
it is heterological. The common solution to this puzzle is that
heterological, as defined by Grelling, is not what Grice a genuine
predicate ‒ Gricing is!In other words, Is heterological
heterological? is without meaning. That does not mean that an utterer, such as
Baron Russell, may implicate that he is being very witty by uttering the
Grelling paradox! There can be no predicate that applies to all and only those
predicates it does not apply to for the same reason that there can be no barber
who shaves all and only those people who do not shave themselves. Grice
seems to be relying on his friend at Christ Church, Thomson in On Some
Paradoxes, in the same volume where Grice published his Remarks about the
senses, Analytical Philosophy, Butler (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford,
104–119. Grice thought that Thomson was a genius, if ever there is one!
Plus, Grice thought that, after St. Johns, Christ Church was the second most
beautiful venue in the city of dreaming spires. On top, it is what makes Oxford
a city, and not, as villagers call it, a town. Refs.: the main source is
Grice’s essay on ‘heterologicality,’ but the keyword ‘paradox’ is useful, too,
especially as applied to Grice’s own paradox and to what, after Moore, Grice
refers to as the philosopher’s paradoxes. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
Hobson’s choice: willkür –
Hobson’s choice. One of Grice’s favourite words from Kant – “It’s so Kantish!”
I told Pears about this, and having found it’s cognate with English ‘choose,’
he immediately set to write an essay on the topic!” f., ‘option, discretion,
caprice,’ from MidHG. willekür,
f., ‘free choice, free will’; gee kiesen and Kur-kiesen, verb, ‘to select,’ from Middle High German kiesen, Old High German chiosan, ‘to test, try, taste for the
purpose of testing, test by tasting, select after strict examination.’
Gothic kiusan,
Anglo-Saxon ceósan,
English to choose.
Teutonic root kus (with
the change of s into r, kur in the participle erkoren, see also Kur, ‘choice’), from
pre-Teutonic gus, in
Latin gus-tus, gus-tare, Greek γεύω for γεύσω, Indian root juš, ‘to select, be fond of.’
Teutonic kausjun passed
as kusiti into
Slavonic. There is an oil portrait of Thomas Hobson, in the National Portrait
Gallery, London. He looks straight to the artist and is dressed in typical
Tudor dress, with a heavy coat, a ruff, and tie tails Thomas Hobson, a portrait
in the National Portrait Gallery, London. A Hobson's choice is a free choice in
which only one thing is offered. Because a person may refuse to accept what is
offered, the two options are taking it or taking nothing. In other words, one
may "take it or leave it". The
phrase is said to have originated with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery
stable owner in Cambridge, England, who offered customers the choice of either
taking the horse in his stall nearest to the door or taking none at all.
According to a plaque underneath a painting of Hobson donated to Cambridge
Guildhall, Hobson had an extensive stable of some 40 horses. This gave the
appearance to his customers that, upon entry, they would have their choice of
mounts, when in fact there was only one: Hobson required his customers to
choose the horse in the stall closest to the door. This was to prevent the best
horses from always being chosen, which would have caused those horses to become
overused.[1] Hobson's stable was located on land that is now owned by St
Catharine's College, Cambridge. Early
appearances in writing According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first
known written usage of this phrase is in The rustick's alarm to the Rabbies,
written by Samuel Fisher in 1660:[3] If
in this Case there be no other (as the Proverb is) then Hobson's choice...which
is, chuse whether you will have this or none.
It also appears in Joseph Addison's paper The Spectator (No. 509 of 14
October 1712); and in Thomas Ward's 1688 poem "England's
Reformation", not published until after Ward's death. Ward wrote: Where to elect there is but one, 'Tis
Hobson's choice—take that, or none. The term "Hobson's choice" is
often used to mean an illusion of choice, but it is not a choice between two
equivalent options, which is a Morton's fork, nor is it a choice between two
undesirable options, which is a dilemma. Hobson's choice is one between
something or nothing. John Stuart Mill,
in his book Considerations on Representative Government, refers to Hobson's
choice: When the individuals composing
the majority would no longer be reduced to Hobson's choice, of either voting
for the person brought forward by their local leaders, or not voting at all. In
another of his books, The Subjection of Women, Mill discusses marriage: Those who attempt to force women into
marriage by closing all other doors against them, lay themselves open to a
similar retort. If they mean what they say, their opinion must evidently be,
that men do not render the married condition so desirable to women, as to
induce them to accept it for its own recommendations. It is not a sign of one's
thinking the boon one offers very attractive, when one allows only Hobson's
choice, 'that or none'.... And if men are determined that the law of marriage
shall be a law of despotism, they are quite right in point of mere policy, in
leaving to women only Hobson's choice. But, in that case, all that has been
done in the modern world to relax the chain on the minds of women, has been a
mistake. They should have never been allowed to receive a literary
education.[7] A Hobson's choice is
different from: Dilemma: a choice between
two or more options, none of which is attractive. False dilemma: only certain
choices are considered, when in fact there are others. Catch-22: a logical
paradox arising from a situation in which an individual needs something that
can only be acquired by not being in that very situation. Morton's fork, and a
double bind: choices yield equivalent, and often undesirable, results.
Blackmail and extortion: the choice between paying money (or some non-monetary
good or deed) or risk suffering an unpleasant action. A common error is to use
the phrase "Hobbesian choice" instead of "Hobson's choice",
confusing the philosopher Thomas Hobbes with the relatively obscure Thomas
Hobson[8][9][10] (It's possible they may be confusing "Hobson's
choice" with "Hobbesian trap", which refers to the trap into
which a state falls when it attacks another out of fear).[11] Notwithstanding
that confused usage, the phrase "Hobbesian choice" is historically
incorrect.[12][13][14] Common law In
Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha (1983), Justice Byron White
dissented and classified the majority's decision to strike down the
"one-house veto" as unconstitutional as leaving Congress with a
Hobson's choice. Congress may choose between "refrain[ing] from delegating
the necessary authority, leaving itself with a hopeless task of writing laws
with the requisite specificity to cover endless special circumstances across
the entire policy landscape, or in the alternative, to abdicate its lawmaking
function to the executive branch and independent agency". In Philadelphia v. New Jersey, 437 U.S. 617
(1978),[15] the majority opinion ruled that a New Jersey law which prohibited
the importation of solid or liquid waste from other states into New Jersey was
unconstitutional based on the Commerce Clause. The majority reasoned that New
Jersey cannot discriminate between the intrastate waste and the interstate
waste with out due justification. In dissent, Justice Rehnquist stated: [According to the Court,] New Jersey must
either prohibit all landfill operations, leaving itself to cast about for a
presently nonexistent solution to the serious problem of disposing of the waste
generated within its own borders, or it must accept waste from every portion of
the United States, thereby multiplying the health and safety problems which
would result if it dealt only with such wastes generated within the State.
Because past precedents establish that the Commerce Clause does not present
appellees with such a Hobson's choice, I dissent. In Monell v. Department of Social Services of
the City of New York, 436 U.S. 658 (1978)[16] the judgement of the court was
that [T]here was ample support for
Blair's view that the Sherman Amendment, by putting municipalities to the
Hobson's choice of keeping the peace or paying civil damages, attempted to impose
obligations to municipalities by indirection that could not be imposed
directly, thereby threatening to "destroy the government of the
states". In the South African
Constitutional Case MEC for Education, Kwa-Zulu Natal and Others v Pillay, 2008
(1) SA 474 (CC)[17] Chief Justice Langa for the majority of the Court (in
Paragraph 62 of the judgement) writes that:
The traditional basis for invalidating laws that prohibit the exercise
of an obligatory religious practice is that it confronts the adherents with a
Hobson's choice between observance of their faith and adherence to the law.
There is however more to the protection of religious and cultural practices
than saving believers from hard choices. As stated above, religious and
cultural practices are protected because they are central to human identity and
hence to human dignity which is in turn central to equality. Are voluntary
practices any less a part of a person's identity or do they affect human
dignity any less seriously because they are not mandatory? In Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis (2018),
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented and added in one of the footnotes that
the petitioners "faced a Hobson’s choice: accept arbitration on their
employer’s terms or give up their jobs".
