THESAVRVS GRICEIANVM
H.
P. Grice, St. John’s Oxford
Compiled
by Grice’s Playgroup, The Bodleian
a:
Grice knows that his problem with Strawson is the Square of Opposition (Grice
1989: )So he is well aware of the question about Barbara and Celarent. So this
is the ‘universalis dedicativa.’ Vide below entries for “E” (universalis
abdicative), “I” (particularis dedicativa)
and “O” (particularis abdicative). The square (figura quadrata) is
generated by criss-crossing the two categories, aptly sub-divided, --
‘quantitas’ into universalis and particularis, and qualitaas into dedicativa
and the abdicative. Refs.: Grice 1989
∀: rendered by Grice as “all,” borrowed from Gentzen’s
“All-Zeichen.” (Peano did not use it). Grice is a stickler, and uses the brackets,
(∀x) – Grice thinks
that Whitehead and Russell did perfectly well with their substitutional account
to ‘all,’ “even it that displeased my tutee P. F. Strawson.” Parsons, who Grice
admires, suggests that one treat quantification over predicative classes
substitutionally, and capture “the idea that classes are not“real”
independently of the expression forthem. Grice perceives a difficulty relating to the allegedly dubious admissibility
of propositions as entities. A perfectly sound, though perhaps somewhat
superficial, reply to the objection as it is presented would be that in any
definition of “Emissor E communicates that p” iff “Emissor E desires that p.”
which Grice would be willing to countenance,
'p' operates simply as a ‘gap sign.’ ‘p’ does appear in the analysandum,
and re-appears in the corresponding analysans. If Grice were to advance the not
wholly plausible thesis that “to feel Byzantine” is just to have a an
anti-rylean agitation which is caused by the thought that Grice is or might *be*
Byzantine, it would surely be ridiculous to criticize Grice on the grounds that
Grice saddles himself with an ontological commitment to feelings, or to modes
of feeling. And why? Well, because, alla Parsons, if a quantifier is covertly
involved at all, it will only be a universal quantifier which in such a case as
this is more than adequately handled by a substitutional account of
quantification. Grice’s situation vis-a-vis the ‘proposition’ is in no way
different. There should be an entry for the inverted E, the first entry under
the E.
abderites: Grice was something of a logical atomist, so he used to
refer to himself as a neo-Abderite. The reference being to Democritus and
Leucippus, from Abdera.
abdicative: while one can draw a skull communicating that there is
danger; one can then cross out the skull indicating that there is no danger. So
the emissor communicates that there is no danger. Or rather, the emissor
communicates that it is not the case that there is danger. Since this involves
a ‘that’-clause, it is not unreasonable to speak of a ‘propositio,’ and such
would be ‘abdicativa.’ In his earliest reflections on the topic, Grice draws on
sub-perceptual illustrations rendered more or less as involving two items of
‘propositio dedicativa’ and their negation and privation: ‘The bell tolls in
Gb” and “The pillar box is red.” For the latter, “The pillar box is not blue”
can be uttered as a conclusion (“If the pillar box is red, it is not the case
that the pillar box is blue.”). For the former case, “The bell tolls in Ab” may
do. “If the bell tolls in Gb, it is not the case that the bell tolls in Ab.”
For Grice, the métier of a propositio abidcativa has to do with the abdicatum
of a conjunctum. For a more primitive rationale, Grice does not see the
complete justification. That means that Grice sees that there are OPTIONS TO
introducing a ‘propositio abdicativa’. These options are of two kinds. One is
the ‘stroke.’ If you draw a skull, a stroke, and a skull, you communicate that
it is not the case there is danger. The other involves “other than” or
“incompatible.” Again, drawsing a skull and writing INCOMPATIBLE and drawing
another skull and you communicate that it is not the case that there is danger.
abdicatum: Apuleius makes an analogy that Grice (and the Grecians
before) finds interesting. It is the ‘propositio dedicative’ apophatike’/’propositio
abdicativa’ kataphatike distinction. The ‘abdicatum’ would be the ‘negatum.’ The
‘dedicatum’ would be the ‘affirmatum.’ Apuleius’s terms make the correlation
evident and Grice preferred it to that of ‘affirmatum’ and ‘negatum,’ – “where
the correlation is not that obvious.” So there is the abdicatum, the negatum,
and the negation. ‘Negatum’ and ‘affirmatum’ are actually used when translating
Husserl from the vernacular! For Husserl, Negation negation a noetic modification of
a positing, noematic cancellation every ‘negatum’
an Object posited as existing, reiterated negation; a ‘negatum’ not a
determination produced by reflection; non-being equivalent to being validly
negated. Grice’s interest in ‘not’ as a
unary functor is central. Grice was ablet to tutor Strawson in philosophy in
that famous term. In his “Introduction to logical theory,” Strawson alleges to
show that some logical
‘laws,’ taken together, show that any truth-functional sentence or formula in
which the main constant is “~ “ is the contradictory of the sentence or formula
which results from omitting that sign.” Strawson goes on to say: “A standard and
primary use of “not” in a sentence is to assert the contradictory of the
statement which would be made by the use, in the same context, of the same
sentence without “not.” Of course we must not suppose that the insertion of
“not” anywhere in any sentence always has this effect. “Some bulls are not
dangerous” is not the contradictory of “Some bulls are dangerous.” This is why
the identification of “~” with “it is not the case that” is to be preferred to
its identification with “not” simpliciter. This identification, then, involves
only those minimum departures from the logic of ordinary language which must
always result from the formal logician's activity of codifying rules with the
help of verbal patterns : viz., (i) the adoption of a rigid rule when ordinary
language permits variations and deviations from the standard use (cf. rules “
~(p Λ ~p)”
and “ ~~p ≡ p” and the discussions in
1-8, and 2-9); (ii) that stretching of the sense of ‘exemplify’ which allows,
us, e.g., to regard ‘Tom is not mad’ as well as ‘Not all bulls are dangerous’
as 'exemplifications’ of not-p.’”
Strawson goes on: “So we shall call ‘~’ the negation sign, and read ‘~’as
‘not.’ One might be tempted to suppose that declaring formulae “ ~(p Λ ~p)” and “p v ~p”
laws of the system was the same as saying that, as regards this system, a
statement cannot be both true and false and must be either true or false. But
it is not. The rules that “ ~(p Λ ~p)” and “p v ~p”
are analytic are not rules about ‘true’ and ‘false;’ they are rules about ‘~.;
They say that, given that a statement has one of the two truth-values, then it
is logically impossible for both that statement and the corresponding statement
of the form ‘ ~p’ to be true, and for
both that statement and the corresponding statement of the form ‘~p’ to be
false.” A bit of palæo-Griceian history is
in order. Sheffer, defines ‘not’ and negation in terms of incompatibility in ‘A
set of five independent postulates for Boolean algebras, with application to
logical constants,’ Trans. American Mathematical Society. Grice does refers to
‘the strokes.’ His use of the plural is interesting as a nod to Peirce’s minute
logic in his ‘Boolian [sic] algebra with one constant.’ There is indeed
Peirce’s stroke, or ampheck (↓), Sheffer’s stroke (|, /, ↑), and and Quine’s
stroke (†, strictly Quine’s dagger). Some philosophers prefer to refer to
Peirces Stroke as Peirce’s arrow, or strictly stressed double-edged sword. His
editors disambiguate his ampheck, distinguishing between the dyadic
functor or connective equivalent to Sheffer’s stroke and ‘nor.’ While
Whitehead, Russell, and Witters love Sheffer’s stroke, Hilbert does not: ‘‘p/p’
ist dann gleichbedeutend mit ‘X̄.’ Grice explores primitiveness. It is
possible, to some extent, to qualify this or that device in terms of
primitiveness. As regards ‘not,’ if a communication-system did not contain a
unitary negative device, there would be many things that communicators can now
communicate that they would be then unable to communicate. He has two
important caveats. That would be the case unless, first, the
communication-system contained some very artificial-seeming connective like one
or other of the strokes, and, second, communicators put themselves to a good
deal of trouble, as Plato does in ‘The Sophist’ with ‘diaphoron,’ that Wiggins
symbolises with ‘Δ,’ to find, more or less case by case, complicated forms
of expression, not necessarily featuring a connective, but involving such
expressions as ‘other than’or ‘incompatible with.’ Grice further refers to
Aristotle’s ‘apophasis’ in De Int.17a25. Grice, always lured by the
potentiality of a joint philosophical endeavour, treasures his collaboration
with Strawson that is followed by one with Austin on Cat. and De Int. So what
does Aristotle say in De Int.? Surely Aristotle could have started by referring
to Plato’s Parmenides, aptly analysed by Wiggins. Since Aristotle is more of a
don than a poet, he has to give ‘not’ a name: ‘ἀπόφασις ἐστιν ἀπόφανσίς τινος
ἀπό τινος,’a predication of one thing away from another, i.e. negation of
it. This is Grice’s reflection, in a verificationist vein, of two types of
this or that negative utterance. His immediate trigger is Ryle’s contribution
on a symposium on Bradley’s idea of an internal relation, where Grice appeals
to Peirce’s incompatibility. ‘The proposition ‘This is red’ is imcompatible
with the proposition, ‘This is not coloured.’ While he uses a souly verb or
predicate for one of them, Grice will go back to the primacy of ‘potching’ at a
later stage. A P potches that the obble is not fang, but feng. It is convenient
to introduce this or that soul-state, ψ, sensing that …, or perceiving that
… Grice works mainly with two scenarios, both involved with the first-person
singular pronoun ‘I’ with which he is obsessed. Grice’s first scenario concerns
a proposition that implies another proposition featuring ‘someone, viz. I,’ the
first-person singular pronoun as subject, a sensory modal verb, and an object,
the proposition, it is not the case that ‘the α is φ1.’
The denotatum of the first-person pronoun perceives that a thing displays this
or the visual sense-datum of a colour, and the corresponding sensory modal
predicate. Via a reductive (but not reductionist) analysis, we get that, by
uttering ‘It is not the case that I see that the pillar box is blue,’ the
utterer U means, i. e. m-intends his addressee A to believe, U he sees that the
pillar box is red. U’s source, reason, ground, knowledge, or belief, upon which
he bases his uttering his utterance is U’s *indirect* mediated actual
experience, belief, or knowledge, linked to a sense-datum φ2 (red)
other than φ1 (blue). Grice’s second scenario concerns a proposition
explicitly featuring the first-person singular pronoun, an introspection,
involving an auditory sense-datum of a noise. Via reductive (but not
reductionist) analysis, we get that, by uttering ‘It is not the case that I
hear that the bell tolls in Gb,’ U means that he lacks the experience of
hearing that the bell tolls simpliciter. U’s source, reason, ground, knowledge,
or belief, upon which he bases his uttering his utterance is the *direct*
unmediated felt absence, or absentia, or privatio or privation, or apophasis,
verified by introspection, of the co-relative ψ, which
Grice links to the absence of the experience, belief, or knowledge, of the
sense-datum, the apophasis of the experience, which is thereby negated. In
either case, Grice’s analysans do not feature ‘not.’ Grice turns back to
the topic in seminars later at Oxford in connection with Strawson’s cursory
treatment of ‘not’ in “Logical Theory.”‘Not’ (and ~.) is the first pair, qua
unary satisfactory-value-functor (unlike this or that dyadic co-ordinate, and,
or, or the dyadic sub-ordinate if) in Grice’s list of this or that vernacular
counterpart attached to this or that formal device. Cf. ‘Smith has not ceased
from eating iron,’ in ‘Causal theory.’ In the fourth James lecture, Grice
explores a role for negation along the lines of Wilson’s Statement and
Inference.’ Grice’s ‘Vacuous Names’ contains Gentzen-type syntactic inference
rules for both ‘not’’s introduction (+, ~) and the elimination (-, ~) and the
correlative value assignation. Note that there are correlative rules for
Peirce’s arrow. Grice’s motivation is to qualify ‘not’ with a subscript
scope-indicating device on ~ for a tricky case like ‘The climber of Mt. Everest
on hands and knees is not to atttend the party in his honour.’ The logical form
becomes qualified: ‘~2(Marmaduke Bloggs is coming)1’, or
‘~2(Pegasus flies)1.’ generic formula is ~2p1,
which indicates that p is introduced prior to ~. In the earlier James lectures
he used the square bracket device. The generic formula being ‘~[p],’ where [p]
reads that p is assigned common-ground status. Cancelling the implicata may be
trickier. ‘It is not the case that I hear that the bell tolls because it is
under reparation.’ ‘That is not blue; it’s an optical illusion.’ Cf. Grice on
‘It is an illusion. What is it?’ Cf. The king of France is not bald because
there is no king of France. In Presupposition, the fourth Urbana lecture, Grice
uses square brackets for the subscript scope indicating device. ‘Do not arrest
[the intruder]!,’ the device meant to assign common-ground status. In ‘Method”
Grice plays with the internalisation of a pre-theoretical concept of not within
the scope of ‘ψ.’ In the Kant lectures on “Aspects,” Grice explores ‘not’
within the scope of this or that mode operator, as in the buletic utterance,
‘Do not arrest the intruder!’ Is that internal narrow scope, ‘!~p,’ or external
wide scope, ‘~!p’? Grice also touches on this or that mixed-mode utterance, and
in connection with the minor problem of presupposition within the scope of an
operator other than the indicative-mode operator. ‘Smith has not ceased from
eating iron, because Smith does not exist ‒ cf. Hamlet sees that his father is
on the rampants, but the sight is not reciprocated ‒ Macbeth sees that Banquo
is near him, but his vision is not reciprocated. Grice is having in mind Hare’s
defense of a non-doxastic utterance. In his commentary in PGRICE, Grice
expands on this metaphysical construction routine of Humeian projection with
the pre-intuitive concept of ‘not,’
specifying the different stages the intuitive concept undergoes until it
becomes fully rationally recostructed, as something like a Fregeian sense.
In the centerpiece lecture of the William James set, Grice explores Wilson’s
Statement and inference to assign a métier to ‘not,’ and succeeds in finding
one. The conversational métier of ‘not’ is explained in terms of the conversational
implicatum. By uttering ‘Smith has not been to prison yet,’ U implies that some
utterer has, somewhere, sometime, expressed an opinion to the contrary. This is
connected by Grice with the ability a rational creature has to possess to
survive. The creature has to be able, as Sheffer notes, to deny this or that.
Grices notable case is the negation of a conjunction. So it may well be that
the most rational role for ‘not’ is not primary in that it is realised once
less primitive operators are introduced. Is there a strict conceptual
distinction, as Grice suggests, between negation and privation? If privation
involves or presupposes negation, one might appeal to something like Modified
Occam’s Razor (M. O. R.), do not multiply negations beyond necessity. In his
choice of examples, Grice seems to be implicating negation for an empirically
verifiable, observational utterance, such as U does not see that the pillar box
is blue not because U does not exist, but on the basis of U’s experiencing,
knowing, believing and indeed seeing that the pillar box is red. This is a
negation, proper, or simpliciter (even if it involves a sense-datum phi2
incompatible with sense-datum phi1. Privation, on the other hand, would be
involved in an utterance arrived via introspection, such as U does not hear
that the bell is ringing on the basis of his knowing that he is aware of the
absence, simpliciter, of an experience to that effect. Aristotle, or some later
Aristotelian, may have made the same distinction, within apophasis between
negation or negatio and privation or privatio. Or not. Of course, Grice is
ultimately looking for the rationale behind the conversational implicatum in
terms of a principle of conversational helpfulness underlying his picture of
conversation as rational co-operation. To use his Pological jargon in Method,
in Pirotese and Griceish There is the P1, who potches that the obble
is not fang, but feng. P1 utters p explicitly conveying that p.