In Trump et al v. Mazars USA, LLP, US Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia No. 19-5142, 49 (D.C. Cir. 11 October 2019) ("[w]orse still,
the dissent’s novel approach would now impose upon the courts the job of
ordering the cessation of the legislative function and putting Congress to the
Hobson’s Choice of impeachment or nothing."). Popular culture Hobson's Choice is a
full-length stage comedy written by Harold Brighouse in 1915. At the end of the
play, the central character, Henry Horatio Hobson, formerly a wealthy,
self-made businessman but now a sick and broken man, faces the unpalatable
prospect of being looked after by his daughter Maggie and her husband Will
Mossop, who used to be one of Hobson's underlings. His other daughters have
refused to take him in, so he has no choice but to accept Maggie's offer which
comes with the condition that he must surrender control of his entire business
to her and her husband, Will. The play
was adapted for film several times, including versions from 1920 by Percy Nash,
1931 by Thomas Bentley, 1954 by David Lean and a 1983 TV movie. Alfred Bester's 1952 short story Hobson's
Choice describes a world in which time travel is possible, and the option is to
travel or to stay in one's native time. In
the 1951 Robert Heinlein book Between Planets, the main character Don Harvey
incorrectly mentions he has a Hobson's choice. While on a space station
orbiting Earth, Don needs to get to Mars, where his parents are. The only
rockets available are back to Earth (where he is not welcome) or on to Venus. In The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket, the
Baudelaire orphans and Fiona are said to be faced with a Hobson's Choice when
they are trapped by the Medusoid Mycelium Mushrooms in the Gorgonian Grotto:
"We can wait until the mushrooms disappear, or we can find ourselves
poisoned".In Bram Stoker's short story "The Burial of Rats", the
narrator advises he has a case of Hobson's Choice while being chased by
villains. The story was written around 1874.
The Terminal Experiment, a 1995 science fiction novel by Robert J.
Sawyer, was originally serialised under the title Hobson's Choice. Half-Life, a video game created in 1998 by
Valve includes a Hobson's Choice in the final chapter. A human-like entity,
known only as the 'G-Man', offers the protagonist Gordon Freeman a job, working
under his control. If Gordon were to refuse this offer, he would be killed in
an unwinnable battle, thus creating the 'illusion of free choice'. In Early Edition, the lead character Gary
Hobson is named after the choices he regularly makes during his
adventures. In an episode of Inspector
George Gently, a character claims her resignation was a Hobson's choice,
prompting a debate among other police officers as to who Hobson is. In "Cape May" (The Blacklist season
3, episode 19), Raymond Reddington describes having faced a Hobson's choice in
the previous episode where he was faced with the choice of saving Elizabeth
Keen's baby and losing Elizabeth Keen or losing them both. In his 1984 novel Job: A Comedy of Justice,
Robert A. Heinlein's protagonist is said to have Hobson's Choice when he has
the options of boarding the wrong cruise ship or staying on the island. Remarking about the 1909 Ford Model T, US
industrialist Henry Ford is credited as saying “Any customer can have a car painted
any color that he wants so long as it is black”[19] In 'The Jolly Boys' Outing', a 1989 Christmas
Special episode of Only Fools and Horses, Alan states they are left with
Hobson's Choice after their coach has blown up (due to a dodgy radio, supplied
by Del). There's a rail strike, the last bus has gone, and their coach is out
of action. They can't hitch-hike as there's 27 of them, and the replacement
coach doesn't come till the next morning, thus their only choice is to stay in
Margate for the night. See also
Buckley's Chance Buridan's ass Boulwarism Death and Taxes Locus of control
Morton's fork No-win situation Standard form contract Sophie's Choice Zugzwang
References Barrett, Grant.
"Hobson's Choice", A Way with Words
"Thomas Hobson: Hobson's Choice and Hobson's Conduit".
Historyworks. See Samuel Fisher.
"Rusticus ad academicos in exercitationibus expostulatoriis, apologeticis
quatuor the rustick's alarm to the rabbies or The country correcting the
university and clergy, and ... contesting for the truth ... : in four
apologeticall and expostulatory exercitations : wherein is contained, as well a
general account to all enquirers, as a general answer to all opposers of the
most truly catholike and most truly Christ-like Chistians called Quakers, and
of the true divinity of their doctrine : by way of entire entercourse held in
special with four of the clergies chieftanes, viz, John Owen ... Tho. Danson
... John Tombes ... Rich. Baxter ." Europeana. Retrieved 8 August
2014. See The Spectator with Notes and
General Index, the Twelve Volumes Comprised in Two. Philadelphia: J.J.
Woodward. 1832. p. 272. Retrieved 4 August 2014. via Google Books Ward, Thomas (1853). English Reformation, A
Poem. New York: D.& J. Sadlier & Co. p. 373. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
via Internet Archive See Mill, John
Stuart (1861). Considerations on Representative Government (1 ed.). London:
Parker, Son, & Bourn. p. 145. Retrieved 23 June 2014. via Google Books Mill, John Stuart (1869). The Subjection of
Women (1869 first ed.). London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer. pp. 51–2.
Retrieved 28 July 2014. Hobbes, Thomas
(1982) [1651]. Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth,
Ecclesiastical and Civil. New York: Viking Press. Martinich, A. P. (1999). Hobbes: A Biography.
Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN
978-0-521-49583-7. Martin, Gary.
"Hobson's Choice". The Phrase Finder. Archived from the original on 6
March 2009. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
"The Hobbesian Trap" (PDF). 21 September 2010. Retrieved 8
April 2012. "Sunday Lexico-Neuroticism".
boaltalk.blogspot.com. 27 July 2008. Retrieved 7 August 2010. Levy, Jacob (10 June 2003). "The Volokh
Conspiracy". volokh.com. Retrieved 7 August 2010. Oxford English Dictionary, Editor:
"Amazingly, some writers have confused the obscure Thomas Hobson with his
famous contemporary, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. The resulting malapropism
is beautifully grotesque". Garner, Bryan (1995). A Dictionary of Modern
Legal Usage (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 404–405. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/437/617/ "Monell v. Department of Soc. Svcs. -
436 U.S. 658 (1978)". justicia.com. US Supreme Court. 6 June 1978. 436
U.S. 658. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
"MEC for Education: Kwazulu-Natal and Others v Pillay (CCT 51/06)
[2007] ZACC 21; 2008 (1) SA 474 (CC); 2008 (2) BCLR 99 (CC) (5 October
2007)". www.saflii.org. Snicket,
Lemony (2004) The Grim Grotto, New York: HarperCollins Publishers p.145 -
147 Henry Ford in collaboration with
Samuel Crowther in My Life and Work. 1922. Page 72 External links Chisholm,
Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hobson's Choice" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 13
(11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 553. Categories: English-language
idiomsFree willMetaphors referring to peopleDilemmas. Refs.: H. P. Grice and D.
F. Pears, The philosophy of action, Pears, Choosing and deciding. The H. P.
Grice Papers, BANC.
I:
particularis dedicativa.. See Grice, “Circling the Square of Opposition.
ichthyological necessity: topic-neutral:
Originally, Ryle’s term for logical constants, such as “of ” “not,” “every.”
They are not endowed with special meanings, and are applicable to discourse
about any subject-matter. They do not refer to any external object but function
to organize meaningful discourse. J. J. C. Smart calls a term topic-neutral if
it is noncommittal about designating something mental or something physical.
Instead, it simply describes an event without judging the question of its
intrinsic nature. In his central-state theory of mind, Smart develops a
topic-neutral analysis of mental expressions and argues that it is possible to
account for the situations described by mental concepts in purely physical and
topic-neutral terms. “In this respect, statements like ‘I am thinking now’ are,
as J. J. C. Smart puts it, topic-neutral. They say that something is going on
within us, something apt for the causing of certain sorts of behaviour, but
they say nothing of the nature of this process.” D. Armstrong, A Materialist
Theory of the Mind
ideationalism. Alston calls Grice an ideationalist, and Grice takes it as
a term of abuse. Grice would occasionally use ‘mental.’ Short and Lewis have
"mens.” “terra corpus est, at mentis ignis est;” so too, “istic est de
sole sumptus; isque totus mentis est;” f. from the root ‘men,’ whence ‘memini,’ and ‘comminiscor.’ Lewis and Short render
‘mens’ as ‘the mind, disposition; the heart, soul.’ Lewis and Short have
‘commĭniscor,’ originally conminiscor ), mentus, from ‘miniscor,’ whence also ‘reminiscor,’
stem ‘men,’ whence ‘mens’ and ‘memini,’
cf. Varro, Lingua Latina 6, § 44. Lewis and Short render the verb as,
literally, ‘to ponder carefully, to reflect upon;’ ‘hence, as a result of
reflection; cf. 1. commentor, II.), to devise something by careful thought, to
contrive, invent, feign. Myro is perhaps unaware of the implicata of ‘mental’
when he qualifies his -ism with ‘modest.’ Grice would seldom use mind (Grecian
nous) or mental (Grecian noetikos vs. æsthetikos). His sympathies go for more
over-arching Grecian terms like the very Aristotelian soul, the anima, i. e.
the psyche and the psychological. Grice discusses G. Myro’s essay, ‘In defence
of a modal mentalism,’ with attending commentary by R. Albritton and S. Cavell.