P2 alternatively feels like negating that. By uttering ~p, P2 explicitly
conveys that ~p. P1 volunteers to P2, ~p, explicitly
conveying that ~p. Not raining! Or No bull. You are safe. Surely a rational
creature should be capable to deny this or that, as Grice puts it in Indicative
conditionals. Interestingly, Grice does not consider, as Gazdar does, under
Palmer), he other possible unitary functors (three in a standard binary
assignation of values) – just negation, which reverses the satisfactory-value
of the radix or neustic. In terms of systematics, thus, it is convenient
to regard Grices view on negation and privation as his outlook on the operators
as this or that procedure by the utterer that endows him with this or that
basic expressive, operative power. In this case, the expressive power is
specifically related to his proficiency with not. The proficiency is co-related
with this or that device in general, whose vernacular expression will bear a
formal counterpart. Many of Grices comments addressed to this more general
topic of this or that satisfactoriness-preserving operator apply to not, and
thus raise the question about the explicitum or explicatum of not. A Griceian
should not be confused. The fact that Grice does not explicitly mention not or
negation when exploring the concept of a generic formal device does not mean
that what he says about formal device may not be particularised to apply to not
or negation. His big concession is that Whitehead and Russell (and Peano before
them) are right about the explicitum or explicatum of not being ~, even if
Grice follows Hilbert and Ackermann in dismissing Peirces arrow for pragmatic
reasons. This is what Grice calls the identity thesis to oppose to Strawsons
divergence thesis between not and ~. More formally, by uttering Not-p, U
explicitly conveys that ~p. Any divergence is explained via the implicatum. A
not utterance is horribly uninformative, and not each of them is of
philosophical interest. Grice joked with Bradley and Searles The man in the
next table is not lighting the cigarette with a twenty-dollar bill, the denotatum
of the Subjects being a Texas oilman in his country club. The odd implicatum is
usually to the effect that someone thought otherwise. In terms of Cook Wilson,
the role of not has more to do with the expressive power of a rational creature
to deny a molecular or composite utterance such as p and q Grice comments that
in the case of or, the not may be addressed, conversationally, to the
utterability of the disjunction. His example involves the logical form Not (p
or q). It is not the case that Wilson or Heath will be prime minister. Theres
always hope for Nabarro or Thorpe. The utterer is, at the level of
the implicatum, not now contradicting what his co-conversationalist has
utterered. The utterer is certainly not denying that Wilson will be Prime
Minister. It is, rather, that the utterer U wishes not to assert or state, say,
what his co-conversant has asserted, but, instead, to substitute a different
statement or claim which the utterer U regards as preferable under the
circumstances. Grice calls this substitutive disagreement. This was a
long-standing interest of Grices: an earlier manuscript reads Wilson or MacMillan
will be prime minister. Let us take a closer look at the way Grice
initially rephrases his two scenarios involving not as attached to an auditory
and a visual sense datum. I do not hear that the bell is ringing is rationally
justified by the absence or absentia of the experience of hearing it. I do not
see that the pillar box is blue is rationally justified by U’s sensing that the
pillar box is red. The latter depends on Kant’s concept of the synthetic a
priori with which Grice tests with his childrens playmates. Can a sweater be
red and green all over? No stripes allowed! Can a pillar box be blue and red
all over? Cf. Ryles’ssymposium on negation with Mabbott, for the Aristotelian
Society, a source for Grices reflexion. Ryle later discussing Bradleys internal
relations, reflects that that the proposition, ‘This pillar box is only red’ is
incompatible with ‘This pillar box is only blue.’ As bearing this or that
conversational implicata, Grices two scenarios can be re-phrased, unhelpfully,
as I am unhearing a noise and That is unred. The apparently
unhelpful point bears however some importance. It shows that negation and not
are not co-extensive. The variants also demonstrate that the implicatum, qua
conversational, rather than conventional, is non-detachable. Not is hardly
primtive pure Anglo-Saxon. It is the rather convoluted abbreviation of
ne-aught. Its ne that counts as the proper, pure, amorphous Anglo-Saxon
negation, as in a member of parliament (if not a horse) uttering
nay. Grices view of conversation as rational co-operation, as
displayed in this or that conversational implicatum necessitates that the
implicatum is never attached to this or that expression. Here the favoured, but
not exclusive expression, is not, since Strawson uses it. But the vernacular
provides a wealth of expressive ways to be negative! Grice possibly chose
negation not because, as with this or that nihilistic philosopher, such as
Schopenhauer, or indeed Parmenides, he finds the concept a key one. But one may
well say that this is the Schopenhauerian or the Parmenidesian in Griceian.
Grice is approaching not in linguistic, empiricist, or conceptual key. He is
applying the new Oxonian methodology: the reductive analysis alla Russell in
terms of logical construction. Grices implies priority is with by uttering x,
by which U explicitly conveys that ~p, U implicitly conveys that q. The essay
thus elaborates on this implicated q. For the record, nihilism was coined
by philosopher Jacobi, while the more primitive negatio and privatio is each a
time-honoured item in the philosophical lexicon, with which mediaeval this or
that speculative grammarian is especially obsessed. Negatio translates the ‘apophasis’
of Aristotle, and has a pretty pedigreed history. The philosophical lexicon has
nĕgātĭo, f. negare, which L and S, unhelpfully, render as a denying,
denial, negation, Cicero, Sull. 13, 39: negatio inficiatioque
facti, id. Part. 29, 102. L and S go on to add that negatio is predicated
of to the expression that denies, a negative. Grice would say that L and S
should realise that its the utterer who denies. The source L and S give is
ADogm. Plat. 3, p. 32, 38. As for Grices other word, there
is “prīvātĭo,” f. privare, which again unhelpfully, L and S render as a
taking away, privation of a thing. doloris, Cic. Fin. 1, 11,
37, and 38, or pain-free, as Grice might prefer, cf. zero-tolerance. L and
S also cite: 2, 9, 28: culpæ, Gell. 2, 6, 10. The negatio-privatio
distinction is attested in Grecian, indeed the distinction requires its own
entry. For it is Boethius who first renders Aristotle’s ‘hexis’ into ‘habitus’
and Aristotle’s steresis’ into ‘privatio.’ So the the Grecians were never just happy
with “ἀπόφασις (A)” and they had to keep multiplying negations beyond
necessity. The noun is from “ἀπόφημι.” Now L and S unhepfully render the noun
as as denial, negation, adding “oκατάφασις,” for which they cites from The Sophista
by Plato (263e), to give then the definition “ἀπόφασις ἐστιν
ἀπόφανσίς τινος ἀπό τινος,” a predication of one thing away
from another, i.e. negation of it, for which they provide the
source that Grice is relying. on: Arist. Int.17a25, cf. APo. 72a14;
ἀπόφασις τινός, negation, exclusion of a thing, Pl. Cra. 426d; δύο ἀ.
μίαν κατάφασιν ἀποτελοῦσι Luc. Gall.11. If he was not the first to explore
philosophically negation, Grice may be regarded as a philosopher who most
explored negation as occurring in a that-clause followed by a propositional
complexus that contains ~, and as applied to a personal agent, in a lower
branch of philosophical psychology. It is also the basis for his linguistic
botany. He seems to be trying to help other philosopher not to fall in the trap
of thinking that not has a special sense. The utterer means that ~p. In what
ways is that to be interpreted? Grice confessed to never
been impressed by Ayer. The crudities and dogmatisms seemed too pervasive.
Is Grice being an empiricist and a verificationist? Let us go back to This is
not red and I am not hearing a noise. Grices suggestion is that the
incompatible fact offering a solution to this problem is the fact that the
utterer of “Someone, viz. I, does not hear that the bell tolls” is indicating (and
informing) that U merely entertains the positive (affirmative) proposition,
Someone, viz. I, hears that the bell tolls, without having an attitude of
certainty towards it. More generally, Grice is proposing, like Bradley and
indeed Bosanquet, who Grice otherwise regards as a minor philosopher, a more
basic Subjects-predicate utterance. The α is not β. The utterer
states I do not know that α is β if and only if every present
mental or souly process, of mine, has some characteristic
incompatible with the knowledge that α is β. One
may propose a doxastic weaker version, replacing the dogmatic Oxonian know
with believe. Grices view of compatibility is an application of the
Sheffer stroke that Grice will later use in accounts of not. ~p iff p|p or ~p ≡df p|p. But
then, as Grice points out, Sheffer is hardly Griceian. If Pirotese did not
contain a unitary negative device, there would be many things that a P should
be able to express that the P should be unable to express unless Pirotese
contained some very artificially-looking dyadic functor like one or other of
the strokes, or the P put himself to a good deal of trouble to find, more or
less case by case, complicated forms of expression, as Platos Parmenides does,
involving such expressions as other than, or incompatible with. V. Wiggins on
Platos Parmenides in a Griceian key. Such a complicate form of expression would
infringe the principle of conversational helpfulness, notably in its
desideratum of conversational clarity, or conversational perspicuity [sic], where
the sic is Grices seeing that unsensitive Oxonians sometimes mistake
perspicuity for the allegedly, cognate perspicacity (L. perspicacitas, like
perspicuitas, from perspicere). Grice finds the unitary brevity of not-p
attractive. Then theres the pretty Griceian idea of the pregnant proposition.
Im not hearing a nose is pregnant, as Occam has it, with I am hearing a
noise. A scholastic and mediæval philosopher loves to be figurative.
Grices main proposal may be seen as drawing on this or that verificationist
assumption by Ayer, who actually has a later essay on not falsely connecting it
with falsity. Grices proposed better analysis would please Ayer, had Grice been
brought on the right side of the tracks, since it can be Subjectsed to a
process of verification, on the understanding that either perception
through the senses (It is red) or introspection (Every present mental or
souly process of mine ) is each an empirical phenomenon. But there are
subtleties to be drawn. At Oxford, Grices view on negation will influence
philosophers like Wiggins, and in a negative way, Cohen, who raises the
Griceian topic of the occurrence of negation in embedded clauses, found by
Grice to be crucial for the rational genitorial justification of not as a
refutation of the composite p and q), and motivating Walker with a reply
(itself countered by Cohen ‒ Can the conversationalist hypothesis be
defended?). So problems are not absent, as they should not! Grice re-read
Peirces definition or reductive analysis of not and enjoyed it! Peirce
discovers the logical connective Grice calls the Sheffer Stroke, as well as the
related connective nor (also called Joint Denial, and quite appropriately
Peirces Arrow, with other Namess in use being Quines Arrow or Quines Dagger and
today usually symbolized by “/”). The relevant manuscript, numbered MS 378 in a
subsequent edition and titled A Boolian [sic] Algebra with One Constant, MS
378, was actually destined for discarding and was salvaged for posterity A
fragmentary text by Peirce also shows familiarity with the remarkable
meta-logical characteristics that make a single function functionally complete,
and this is also the case with Peirces unfinished Minute Logic: these texts are
published posthumously. Peirce designates the two truth functions, nand and
nor, by using the symbol “” which he called ampheck, coining this
neologism from the Grecian ἀμφήκης, of equal length in both directions. Peirces
editors disambiguate the use of symbols by assigning “” to the
connective we call Sheffers troke while preserving the symbol “/” for
nor. In MS 378, A Boolian Algebra with One Constant, by Peirce, tagged
“to be discarded” at the Department of Philosophy at Harvard, Peirce reduces
the number of logical operators to one constant. Peirce states that his
notation uses the minimum number of different signs and shows for the first
time the possibility of writing both universal and particular propositions with
but one copula. Peirce’s notation is later termed Sheffers stroke, and is also
well-known as the nand operation, in Peirce’s terms the operation by which two
propositions written in a pair are considered to be both denied. In the same
manuscript, Peirce also discovers what is the expressive completeness of ‘nor,’
indeed today rightly recognized as the Peirce arrow. Like Sheffer, of
Cornell, independently does later (only to be dismissed by Hilbert and
Ackermann), Peirce understands that these two connectives can be used to reduce
all mathematically definable connectives (also called primitives and constants)
of propositional logic. This means that all definable connectives of
propositional logic can be defined by using only Sheffers stroke or nor as the
single connective. No other connective (or associated function) that takes one
or two variables as inputs has this property. Standard, two-valued
propositional logic has no unary functions that have the remarkable property of
functional completeness. At first blush, availability of this option ensures
that economy of resources can be obtained—at least in terms of how many
functions or connectives are to be included as undefined. Unfortunately, as
Grice, following Hilbert and Ackermann realise, there is a trade-off between
this philosophical semantic gain in economy of symbolic resources and the
pragmatically unwieldy length and rather counterintuitive, to use Grices
phrase, appearance of the formulas that use only the one connective. It
is characteristic of his logical genius, however, and emblematic of his rather
under-appreciated, surely not by Grice, contributions to the development of
semiotics that Peirce grasps the significance of functional completeness and
figure out what truth functions — up to arity 2 — are functionally complete for
two-valued propositional logic, never mind helping the philosopher to provide a
reductive analysis of negation that Grice is looking for. Strictly, this is the
property of weak functional completeness, given that we disregard whether
constants or zero-ary functions like 1 or 0 can be defined. Peirce subscribes
to a semeiotic view, popular in the Old World with Ogden and Welby, and later
Grice, according to which the fundamental nature and proper tasks of the
formal study of communication are defined by the rules set down for the
construction and manipulation of symbolic resources. A proliferation of symbols
for the various connectives that are admitted into the signature of a logical
system suffers from a serious defect on this view. The symbolic grammar fails
to match or represent the logical fact of interdefinability of the connectives,
and reductive analysis of all to one. Peirce is willing sometimes to accept
constructing a formal signature for two-valued propositional logic by using the
two-members set of connectives, which is minimally functionally complete. This
means that these two connectives — or, if we are to stick to an approach that
emphasizes the notational character of logical analysis, these two symbols —are
adequate expressively. Every mathematically definable connective of the logic
can be defined by using only these two. And the set is minimally functionally
complete in that neither of these connectives can be defined by the other (so,
as we say, they are both independent relative to each other.) The
symbol can be viewed as representing a constant truth function
(either unary or binary) that returns the truth value 0 for any input or
inputs. Or it can be regarded as a constant, which means that it is a zero=ary
(zero-input) function, a degenerate function, which refers to the truth value
0. Although not using, as Grice does, Peanos terminology, Peirce takes the
second option. This set has cardinality 2 (it has exactly 2 members) but it is
not the best we can do. Peirces discovery of what we have called the Sheffer
functions or strokes (anachronistically and unfairly to Peirce, as Grice notes,
but bowing to convention) shows that we can have a set of cardinality 1 (a
one-member set or a so-called singleton) that is minimally functionally
complete with respect to the definable connectives of two-valued propositional
logic. Thus, either one of the following sets can do. The sets are functionally
complete and, because they have only one member each, we say that the
connectives themselves have the property of functional completeness. / is the
symbol of Sheffers stroke or nand and /is the symbol of the Peirce Arrow
or nor. Grice stipulates as such, even though he does not introduce his grammar
formally. It is important to show ow these functions can define other
functions. Algebraically approached, this is a matter of functional
composition In case one wonders why the satisfaction with defining the
connectives of the set that comprises the symbols for negation, inclusive
disjunction, and conjunction, there is an explanation. There is an easy,
although informal, way to show that this set is functionally complete. It is
not minimally functionally complete because nor and nand are
inter-definable. But it is functionally complete. Thus, showing that one can
define these functions suffices for achieving functional completeness.
Definability should be thought as logical equivalence. One connective can be
defined by means of others if and only if the formulae in the definition (what
is defined and what is doing the defining) are logically equivalent. Presuppose
the truth-tabular definitions of the connectives. Grice enjoyed that.
Meanwhile, at Corpus, Grice is involved in serious philosophical studies under
the tutelage of Hardie. While his philosophical socialising is limited, having
been born on the wrong side of the tracks, first at Corpus, and then at
Merton, and ending at St. Johns, Grice fails to attend the seminal meetings at
All Souls held on Thursday evenings by the play group of the seven (Austin,
Ayer, Berlin, Hampshire, MacDermott, MacNabb, and Woozley). Three of them will
join Grice in the new play group after the war: Austin, Hampshire, and Woozley.