Grice himself would hardly use mental, mentalist, or mentalism himself, but
perhaps psychologism. Grice would use mental, on occasion, but his Grecianism
was deeply rooted, unlike Myro’s. At Clifton and under Hardie (let us recall he
came up to Oxford under a classics scholarship to enrol in the Lit. Hum.) he
knows that mental translates mentalis translates nous, only ONE part, one
third, actually, of the soul, and even then it may not include the ‘practical
rational’ one! Cf. below on ‘telementational.’ Refs.: The reference to mentalism
in the essay on ‘modest mentalism,’ after Myro, in The H. P. Grice Papers,
BANC.
ideatum. Quite used by Grice. Cf. Conceptum. Sub-perceptual. Cognate
with ‘eidos,’ that Grice translates as ‘forma.’ Why is an ‘eidos’ an ‘idea’ and
in what sense is an idea a ‘form’? These are deep questions!
idem
A key
philosophical notion that encompasses linguistic, logic, and metaphysical
issues, and also epistemology. Possibly the central question in philosophy.
Vide the principle of ‘identity.’ amicus est tamquam alter idem,” a second self, Identicum. Grecian ‘tautotes.’ late L. identitās (Martianus
Capella, c425), peculiarly formed from ident(i)-, for L. idem ‘same’ + -tās,
-tātem: see -ty. Various suggestions have been offered as to the
formation. Need was evidently felt of a noun of condition or quality from
idem to express the notion of ‘sameness’, side by side with those of ‘likeness’
and ‘oneness’ expressed by similitās and ūnitās: hence the form of the
suffix. But idem had no combining stem. Some have thought that
ident(i)- was taken from the L. adv. "identidem" ‘over and over
again, repeatedly’, connexion with which appears to be suggested by Du Cange's
explanation of identitās as ‘quævis actio repetita’. Meyer-Lübke suggests
that in the formation there was present some association between idem and id
ens ‘that being’, whence "identitās" like "entitās." But assimilation
to "entitās" may have been merely to avoid the solecism of *idemitās
or *idemtās. sameness. However originated, "ident(i)-" (either
from adverb "identidem" or an assimilation of "id ens,"
"id ens," that being, "id entitas" "that entity")
became the combining stem of idem, and the series ūnitās, ūnicus, ūnificus,
ūnificāre, was paralleled by identitās, identicus, identificus, identificāre:
see identic, identific, identify above.] to OED 3rd: identity, n.
Pronunciation: Brit./ʌɪˈdɛntᵻti/ , U.S. /aɪˈdɛn(t)ədi/ Forms: 15
idemptitie, 15 ydemptyte, 15–16 identitie, 15– identity, 16 idemptity.
Etymology: < Middle French identité, ydemtité, ydemptité, ydentité (French
identité) quality or condition of being the same (a1310; 1756 in sense
‘individuality, personality’, 1801 in sense ‘distinct impression of a single
person or thing presented to or perceived by others’) and its etymon
post-classical Latin identitat-, identitas quality of being the same
(4th cent.), condition or fact that a person or thing is itself and not
something else (8th cent. in a British source), fact of being the same (from
12th cent. in British sources), continual sameness, lack of variety, monotony
(from 12th cent. in British sources; 14th cent. in a continental source) < classical
Latin idem same (see idem n.) + -tās (see -ty suffix1) [sameness], after
post-classical Latin essentitas ‘being’ (4th cent.).The Latin word was formed
to provide a translation equivalent for ancient Greek ταὐτότης (tautotes)
identity. identity: identity was a key concept for Grice. Under identity, he
views both identity simpliciter and personal identity. Grice advocates
psychological or soul criterianism. Psychological or soul criterianism has been
advocated, in one form or another, by philosophers such as Locke, Butler,
Duncan-Jones, Berkeley, Gallie, Grice, Flew, Haugeland, Jones, Perry, Shoemaker
and Parfit, and Quinton. What all of these theories have in common is the
idea that, even if it is the case that some kind of physical states are
necessary for being a person, it is the unity of consciousness which is of
decisive importance for personal identity over time. In this sense, person is a
term which picks out a psychological, or mental, "thing". In claiming
this, all Psychological Criterianists entail the view that personal identity
consists in the continuity of psychological features. It is interesting that
Flew has an earlier "Selves," earlier than his essay on Locke on
personal identity. The first, for Mind, criticising Jones, "The self in
sensory cognition"; the second for Philosophy. Surely under the tutelage
of Grice. Cf. Jones, Selves: A reply to Flew, Philosophy. The
stronger thesis asserts that there is no conceivable situation in which bodily
identity would be necessary, some other conditions being always both necessary
and sufficient. Grice takes it that Locke’s theory (II, 27) is an example of
this latter type. To say "Grice remembers that he heard a
noise", without irony or inverted commas, is to imply that Grice did hear
a noise. In this respect remember is like, know, a factive. It does not follow
from this, nor is it true, that each claim to remember, any more than each
claim to know, is alethic or veridical; or, not everything one seems to
remember is something one really remembers. So much is obvious, although Locke
-- although admittedly referring only to the memory of actions, section 13
-- is forced to invoke the providence of God to deny the latter. These
points have been emphasised by Flew in his discussion of Locke’s views on personal
identity. In formulating Locke’ thesis, however, Flew makes a mistake; for he
offers Lockes thesis in the form if Grice can remember Hardies doing
such-and-such, Grice and Hardie are the same person. But this obviously will
not do, even for Locke, for we constantly say things like I remember my brother
Derek joining the army without implying that I and my brother are the same
person. So if we are to formulate such a criterion, it looks as though we have
to say something like the following. If Derek Grice remembers joining my, he is
the person who did that thing. But since remembers doing means remembers
himself doing, this is trivially tautologous, and moreover lends colour to
Butlers famous objection that memory, so far from constituting personal identity,
presupposes it. As Butler puts it, one should really think it
self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore
cannot constitute, personal identity; any more than knowledge, in any other
case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes. Butler then asserts that
Locke’s misstep stems from his methodology. This wonderful mistake may possibly
have arisen from hence; that to be endued with consciousness is inseparable
from the idea of a person, or intelligent being. For this might be expressed
inaccurately thus, that consciousness makes personality: and from hence it
might be concluded to make personal identity. One of the points that Locke
emphasizes—that persistence conditions are determined via defining kind
terms—is what, according to Butler, leads Locke astray. Butler
additionally makes the point that memory is not required for personal
persistence. But though present consciousness of what we at present do and feel
is necessary to our being the persons we now are; yet present consciousness of
past actions or feelings is not necessary to our being the same persons who
performed those actions, or had those feelings. This is a point that others
develop when they assert that Lockes view results in contradiction. Hence
the criterion should rather run as follows. If Derek Grice claims to remember
joining the army. We must then ask how such a criterion might be
used. Grices example is: I remember I smelled a smell. He needs two
experiences to use same. I heard a noise and I smelled a smell.The singular
defines the hearing of a noise is the object of some consciousness. The pair
defines, "The hearing of a noise and the smelling of a smell are objects
of the same -- cognate with self as in I hurt me self, -- consciousness. The
standard form of an identity question is Is this x the same x as that x
which E and in the simpler situation we are at least presented with just
the materials for constructing such a question; but in the more complicated
situation we are baffled even in asking the question, since both the
transformed persons are equally good candidates for being its Subjects, and the
question Are these two xs the same (x?) as the x which E is not a recognizable
form of identity question. Thus, it might be argued, the fact that we could not
speak of identity in the latter situation is no kind of proof that we could not
do so in the former. Certainly it is not a proof, as Strawson points out to
Grice. This is not to say that they are identical at all. The only case in
which identity and exact similarity could be distinguished, as we have just
seen, is that of the body, same body and exactly similar body really do mark a
difference. Thus one may claim that the omission of the body takes away all
content from the idea of personal identity, as Pears pointed out to
Grice. Leaving aside memory, which only partially applies to the case,
character and attainments are quite clearly general things. Joness character
is, in a sense, a particular; just because Jones’s character refers to the instantiation
of certain properties by a particular (and bodily) man, as Strawson points out
to Grice (Particular and general). If in ‘Negation and privation,’ Grice
tackles Aristotle, he now tackles Locke. Indeed, seeing that Grice went years
later to the topic as motivated by, of all people, Haugeland, rather than
perhaps the more academic milieu that Perry offers, Grice became obsessed with
Hume’s sceptical doubts! Hume writes in the Appendix that when he turns his
reflection on himself, Hume never can perceive this self without some one
or more perceptions. Nor can Hume ever perceive any thing but the
perceptions. It is the composition of these, therefore, which forms the
self, Hume thinks. Hume grants that one can conceive a thinking being to have
either many or few perceptions. Suppose, says Hume, the mind to be reduced even
below the life of an oyster. Suppose the oyster to have only one perception, as
of thirst or hunger. Consider the oyster in that situation. Does the oyster
conceive any thing but merely that perception? Has the oyster any notion of, to
use Gallies pretentious Aristotelian jargon, self or substance? If not, the
addition of this or other perception can never give the oyster that
notion. The annihilation, which this or that philosopher, including Grices
first post-war tutee, Flew, supposes to follow upon death, and which
entirely destroys the oysters self, is nothing but an
extinction of all particular perceptions; love and
hatred, pain and pleasure, thought and sensation. These therefore
must be the same with self; since the one cannot survive the other.
Is self the same with substance? If it be, how can that question have
place, concerning the subsistence of self, under a change of
substance? If they be distinct, what is the difference betwixt them? For his
part, Hume claims, he has a notion of neither, when conceived distinct
from this or that particular perception. However extraordinary Hume’s
conclusion may seem, it need not surprise us. Most
philosophers, such as Locke, seems inclined to think, that personal
identity arises from consciousness. But consciousness is nothing but
a reflected thought or perception, Hume suggests. This is Grices quandary about
personal identity and its implicata. Some philosophers have taken Grice as trying
to provide an exegesis of Locke. However, their approaches surely differ. What
works for Grice may not work for Locke. For Grice it is analytically true that
it is not the case that Person1 and Person may have the
same experience. Grice explicitly states that he thinks that his
logical-construction theory is a modification of Locke’s theory. Grice does not
seem terribly interested to find why it may not, even if the York-based Locke
Society might! Rather than introjecting into Lockes shoes, Grices strategy
seems to dismiss Locke, shoes and all. Specifically, it not clear to Grice what
Lockes answer in the Essay would be to Grices question about this or that I
utterance that he sets his analysis with. Admittedly, Grice does quote, albeit
briefly, directly from Lockes Essay. As far as any intelligent being can repeat
the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it at first,
and with the same consciousness it has of any present action, Locke claims, so
far the being is the same personal self. Grice tackles Lockes claim with four
objections. These are important to consider since Grice sees as improving on
Locke. A first objection concerns icircularity, with which Grice easily
disposes by following Hume and appealing to the experience of memory or
introspection. A second objection is Reid’s alleged counterexample about the
long-term memory of the admiral who cannot remember that he was flogged as a
boy. Grice dismisses this as involving too long-term of a memory. A third
objection concerns Locke’s vagueness about the aboutness of consciousness,
a point made by Hume in the Appendix. A fourth objection concerns again
circularity, this time in Locke’s use of same in the definiens ‒ cf. Wiggins,
Sameness and substance. It’s extraordinary that Wiggins is philosophising on
anything Griceian. Grice is concerned with the implicatum involved in the use
of the first person singular. I will be fighting soon. Grice means in body and
soul. The utterance also indicates that this is Grices pre-war days at Oxford.
No wonder his choice of an example. What else could he have in his soul? The
topic of personal identity, which label Hume and Austin found pretentious, and
preferred to talk about the illocutionary force of I, has a special Oxonian
pedigree, perhaps as motivated by Humes challenge, that Grice has occasion to
study and explore for his M. A. Lit. Hum. with Locke’s Essay as mandatory
reading. Locke, a philosopher with whom Oxford identifies most, infamously
defends this memory-based account of I. Up in Scotland, Reid reads it and
concocts this alleged counter-example. Hume, or Home, if you must, enjoys it.
In fact, while in the Mind essay he is not too specific about Hume, Grice will,
due mainly to his joint investigations with Haugeland, approach, introjecting
into the shoes of Hume ‒ who is idolised in The New World ‒ in ways he does not
introject into Lockes. But Grices quandary is Hume’s quandary, too. In his own
approach to I, the Cartesian ego, made transcendental and apperceptive by Kant,
Grice updates the time-honoured empiricist mnemonic analysis by Locke. The
first update is in style. Grice embraces, as he does with negation, a logical
construction, alla Russell, via Broad, of this or that “I” (first-person) utterance,
ending up with an analysis of a “someone,” third-person, less informative,
utterance. Grices immediate source is Gallie’s essay on self and substance in
Mind. Mind is still a review of psychology and philosophy, so poor Grice has
not much choice. In fact, Grice is being heterodoxical or heretic enough to use
Broad’s taxonomy, straight from the other place of I utterances. The
logical-construction theory is a third proposal, next to the Bradleyian
idealist pure-ego theory and the misleading covert-description theory.
Grice deals with the Reids alleged counterexample of the brave
officer. Suppose, Reid says, and Grice quotes verbatim, a brave officer to
have been flogged when a boy at school, for robbing an orchard, to have taken a
standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a general
in advanced life. Suppose also, which must be admitted to be possible, that
when he2 took the standard, he2 was conscious
of his having been flogged at school, and that, when made a general, he3 was
conscious of his2 taking the standard, but had absolutely lost
the consciousness of his1 flogging. These things being supposed, it follows,
from Lockes doctrine, that he1 who is flogged at school is the same person as
him2 who later takes the standard, and that he2 who
later takes the standard is the same person as him3 who is
still later made a general. When it follows, if there be any truth in logic,
that the general is the same person with him1 who is flogged at
school. But the general’s consciousness does emphatically not reach so far back
as his1 flogging. Therefore, according to Locke’s doctrine, he3 is
emphatically not the same person as him1 who is flogged. Therefore, we can say
about the general that he3 is, and at the same time, that he3 is
not the same person as him1 who was flogged at
school. Grice, wholl later add a temporal suffix to =t yielding, by
transitivity. The flogged boy =t1 the brave officer. And the
brave officer =t2 the admiral. But the admiral ≠t3 the
flogged boy. In Mind, Grice tackles the basic analysans, and comes up with a
rather elaborate analysans for a simple I or Someone statement. Grice just
turns to a generic affirmative variant of the utterance he had used in
Negation. It is now someone, viz. I, who hears that the bell tolls. It is the
affirmative counterpart of the focus of his earlier essay on negation, I do not
hear that the bell tolls. Grice dismisses what, in the other place, was
referred to as privileged-access, and the indexicality of I, an approach that
will be made popular by Perry, who however reprints Grices essay in his
influential collection for the University of California Press. By allowing for
someone, viz. I, Grice seems to be relying on a piece of reasoning which hell
later, in his first Locke lecture, refer to as too good. I hear that the bell
tolls; therefore, someone hears that the bell tolls. Grice attempts to reduce
this or that I utterance (Someone, viz. I, hears that the bell tolls) is in
terms of a chain or sequence of mnemonic states. It poses a few quandaries
itself. While quoting from this or that recent philosopher such as Gallie and
Broad, it is a good thing that Grice has occasion to go back to, or revisit,
Locke and contest this or that infamous and alleged counterexample presented by
Reid and Hume. Grice adds a methodological note to his proposed
logical-construction theory of personal identity. There is some intricacy of
his reductive analysis, indeed logical construction, for an apparently simple
and harmless utterance (cf. his earlier essay on I do not hear that the bell tolls).
But this intricacy does not prove the analysis wrong. Only that Grice is too
subtle. If the reductive analysis of not is in terms of each state which I am
experiencing is incompatible with phi), that should not be a minus, or
drawback, but a plus, and an advantage in terms of philosophical progress. The
same holds here in terms of the concept of a temporary state. Much later,
Grice reconsiders, or revisits, indeed, Broads remark and re-titles his
approach as the (or a) logical-construction theory of personal identity. And,
with Haugeland, Grice re-considers Humes own vagaries, or quandary, with
personal identity. Unlike the more conservative Locke that Grice favours in the
pages of Mind, eliminationist Hume sees ‘I’ as a conceptual muddle, indeed a
metaphysical chimæra. Hume presses the point for an empiricist verificationist
account of I. For, as Russell would rhetorically ask, ‘What can be more direct
that the experience of myself?’ The Hume Society should take notice of Grices
simplification of Hume’s implicatum on I, if The Locke Society won’t. As a
matter of fact, Grice calls one of his metaphysical construction routines the
Humeian projection, so it is not too adventurous to think that Grice considers
I as an intuitive concept that needs to be metaphysically re-constructed
and be given a legitimate Fregeian sense. Why that label for a construction
routine? Grice calls this metaphysical construction routine Humeian projection,
since the mind (or soul) as it were, spreads over its objects. But, by mind,
Hume does not necessarily mean the I. Cf. The minds I. Grice is especially
concerned with the poverty and weaknesses of Humes criticism to Lockes account
of personal identity. Grice opts to revisit the Lockeian memory-based of this
or that someone, viz. I utterance that Hume rather regards as vague, and
confusing. Unlike Humes, neither Lockes nor Grices reductive analysis of
personal identity is reductionist and eliminationist. The
reductive-reductionist distinction Grice draws in Retrospective epilogue as he
responds to Rountree-Jack on this or that alleged wrong on meaning that. It is
only natural that Grice would be sympathetic to Locke. Grice explores these
issues with Haugeland mainly at seminars. One may wonder why Grice spends so
much time in a philosopher such as Hume, with whom he agreed almost on nothing!