But at St. Johns Grice tutors Strawson, and learns all about the linguistic
botany methodology on his return from the navy. Indeed, his being appointed
Strawson as his tutee starts a life-long friendship and collaboration. There
are separate entries for the connectives: conjunction, disjunction, and
conditional. Refs.: Allusions to negation are scattered, notably in Essay 4 in
WoW, but also in “Method in philosophical psychology,” and “Prejudices and
predilections” (repr. in “Conception”), and under semantics and syntax. There
are specific essays of different dates, in s. V, in two separate folders, in
BANC.
absolutum: If we say, emissor E communicates that p, what is its
relatum? Nothing. The theory of communication NEEDS to be relative. To search
for the absolute in the theory of communication is otiose, for in communication
there is an unavoidable relatum, which is the emissor himself. Now Grice is
interested in an emissor that communicates that p is absolute. So we need
absolute and meta-absolute. I.e. if the emissor can communicate that ‘p’ is
absolute, he has more ground to exert his authority into inducing in his
addressee that the addressee believe what he is intended to believe.
The
absolutum is one, unlike Grice’s absoluta, or absolutes. Trust Grice to
pluralise Bradley’s absolute. While it is practical to restore the root of
‘axis’ for Grice’s value (validum, optimum), it is not easy to find a
grecianism for the absolutum absolute. Lewis and Short have “absolvere,” which
they render as
‘to loosen from, to make loose, set free, detach, untie (usu. trop., the fig.
being derived from fetters, qs. a vinculis solvere, like “vinculis exsolvere,”
Plaut. Truc. 3, 4, 10). So that makes sense. Lewis and Short also have “absolutum,” which they render as“absolute, unrestricted,
unconditional,” – as in Cicero: “hoc mihi videor videre, esse quasdam cum
adjunctione necessitudines, quasdam simplices et absolutas” (Inv. 2, 57, 170). Grice
repatedly uses the plural ‘abosolutes,’ and occasionally the singular. Obviously,
Grice has in mind the absolute-relative distinction, not wanting to be seen as
relativist, unless it is a constructionist relativist. Grice refers to Bradley in ‘Prolegomena,’ and has an essay
on the ‘absolutes.’ It is all back to when German philosopher F. Schiller, of
Corpus, publishes “Mind!” Its frontispiece is a portrait of the absolute, “very
much like the Bellman’s completely blank map in The hunting of the snark.” The
absolutum is the sum of all being, an emblem of idealism. Idealism dominates
Oxford for part of Grice’s career. The realist mission, headed by Wilson, is to
clean up philosophy’s act Bradley’s Appearance and reality, mirrors the point of
the snark. Bradley uses the example of a lump of sugar. It all begins to
crumble, In Oxonian parlance, the absolute is a boo-jum, you see. Bradley is
clear here, to irritate Ayer: the absolutum is, put simply, a higher unity, pure
spirit. “It can never and it enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution
and progress.” Especially at Corpus, tutees are aware of Hartmann’s absolutum.
Barnes thinks he can destroy with his emotivism. Hartmann, otherwise a
naturalist, is claims that this or that value exists, not in the realm (Reich)
of nature, but as an ideal essence of a thing, but in a realm which is not
less, but more real than nature. For Hartmann, if a value exists, it is not
relative, but absolute, objective, and rational, and so is a value judgment. Like
Grice, for Hartmann, the relativity dissolves upon conceiving and constructing
a value as an absolutum, not a relativum. The essence of a thing need not
reduce to a contingence. To conceive the essence of a table is to conceive what
the métier of a table. Like Hartmann, Grice is very ‘systematik’ axiologist, and
uses ‘relative’ variously. Already in the Oxford Philosophical Society, Grice
conceives of an utterer’s meaning and his communicatum is notoriously relative.
It is an act of communication relative to an agent. For Grice, there is hardly
a realm of un-constructed reality, so his construction of value as an absolutum
comes as no surprise. Grice is especially irritated by Julie Andrews in Noël
Coward’s “Relative values” and this Oxonian cavalier attitude he perceives in Barnes
and Hare, a pinko simplistic attitude against any absolute. Unlike
Hartmann, Grice adopts not so much a neo-Kantian as an Ariskantian tenet. The
ratiocinative part of the soul of a personal being is designated the proper
judge in the power structure of the soul. Whatever is relative to this
particular creature successfully attains, ipso facto, absolute value. Refs.: For
a good overview of emotivism in Oxford v. Urmson’s The emotive theory of
ethics. Grice, “Values, morals, absolutes, and the metaphysical,” The H. P.
Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), c 9-f. 24, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley.
abstractum: In an emissor draws a skull to communicate that there
is danger, the addressee comes to think that there is danger, in the air. Let’s
formalise that proposition as “The air is dangerous.” Is that abstract? It is:
it involves two predicates which may be said to denote two abstracta: the
property of being air, and the property of being dangerous. So abstracta are
unavoidable in a communicatum, that reaches the sophistication of requiring a
‘that’-clause. The usual phrase in Grice
is ‘abstract’ as adjective and applied to ‘entity’ as anything troublesome to
nominalism. At Oxford, Grice belongs to the class for members whose class have
no members. If class C and class C have the same
members, they are the same. A class xx is a set just in case there is a
class yy such that x∈yx∈y. A
class which is not a set is an improper, not a proper class, or a well-ordered
one, as Burali-Forti puts it in ‘Sulle classi ben ordinate.’ Grice reads Cantor's essay and finds an antinomy on the
third page. He mmediately writes his uncle “I am reading Cantor and find an antinomy.”
The antinomy is obvious and concerns the class of all classes that are not
members of themselves. This obviously leads to a pragmatic contradiction, to
echo Moore, since this class must be and not be a member of itself and not a
member of itself. Grice had access to the Correspondence of Zermelo and re-wrote
the antinomy.Which leads Grice to Austin. For Austin thinks he can lead a
class, and that Saturday morning is a good time for a class of members whose
classes have no members, almost an insult. Grice is hardly attached to
canonicals, not even first-order predicate logic with identity and class
theory. Grice sees extensionalism asa a position imbued with the spirit of nominalism
yet dear to the philosopher particularly impressed by the power of class
theory. But Grice is having in mind the concretum-abstractum distinction, and
as an Aristotelian, he wants to defend a category as an abstractum or
universalium. Lewis and Short have ‘concrescere,’ rendered as ‘to grow
together; hence with the prevailing idea of uniting, and generally of soft or
liquid substances which thicken; to harden, condense, curdle, stiffen, congeal,
etc. (very freq., and class. in prose and poetry).’ For ‘abstractum,’ they have
‘abstrăhere, which they render as ‘to draw away from a place or person, to drag
or pull away.’ The ability to see a horse (hippos) without seeing horseness
(hippotes), as Plato remarks, is a matter of stupidity. Yet, perhaps bue to the
commentary by his editors, Grice feels defensive about proposition. Expanding
on an essay on the propositional complexum,’ the idea is that if we construct a
complexum step by step, in class-theoretical terms, one may not committed to an
‘abstract entity.’ But how unabstract is class theory? Grice hardly attaches to
the canonicals of first-order predicate calculus with identity together with
class theory. An item i is a universalium and 'abstractum' iff i fails to
occupy a region in space and time. This raises a few questions. It is
conceivable that an items that is standardly regarded as an 'abstractum' may
nonetheless occupy a volumes of space and time. The school of latter-day
nominalism is for ever criticised at Oxford, and Grice is no exception. The
topic of the abstractum was already present in Grice’s previous generation, as
in the essay by Ryle on the systematically misleading expression, and the
category reprinted in Flew. For it to be, a particular concretum individuum or
prima substantia has to be something, which is what an abstractum universaium
provides. A universal is part of the ‘essentia’ of the particular. Ariskants
motivation for for coining “to katholou” is doxastic. Aristotle claims that to
have a ‘doxa’ requires there to be an abstract universalium, not apart from (“para”),
but holding of (“kata”) a concretum individuum. Within the “this” (“tode”)
there is an aspect of “something” (“ti.”). Aristotle uses the “hêi” (“qua”) locution,
which plays a crucial role in perceiving. Ariskant’s remark that a particular
horse is always a horse (with a species and a genus) may strike the
non-philosopher as trivial. Grice strongly denies that its triviality is
unenlightening, and he loves to quote from Plato. Liddell and Scott have “ἱππότης,”
rendered as “horse-nature, the concept of horse,” Antisth. et Pl. ap. Simp.in
Cat. 208.30,32, Sch. Arist Id.p.167F. Then there is the ‘commensurate
universal,’ the major premise is a universal proposition. Grice provides a
logical construction of such lexemes as “abstractum” and “universalium,” and
“concretum” and “individuum,” or “atomon” in terms of two relations, “izzing”
and “hazzing.” x is an individuum or atomon iff nothing other than x izzes x. Austin
is Austin, and Strawson is Strawson. Now, x is a primum individuum, proton
atomon, or prima substantia, iff x is an individuum, and nothing hazzes x. One needs to distinguish between a singular
individuum and a particular (“to kathekaston,” particulare) simpliciter. Short
and Lewis have “partĭcŭlāris, e, adj.” which they render, unhelpfully, as
“particular,” but also as “of or concerning a part, partial, particular.”
“Propositiones aliae universales, aliae particulares, ADogm. Plat. 3, p. 35,
34: partĭcŭlārĭter is particularly,
ADogm. Plat. 3, p. 33, 32; opp. “generaliter,” Firm. Math. 1, 5 fin.; opp.
“universaliter,” Aug. Retract. 1, 5 fin. Cf. Strawson, “Particular and
general,” crediting Grice twice; the second time about a fine point of
denotatum: ‘the tallest man that ever lived, lives, or will live.” To define a
‘particular,’ you need to introduce, as Ariskant does, the idea of predication.
(∀x)(x
is an individuum)≡◻(∀y)(y izzes x)⊃(x izzes y). (∀x)(x izz a particulare(≡◻(∀y)(x
izzes predicable of y)⊃(x
izzes y Λ y izzes x). Once we have defined a ‘particular,’ we can go
and define a ‘singulare,’ a ‘tode ti,’ a ‘this what.” (∀x)(x izzes singulare)⊃(x izzes an individuum). There’s
further implicate to come. (∀x)(x izzes a particulare)⊃(x izzes an individuum)). The concern by Grice
with the abstractum as a “universalium in re” can be traced back to his reading
of Aristotle’s Categoriæ, for his Lit. Hum., and later with Austin and
Strawson. Anything but a ‘prima substantia,’ ‒ viz. essence, accident, attribute,
etc. ‒ may be said to belong in the realm of the abstractum or
universalium qua predicable. As such, an abstractum and univeralium is not a
spatio-temporal continuant. However, a category shift or
‘subjectification,’ by Grice allows a universalium as subject. The topic is
approached formally by means of the notion of order. First-order predicate
calculus ranges over this or that spatio-temporal continuant individual, in
Strawson’s use of the term. A higher-order predicate calculus ranges over this
or that abstractum, a feature, and beyond. An abstractum universalium is only referred
to in a second-order predicate calculus. This is Grice’s attempt to approach
Aristkant in pragmatic key. In his exploration of the abstractum, Grice is
challenging extensionalism, so fashionable in the New World within The School
of Latter-Day Nominalists. Grice is careful here since he is well aware that
Bennett has called him a meaning-nominalist. Refs.: For pre-play group
reflections see Ryle’s Categories and Systematically misleading expressions.
Explorations by other members of Grice’s playgroup are Strawson, ‘Particular
and general’ and Warnock, ‘Metaphysics in logic,’ The main work by Grice at
Oxford on the ‘abstractum’ is with Austin (f. 15) and later with Strawson (f.23).
Grice, “Aristotle’s Categoriae,” The H. P. Grice Papers, S. II, c. 6-f. 15 and
c. 6, f. 23, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley.
acceptabilitas: Grice generalizes his desirability and credibility
functions into a single acceptability. Acceptability has obviously degrees.
Grice is thinking of ‘scales’ alla: must, optimal acceptability (for both
modalities), should (medium acceptability), and ought (defeasible
acceptability). He develops the views in The John Locke lectures, having
introduced ‘accept,’ in his BA lecture on ‘Intention and Uncertainty.’ In fact,
much as in “Causal Theory” he has an excursus on ‘Implication,’ here he has,
also in italics, an excursus on “acceptance.” It seems that a degree of analogy
between intending and believing has to be admitted; likewise the presence of a
factual commitment in the case of an expression of intention. We can now use
the term ‘acceptance’ to express a generic concept applying both to cases of
intention and to cases of belief. He who intends to do A and he who believes
that he will do A can both be said to accept (or to accept it as being the
case) that he will do A. We could now attempt to renovate the three-pronged
analysis discussed in Section I, replacing references in that analysis to being
sure or certain that one will do A by references to accepting that one will do
A. We might reasonably hope thereby to escape the objections raised in Section
I, since these objections seemingly centred on special features of the notion of
certainty which would NOT attach to the generic notion of acceptance. Hope that
the renovated analysis will enable us to meet the sceptic will not immediately
be realised, for the sceptic can still as (a) why some cases of acceptance
should be specially dispensed from the need for evidential backing, and (b) if
certain cases are exempt from evidential justification but not from
justification, what sort of justification is here required. Some progress might
be achieved by adopting a different analysis of intention in terms of
acceptance. We might suggest that ‘Grice intends to go to Harborne’ is very
roughly equivalent to the conjunction of ‘Grice accepts-1 that he will go to
Harborne’ and ‘Grice accepts-2 that his going to Harborne will result from the
effect of his acceptance-1 that he will go to Harborne. The idea is that when a
case of acceptance is also a case of belief, the accepter does NOT regard his
acceptance as contributing towards the realisation of the state of affairs the
future the existence of which he accepts; whereas when a case of acceptance is
not a case of belief but a case of intention, he does regard the acceptance as
so contributing. Such an analysis clearly enables us to deal with the sceptic
with regard to this question (a), viz. why some cases of acceptance (those
which are cases of intention) should be specially exempt from the need of
evidential backing. For if my going to Harborne is to depend causally on my
acceptance that I shall-c go, the possession of satisfactory evidence that I
shall-c go will involve possession of the information that I accept that I
shall-c go. Obviously, then, I cannot (though others can) come to accept that I
shall-c go on the basis of satisfactory evidence, for to have such evidence I
should have already to have accepted that I shall-c go. I cannot decide whether
or not to accept-1 that I shall-c go on the strength of evidence which includes
as a datum that I do accept-1 that I shall-c go. Grice grants that we are still
unable to deal with the sceptic as regards question (b), viz. what sort of
justification is available for those cases of acceptance which require non-evidential
justification even though they involve a factual commitment. Though it is clear
that, on this analysis, one must not expect the intender to rely on evidence
for his statements of what he will in fact do, we have not provided any account
of the nature of the non-evidential considerations which may be adduced to
justify such a statement, nor (a fortiori) of the reasons why such
considerations might legitimately thought to succeed in justifying such a
statement. Refs.: Grice, “Intention and uncertainty,” The British Academy, and
BANC, MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library.
acceptum: As a meta-ethicist, like Hare, Grice is interested in
providing criteria for acceptability. He proposes three formal
universalizability, conceptual universalizability, and applicational
universalizability. This is Grice’s Golden Rule, which is Biblical in nature. Grice
needs a past participle for a ‘that’-clause of something ‘thought’. He has
‘creditum’ for what is believed, and ‘desideratum’ for what is desired. So
he uses ‘acceptum’ for what is accepted, a neutral form to cover both the
desideratum and the creditum. Short and Lewis have ‘accipio,’ f.