The answer is Humes influence in the Third World that forced Grice to focus on
this or that philosopher. Surely Locke is less popular in the New World than
Hume is. One supposes Grice is trying to save Hume at the implicatum level, at
least. The phrase or term of art, logical construction is Russells and Broads,
but Grice loved it. Rational reconstruction is not too dissimilar. Grice
prefers Russells and Broads more conservative label. This is more than a
terminological point. If Hume is right and there is NO intuitive concept behind
I, one cannot strictly re-construct it, only construct it. Ultimately, Grice
shows that, if only at the implicatum level, we are able to provide an
analysandum for this or that someone, viz. I utterance without using I, by
implicating only this or that mnemonic concept, which belongs, naturally, as
his theory of negation does, in a theory of philosophical psychology, and again
a lower branch of it, dealing with memory. The topic of personal identity
unites various interests of Grice. The first is identity “=” simpliciter.
Instead of talking of the meaning of I, as, say, Anscombe would, Grice sticks
to the traditional category, or keyword, for this, i. e. the theory-laden,
personal identity, or even personal sameness. Personal identity is a type of
identity, but personal adds something to it. Surely Hume was stretching person
a bit when using the example of a soul with a life lower than an oyster. Since
Grice follows Aristotles De Anima, he enjoys Hume’s choice, though. It may be
argued that personal adds Locke’s consciousness, and rational agency. Grice
plays with the body-soul distinction. I, viz someone or somebody, fell from the
stairs, perhaps differs from I will be fighting soon. This or that someone,
viz. I utterance may be purely bodily. Grice would think that the idea that his
soul fell from the stairs sounds, as it would to Berkeley, harsh. But then
theres this or that one may be mixed utterance. Someone, viz. I, plays cricket,
where surely your bodily mechanisms require some sort of control by the soul.
Finally, this or that may be purely souly ‒ the one Grice ends up analysing,
Someone, viz. I, hear that the bell tolls. At the time of his Mind essay, Grice
may have been unaware of the complications that the concept of a person may
bring as attached in adjective form to identity. Ayer did, and Strawson and
Wiggins will, and Grice learns much from Strawson. Since Parfit, this has
become a common-place topic for analysis at Oxford. A person as a complexum of
a body-soul spatio-temporal continuant substance. Ultimately, Grice finds a
theoretical counterpart here. A P may become a human, which Grice understands
physiologically. That is not enough. A P must aspire, via meteousis, to become
a person. Thus, person becomes a technical term in Grices grand metaphysical
scheme of things. Someone, viz. I, hear that the bell is tolls is analysed
as ≡df, or if and only if, a hearing that the bell tolls is a
part of a total temporary tn souly state S1 which is
one in a s. such that any state Sn, given this or that
condition, contains as a part a memory Mn of the
experience of hearing that the bell tolls, which is a component in some
pre-sequent t1n item, or contains an experience of hearing
that the bell tolls a memory M of which would, given this or that
condition, occur as a component in some sub-sequent t2>tn item,
there being no sub-set of items which is independent of the rest. Grice
simplifies the reductive analysans. Someone, viz. I, hears that the bell tolls
iff a hearing that the bell tolls is a component in an item of an interlocking
s. with emphasis on lock, s. of this or that memorable and memorative
total temporary tn state S1. Is Grice’s Personal
identity ever referred to in the Oxonian philosophical literature? Indeeed.
Parfit mentions, which makes it especially memorable and memorative. P. Edwards
includes a reference to Grices Mind essay in the entry for Personal identity,
as a reference to Grice et al on Met. , is referenced in Edwardss encyclopædia
entry for metaphysics. Grice does not attribute privileged access or
incorrigibility to I or the first person. He always hastens to add that I can
always be substituted, salva veritate (if baffling your addressee A) by someone
or other, if not some-body or other, a colloquialism Grice especially detested.
Grices agency-based approach requires that. I am rational provided thou art,
too. If, by explicitly saying he is a Lockeian, Grice surely does not wish us
to see him as trying to be original, or the first to consider this or that
problem about I; i.e. someone. Still, Grice is the philosopher who explores
most deeply the reductive analysis of I, i.e. someone. Grice needs the
reductive analysis because human agency (philosophically, rather than
psychologically interpreted) is key for his approach to things. By uttering The
bell tolls, U means that someone, viz. himself, hears that the bell tolls, or
even, by uttering I, hear, viz. someone hears, that the bell tolls, U means
that the experience of a hearing that the bell tolls is a component in a
total temporary state which is a member of a s. such that each member
would, given certain conditions, contain as an component one
memory of an experience which is a component in a pre-sequent member, or
contains as a component some experience a memory of which would,
given certain conditions, occur as a component in a post-sequent member;
there being no sub-set of members which is independent of the rest. Thanks,
the addressee might reply. I didnt know that! The reductive bit to Grices
analysis needs to be emphasised. For Grice, a person, and consequently, a
someone, viz. I utterance, is, simpliciter, a logical construction out of this
or that Humeian experience. Whereas in Russell, as Broad notes, a logical
construction of this or that philosophical concept, in this case personal
identity, or cf. Grices earlier reductive analysis of not, is thought of as an
improved, rationally reconstructed conception. Neither Russell nor Broad need
maintain that the logical construction preserves the original meaning of the
analysandum someone, viz. I, hears that the bell tolls, or I do not hear that
the bell tolls ‒ hence their paradox of reductionist analysis. This change of
Subjects does not apply to Grice. Grice emphatically intends to be make
explicit, if rationally reconstructed (if that is not an improvement) through
reductive (if not reductionist) analysis, the concept Grice already claims to
have. One particular development to consider is within Grices play group, that
of Quinton. Grice and Quinton seem to have been the only two philosophers in
Austins play group who showed any interest on someone, viz. I. Or not. The fact
that Quinton entitles his thing “The soul” did not help. Note that Woozley was at
the time editing Reid on “Identity,” Cf. Duncan-Jones on mans mortality. Note
that Quintons immediate trigger is Shoemaker. Grice writes that he is not
“merely a series of perceptions,” for he is “conscious of a permanent self, an
I who experiences these perceptions and who is now identical with the I
who experienced perceptions yesterday.” So, leaving aside that he is using I
with the third person verb, but surely this is no use-mention fallacy, it is
this puzzle that provoked his thoughts on temporal-relative “=” later on. As
Grice notes, Butler argued that consciousness of experience can contribute to
identity but not define it. Grice will use Butler in his elaboration of
conversational benevolence versus conversational self-interest. Better than
Quinton, it is better to consider Flew in Philosophy, 96, on Locke and the
problem of personal identity, obviously suggested as a term paper by Grice!
Wiggins cites Flew. Flew actually notes that Berkeley saw Lockes problem
earlier than Reid, which concerns the transitiveness of =. Recall that Wigginss
tutor at Oxford was a tutee by Grice, Ackrill. Refs.: The main references
covering identity simpliciter are in “Vacuous Names,” and his joint work on
metaphysics with G. Myro. The main references relating to the second group, of
personal identity, are his “Mind” essay, an essay on ‘the logical-construction
theory of personal identity,’ and a second set of essays on Hume’s quandary,
The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
illatum, f. illātĭo (inl- ), ōnis,
f. infero, a logical
inference, conclusion: “vel illativum rogamentum. quod ex acceptionibus colligitur et infertur,” App.
Dogm. Plat. 3, pp. 34, 15. – infero: to conclude, infer, draw an inference, Cic. Inv. 1, 47, 87; Quint. 5, 11, 27.
illusion: cf. veridical memories, who needs them? hallucination
is Grice’s topic.Malcolm argues in Dreaming and Skepticism and in his Dreaming
that the notion of a dream qua conscious experience that occurs at a definite
time and has definite duration during sleep, is unintelligible. This
contradicts the views of philosophers like Descartes (and indeed Moore!), who, Malcolm
holds, assume that a human being may have a conscious thought and a conscious
experience during sleep. Descartes claims that he had been deceived during
sleep. Malcolms point is that ordinary language contrasts consciousness and
sleep. The claim that one is conscious while one is sleep-walking is stretching
the use of the term. Malcolm rejects the alleged counter-examples based on
sleepwalking or sleep-talking, e.g. dreaming that one is climbing stairs while
one is actually doing so is not a counter-example because, in such a case, the
individual is not sound asleep after all. If a person is in any state of
consciousness, it logically follows that he is not sound asleep. The concept of
dreaming is based on our descriptions of dreams after we have awakened in
telling a dream. Thus, to have dreamt that one has a thought during sleep is
not to have a thought any more than to have dreamt that one has climbed Everest
is to have climbed Everest. Since one cannot have an experience during sleep,
one cannot have a mistaken experience during sleep, thereby undermining the
sort of scepticism based on the idea that our experience might be wrong because
we might be dreaming. Malcolm further argues that a report of a conscious state
during sleep is unverifiable. If Grice claims that he and Strawson saw a
big-foot in charge of the reserve desk at the Bodleian library, one can verify
that this took place by talking to Strawson and gathering forensic evidence
from the library. However, there is no way to verify Grices claim that he
dreamed that he and Strawson saw a big-foot working at the Bodleian. Grices
only basis for his claim that he dreamt this is that Grice says so after he
wakes up. How does one distinguish the case where Grice dreamed that he saw a
big-foot working at The Bodleian and the case in which he dreamed that he saw a
person in a big-foot suit working at the library but, after awakening,
mis-remembered that person in a big-foot suit as a big-foot proper? If Grice
should admit that he had earlier mis-reported his dream and that he had
actually dreamed he saw a person in a big-foot suit at The Bodleian, there is
no more independent verification for this new claim than there was for the
original one. Thus, there is, for Malcolm, no sense to the idea of mis-remembering
ones dreams. Malcolm here applies one of Witters ideas from his private
language argument. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me
is right. And that only means that here we cannot talk about right. For a
similar reason, Malcolm challenges the idea that one can assign a definite
duration or time of occurrence to a dream. If Grice claims that he ran the mile
in 3.4 minutes, one could verify this in the usual ways. If, however, Grice
says he dreamt that he ran the mile in 3.4 minutes, how is one to measure the
duration of his dreamt run? If Grice says he was wearing a stopwatch in the
dream and clocked his run at 3.4 minutes, how can one know that the dreamt
stopwatch is not running at half speed (so that he really dreamt that he ran
the mile in 6.8 minutes)? Grice might argue that a dream report does not carry
such a conversational implicata. But Malcolm would say that just admits the
point. The ordinary criteria one uses for determining temporal duration do not
apply to dreamt events. The problem in both these cases (Grice dreaming one saw
a bigfoot working at The Bodleian and dreaming that he ran the mile in 3.4
minutes) is that there is no way to verify the truth of these dreamt events —
no direct way to access that dreamt inner experience, that mysterious glow of
consciousness inside the mind of Grice lying comatose on the couch, in order to
determine the facts of the matter. This is because, for Malcolm, there are no
facts of the matter apart from the report by the dreamer of the dream upon
awakening. Malcolm claims that the empirical evidence does not enable one to
decide between the view that a dream experience occurs during sleep and the
view that they are generated upon the moment of waking up. Dennett agrees with
Malcolm that nothing supports the received view that a dream involves a
conscious experience while one is asleep but holds that such issues might be
settled empirically. Malcolm also argues against the attempt to provide a
physiological mark of the duration of a dream, for example, the view that the
dream lasted as long as the rapid eye movements. Malcolm replies that there can
only be as much precision in that common concept of dreaming as is provided by
the common criterion of dreaming. These scientific researchers are misled by
the assumption that the provision for the duration of a dream is already there,
only somewhat obscured and in need of being made more precise. However, Malcolm
claims, it is not already there (in the ordinary concept of dreaming). These scientific
views are making radical conceptual changes in the concept of dreaming, not
further explaining our ordinary concept of dreaming. Malcolm admits, however,
that it might be natural to adopt such scientific views about REM sleep as a
convention. Malcolm points out, however, that if REM sleep is adopted as a
criterion for the occurrence of a dream, people would have to be informed
upon waking up that they had dreamed or not. As Pears observes, Malcolm does
not mean to deny that people have dreams in favour of the view that they only
have waking dream-behaviour. Of course it is no misuse of language to speak of
remembering a dream. His point is that since the concept of dreaming is so
closely tied to our concept of waking report of a dreams, one cannot form a
coherent concept of this alleged inner (private) something that occurs with a
definite duration during sleep. Malcolm rejects a certain philosophical
conception of dreaming, not the ordinary concept of dreaming, which, he holds,
is neither a hidden private something nor mere outward behaviour.The account of
dreaming by Malcolm has come in for considerable criticism. Some argue that
Malcolms claim that occurrences in dreams cannot be verified by others does not
require the strict criteria that Malcolm proposes but can be justified by
appeal to the simplicity, plausibility, and predictive adequacy of an
explanatory system as a whole. Some argue that Malcolms account of the sentence
I am awake is inconsistent. A comprehensive programme in considerable detail
has been offered for an empirical scientific investigation of dreaming of the
sort that Malcolm rejects. Others have proposed various counterexamples and counter
arguments against dreaming by Malcolm. Grices emphasis is in Malcolms easy way
out with statements to the effect that implicata do or do not operate in dream
reports. They do in mine! Grice considers, I may be dreaming in the two essays
opening the Part II: Explorations on semantics and metaphysics in WOW. Cf.
Urmson on ‘delusion’ in ‘Parentheticals’ as ‘conceptually impossible.’ Refs.: The
main reference is Grice’s essay on ‘Dreaming,’ but there are scattered
references in his treatment of Descartes, and “The causal theory of perception”
(henceforth, “Causal theory”), The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
imperatum – This starts with the Greeks, who had the klesis
porstktike, modus imperativus. But then, under the modus subjunctives, the
Romans added the modus prohibitivus. So this is interesting, because it seems
that most of Grice’s maxims are ‘prohibitions’: “Do not say what you believe to
be false.” “Do not that for which you lack adequate evidence.” And some while
formally in the ‘affirmative,’ look prohibitive with ‘negative-loaded’ verbs
like ‘avoid ambiguity,’ etc. hile an imperatus, m. is a command, ‘imperatum’
refers, diaphanously, to what is commanded. “Impero” is actually a derivation
from the intensive “in-“ and the “paro,” as in “prepare,” “Paratum” would thus
reflect the ssame cognateness with ‘imperatum.” Modus imperativus -- imperative mode: At one
point, Grice loved the “psi,” Actions are alright, but we need to stop at the
psi level. The emissor communicates that the addressee thinks that the emissor
has propositional attitude psi. No need to get into the logical form of action.
One can just do with the logical form of a ‘that’-clause in the ascription of a
state of the soul. This should usually INVOLVE an action, as in Hare, “The door
is shut, please.” like Hare, Grice loves an imperative. In this essay, Grice
attempts an exploration of the logical form of Kant’s concoction. Grice is
especially irritated by the ‘the.’ ‘They speak of Kant’s categorical
imperative, when he cared to formulate a few versions of it!” Grice lists them
all in Abbott’s version. There are nine of them! Grice is interested in the conceptual
connection of the categorical imperative with the hypothetical or suppositional
imperative, in terms of the type of connection between the protasis and the
apodosis. Grice spends the full second Carus lecture on the conception of
value on this. Grice is aware that the topic is central to Oxonian
philosophers such as Hare, a member of Austin’s Play Group, too, who regard the
universability of an imperative as a mark of its categoricity, and indeed,
moral status. Grice chose some of the Kantian terminology on purpose.Grice
would refer to this or that ‘conversational maxim.’A ‘conversational maxim’
contributes to what Grice jocularly refers to as the ‘conversational
immanuel.’But there is an admission test.The ‘conversational maxim’ has to be
shown that, qua items under an overarching principle of conversational
helpfulness, the maxim displays a quality associated with conceptual, formal,
and applicational generality. Grice never understood what Kant meant by the
categoric imperative. But for Grice, from the acceptability of the the immanuel
you can deduce the acceptability of this or that maxim, and from the
acceptability of the conversational immanuel, be conversationally helpful, you
can deduce the acceptability of this or that convesational maxim. Grice hardly
considered Kants approach to the categoric imperative other than via the
universability of this or that maxim. This or that conversational maxim,
provided by Grice, may be said to be universalisable if and only if it displays
what Grice sees as these three types of generality: conceptual, formal, and
applicational. He does the same for general maxims of conduct. The results are
compiled in a manual of universalisable maxims, the conversational immanuel, an
appendix to the general immanuel. The other justification by Kant of the
categoric imperative involve an approach other than the genitorial
justification, and an invocation of autonomy and freedom. It is the use by
Plato of imperative as per categoric imperative that has Grice expanding on
modes other than the doxastic, to bring in the buletic, where the categoric
imperative resides. Note that in the end Kant DOES formulate the categoric
imperative, as Grice notes, as a real imperative, rather than a command, etc.