‘capio.’ Grice uses the abbreviation “Acc” for this. As he puts it in the
Locke lectures: "An idea I want to
explore is that we represent the sentences ‘Smith should be recovering his health by now’ and ‘Smith should join
the cricket club’ as having the
following structures. First, a common "rationality" operator
'Acc', to be heard as "it is reasonable that", "it is
acceptABLE that", "it ought to be that", "it
should be that", or in some other similar way.Next, one or other of
two mode operators, which in the case of the first are to be written as '⊢' and in the case of the second are to be
written as '!.’ Finally a 'radical', to be represented by 'r' or some other
lower-case letter. The structure for the second is ‘Acc + ⊢ + r. For the second, ‘Acc + ! + r,’
with each symbol falling within the scope of its predecessor. Grice is not a
psychologist, but he speaks of the ‘soul.’ He was a philosopher engaged in
philosophical psychology. The psychological theory which Grice envisages would
be deficient as a theory to explain behaviour if it did not contain provision
for interests in the ascription of psychological states otherwise than as tools
for explaining and predicting behaviour, interests e. g. on the part of one
creature to be able to ascribe these rather than those psychological states to
another creature because of a concern for the other creature. Within such a
theory it should be possible to derive strong motivations on the part of the
creatures Subjects to the theory against the abandonment of the central
concepts of the theory and so of the theory itself, motivations which the
creatures would or should regard as justified.
Indeed, only from within the framework of such a theory, I think, can
matters of evaluation, and so, of the evaluation of modes of explanation, be
raised at all. If I conjecture aright, then, the entrenched system contains the
materials needed to justify its own entrenchment; whereas no rival system
contains a basis for the justification of anything at all. We should recall
that the first rendering that Liddell and Scott give for “ψυχή” is “life;” the
tripartite division of “ψ., οἱ δὲ περὶ Πλάτωνα καὶ Ἀρχύτας καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ
Πυθαγόρειοι τὴν ψ. τριμερῆ ἀποφαίνονται, διαιροῦντες εἰς λογισμὸν καὶ θυμὸν καὶ
ἐπιθυμίαν,” Pl.R.439e sqq.; in Arist. “ἡ ψ. τούτοις ὥρισται, θρεπτικῷ,
αἰσθητικῷ, διανοητικῷ, κινήσει: πότερον δὲ τοὔτων ἕκαστόν ἐστι ψ. ἢ ψυχῆς
μόριον;” de An.413b11, cf. PA641b4; “ἡ θρεπτικὴ ψ.” Id.de An.434a22,
al.; And Aristotle also has Grice’s favourite, ‘psychic,’ ψυχικός , ή, όν,
“of the soul or life, spiritual, opp. “σωματικός, ἡδοναί” Arist.EN1117b28. The
compound “psichiologia” is first used in "Psichiologia de ratione animae
humanae," (in Bozicevic-Natalis, Vita Marci Maruli Spalatensis). A
footnote in “Method,” repr. in “Conception” dates Grice’s lectures at
Princeton. Grice is forever grateful to Carnap for having coined ‘pirot,’ or having
thought to have coined. Apparently, someone had used the expression before him
to mean some sort of exotic fish. He starts by listing this or that a focal
problem. The first problem is circularity. He refers to the dispositional
behaviouristic analysis by Ryle. The second focal problem is the alleged
analytic status of a psychological law. One problem concerns some respect for
Grice’s own privileged access to this or that state and this or that avowal of
this or that state being incorrigible. The fourth problem concerns the
law-selection. He refers to pessimism. He talks of folk-science. D and C are is
each predicate-constant in some law L in some psychological theory θ. This
or that instantiable of D or C may well be a set or a property or neither.
Grices way of Ramseyified naming: There is just one predicate D, such that
nomological generalization L introducing D via implicit definition in
theory θ obtains. Uniqueness is essential since D is assigned to a
names for a particular instantiable (One can dispense with uniqueness by way of
Ramseyified description discussed under ‘ramseyified description.’) Grice
trusts he is not overstretching Ramsey’s original intention. He applies
Ramsey-naming and Ramsey-describing to pain. He who hollers is in pain. Or
rather, He who is in pain hollers. (Sufficient but not necessary). He rejects
disjunctional physicalism on it sounding harsh, as Berkeley puts it, to say
that Smiths brains being in such and such a state is a case of, say, judging
something to be true on insufficient evidence. He criticises the body-soul
identity thesis on dismissing =s main purpose, to license predicate
transfers. Grice wasnt sure what his presidential address to the American
Philosophical Association will be about. He chose the banal (i.e. the
ordinary-language counterpart of something like a need we ascribe to a squirrel
to gobble nuts) and the bizarre: the philosophers construction of need and
other psychological, now theoretical terms. In the proceedings, Grice
creates the discipline of Pology. He cares to mention philosophers Aristotle,
Lewis, Myro, Witters, Ramsey, Ryle, and a few others. The essay became popular
when, of all people, Block, cited it as a programme in functionalism,
which it is Grices method in functionalist philosophical psychology. Introduces
Pology as a creature-construction discipline. Repr. in “Conception,” it
reached a wider audience. The essay is highly subdivided, and covers a lot of
ground. Grice starts by noting that, contra Ryle, he wants to see psychological
predicates as theoretical concepts. The kind of theory he is having in mind is
folksy. The first creature he introduces to apply his method is Toby, a
squarrel, that is a reconstructed squirrel. Grice gives some principles of
Pirotology. Maxims of rational behaviour compound to form what he calls an
immanuel, of which The Conversational Immanuel is a part. Grice concludes with
a warning against the Devil of Scientism, but acknowledges perhaps he was
giving much too credit to Myros influence on this! “Method”
in “Conception,” philosophical psychology, Pirotology. The Immanuel
section is perhaps the most important from the point of view of conversation as
rational cooperation. For he identifies three types of generality: formal,
applicational, and content-based. Also, he allows for there being different
types of imannuels. Surely one should be the conversational immanuel. Ryle
would say that one can have a manual, yet now know how to use it! And theres
also the Witters-type problem. How do we say that the conversationalist is
following the immanuel? Perhaps the statement is too strong – cf. following a
rule – and Grices problems with resultant and basic procedures, and how the
former derive from the latter! This connects with Chomsky, and in general with
Grices antipathy towards constitutive rules! In “Uncertainty,” Grice warns that
his interpretation of Prichards willing that as a state should not preclude a
physicalist analysis, but in Method it is all against physicalism. In Method, from the mundane to the recondite, he is
playful enough to say that primacy is no big deal, and that, if properly
motivated, he might give a reductive analysis of the buletic in terms of the
doxastic. But his reductive analysis of the doxastic in terms of the buletic
runs as follows: P judges that p iff P wills as follows: given any situation in
which P wills some end E and here are two non-empty classes K1 and
K2 of action types, such that: the performance by P of an
action-type belonging to K1 realises E1 just in
case p obtains, and the performance by the P of an action type belonging to of
K2 will realise E just in case p does not obtain, and here is
no third non-empty class K3 of action types such that the
performance by the P of an action type belonging to will realise E
whether p is true or p is false, in such situation, the P is to will that the P
performs some action type belonging to K1. Creature construction
allows for an account of freedom that will metaphysically justify absolute
value. Frankfurt has become famous for his second-order and
higher-order desires. Grice is exploring similar grounds in what comes out as
his “Method” (originally APA presidential address, now repr. in “Conception”).
Refs.: The obvious source is his “Method,” repr. in “Conception,” but the
keyword: “philosophical psychology” is useful in the Grice papers. There is a
specific essay on the power structure of the soul, The H. P. Grice Collection,
BANC.
accidentia. If there is
accidentia, there is ‘essentia.’ If the Grecians felt like using the prefix
‘syn-‘ for this, why didn’t the Romans use the affix ‘cum-’? There are two:
coincidentia, and concomitantia. For Grice, even English is vague here – to the
point like he felt that ‘have,’ as in ‘have a property’ seems more of a proper
translation of Aristotle’s ‘accidentia.’ Anything else falls under the ‘izz,’
not the ‘hazz.’ Because if the property is not accidental, the subject-item
would just cease to exist, so the essential property is something the subject
item IZZ, not HAZZ. One philosophical mistake: what is essential is not also
accidental. Grice follows Kripke in the account of existence and essence. If
Grice’s essence is his rational nature, if Grice becomes irrational, he ceases
to exist. Not so for any property that Grice has which is NOT essential. An
essential property is the first predicable, in that it is not one of this or
that genus that is redundant. So Grice applies ‘accidental,’ like ‘essential’
to ‘attribute,’ and to attribute is to predicate. An essential attribute is
manifested by an essential predicate. A non-essential predicate is an
accidental attribute. There is the ‘idea’ of the ‘proprium,’ idion, with which
Grice has to struggle a little. For what is the implicatum of a ‘proprium’
ascripition? “Man is a laughing animal.” Why would someone say such an idiocy
in the first place?!
ackrillism – after J. L.
Ackrill, London-born, Oxford-educated tutee of Grice’s. Grice cites him in
“Some reflections on ends and happiness.” The reference is to Ackrill’s
exploration on Aristotle on happiness. Ackrill was Grice’s tutee at St. John’s
where he read, as he should, for the Lit. Hum. (Phil.). Grice instilled on him
a love for Aristotle, which had been instilled on Grice by Scots philosopher
Hardie, Grice’s tutee at THE place to study Lit. Hum., Corpus. Grice regretted
that Ackrill had to *translate* Aristotle. “Of course at Clifton and Corpus,
Hardie never asked me so!” Grice thought that Aristotle was almost being
‘murdered,’ literally, by Ackrill. That’s why Grice would always quote
Aristotle in the Grecian vernacular. An “ackrillism,” then, as Grice used it,
is a way to turn Aristotle from one vernacular to another, “usually with an
Ackrillian effect.”
additum: f. addo ,
dĭdi, dĭtum, 3, v. a. 2. do (addues for addideris, Paul. ex Fest. p. 27 Müll.),addition.
Strawson Wiggins p. 520. The utterer implies something more or different from
what he explicitly conveys. Cfr. Disimplicatum, ‘less’ under ‘different from’
How seriously are we taking the ‘more.’ Not used by Grice. They seem
cross-categorial. If emissor draws a skull and then a cross he means that there
is danger and death in the offing. He crosses the cross, so it means death is
avoidable. Urmson says that Warnock went to bed and took off his boots. He
implicates in that order. So he means MORE than the ‘ampersand.” The “and” is
expanded into “and then.” But in not every case things are so easy that it’s a
matter of adding stuff. Cf. summatum, conjunctum.
additive
implicature:
By uttering ‘and,’ Russell means the Boolean adition. Whitehead means ‘and
then’. Whithead’s implicatum is ADDITIVE, as opposed to diaphoron. Grice
considers the conceptual possibilities here: One may explicitly convey that p,
and implicitly convey q, where q ADDS to p (e. g. ‘and’ implicates ‘and then’).
Sometimes it does not, “He is a fine fine,” (or a ‘nice fellow,’ Lecture IV)
implying, “He is a scoundrel.” Sometimes it has nothing to do with it, “The
weather has been nice” implying, “you committed a gaffe.” With disimplicatum,
you implicate LESS than you explicitly convey. When did you last see your
father? “Yesterday night, in my drams.” Grice sums this up with the phrase,
“more or other.” By explicitly conveying that p, the emissor implicates MORE OR
OTHER than he explicitly conveys.
agitation: a Byzantine feeling is a Ryleian
agitation. If Grice were to advance the not
wholly plausible thesis that ‘to feel Byzantine’ is just to have a an
anti-rylean agitation which is caused by the thought that Grice is or might
*be* Byzantine, it would surely be ridiculous to criticise Grice on the grounds
that Grice saddles himself with an ontological commitment to feelings, or to
modes of feeling. And why? Well, because, alla Parsons, if a quantifier is
covertly involved at all, it will only be a universal quantifier which in such
a case as this is more than adequately handled by a substitutional account of
quantification. Grice’s situation vis-a-vis the ‘proposition’ is in no way
different. In
the idiolect of Ryle, “a serious student of Grecian philosophy,” as Grice puts
it, ‘emotion’ designates at least three or four different kinds of things,
which Ryle calls an ‘inclination, or ‘motive,’ a ‘mood’, an ‘agitation,’ or a ‘commotion,’
and a ‘feeling.’ An inclination or a mood, including an agitation, is not
occurrences and doest not therefore take place either publicly or privately. It
is a propensity, not an act or state. An inclination is, however, a propensity
of this or that kind, and the kind is important. A feeling, on the other hand,
IS an occurrence, but the place that mention of it should take in a description
of human behaviour is very different from that which the standard theories
accord to it. A susceptibility to a specific agitation is on the same general
footing with an inclination, viz. that each is a general propensity and not an
occurrence. An agitation is not a motive. But an agitation does presuppose a
motive, or rather an agitataion presupposes a behaviour trend of which a motive
is for us the most interesting sort.
There
is however a matter of expression which is the source of some confusion, even
among Oxonian Wilde readers, and that did confuse philosophical psychologists
of the ability of G. F. Stout. An expression may signify both an inclination
and an agitation. But an expression may signify anything but an agitations.
Again, some other expression may signify anything but an inclination. An
expression like ‘uneasy’, ‘anxious’, ‘distressed’, ‘excited’, ‘startled’ always
signifies an agitations. An expression like ‘fond of fishing’, ‘keen on
gardening’, ‘bent on becoming a bishop’ never signifies an agitation. But an
expression like ‘love’, ‘want’, ‘desire’, ‘proud’, ‘eager,’ or many others, stands
sometimes for a simple inclination and sometimes for an agitations which is
resultant upon the inclinations and interferences with the exercise of it. Thus
‘hungry’ for ‘having a good appetite’ means roughly ‘is eating or would eat
heartily and without sauces, etc..’ This is different from ‘hungry’ in which a
person might be said to be ‘too hungry to concentrate on his work’. Hunger in
this second expression is a distress, and requires for its existence the
conjunction of an appetite with the inability to eat. Similarly the way in
which a boy is proud of his school is different from the way in which he is
speechless with pride on being unexpectedly given a place in a school team. To
remove a possible misapprehension, it must be pointed out that an agitation may
be quite agreeable. A man may voluntarily subject himself to suspense, fatigue,
uncertainty, perplexity, fear and surprise in such practices as angling,
rowing, travelling, crossword puzzles, rock-climbing and joking. That a thing
like a thrill, a rapture, a surprise, an amusement and an relief is an
agitation is shown by the fact that we can say that someone is too much
thrilled, amused or relieved to act, think or talk coherently. It
is helpful to notice that, anyhow commonly, the expression which completes ‘pang of . . .’ or ‘chill of . . .’ denotes an
agitation. A feeling, such as a man feeling Byzantine, is intrinsically
connected with an agitation. But a feeling, e. g. of a man who is feeling
Byzantine, is not intrinsically connected with an inclination, save in so far
as the inclination is a factor in the agitation. This is no novel psychological
hypothesis; It is part of the logic of our descriptions of a feeling that a
feeling (such as a man feeling Byzantine) is a sign of an agitation and is not
an exercise of an inclination. A feeling, such as a man feeling Byzantine, in
other words, is not a thing of which it makes sense to ask from what motive it
issues. The same is true, for the same reasons, of any sign of any agitation. This
point shows why we were right to suggest above that a feeling (like a man
feeling Byzantine) does not belong directly to a simple inclination. An
inclination is a certain sort of proneness or readiness to do certain sorts of
things on purpose. These things are therefore describable as being done from
that motive. They are the exercises of the disposition that we call ‘a motive’.
A feeling (such as a man feeling Byzantine) is not from a motive and is
therefore not among the possible exercise of such a propensiy. The widespread
theory that a motive such as vanity, or affection, is in the first instance a
disposition to experience certain specific feeling is therefore absurd. There
may be, of course, a tendency to have a feeling, such as feeling Byzantine;
being vertiginous and rheumatic are such tendencies. But we do not try to
modify a tendency of these kinds by a sermon. What a feeling, such as being
Byzantine, does causally belong to is the agitation. A feeling (such as feeling
Byzantine) is a sign of an agitation in the same sort of way as a stomach-ache is
a sign of indigestion. Roughly, we do not, as the prevalent theory holds, act
purposively because we experience a feeling (such as feeling Byzantine); we
experience a feeling (such as feeling Byzantine), as we wince and shudder,
because we are inhibited from acting purposively.