Grice loved Kant, but he loved Kantotle best. In the last Kant lecture, he
proposes to define the categorical imperative as a counsel of prudence, with a
protasis Let Grice be happy. The derivation involves eight stages! Grice found
out that out of his play-group activities with this or that linguistic nuance
he had arrived at the principle, or imperative of conversational helpfulness,
indeed formulated as an imperative: Make your contribution such as is required,
at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of the conversation in
which you are engaged. He notes that the rationality behind the idea of
conversation as rational co-operation does not preclude seeing rationality in
conversation as other than cooperation. The fact that he chooses maxim, and explicitly
echoes Kant, indicates where Grice is leading! An exploration on Paton on the
categorical imperative. Grice had previously explored the logical form of
hypothetical or suppositional imperatives in the Kant (and later Locke)
lectures, notably in Lecture IV, Further remarks on practical and alethic
reasons. Here he considers topics related to Hares
tropic-clistic neustic-phrastic quartet. What does it mean to say that
a command is conditional? The two successors of Grices post as
Tutorial Fellow at St. Johns, Baker Hacker, will tackle the same issue with
humour, in Sense and nonsense, published by Blackwell (too irreverent to be
published by the Clarendon). Is the logical form of a maxim, .p⊃!q, or !(.p ⊃.q),
etc. Kant thought that there is a special
sub-class of hypothetical or suppositional imperative (which he
called a counsels of prudence) which is like his class of technical imperative,
except in that the end specified in a full specfication of the imperative is
the special end of eudæmonia (the agents eudæmonia). For
Grice, understanding Kant’s first version of the categorical imperative
involves understanding what a maxim is supposed to be. Grice
explores at some length four alternative interpretations of an
iffy buletic (as opposed to a non-iffy buletic): three formal, one material.
The first interpretation is the horseshoe interpretation. A blind logical
nose might lead us or be led to the assumption of a link between a
buletically iffy utterance and a doxastically iffy utterance. Such a link
no doubt exists, but the most obvious version of it is plainly
inadequate. At least one other philosopher besides Grice has noticed that If he
torments the cat, have him arrested! is unlikely to express an
buletically iffy utterance, and that even if one restricts oneself to
this or that case in which the protasis specifies a will, we find pairs of
examples like If you will to go to Oxford, travel by AA via Richmond! or
If you will to go to Cambridge, see a psychiatrist! where it is plain that one
is, and the other is not, the expression of a buletically iffy utterance. For
fun, Grice does not tell which! A less easily eliminable suggestion, yet one
which would still interprets the notion of a buletically iffy utterance in
terms of that particular logical form to which if, hypothetical or
suppositional and conditional attach,
would be the following. Let us assume that it is established, or conceded, as
legitimate to formulate an if utterance in which not only the apodosis is
couched in some mode other than the doxastic, as in this or that conditional
command. If you see the whites of their eyes, shoot fire! but also the protasis
or some part (clause) of them. In which case all of the following might be
admissible conditionals. Thus, we might have a doxastic protasis (If the cat is
sick, take it to the vet), or a mixed (buletic-cum-doxastic protasis (If you
are to take the cat to the vet and theres no cage available, put it on Marthas
lap!), and buletic protasis (If you are to take the cat to the vet, put it in a
cage!). If this suggestion seems rebarbative, think of this or that quaint if
utterance (when it is quaint) as conditionalised versions of this or that
therefore-sequence, such as: buletic-cum-doxastic premises (Take the cat
to the vet! There isnt a cage. Therefore; Put the cat on Marthas lap!), buletic
premise (Take the cat to the vet! Put it in a cage!). And then, maybe, the
discomfort is reduced. Grice next considers a second formal interpretation or
approach to the buletically iffy/non-iffy utterance. Among if utterances with a
buletic apodosis some will have, then, a mixed doxastic-cum buletic protasis
(partly doxastic, partly buletic), and some will have a purely doxastic
protasis (If the cat is sick, take him to the vet!). Grice proposes a
definition of the iffy/non-iffy distinction. A buletically iffy utterance is an
iffy utterance the apodosis of which is buletic and the protasis of which is
buletic or mixed (buletic-cum-dxastic) or it is an elliptical version of such
an iffy utterance. A buletically non-iffy utterance is a buletic utterance
which is not iffy or else, if it is iffy, has a purely doxastic protasis. Grice
makes three quick comments on this second interpretation. First, re: a real
imperative. The structures which are being offered as a way of interpreting an
iffy and a non-iffy imperative do not, as they stand, offer any room for
the appearance this or that buletic modality like ought and should which are so
prominently visible in the standard examples of those kinds of imperatives. The
imperatives suggested by Grice are explicit imperatives. An explicit buletic
utterance is Do such-and-such! and not You ought to do such and such or, worse,
One ought to do such and such. Grice thinks, however, that one can modify this
suggestion to meet the demand for the appearance or occurrence of ought (etc)
if such occurrence is needed. Second, it would remain to be decided how close
the preferred reading of Grices deviant conditional imperatives would be to the
accepted interpretation of standard hypothetical or
suppositional imperatives. But even if there were some divergence that
might be acceptable if the new interpretation turns out to embody a more
precise notion than the standard conception. Then theres the neustical versus
tropical protases. There are, Grice thinks, serious doubts of the admissibility
of conditionals with a NON-doxastic protasis, which are for Grice connected
with the very difficult question whether the doxastic and the buletic modes are
co-ordinate or whether the doxastic mode is in some crucial fashion (but
not in other) prior (to use Suppess qualification) to the buletic. Grice
confesses he does not know the answer to that question. A third formal interpretation links
the iffy/non-iffy distinction to the absolute-relative value distinction. An
iffy imperatives would be end-relative and might be analogous
to an evidence-relative probability. A non-iffy imperatives would not
be end-relative. Finally, a fourth Interpretation is not formal, but
material. This is close to part of what Kant says on the topic. It is a
distinction between an imperative being escapable (iffy), through the
absence of a particular will and its not being escapable (non-iffy). If
we understand the idea of escabability sufficiently widely, the
following imperatives are all escapable, even though their logical form is
not in every case the same: Give up popcorn!, To get slim, give up
popcorn!, If you will to get slim, give up popcorn! Suppose Grice has no
will to get slim. One might say that the first imperative (Give up
popcorn!) is escaped, provided giving up popcorn has nothing else
to recommend it, by falsifying You should give up popcorn. The
second and the third imperatives (To get slim, give up pocorn! and If
you will to get slim, give up popcorn!) would not, perhaps, involve
falsification but they would, in the circumstances, be inapplicable
to Grice – and inapplicability, too, counts, as escape. A non-iffy
imperative however, is in no way escapable. Re: the Dynamics of
Imperatives in Discourse, Grice then gives three examples which he had
discussed in “Aspects,” which concern arguments (or therefore-chains). This we
may see as an elucidation to grasp the logical form of buletically iffy
utterance (elided by the therefore, which is an if in the metalanguage)
in its dynamics in argumentation. We should, Grice suggests,
consider not merely imperatives of each sort, together with the range
of possible characterisations, but also the possible forms of argument into
which_particular_ hypothetical or suppositional imperatives might enter.
Consider: Defend the Philosophy Department! If you are to defend the
philosophy department, learn to use bows and arrows! Therefore, learn to
use bows and arrows! Grice says he is using the dichotomy of original-derived
value. In this example, in the first premise, it is not specified whether the
will is original or derived, the second premise specifies conducive to (means),
and the conclusion would involve a derived will, provided the second premise is
doxastically satisfactory. Another example would be: Fight for your country! If
you are to fight for your country, join up one of the services! Therefore, join
up! Here, the first premise and the conclusion do not specify the protasis. If
the conclusion did, it would repeat the second premise. Then theres Increase
your holdings in oil shares! If you visit your father, hell give you some oil
shares. Therefore, visit your father! This argument (purportedly) transmits
value. Let us explore these characterisations by Grice with the aid of
Hares distinctions. For Hare in a hypothetical or suppositional imperative, the
protasis contains a neustic-cum-tropic. A distinction may be made between this
or that hypothetical or suppositional imperative and a term used by Grice
in his first interpretation of the hypothetical or suppositional
imperative, that of conditional command (If you see the whites of their
eyes, shoot fire!). A hypothetical or suppositional imperative can
be distinguished from a conditional imperative (If you want to make bread,
use yeast! If you see anything suspicious, telephone the police!) by the
fact that modus ponens is not valid for it. One may use hypothetical,
suppositional or conditional imperative for a buletic utterance which features
if, and reserve conditional command for a command which is expressed by an
imperative, and which is conditional on the satisfaction of the protasis.
Thus, on this view, treating the major premise of an argument as a
hypothetical or suppositional imperative turns the therefore-chain invalid.
Consider the sequence with the major premise as a hypothetical or suppositional
imperative. If you will to make someone mad, give him drug D! You
will to make Peter mad; therefore, give Peter drug D! By uttering this
hypothetical or suppositional imperative, the utterer tells his addressee A
only what means to adopt to achieve a given end in a way which
does not necessarily endorse the adoption of that end, and hence of
the means to it. Someone might similarly say, if you will to make
someone mad, give him drug D! But, of course, even if you will to do
that, you must not try to do so. On the other hand, the
following is arguably valid because the major premise is a
conditional imperative and not a mere hypothetical or suppositional
one. We have a case of major premise as a conditional imperative: You will to
make someone mad, give him drug D! Make Peter mad! Therefore, give
Peter drug D!. We can explain this in terms of the presence of the neustic
in the antecedent of the imperative working as the major premise.