A
sentimentalist is a man who indulges in this or that induced feeling (such as
feeling Byzantine) without acknowledging the fictitiousness of his agitation.
It seems to be generally supposed that ‘pleasure’ or ‘desire’ is always used to
signify a feeling. And there certainly are feelings which can be described as a
feeling of pleasure or desire. Some thrills, shocks, glows and ticklings are
feelings of delight, surprise, relief and amusement; and things like a
hankering, an itche, a gnawing and a yearning is a sign that something is both
wanted and missed. But the transports, surprises, reliefs and distresses of
which such a feeling is diagnosed, or mis-diagnosed, as a sign is not itself a
feeling. It is an agitation or a mood, just as are the transports and
distresses which a child betrays by his skips and his whimpers. Nostalgia is an
agitation and one which can be called a ‘desire’; but it is not merely a
feeling or series of feelings. There is the sense of ‘pleasure’ in which it is
commonly replaced by such expressions as ‘delight’, ‘transport’, ‘rapture’,
‘exultation’ and ‘joy’. These are expressions of this or that mood signifying this
or that agitation. There are two quite different usages of ‘emotion’, in which
we explain people’s behaviour by reference to emotions. In the first usage of
‘emotion,’ we are referring to the motives or inclinations from which more or
less intelligent actions are done. In a second usage we are referring to a
mood, including the agitation or perturbation of which some aimless movement
may be a sign. In neither of these usages are we asserting or implicating that
the overt behaviour is the effect of a felt turbulence in the agent’s stream of
consciousness. In a third usage of ‘emotion’, pangs and twinges are feelings or
emotions, but they are not, save per accidens, things by reference to which we
explain behaviour. They are things for which diagnoses are required, not things
required for the diagnoses of behaviour. Since a convulsion of merriment is not
the state of mind of the sober experimentalist, the enjoyment of a joke is also
not an introspectible happening. States of mind such as these more or less
violent agitations can be examined only in retrospect. Yet nothing disastrous
follows from this restriction. We are not shorter of information about panic or
amusement than about other states of mind. If retrospection can give us the
data we need for our knowledge of some states of mind, there is no reason why
it should not do so for all. And this is just what seems to be suggested by the
popular phrase ‘to catch oneself doing so and so’. We catch, as we pursue and
overtake, what is already running away from us. I catch myself daydreaming
about a mountain walk after, perhaps very shortly after, I have begun the
daydream; or I catch myself humming a particular air only when the first few
notes have already been hummed. Retrospection, prompt or delayed, is a genuine
process and one which is exempt from the troubles ensuing from the assumption
of multiply divided attention; it is also exempt from the troubles ensuing from
the assumption that violent agitations could be the objects of cool,
contemporary scrutiny. One may be aware that he is whistling ‘Tipperary’ and
not know that he is whistling it in order to give tte appearance of a
sang-froid which he does not feel. Or, again, he may be aware that he is
shamming sang-froid without knowing that the tremors which he is trying to hide
derive from the agitation of a guilty conscience.
altogether nice girl: Or Grice’s altogether nice girl. Grice
quotes from the music-hall ditty, “Every [sic] nice girl loves a sailor”
(WoW:33). He uses this for his account of multiple quantification. There is a
reading where the emissor may implicate that every nice girl is such that he
loves one sailor, viz. Grice. But if the existential quantifier is not made
dominant, the uniqueness is disimplicated. Grice admits that not every
nominalist will be contented with the ‘metaphysical’ status of ‘the altogether
nice girl.’ The ‘one-at-a-time sailor’ is her counterpart. And they inhabit the
class of LOVE.
analytic a priori: R.
A. Wollheim. London-born philosopher, BPhil Oxon, Balliol (under D. Marcus) and
All Souls. Examined by H. P. Grice.
“What’s two times two?” Wollheim treasured that examination. It was in the
context of a discussion of J. S. Mill and I. Kant, for whom addition and
multiplication are ‘synthetic’ – a priori for Kant, a posteriori for Mill.
Grice was trying to provide a counterexample to Mill’s thesis that all comes
via deduction or induction.
animal: pirotese. Durrell’s Family Conversations.
Durrelly’s family conversation. When H. P. Grice was presented with an ‘overview’ of his
oeuvre for PGRICE (Grandy and Warner, 1986), he soon found out. “There’s something missing.” Indeed, there is a very infamous objection,
Grice thought, which is not mentioned by ‘Richards,’ as he abbreviates Richard
Grandy and Richard Warner’s majestically plural ‘overview,’ which seems to
Grice to be one to which Grice must respond. And he shall! The objection Grice
states as follows. One of the leading strands in Grice’s reductive analysis of
the circumstances or scenario in which an emissor (E) communicates that p is
that the scenario, call it “C,” is not to be regarded exclusively, “or even
primarily,” as a ‘feature’ of an E that is using what philosophers of language (since
Plato’s “Cratylus”) have been calling ‘language’ (glossa, la lingua latina, la
lingua italiana, la langue française, the English tongue, de nederlands taal,
die Deutsche Sprache, etc.). The emissum (e) may be an ‘utterance’ which is not
‘linguistic.’ Grice finds the issue crucial after discussing the topic with his
colleague at Berkeley, Davidson. For Davidson reminds Grice: “[t]here is no such
thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers […]
have supposed” (Davidson, 1986: 174). “I’m happy you say ‘many,’ Davidson,”
Grice commented. Grice continues formulating what he
obviously found to be an insidious, fastidious, objection. There are many
instances of “NOTABLY NON-‘linguistic’” vehicles or devices of communication,
within a communication-system, even a one-off system, which fulfil this or that
communication-function. I am using ‘communication-function’ alla Grice (1961:138,
repr. 1989:235).
These vehicles or devices are mostly
syntactically un-structured or amorphous – Grice’s favourite example being a
‘sort of hand-wave’ meaning that it is not the case that the emissor knows the
route or that the emissor is about to leave his addressee (1967:VI, repr. 1989:126).
Sometimes,
a device may exhibit at least “some rudimentary syntactic” structure – as Grice
puts it, giving a nod to Morris’s tripartite semiotics -- in that we may perhaps
distinguish and identify a ‘totum’ or complexum (say, Plato’s ‘logos’) from a
pars or simplex (say, Plato’s ‘onoma’ and ‘rhema’). Grice’s intention-based
reductive analysis of a communicatum, based on Aristotle, Locke, and Peirce, is
designed, indeed its very raison d'être being, to allow for the possibility that a non-“linguistic,” and,
further, indeed a non-“conventional” 'utterance,’ perhaps unrepeatable token,
not even manifesting any degree of syntactic structure, but a block of an
amorphous signal, be within the ‘repertoire’ of ‘procedures,’ perhaps
unrepeatable ones, of this or that organism, or creature, or agent, even if not
relying on any apparatus for communication of the kind that that we may label
‘linguistic’ or otherwise ‘conventional,’ will count as an emissor E ‘doing’
this or that ‘thing,’ thereby ‘communicating’ that p. To provide for this
conceptual scenario, it is plainly necessary, Grice grants, that the key
ingredient in any representation or conceptualization, or reductive analysis of
‘communicating,’ viz. intending that p, for Grice, should be a ‘state’ of the
emissor’s “soul” (Grice is translating Grecian ψυχή the capacity for which does not require what we may label
the ‘possession’ of, shall we say, ‘faculty,’ of what philosophers since Cratylus
have been calling ‘γλῶσσα Ἑλληνίδα,’
‘lingua latina,’ ‘lingua italiana,’ ‘langue française,’ ‘English tongue,’
‘Nederlands taal,’ ‘die Deutsche Sprache.’ (Grice
always congratulated Kant for never distinguishing between ‘die Deutsche
Sprache’ and ‘Sprache’ as ‘eine Fakultät.’). Now
a philosopher, relying on this or that neo-Prichardian reductive analysis of
‘intending that p,’ (Oxonian Grice will quote Oxonian if he can) may not be
willing to allow the possibility of such, shall we grant, pre-linguistic
intending that p, or non-linguistic intending that p. Surely, if the emissor E
realizes that his addressee or recipient R does not ‘share’ say, what the
Germans call ‘die Deutsche Sprache,” E may still communicate, by doing
so-and-so, that such-and-such, viz. p. E may make this sort of hand wave
communicating that E knows the route or that E is about to leave R. Against
that objection, Grice surely wins the day. There’s nothing in Prichard account
of ‘willing that p,’ itself a borrowing from William James (“I will that the
distant table slides over the floor toward me. It does not.”) which is about
‘die Deutsche Sprache.’
But Grice hastens to declare that
winning ‘the’ day may not be winning ‘all’ day. And
that is because of Oxonian philosophy being what it is. Because, as far as
Grice’s Oxonian explorations on communication go, in a succession of
increasingly elaborate moves – ending with a a clause which closes the succession
o-- designed to thwart this or that scenario, later deemed illegitimate,
involving two rational agents where the emissor E relies on an
‘inference-element’ that it is not the case that E intends his recipient R will
recogise – Grice is led to narrow the ‘intending’ the reductive analysis of ‘Emissor
E communicates that p’ to C-intending. Grice expects that whatever may be the case in general with
regard to ‘intending,’ C-intending seems for some reason to Grice to be
unsophisticatedly, viz. plainly, too sophisticated a ‘state’ of a soul (or ψυχή) to be found in an organism, ‘pirot,’ creature, that we may
not want to deem ‘rational,’ or as the Germans would say, a creature that is plainly
destitute of “Die Deutsche Sprache.” We seem to be needing a pirot to be “very
intelligent, indeed rational.” (Who other than Grice would genially combine
Locke with Carnap?). Some may regret, Grice admits, that his unavoidable rear-guard
action just undermines the raison d'etre of his campaign. However, Grice goes on to provide an admittedly brief reply
which will have to suffice under the circumstances. There is SOME limit for
Oxonian debate! A full treatment that would satisfy Grice requires delving deep
into crucial problems about the boundary between vicious and virtuous conceptual
circularity.
Which is promising. It is not something
UNATTAINABLE a priori – and there is nothing wrong with leaving it for the
morrow. It reduces to the philosopher trying to show himself virtuously
circular, if not, like Lear, spherical. But why need the circle be virtuous.
Well, as August would put it, unless a ‘circulus’ is not ‘virtuosus,’ one would
hardly deem it a ‘circulus’ in the first place. A circle is virtuous if it is not a
bad circle. One may even say, with The Carpenter, that, like a cabbage or a
king, if a circle is not virtuous is not even a circle! (Grice 2001:35). In
this case, to borrow from former Oxonian student S. R. Schiffer, we need the
‘virtuous circle’ because we are dealing with ‘a loop’ (Schiffer, 1988:v) -- a
‘conceptual loop,’ that is. Schiffer is not interested in ‘communicating;’ only
‘meaning,’ but his point can be easily transliterated. Schiffer is saying that
‘U,’ or utterer, our ‘E,’ means that p’ surely relies on ‘U intends that p,’
but mind the loop: ‘U intends that p’ may rely on ‘U means that p.’In Grice’s
most generic, third-person terms, we have a creature, call it a pirot, P1,
that, by doing thing D1, communicates that p. We are talking of Grice qua
ethologist, who OBSERVES the scenario. As it happens, Grice’s favourite pirot
is the parrot, and call Grice a snob, but his favourite parrot was Prince
Maurice’s Parrot. Prince Maurice’s Parrot. Grice reads Locke, and adapts it
slightly. “Since I think I may be confident, that, whoever should see a
CREATURE of his own shape or make, though it had no more reason all its life
than a PARROT, would call him still A MAN; or whoever should hear a parrot discourse,
reason, and philosophise, would call or think it nothing but a PARROT; and say,
the one was A DULL IRRATIONAL MAN, and the other A VERY INTELLIGENT RATIONAL
PARROT. “A relation we have in an author of great note, is sufficient to
countenance the supposition of A RATIONAL PARROT. “The author’s words are as
follows.”““I had a mind to know, from Prince Maurice's own mouth, the account
of a common, but much credited story, that I had heard so often from many
others, of a parrot he has, that speaks, and asks, and answers common questions,
like A REASONABLE CREATURE.””““So that those of his train there generally
conclude it to be witchery or possession; and one of his chaplains, would never
from that time endure A PARROT, but says all PARROTS have a devil in them.””““I
had heard many particulars of this story, and as severed by people hard to be
discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there is of it.””““Prince
Maurice says, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there is something
true, but a great deal false of what is reported.””““I desired to know of him
what there was of the first. Prince Maurice tells me short and coldly, that he
had HEARD of such A PARROT; and though he believes nothing of it, and it was a
good way off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for the parrot: that it
was a very great parrot; and when the parrot comes first into the room where
Prince Maurice is, with a great many men about him, the parrot says presently, ‘What
a nice company is here.’”” ““ One of the men asks the parrot, ‘What thinkest
thou that man is?,’ ostending his finger, and pointing to Prince Maurice.”“The
parrot answers, ‘Some general -- or other.’ When the man brings the parrot
close to Prince Maurice, Prince Maurice asks the parrot, ‘D'ou venez-vous?’”““The
parrot answers, ‘De Marinnan.’ Then Prince Maurice goes on, and poses a second
question to the parrot.””““‘A qui estes-vous?’ The Parrot answers: ‘A un Portugais.’”““Prince
Maurice then asks a third question: ‘Que fais-tu la?’““The parrot answers: “Je
garde les poulles.’ Prince Maurice smiles, which pleases the Parrot.”““Prince
Maurice, violating a Griceian maxim, and being just informed that p, asks whether
p. This is incidentally the Prince’s fourth question to the parrot – the first
idiotic one. ‘Vous gardez les poulles?’”” ““The
Parrot answers, ‘Oui, moi; et je scai bien faire.’ Then the parrott appeals to
Peirce’s iconic system and makes the chuck four or five times that a man uses
to make to chickens when a man calls them. I set down the words of this worthy
dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me. I ask Prince
Maurice in what ‘tongue’ the parrot speaks.””““Prince Maurice says that the
parrot speaks in the Brazilian tongue.””““ I ask Prince William whether he understands
the Brazilian tongue.”” ““Prince Maurice says: No, but he has taken care to
have TWO interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke the Brazilian
tongue, and the other a Brazilian that spoke the Dutch tongue; that Prince
Maurice asked them separately and privately, and both of them AGREED in telling
Prince Maurice just the same thing that the parrot had said.””““I could not but
tell this ODD story, because it is so much out of the way, and from the first
hand, and what may pass for a good one; for I dare say Prince Maurice at least
believed himself in all he told me, having ever passed for a very honest and
pious man.””““I leave it to naturalists to reason, and to other men to believe,
as they please upon it. However, it is not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or
enliven a busy scene sometimes with such digressions, whether to the purpose or
no.””Locke takes care “that the reader should have the story at large in the
author's own words, because he seems to me not to have thought it incredible.”“For
it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he, who had sufficiency enough to
warrant all the testimonies he gives of himself, should take so much pains, in
a place where it had nothing to do, to pin so close, not only on a man whom he
mentions as his friend, but on a prince in whom he acknowledges very great
honesty and piety, a story which, if he himself thought incredible, he could
not but also think RIDICULOUS.”“Prince Maurice, it is plain, who vouches this
story, and our author, who relates it from him, both of them call this talker A
PARROT.”Locke asks “any one else who thinks such a story fit to be told,
whether, if this PARROT, and all of its kind, had always talked, as we have a
prince's word for it this one did,- whether, I say, they would not have passed
for a race of RATIONAL ANIMALS; but yet, whether, for all that, they would have
been allowed to be MEN, and not PARROTS?”“For I presume it is not the idea of A
THINKING OR RATIONAL BEING alone that makes the idea of A MAN in most people's
sense: but of A BODY, so and so shaped, joined to it: and if that be the idea
of a MAN, the same successive body not shifted all at once, must, as well as
THE SAME IMMATERIAL SPIRIT, go to the making of the same MAN.”So back to Grice’s pirotology, or Pirotologia.
But first a precis Grice needs a dossier with a précis, so that he can insert
the parrot’s conversational implicata – and Prince Maurice’s. PARROT: What a
nice company is here.MAN (pointing to Prince Maurice): What thinkest thou that
man is?PARROT: Some general -- or other. Grice’s gloss: The he parrot displays
what Grice calls ‘up-take.’ The parrot recognizes the man’s c-intention. So far
is ability to display uptake.PRINCE MAURICE: D'ou venez-vous?PARROT: De
Marinnan.PRINCE MAURICE: A qui estes-vous?PARROT: A un Portugais.PRINCE
MAURICE: Que fais-tu la?PARROT: Je garde les poulles.PRINCE MAURICE SMILES and
flouts a Griceian maxim: Vous gardez les poulles?PARROT (losing patience, and
grasping the Prince’s implicature that he doubts it): Oui, moi. Et je scai bien
faire.Grice’s gloss: The Parrott appeals to Peirce’s iconic system and makes
the chuck five times that a man uses to make to chickens when a man calls
them.According to his “most recent speculations” about communication, Grice
goes on in his ‘Reply to Richards,’ one should distinguish, as he engages in a
bit of legalese, between two sides of the scenario under conceptual reduction,
E communicates that p. One side is the ‘de facto’ side, a side which, as in
name implies, in fact contains any communication-relevant feature which obtains
or is present in the circumstances. But then there is a ‘de jure’ side to the
scenario, viz. the nested C-intending which is only deemed to be present, as a
vicious circle with good intentions may become a virtuous one. By the ‘nesting,’
Grice means the three sub-intentions, involved in a scenario where Emissor E
communicates that (psi*) p, reducible to the Emissor E c-intending that A recognises
that E psi-s that p.First, there is the ‘exhibitive’ intention, C1. Emissor E
intends A to recognise that A psi-s that p.Second, there is the ‘reflexive’
intention, C2.Emissor intends that A recognise C1 by A recognising C2Third,
there is the ‘openness’ intention, C3. There is no inference-element which is
C-constitutive such that Emissor relies on it and yet does not intend A to
recognise.The “de jure” side to the state of affairs involves self-reference But
since this self-referential circle, a mere ‘loop,’ is meant to BLOCK an utterly
vicious circle of a regressus ad infinitum (or ‘ho eis apeiron ekballon,’ if
you must), the self-referential circle may well be deemed virtuous. The ‘de
jure’ side to the scenario is trying to save state of affairs which in, in
Grice’s words, “infinitely complex,” and such that no reasonable philosopher
should expect to be realised ‘de facto.’ “In which case,” Grice remarks, “it seems
to serve little, if any, purpose” to assume that this very INCONCEIVABLE ‘de
facto’ instantiation of a ‘de jure’ ascription of an emissor communicating that
p would only be detectable, as it isn’t, by appeal to something like ‘die
Deutsche Sprache’!“At its most meagre,” to use Grice’s idiom, the ‘de facto’
side should consist, merely, in any pre-rational ‘counterpart’ to the state of
affairs describable by having an Emissor E communicating that p,This might
amount to no more than making a certain sort of utterance – our doing D1 -- in
order thereby to get some recipient creature R, our second pirot, P2, to think
or want some particular thing, our p. This meagre condition hardly involves
reference to anything like ‘die Deutsche Sprache.’Let’s reformulate the
condition.It’s just a pirot, at a ‘pre-rational’ level. The pirot does a thing
T IN ORDER THEREBY to get some other pirot to think or do some particular
thing. To echo Hare,Die Tur ist geschlossen, ja.Die Tur ist geschlossen,
bitte.Grice continues as a corollary: “Maybe in a less straightforward instance
of “Emissor E communicates that p” there is actually present the C-intention
whose feasibility as an ‘intention’ suggests some ability to use ‘die Deutsche
Sprache.’And if it does, Grice adds, it looks like anything like ‘die Deutsche
Sprache’ ends up being an aid to the conceptualizing about communication, not
communication itself! ReferencesDavidson, Donald
1986. A nice derangement of epitaphs, in Grandy and Warner, pp. 157-74.Durrell,
My family and other animals. Grandy, R. E. and R. O. Warner. 1986.
Philosophical grounds of rationality: intentions, categories, ends. Oxford, at
the Clarendon Press. Grice, H. P. 1986. Reply to Richards, in Grandy and
Warner, pp. 45-106Grice, H. P. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. London and
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Grice, H. P. 2001. Aspects of
reason. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. Locke, J. 1690. An essay concerning
humane [sic] understanding. Oxford: The Bodleian. Schiffer, S. R. 1988.
Meaning. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press.
animatum: Grice was interested in what he called
the ‘rational soul’ (psyche logike). In an act of communication, Emissor
communicates that p, there is a psi involved, therefore a soul, therefore what
the Romans called an ‘anima,’ and the Greeks called the ‘psyche.’ For surely
there can be no psi-transmission without a psi. Grice loved to abbreviate this
as the psi, since Lady Asquith, who was a soul, would not have desired any less
from Grice. Grice, like Plato and Aristotle, holds a tripartite theory of the
soul. Where, ‘part’ (Aristotelian ‘meros’) is taken very seriously. Anything
thought. From ‘psyche,’ anima. Grice uses the symbol of the letter psi here
which he renders as ‘animatum.’ Why Grice prefers ‘soul’ to mind. The
immortality of a the chicken soul. By Shropshire. Shropshire claims that the immortality of the soul is proved by
the fact that, if you cut off a chicken's head, the chicken will run round the
yard for a quarter of an hour before dropping. Grice has an an 'expansion' of
Shropshire's ingenious argument.If the soul is not dependent on the body, it is
immortal. If the soul is dependent on the body, it is dependent on that part of
the body in which it is located. If the soul is located in the body, it is
located in the head. If the chicken's soul were located in its head, the
chicken's soul would be destroyed if the head were rendered inoperative by
removal from the body. The chicken runs round the yard after head-removal. It
could do this only if animated, and controlled by its soul. So the chicken's
soul is not located in, and not dependent on, the chicken's head. So the
chicken's soul is not dependent on the chicken's body. So the chicken's soul is
immortal. end p.11 If the chicken's soul is immortal, a fortiori the human soul
is immortal. So the soul is immortal. The question I now ask myself is this:
why is it that I should be quite prepared to believe that the Harvard students
ascribed their expansion of Botvinnik's proof, or at least some part of it, to
Botvinnik (as what he had in mind), whereas I have no inclination at all to
ascribe any part of my expansion to Shropshire? Considerations which at once
strike me as being likely to be relevant are: (1) that Botvinnik's proof
without doubt contained more steps than Shropshire's claim; (2) that the
expansion of Botvinnik's proof probably imported, as extra premisses, only
propositions which are true, and indeed certain; whereas my expansion imports
premisses which are false or dubious; (3) that Botvinnik was highly intelligent
and an accomplished logician; whereas Shropshire was neither very intelligent
nor very accomplished as a philosopher. No doubt these considerations are
relevant, though one wonders whether one would be much readier to accord
Shropshire's production the title of 'reasoning' if it had contained some
further striking 'deductions', such as that since the soul is immortal moral
principles have absolute validity; and one might also ask whether the effect of
(3) does not nullify that of (2), since, if Shropshire was stupid, why should
not one ascribe to him a reconstructed argument containing plainly unacceptable
premisses? But, mainly, I would like some further light on the following
question: if such considerations as those which I have just mentioned are relevant,
why are they relevant? I should say a word about avowals. The following
contention might be advanced. If you want to know whether someone R, who has
produced what may be an incomplete piece of reasoning, has a particular
completion in mind, the direct way to find out is to ask him. That would settle
the matter. If, however, you are unable to ask him, then indirect methods will
have to be used, which may well be indecisive. Indeterminacy springs merely
from having to rely on indirect methods. I have two comments to make. First: it
end p.12 is far from clear to what extent avowals do settle the matter. Anyone
who has taught philosophy is familiar with the situation in which, under
pressure to expand an argument they have advanced, students, particularly
beginners, make statements which, one is inclined to say, misrepresent their
position. This phenomenon is perhaps accounted for by my much more important
second point: that avowals in this kind of context generally do not have the
character which one might without reflection suppose them to have; they are not
so much reportive as constructive. If I ask someone if he thinks that so-and-so
is a consequence of such-and-such, what I shall receive will be primarily a
defence of this supposition, not a report on what, historically, he had in mind
in making it. We are in general much more interested in whether an inferential
step is a good one to make than we are in what a particular person had in mind
at the actual moment at which he made the step. One might perhaps see an
analogy between avowals in this area and the specification of plans. If someone
has propounded a plan for achieving a certain objective, and I ask him what he
proposes to do in such-and-such a contingency, I expect him to do the best he
can to specify for me a way of meeting that contingency, rather than to give a
historically correct account of what thoughts he had been entertaining. This
feature of what I might call inferential avowals is one for which we shall have
to account.Let us take stock. The thesis which we proposed for examination has
needed emendation twice, once in the face of the possibility of bad reasoning,
and once to allow for informal and incomplete reasoning. The reformulation
needed to accommodate the latter is proving difficult to reach. Let us take s
and s′ to be sequences consisting of a set of premisses and a conclusion (or,
perhaps it would be better to say, a set of propositions and a further
proposition), or a sequence (sorites) of such sequences. (This is not fully accurate,
but will serve.) Let us suppose that x has produced s (in speech or in
thought). Let "formally cogent" mean "having true premisses, and
being such that steps from premisses to conclusions are formally valid".
(1) We cannot define "s is a piece of reasoning by x" as "x
thinks s to be formally cogent", because if s is an incomplete piece of
reasoning s is not, and could not reasonably be thought by x to be, formally
cogent. end p.13 (2) We cannot define "s is a piece of reasoning by
x" as "(∃s′)
(s′ is an expansion of s and s′ is formally cogent)" because (a) it does
not get in the idea that x thinks s′ formally cogent and (b) it would exclude
bad reasoning. (3) We cannot define "s is a piece of reasoning by x"
as "x thinks that (∃s′)
(s′ is an expansion of s and s′ is formally cogent)", for this is too
weak, and would allow as reasoning any case in which x believed (for whatever
reason, or lack of reason) that an informal sequence had some formally cogent
expansion or other. (Compare perhaps Shropshire.).” In Latin indeed, ‘animus’
and ‘anima’ make a world of a difference, as Shropshire well knows. Psyche
transliterates as ‘anima’ only; ‘animus’ the Greeks never felt the need for. Of
course a chicken is an animal, as in man. “Homo animalis rationalis.” Grice
prefers ‘human,’ but sometimes he uses ‘animal,’ as opposed to ‘vegetal,
sometimes, when considering stages of freedom. A stone (mineral) displays a
‘free’ fall, which is metabolical. And then, a vegetable is less free than an
animal, which can move, and a non-human animal (that Grice calls ‘a beast’) is
less free than man, who is a rational animal. Grice notes that back in the day,
when the prince came from a hunt, “I brought some animals,” since these were
‘deer,’ ‘deer’ was taken as meaning ‘animal,’ when the implicatum was very much
cancellable. The Anglo-Saxons soon dropped the ‘deer’ and adopted the Latinate
‘animal.’ They narrowed the use of ‘deer’ for the ‘cervus cervus.’ But not
across the North Sea where the zoo is still called a ‘deer-garden.’ When
Aelfric studied philosophy he once thought man was a rational deer.
apagoge:
distinguished by Grice from both ‘epagoge,’ and his favoured ‘diagoge.’ A shifting of the
basis of argument: hence of argument based on a probable or agreed assumption, Arist.APr.69a20,
cf. Anon.in SE65.35; reduction, “ἡ εἰς τὸ ἀδύνατον ἀ.” reductio per
impossibile, APr. 29b6; “ἡ ἀ. μετάβασίς ἐστιν ἀπ᾽ ἄλλου προβλήματος ἢ
θεωρήματος ἐπ᾽ ἄλλο, οὗ γνωσθέντος ἢ πορισθέντος καὶ τὸ προκείμενον ἔσται
καταφανές” Procl. in Euc.p.212F.; τῶν ἀπορουμένων διαγραμμάτων τὴν ἀ.
ποιήσασθαι ib. p.213F. b. reduction of a disputant (cf. ἀπάγω v. 1c), “ἡ ἐπὶ τὸ
ἄδηλον ἀ.” S.E.P.2.234.
aporia: cf. aporetic, cognate with porosity. No
porosity, and you get an impasse. While aware of Baker’s and Deutsch’s
treatment of the ‘aporia’ in Aristotle’s account of ‘philos,’ Grice explores
‘aporia’ in Plato in the Thrasymachus on ‘legal justice’ prior to ‘moral
justice’ in Republic. in Dialectic, question for discussion, difficulty,
puzzle, “ἀπορίᾳ σχόμενος” Pl.Prt.321c; ἀ. ἣν ἀπορεῖς ib.324d; “ἡ ἀ. ἰσότης ἐναντίων
λογισμῶν” Arist. Top.145b1, al.; “ἔχει ἀπορίαν περί τινος” Id.Pol.1285b28; “αἱ
μὲν οὖν ἀ. τοιαῦταί τινες συμβαίνουσιν” Id.EN1146b6; “οὐδεμίαν ποιήσει ἀ.”
Id.Metaph.1085a27; ἀ. λύειν, διαλύειν, Id.MM 1201b1, Metaph.1062b31; “ἀπορίᾳ ἀπορίαν
λύειν” D.S.1.37.Discussion with the
Sophist Thrasymachus can
only lead to aporia.