The supposition that the protasis of a hypothetical or suppositional
imperative contains a clause in the buletic mode neatly explains why the
argument with the major premise as a hypothetical or suppositional
imperative is not valid. But the argument with the major premise as a
conditional imperative is, as well as helping to differentiate a
suppositional or hypothetical or suppositional iffy imperative from a
conditional iffy imperative. For, if the protasis of the major premise in the
hypothetical or suppositional imperative is volitival, the mere fact that
you will to make Peter mad does not license the inference of the
imperative to give him the drug; but this _can_ be inferred from the
major premise of the hypothetical or suppositional imperative
together with an imperative, the minor premise in the conditional
imperative, to make Peter mad. Whether the subordinate
clause contains a neustic thus does have have a consequence as
to the validity of inferences into which the complex sentence
enters. Then theres an alleged principle of mode constancy in buletic and
and doxastic inference. One may tries to elucidate Grices ideas on the
logical form of the hypothetical or suppositional imperative proper.
His suggestion is, admittedly, rather tentative. But it might be
argued, in the spirit of it, that an iffy imperative is of the
form ((!p⊃!q) Λ .p)) ∴ !q
But this violates a principle of mode constancy. A phrastic must
remain in the same mode (within the scope of the same tropic) throughout
an argument. A conditional imperative does not violate the principle of
Modal Constancy, since it is of the form ((p⊃!q) Λ
!p)) ∴ !q The question of the logical form of
the hypothetical or suppositional imperative is
too obscure to base much on arguments concerning it. There is an
alternative to Grices account of the validity of an argument featuring a conditional
imperative. This is to treat the major premise of a conditional
imperative, as some have urged it should be as a doxastic utterance tantamount
to In order to make someone mad, you have to give him drug D. Then an
utterer who explicitly conveys or asserts the major premise of a conditional
imperative and commands the second premise is in consistency committed to
commanding the conclusion. If does not always connect phrastic with
phrastic but sometimes connects two expressions consisting of a phrastic
and a tropic. Consider: If you walk past the post office, post the
letter! The antecedent of this imperative states, it seems, the
condition under which the imperative expressed becomes operative,
and so can not be construed buletically, since by uttering a buletic
utterance, an utterer cannot explicitly convey or assert that a condition
obtains. Hence, the protasis ought not be within the scope of the
buletic !, and whatever we take to represent the form of the
utterance above we must not take !(if p, q) to do so. One way out. On
certain interpretation of the isomorphism or æqui-vocality Thesis between
Indicative and Imperative Inference the utterance has to be construed
as an imperative (in the generic reading) to make the doxasatic
conditional If you will walk past the post office, you will post
the letter satisfactory. Leaving aside issues of the implicature of if,
that the utterance can not be so construed seems to be shown by
the fact that the imperative to make the associated doxastically iffy
utterance satisfactory is conformed with by one who does not walk past the
post office. But it seems strange at best to say that the utterance
is conformed with in the same circumstances. This strangeness or
bafflingliness, as Grice prefers, is aptly explained away in terms of the implicatum.
At Oxford, Dummett is endorsing this idea that a
conditional imperative be construed as an imperative to make an
indicative if utterance true. Dummett urges to divide conditional
imperatives into those whose antecedent is within the power of
the addressee, like the utterance in question, and those in which it
is not. Consider: If you go out, wear your coat! One may be not so much
concerned with how to escape this, as Grice is, but how to conform it. A child
may choose not to go out in order to comply with the imperative. For an
imperative whose protasis is_not_ within the power of the addressee (If anyone
tries to escape, shoot him!) it is indifferent whether we treat it as a
conditional imperative or not, so why bother. A small
caveat here. If no one tries to escape, the imperative is *not violated*.
One might ask, might there not be an important practical difference
bewteen saying that an imperative has not been violated and that
it has been complied with? Dummett ignores this distinction. One may
feel think there is much of a practical difference there. Is Grice
an intuitionist? Suppose that you are a frontier guard and
the antecedent has remained unfulfilled. Then, whether we say that you complied with
it, or simply did not *violate* it will make a great deal
of difference if you appear before a war crimes tribunal. For
Dummett, the fact that in the case of an imperative expressed by a conditional
imperative in which the antecedent is not within the agents power, we should
*not* say that the agent had obeyed just on the ground that the protassi is
false, is no ground for construing an imperative as expressing a
conditional command: for there is no question of fixing what shall
constitute obedience independently of the determination of what shall
constitute disobedience. This complicates the issues. One may with Grice (and
Hare, and Edgley) defend imperative inference against other Oxonian
philosophers, such as Kenny or Williams. What is questioned by the sceptics
about imperative inference is whether if each one of a set of imperatives
is used with the force of a command, one can infer a _further_ imperative
with that force from them. Cf. Wiggins on Aristotle on the practical
syllogism. One may be more conservative than Hare, if not Grice. Consider If
you stand by Jane, dont look at her! You stand by Jane; therefore, dont look at
her! This is valid. However, the following, obtained by anti-logism, is not: If
you stand by Jane, dont look at her! Look at her! Therefore, you dont stand by
Jane. It may seem more reasonable to some to deny Kants thesis, and maintain
that anti-logism is valid in imperative inference than it is to hold onto Kants
thesis and deny that antilogism is valid in the case in question. Then theres
the question of the implicata involved in the ordering of modes. Consider:
Varnish every piece of furniture you make! You are going to make a table;
therefore, varnish it! This is prima facie valid. The following, however,
switching the order of the modes in the premises is not. You are going to
varnish every piece of furniture that you make. Make a table! Therefore;
varnish it! The connection between the if and the therefore is metalinguistic,
obviously – the validity of the therefore chain is proved by the associated if
that takes the premise as, literally, the protasis and the consequence as the
apodosis. Conversational Implicature at the Rescue. Problems with
or: Consider Rosss infamous example: Post the letter! Therefore, post the
letter or burn it! as invalid, Ross – and endorsed at Oxford by Williams.
To permit to do p or q is to permit to do p and to permit to do q.
Similarly, to give permission to do something is to lift a prohibition
against doing it. Admittedly, Williams does not need this so we are
stating his claim more strongly than he does. One may review Grices way
out (defense of the validity of the utterance above in terms of the
implicatum. Grice claims that in Rosss infamous example (valid, for Grice),
whilst (to state it roughly) the premises permissive presupposition (to
use the rather clumsy term introduced by Williams) is entailed by it, the
conclusions is only conversationally implicated. Typically for an
isomorphist, Grice says this is something shared by
indicative inferences. If, being absent-minded, Grice asks his wife, What
have I done with the letter? And she replies, You have posted it or burnt it,
she conversationally implicates that she is not in a position to say which
Grice has done. She also conversationally implicates that Grice may not have
post it, so long as he has burnt it. Similarly, the future tense indicative, You
are going to post the letter has the conversational implicature You may be not
going to post the letter so long as you are going to burn it. But this
surely does not validate the introduction rule for OR, to wit: p;
therefore, p or q. One can similarly, say: Eclipse will win. He may not, of
course, if it rains. And I *know* it will *not* rain. Problems with and.
Consider: Put on your parachute AND jump out! Therefore, jump out! Someone who
_only_ jumps out of an æroplane does not fulfil Put on your parachute and
jump out! He has done only what is necessary, but not sufficient to
fulfil it. Imperatives do not differ from indicatives in this respect,
except that fulfilment takes the place of belief or doxa, which is the form of
acceptance apprpriate to a doxasatic utterance, as the Names implies.
Someone who is told Smith put on his parachute AND jumped out is entitled
to believe that Smith jumped out. But if he believes that this is _all_
Smith did he is in error (Cf. Edgley). One may discuss Grices test of
cancellability in the case of the transport officer who says: Go via Coldstream
or Berwick! It seems the transport officers way of expressing himself is
extremely eccentric, or conversationally baffling, as Grice prefers – yet
validly. If the transport officer is not sure if a storm may block one
of the routes, what he should say is _Prepare_ to go via Coldstream or
Berwick! As for the application of Grices test of explicit cancellation here,
it yield, in the circumstances, the transport officer uttering Go either via
Coldstream or Berwick! But you may not go via Coldstream if you do
not go via Berwick, and you may not go via Berwick if you do not go via Coldstream.
Such qualifications ‒ what Grice calls explicit cancellation of the
implicature ‒ seem to the addressee to empty the buletic mode of
utterance of all content and is thus reminiscent of Henry Fords utterance to
the effect that people can choose what colour car they like provided it is
black. But then Grice doesnt think Ford is being illogical, only Griceian and
implicatural! Refs.: There is at least one essay just about the categorical
imperative, but there are scattered references wherever Grice considers the
mood markers, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
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