And the more I trust you, the more I sink into an aporia of sorts. —Aha!
roared Thrasymachus to
everyone's surprise. There it is! Socratic aporia is back! Charge! neither Socrates' company nor
Socrates himself gives any convincing answer. So, he says, finding himself in a
real aporia, he
visits Thrasymachus as
well, and ... I argue that a combination of these means in form
that I call “provocative-aporetic” better accounts for the means that Plato
uses to exert a protreptic effect on readers. Aporia is a simultaneously
intellectual and affective experience, and the way that readers choose to
respond to aporia has a greater protreptic effect than either affective or
intellectual means alone. When Socrates says he can 'transfer' the use of
"just" to things related to the 'soul,' what kind of conversational
game is that? Grice took Socrates's manoeuvre very
seriously.Socrates relies on the tripartite theory of the soul. Plato, actually -- since Socrates is a drammatis persona! In "Philosophical Eschatology, Metaphysics, and Plato's
Republic," H. P. Grice's purpose is to carry out a provocative-aporetic
reading Book I Grice argues that it is a dispute between two ways of
understanding 'just' which causes the aporia when Socrates tries to analyse
'just.' Although Socrates will not argue for the complexity and
tripartition of the soul until Bk. IV, we can at least note the contrast with
Thrasymachus' “idealize user” theory.For Socrates, agents are complex, and
justice coordinates the parts of the agent.For Thrasymachus, agents are simple
“users,” and justice is a tool for use. (2 - 3) Justice makes its
possessor happy; the function (telos, metier) argument. To make the
argument that justice is an excellence (virtus, arete) of soul (psyche) that
makes its possessor happy, Socrates relies on a method for discovering the
function (ἔργον, ergon, 352e1, cf. telos, metier, causa finalis) of any object
whatsoever. Socrates begins by differentiating between an exclusive
functions and an optimal function, so that we may discover the functions in
different types of objects, i.e., natural and artificial objects. We can
say an object performs some function (ergon) if one of the following conditions
holds.If the object is the only one that can do the work in
question, or If it is the object that does that work best.Socrates
then provides examples from different part-whole complexes to make his point. The
eye's exclusive function is to see, because no other organ is specialized so as
to perform just that function. A horse's work is to carry riders into
battle. Even though this might not be a horse's EXCLUSIVE function, it may
be its “optimal” function in that the horse is best suited or designed by God
to the task. Finally, the pruning knife is best for tending to vines, not
because it cannot cut anything else, but because it is optimally suited for
that task. Socrates' use of the pruning knife of as an example of a
thing's function resembles a return to the technē model, since a craftsman must
make the knife for a gardener to Socrates asks, “Would you define this as
the function of a horse and of anything else, as that which someone does either
through that thing alone, or best?” (...τοῦτο ἄν θείης καὶ ἵππου καὶ ἄλλου
ὁτουοῦν ἔργον, ὅ ἄν ἤ μόνῳ ἐκείνῳ ποιῇ τις ἤ ἄριστα; 352e1-2) Thrasymachus
agrees to this definition of function. 91 use.But his use of the eye — a bodily
organ — should dissuade us from this view. One may use these examples to
argue that Socrates is in fact offering a new method to investigate the nature
of justice: 1) Find out what the functions of such objects are2) determine
(by observation, experiment, or even thought experiment) cases where objects of
such a kind perform their functions well and cases where they perform them
poorly; and 3) finally find out the qualities that enable them to perform
such functions well (and in the absence of which they perform poorly), and
these are their virtues.A crucial difference between this method and technē
model of justice lies in the interpretation that each assigns to the realm of
human artifacts. Polemarchus and Thrasymachus both assume that the technē
is unique as a form of knowledge for the power and control that it offers
users. In Polemarchus' case, the technē of justice, “helping friends and
harming enemies,” may be interpreted as a description of a method for gaining
political power within a traditional framework of communal life, which assumes
the oikos as the basic unit of power. Those families that help their
friends and harm their enemies thrive. Thrasymachus, on the other hand,
emphasizes the ways that technai grant users the power to exploit nature to
further their own, distinctively individual ends. Thus, the shepherd
exploits the sheep to make a livelihood for himself. Socrates' approach differs
from these by re-casting “mastery” over nature as submission to norms that
structure the natural world. For example, many factors contribute to making This
points to a distinction Socrates draws in Book X between producers and users of
artifacts. He uses the example of the blacksmith who makes a bridle and
the horseman who uses the bridle to argue that production and use correspond to
two gradations of knowledge (601c). The ultimate purpose of the example is
to provide a metaphor — using the craft analogy — for identifying gradations of
knowledge on a copy-original paradigm of the form-participant
relation. the pruning knife the optimal tool for cutting vines: the shape
of the human hand, the thickness and shape of the vines, and the metal of the
blade. Likewise, in order for horses to optimally perform their “work,”
they must be "healthy" and strong. The conditions that bring
about their "health" and strength are not up to us,
however."Control” only comes about through the recognition of natural
norms. Thus technē is a type of knowledge that coordinates structures in
nature.It is not an unlimited source of power. Socrates' inclusion of the
human soul (psyche) among those things that have a function is the more
controversial aspect of function argument.Socrates says that the functions
(erga) of the soul (psyche) are “to engage in care-taking, ruling, and
deliberation” and, later, simply that the ergon (or function) of the
soul (or psyche) is “to live” (τὸ ζῆν, "to zen," 353d6). But the
difficulty seems to be this: the functions of pruning knives, horses, and
bodily organs are determined with respect to a limited and fairly unambiguous
context that is already defined for them. But what is this context with
respect to the soul (psyche) of a human individual? One answer might be
that the social world — politics — provides the context that defines the soul's
function, just as the needs of the human organism define the context in which
the eye can perform a function. But here a challenger might reply that in
aristocracies, oligarchies, and democracies, “care-taking, ruling, and
deliberation” are utilized for different ends.In these contexts, individual
souls might have different functions, according to the “needs” that these
different regimes have. Alternatively, one might deny altogether that the
human soul has a function: the distinctive feature of human beings might be
their position “outside” of nature. Thus, even if Socrates' description of
the soul's function is accurate, it is too general to be really
informative.Socrates must offer more details for the function argument to be
convincing. Nonetheless, the idea that justice is a condition that lets
the soul perform its functions is a significant departure from the technē
model of justice, and one that will remain throughout the argument of the
Republic. […] τὸ ἐπιμελεῖσθαι καὶ ἄρχειν καὶ βουλεύεσθαι (353d3). As
far as Bk. I is concerned, “justice” functions as a place-holder for that
condition of the soul which permits the soul to perform its functions
well. What that condition is, however, remains unknown.For this reason,
Plato has Socrates concludes Bk. I by likening himself to a “glutton” (ὥσπερ οἱ
λίχνοι, 354b1), who takes another dish before “moderately enjoying the
previous” serving (πρὶν τοῦ προτέρου μετρίως ἀπολαύσαι, 354b2-3). For
Socrates wants to know what effects the optimal condition of soul brings about
before knowing what the condition itself is. Thus Bk. I concludes in
"aporia," but not in a way that betrays the dialogue's lack of
unity.The “separatist” thesis concerning Bk. I goes back to Hermann in
"Geschichte und System der Platonischen Philosophie." One can
argue on behalf of the “separatist” view as well. One can argue against
the separatist thesis, even granting some evidence in favour of the separatist
thesis. To the contrary, the "aporia" clearly foreshadows the
argument that Socrates makes about the soul in Bk. IV, viz. that the soul
(psyche) is a complex whole of parts -- an implicatum in the “justice is
stronger” argument -- and that 'just' is the condition that allows this complex
whole be integrated to an optimal degree. Thus, Bk. I does not conclude
negatively, but rather provides the resources for going beyond the
"technē" model of justice, which is the primary cause of
Polemarchus's and Thrasymachus's encounter with "aporia" in Bk.
I. Throughout conversation of "The Republic," Socrates does not
really alter the argument he gives for justice in Bk. I, but rather states the
same argument in a different way. My gratitude to P. N.
Moore. Refs: Wise guys and smart alecks in Republic 1 and 2; Proleptic
composition in the Republic, or why Bk. 1 was never a separate dialogue, The
Classical Quarterly; "Socrates: ironist and moral philosopher."
aretaic: sometimes used by Grice for ‘virtuosum’.
argumentum:
“I thought I saw an argument, it turned to be some soap” (Dodgson). Term that
Grice borrows from (but “never returned” to) Boethius, the Roman philosopher.
Strictly, Grice is interested in the ‘arguer.’ Say Blackburn goes to Grice and,
not knowing Grice speaks English, writes a skull. Blackburn intends Grice to
think that there is danger, somewhere, even deadly danger. So there is arguing
on Blackburn’s part. And there is INTENDED arguing on Blackburn’s recipient,
Grice, as it happens. For Grice, the truth-value of “Blackburn communicates (to
Grice) that there is danger” does not REQUIRE the uptake.” “Why, one must just
as well require that Jones GETS his job to deem Smith having GIVEN it to him if
that’s what he’s promised. The arguer is invoked in a self-psi-transmission.
For he must think P, and he must think C, and he must think that P yields C.
And this thought that C must be CAUSED by the fact that he thinks that P yields
C. -- f. argŭo
, ŭi, ūtum (ŭĭtum, hence arguiturus, Sall. Fragm. ap. Prisc. p. 882 P.), 3, v.
a. cf. ἀργής, white; ἀργός, bright; Sanscr. árgunas, bright; ragatas, white;
and rag, to shine (v. argentum and argilla); after the same analogy we have
clarus, bright; and claro, to make bright, to make evident; and the Engl.
clear, adj., and to clear = to make clear; v. Georg Curtius p. 171. I.
A.. In gen., to make clear, to show, prove, make known, declare, assert,
μηνύειν: “arguo Eam me vidisse intus,” Plaut. Mil. 2, 3, 66: “non ex auditu
arguo,” id. Bacch. 3, 3, 65: “M. Valerius Laevinus ... speculatores, non
legatos, venisse arguebat,” Liv. 30, 23: “degeneres animos timor arguit,” Verg.
A. 4, 13: “amantem et languor et silentium Arguit,” Hor. Epod. 11, 9; id. C. 1,
13, 7.—Pass., in a mid. signif.: “apparet virtus arguiturque malis,” makes
itself known, Ov. Tr. 4, 3, 80: “laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus,”
betrays himself, Hor. Ep. 1, 19, 6.— B. Esp. a. With aliquem, to attempt to
show something, in one's case, against him, to accuse, reprove, censure, charge
with: Indicāsse est detulisse; “arguisse accusāsse et convicisse,” Dig. 50, 16,
197 (cf. Fest. p. 22: Argutum iri in discrimen vocari): tu delinquis, ego
arguar pro malefactis? Enn. (as transl. of Eurip. Iphig. Aul. 384: Εἶτ̓ ἐγὼ
δίκην δῶ σῶν κακῶν ὁ μὴ σφαλείς) ap. Rufin. § “37: servos ipsos neque accuso
neque arguo neque purgo,” Cic. Rosc. Am. 41, 120: “Pergin, sceleste, intendere
hanc arguere?” Plaut. Mil. 2, 4, 27; 2, 2, 32: “hae tabellae te arguunt,” id.
Bacch. 4, 6, 10: “an hunc porro tactum sapor arguet oris?” Lucr. 4, 487: “quod
adjeci, non ut arguerem, sed ne arguerer,” Vell. 2, 53, 4: “coram aliquem
arguere,” Liv. 43, 5: “apud praefectum,” Tac. A. 14, 41: “(Deus) arguit te
heri,” Vulg. Gen. 31, 42; ib. Lev. 19, 17; ib. 2 Tim. 4, 2; ib. Apoc. 3, 19
al.— b. With the cause of complaint in the gen.; abl. with or without de; with
in with abl.; with acc.; with a clause as object; or with ut (cf. Ramsh. p.
326; Zumpt, § 446). (α). With gen.: “malorum facinorum,” Plaut. Ps. 2, 4, 56
(cf. infra, argutus, B. 2.): “aliquem probri, Stupri, dedecoris,” id. Am. 3, 2,
2: “viros mortuos summi sceleris,” Cic. Rab. Perd. 9, 26: “aliquem tanti
facinoris,” id. Cael. 1: “criminis,” Tac. H. 1, 48: “furti me arguent,” Vulg.
Gen. 30, 33; ib. Eccl. 11, 8: “repetundarum,” Tac. A. 3, 33: “occupandae rei
publicae,” id. ib. 6, 10: “neglegentiae,” Suet. Caes. 53: “noxae,” id. Aug. 67:
“veneni in se comparati,” id. Tib. 49: “socordiae,” id. Claud. 3: “mendacii,”
id. Oth. 10: “timoris,” Verg. A. 11, 384: “sceleris arguemur,” Vulg. 4 Reg. 7,
9; ib. Act. 19, 40 al.— (β). With abl.: “te hoc crimine non arguo,” Cic. Verr.
2, 5, 18; Nep. Paus. 3 fin.— (γ). With de: “de eo crimine, quo de arguatur,”
Cic. Inv 2, 11, 37: “de quibus quoniam verbo arguit, etc.,” id. Rosc. Am. 29
fin.: “Quis arguet me de peccato?” Vulg. Joan. 8, 46; 16, 8.— (δ). With in with
abl. (eccl. Lat.): “non in sacrificiis tuis arguam te,” Vulg. Psa. 49, 8.—（ε) With acc.: quid
undas Arguit et liquidam molem camposque natantīs? of what does he impeach the
waves? etc., quid being here equivalent to cujus or de quo, Lucr. 6, 405
Munro.—（ζ)
With an inf.-clause as object: “quae (mulier) me arguit Hanc domo ab se
subripuisse,” Plaut. Men. 5, 2, 62; id. Mil. 2, 4, 36: “occidisse patrem Sex.
Roscius arguitur,” Cic. Rosc. Am. 13, 37: “auctor illius injuriae fuisse
arguebatur?” Cic. Verr. 2, 1, 33: “qui sibimet vim ferro intulisse arguebatur,”
Suet. Claud. 16; id. Ner. 33; id. Galb. 7: “me Arguit incepto rerum accessisse
labori,” Ov. M. 13, 297; 15, 504.—（η) With ut, as in
Gr. ὡς (post-Aug. and rare), Suet. Ner. 7: “hunc ut dominum et tyrannum, illum
ut proditorem arguentes,” as being master and tyrant, Just. 22, 3.— II. Transf.
to the thing. 1. To accuse, censure, blame: “ea culpa, quam arguo,” Liv. 1, 28:
“peccata coram omnibus argue,” Vulg. 1 Tim. 5, 20: “tribuni plebis dum arguunt
in C. Caesare regni voluntatem,” Vell. 2, 68; Suet. Tit. 5 fin.:
“taciturnitatem pudoremque quorumdam pro tristitiā et malignitate arguens,” id.
Ner. 23; id. Caes. 75: “arguebat et perperam editos census,” he accused of
giving a false statement of property, census, id. Calig. 38: “primusque
animalia mensis Arguit imponi,” censured, taught that it was wrong, Ov. M. 15,
73: “ut non arguantur opera ejus,” Vulg. Joan. 3, 20.— 2. Trop., to denounce as
false: “quod et ipsum Fenestella arguit,” Suet. Vit. Ter. p. 292 Roth.—With
reference to the person, to refute, confute: “aliquem,” Suet. Calig. 8.—Hence,
argūtus , a, um, P. a. A. Of physical objects, clear. 1. To the sight, bright,
glancing, lively: “manus autem minus arguta, digitis subsequens verba, non
exprimens,” not too much in motion, Cic. de Or. 3, 59, 220 (cf. id. Or. 18, 59:
nullae argutiae digitorum, and Quint. 11, 3, 119-123): “manus inter agendum
argutae admodum et gestuosae,” Gell. 1, 5, 2: “et oculi nimis arguti, quem ad
modum animo affecti sumus, loquuntur,” Cic. Leg. 1, 9, 27: “ocelli,” Ov. Am. 3,
3, 9; 3, 2, 83: “argutum caput,” a head graceful in motion, Verg. G. 3, 80
(breve, Servius, but this idea is too prosaic): aures breves et argutae, ears
that move quickly (not stiff, rigid), Pall. 4, 13, 2: “argutā in soleā,” in the
neat sandal, Cat. 68, 72.— 2. a.. To the hearing, clear, penetrating, piercing,
both of pleasant and disagreeable sounds, clear-sounding, sharp, noisy,
rustling, whizzing, rattling, clashing, etc. (mostly poet.): linguae, Naev. ap.
Non. p. 9, 24: “aves,” Prop. 1, 18, 30: “hirundo,” chirping, Verg. G. 1, 377:
“olores,” tuneful, id. E. 9, 36: ilex, murmuring, rustling (as moved by the
wind), id. ib. 7, 1: “nemus,” id. ib. 8, 22 al.—Hence, a poet. epithet of the
musician and poet, clear-sounding, melodious: “Neaera,” Hor. C. 3, 14, 21:
“poëtae,” id. Ep. 2, 2, 90: “fama est arguti Nemesis formosa Tibullus,” Mart.
8, 73, 7: forum, full of bustle or din, noisy, Ov. A.A. 1, 80: “serra,”
grating, Verg. G. 1, 143: “pecten,” rattling, id. ib. 1, 294; id. A. 7, 14 (cf.
in Gr. κερκὶς ἀοιδός, Aristoph. Ranae, v. 1316) al.—Hence, of rattling,
prating, verbose discourse: “sine virtute argutum civem mihi habeam pro
preaeficā, etc.,” Plaut. Truc. 2, 6, 14: “[Neque mendaciloquom neque adeo
argutum magis],” id. Trin. 1, 2, 163 Ritschl.— b. Trop., of written
communications, rattling, wordy, verbose: “obviam mihi litteras quam
argutissimas de omnibus rebus crebro mittas,” Cic. Att. 6, 5: vereor, ne tibi
nimium arguta haec sedulitas videatur, Cael. ap. Cic. Fam. 8, 1. —Transf. to
omens, clear, distinct, conclusive, clearly indicative, etc.: “sunt qui vel
argutissima haec exta esse dicant,” Cic. Div. 2, 12 fin.: “non tibi candidus
argutum sternuit omen Amor?” Prop. 2, 3, 24.— 3. To the smell; sharp, pungent:
“odor argutior,” Plin. 15, 3, 4, § 18.— 4. To the taste; sharp, keen, pungent:
“sapor,” Pall. 3, 25, 4; 4, 10, 26.— B. Of mental qualities. 1. In a good
sense, bright, acute, sagacious, witty: “quis illo (sc. Catone) acerbior in
vituperando? in sententiis argutior?” Cic. Brut. 17, 65: “orator,” id. ib. 70,
247: “poëma facit ita festivum, ita concinnum, ita elegans, nihil ut fieri
possit argutius,” id. Pis. 29; so, “dicta argutissima,” id. de Or. 2, 61, 250:
“sententiae,” id. Opt. Gen. 2: “acumen,” Hor. A. P. 364: “arguto ficta dolore
queri,” dexterously-feigned pain, Prop. 1, 18, 26 al.— 2. In a bad sense, sly,
artful, cunning: “meretrix,” Hor. S. 1, 10, 40: calo. id. Ep. 1, 14, 42:
“milites,” Veg. Mil. 3, 6.—As a pun: ecquid argutus est? is he cunning? Ch.
Malorum facinorum saepissime (i.e. has been accused of), Plaut. Ps. 2, 4, 56
(v. supra, I. B. a.).—Hence, adv.: argūtē (only in the signif. of B.). a.
Subtly, acutely: “respondere,” Cic. Cael. 8: “conicere,” id. Brut. 14, 53:
“dicere,” id. Or. 28, 98.—Comp.: “dicere,” Cic. Brut. 11, 42.— Sup.: “de re
argutissime disputare,” Cic. de Or. 2, 4, 18.— b. Craftily: “obrepere,” Plaut.
Trin. 4, 2, 132; Arn. 5, p. 181.
ariskant: Two of Grice’s
main tutees were respectively Aristotelian and Kantian scholars: Ackrill and
Strawson. Grice, of course, read Ariskant in the vernacular. Critique of Pure Reason.
Translated by Francis Haywood.
William Pickering. 1838. critick of pure reason. (first
English translation) Critique
of Pure Reason. Translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn.
1855 – via Project Gutenberg.Critique
of Pure Reason. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. 1873.Critique of Pure Reason.
Translated by Friedrich Max Müller.
The Macmillan Company. 1881. (Introduction by Ludwig Noiré)Critique of Pure Reason.
Translated by Norman Kemp Smith.
Palgrave Macmillan. 1929. ISBN 1-4039-1194-0.
Archived from the
original on 2009-04-27.Critique
of Pure Reason. Translated by Wolfgang Schwartz.
Scientia Verlag und Antiquariat. 1982. ISBN 978-3-5110-9260-3.Critique of Pure Reason.
Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Hackett Publishing. 1996. ISBN 978-0-87220-257-3.Critique of Pure Reason, Abridged.
Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Hackett Publishing. 1999. ISBN 978-1-6246-6605-6.Critique
of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge
University Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-5216-5729-7.Critique
of Pure Reason. Translated by Marcus Weigelt. Penguin Books. 2007. ISBN 978-0-1404-4747-7.
Grice’s favourite philosopher is Ariskant. One way to approach Grice’s
meta-philosophy is by combining teleology with deontology. Eventually, Grice
embraces a hedonistic eudaimonism, if rationally approved. Grice knows how to
tutor in philosophy: he tutor on Kant as if he is tutoring on Aristotle, and
vice versa. His tutees would say, Here come [sic] Kantotle. Grice is obsessed
with Kantotle. He would teach one or the other as an ethics requirement. Back
at Oxford, the emphasis is of course Aristotle, but he is aware of some trends
to introduce Kant in the Lit.Hum. curriculum, not with much success. Strawson
does his share with the pure reason in Kant in The bounds of sense, but White
professors of moral philosophy are usually not too keen on the critique by Kant
of practical reason. Grice is fascinated that an Irishman, back in 1873, cares
to translate (“for me”) all that Kant has to say about the eudaimonism and
hedonism of Aristotle. An Oxonian philosopher is expected to be a utilitarian,
as Hare is, or a Hegelian, and that is why Grice prefers, heterodoxical as he is,
to be a Kantian rationalist instead. But Grice cannot help being Aristotelian,
Hardie having instilled the “Eth. Nich.” on him at Corpus. While he can’t read
Kant in German, Grice uses Abbott’s Irish vernacular. Note the archaic
metaphysic sic in singular. More Kant. Since Baker can read the
vernacular even less than Grice, it may be good to review the editions. It all
starts when Abbott thinks that his fellow Irishmen are unable to tackle Kant in
the vernacular. Abbott’s thing comes out in 1873: Kant’s critique of practical
reason and other works on the theory of tthics, with Grice quipping. Oddly, I
prefer his other work! Grice collaborates with Baker mainly on work on meta-ethics
seen as an offspring, alla Kant, of philosophical psychology. Akrasia or
egkrateia is one such topic. Baker contributes to PGRICE, a festschrift for
Grice, with an essay on the purity, and alleged lack thereof, of this or that
morally evaluable motive – rhetorically put: do ones motives have to
be pure? For Grice morality cashes out in self-love, self-interest, and desire.
Baker also contributes to a volume on Grice’s honour published by
Palgrave, Meaning and analysis: essays on Grice. Baker organises of a
symposium on the thought of Grice for the APA, the proceedings of which published
in The Journal of Philosophy, with Bennett as chair, contributions by Baker and
Grandy, commented by Stalnaker andWarner. Grice explores with Baker
problems of egcrateia and the reduction of duty to self-love and interest.
Refs.: The obvious keyword is “Kant,” – especially in the Series III on the
doctrines, in collaboration with Baker. There are essays on the Grundlegung,
too. The keyword for “Kantotle,” and the keywords for ‘free,’ and ‘freedom,’
and ‘practical reason,’ and ‘autonomy, are also helpful. Some of this material
in “Actions and events,” “The influence of Kant on Aristotle,” by H. P. Grice,
John Locke Scholar (failed), etc., Oxford (Advisor: J. Dempsey). The H. P.
Grice Papers, BANC.
arbor griceiana: When Kant
introduces the categoric imperative in terms of the ‘maxim’ he does not specify which. He just goes,
irritatingly, “Make the maxim of your conduct a law of nature.” This gave free
rein to Grice to multiply maxims as much as he wished. If he was an occamist
about senses, he certainly was an anti-occamist about maxims. The expression
Strawson and Wiggins use (p. 520) is “ramification.”So Grice needs just ONE
principle – indeed the idea of principles, in plural, is self-contradictory.
For whch ‘first’ is ‘first’? Eventually, he sticks with the principle of
conversational co-operation. And the principle of conversational co-operation,
being Ariskantian, and categoric, even if not ‘moral,’ “ramifies into” the
maxims. This is important. While an ‘ought’ cannot be derived from an ‘is,’ an
‘ought’ can yield a sub-ought. So whatever obligation the principle brings, the
maxim inherit. The maxim is also stated categoric. But it isn’t. It is a
‘counsel of prudence,’ and hypothetical in nature – So, Grice is just ‘playing
Kant,’ but not ‘being’ Kant. The principle states the GOAL (not happiness,
unless we call it ‘conversational eudaemonia’). In any case, as Hare would
agree, there is ‘deontic derivability.’ So if the principle ramifies into the
maxims, the maxims are ‘deductible’ from the principle. This deductibility is
obvious in terms of from generic to specific. The principle merely enjoins to
make the conversational move as is appropriate. Then, playing with Kant, Grice
chooses FOUR dimensions. Two correspond to the material: the quale and the
quantum. The quale relates to affirmation and negation, and Grice uses ‘false,’
which while hardly conceptually linked to ‘negation,’ it relates in common
parlance. So you have things like a prohibition to say the ‘false’ (But “it is
raining” can be false, and it’s affirmative). The quantum relates to what Grice
calls ‘informative CONTENT.’ He grants that the verb ‘inform’ already ENTAILS
the candour that quality brings. So ‘fortitude’ seems a better way to qualify this
dimension. Make the strongest conversational move. The clash with the quality
is obvious – “provided it’s not false.” The third dimension relates two two
materials. Notably the one by the previous conversationalist and your own. If A
said, “She is an old bag.” B says, “The weather’s been delightful.” By NOT
relating the ‘proposition’ “The weather has been delightful” to “She is an old
bag.” He ‘exploits’ the maxim. This is not a concept in Kant. It mocks Kant.
But yet, ‘relate!’ does follow from the principle of cooperation. So, there is
an UNDERLYING relation, as Hobbes noted, when he discussed a very distantly
related proposition concerning the history of Rome, and expecting the recipient
to “only connect.” So the ‘exploitation’ is ‘superficial,’ and applies to the
explicatum. Yet, the emissor does communicate that the weather has been
delightful. Only there is no point in informing the recipient about it, unless
he is communicating that the co-conversationalist has made a gaffe. Finally,
the category of ‘modus’ Grice restricts to the ‘forma,’ not the ‘materia.’ “Be
perspicuous” is denotically entailed by “Make your move appropriate.” This is
the desideratum of clarity. The point must be ‘explicit.’ This is Strawson and Wiggins way of putting
this. It’s a difficult issue. What the connection is between Grice’s principle
of conversational helpfulness and the attending conversational maxims. Strawson
and Wiggins state that Grice should not feel the burden to make the maxims
‘necessarily independent.’
The
image of the ramification is a good one – Grice called it ‘arbor griceiana.’
Austinian
code, The: The jocular way by Grice to refer to ‘The Master,’ whom he saw
wobble on more than one occasion. Grice has mixed feelings (“or fixed meelings,
if you prefer”) about Austin. Unlike Austin, Grice is a Midlands scholarship
boy, and ends up in Corpus. One outcome of this, as he later reminisced is that
Austin never cared to invite him to the Thursday-evenings at All Souls – “which
was alright, I suppose, in that the number was appropriately restricted to
seven.” But Grice confessed that he thought it was because “he had been born on
the wrong side of the tracks.” After the war, Grice would join what Grice, in
fun, called “the Playgroup,” which was anything BUT. Austin played the School
Master, and let the kindergarten relax in the sun! One reason Grice avoided
publication was the idea that Austin would criticise him. Austin never cared to
recognise Grice’s “Personal Identity,” or less so, “Meaning.” He never mentioned
his “Metaphysics” third programme lecture – but Austin never made it to the
programme. Grice socialized very well with who will be Austin’s custodians, in
alphabetical order, Urmson and Warnock – “two charmers.” Unlike Austin, Urmson
and Warnock were the type of person Austin would philosophise with – and he
would spend hours talking about visa with Warnock. Upon Austin’s demise, Grice
kept with the ‘play group’, which really became one! Grice makes immense
references to Austin. Austin fits Grice to a T, because of the ‘mistakes’ he
engages in. So, it is fair to say that Grice’s motivation for the coinage of
implicature was Austin (“He would too often ignore the distinction between what
a ‘communicator’ communicates and what his expression, if anything, does.”). So
Grice attempts an intention-based account of the communicator’s message. Within
this message, there is ONE aspect that can usually be regarded as being of
‘philosophical interest.’ The ‘unnecessary implicature’ is bound to be taken
Austin as part of the ‘philosophical interesting’ bit when it isn’t. So Grice
is criticizing Austin for providing the wrong analysis for the wrong
analysandum. Grice refers specifically to the essays in “Philosophical Papers,”
notably “Other Minds” and “A Plea for Excuses.” But he makes a passing
reference to “Sense and Sensibilia,” whose tone Grice dislikes, and makes a
borrowing or two from the ‘illocution,’ never calling it by that name. At most,
Grice would adapt Austin’s use of ‘act.’ But his rephrase is ‘conversational
move.’ So Grice would say that by making a conversational ‘move,’ the
conversationalist may be communicating TWO things. He spent some type finding a
way to conceptualise this. He later came with the metaphor of the FIRST-FLOOR
act, the MEZZANINE act, and the SECOND-FLOOR act. This applies to Fregeianisms
like ‘aber,’ but it may well apply to Austinian-code type of utterances.
Austinianism:
Grice felt sorry for Nowell-Smith, whom he calls the ‘straight-man’ for the
comedy double act with Austin at the Play Groups. “I would say ‘on principle’”
– “I would say, ‘no, thanks.” “I don’t understand Donne.” “It’s perfectly clear
to me.” By using Nowell-Sith, Grice is implicating that Austin had little
manners in the ‘play group,’ “And I wasn’t surprised when Nowell-Smith left
Oxford for good, almost.” Not quite, of course. After some time in the
extremely fashionable Canterbury, Nowell-Smith returns to Oxford. Vide:
nowell-smithianism.
ayerism. Born of Swiss
parentage in London, “Freddie” got an Oxford educated, and though he wanted to
be a judge, he read Lit. Hum (Phil.). He spent three months in Vienna, and when
he returned, Grice called him ‘enfant terrible.’ Ayer would later cite Grice in
the Aristotelian symposium on the Causal Theory of Perception. But the type of
subtlety in conversational implicature that Grice is interested goes over
Freddie’s head. (“That,” or he was not interested.” Grice was glad that Oxford
was ready to attack Ayer on philosophical grounds, and he later lists
Positivism as a ‘monster’ on his way to the City of Eternal Truth.
“Verificationism” was anti-Oxonian, in being mainly anti-Bradleyian, who is
recognised by every Oxonian philosopher as “one of the clearest and subtlest
prosists in English, and particularly Oxonian, philosophy.” Ayer later became
the logic professor at Oxford – which is now taught no longer at the
Sub-Faculty of Philosophy, but the Department of Mathematics!
bite off more than you can chew: To bite is the function of the FRONT teeth (incisors and canines);
the back teeth (molars) CHEW, crush, or grind. So the relation is Russellian. 1916 G.
B. Shaw Pygmalion 195 The
mistake we describe metaphorically as ‘biting off more than they can chew’. a1960 J.
L. Austin Sense & Sensibilia (1962) i.
1 They [sc. doctrines] all bite
off more than they can chew. While the NED would not
DARE define this obviousness, the OED does not. to undertake too much, to be too
ambitious – “irrational” simpliciter for Grice (WoW).
Blackburn’s skull. Blackburn's
"one-off predicament" of communicating without a shared language illustrates
how Grice's theory can be applied to iconic signals such as the drawing of a
skull to wam of danger. See his Spreading the Word. III. 112.
bonum: Grice makes fun of Hare n “Language of Morals.” To
what extent is Hare saying that to say ‘x is good’ means ‘I approve of x’? (Strictly:
“To say that something is good is to recommend it”). To say " I approve
of x " is in part to do the same thing as when we say
" x is good " a
statement of the form " X
is good" strictly designates " I approve of X " and
suggests " Do so as well". It should be in Part II to
“Language of Morals”. Old Romans did not have an article, so for them it is
unum, bonum, verum, and pulchrum. They were trying to translate the very
articled Grecian things, ‘to agathon,’ ‘to alethes,’ and ‘to kallon.’ The three
references given by Liddell and Scott are good ones. τὸ ἀ., the good,
Epich.171.5, cf. Pl.R.506b, 508e, Arist.Metaph.1091a31, etc. The Grecian Grice
is able to return to the ‘article’. Grice has an early essay on ‘the good,’ and
he uses the same expression at Oxford for the Locke lectures when looking for a
‘desiderative’ equivalent to ‘the true.’ Hare had dedicated the full part of
his “Language of Morals” to ‘good,’ so Grice is well aware of the centrality of
the topic. He was irritated by what he called a performatory approach to the
good, where ‘x is good’ =df. ‘I approve of x.’ Surely that’s a conversational
implicatum. However, in his analysis of reasoning (the demonstratum – since he
uses the adverb ‘demonstrably’ as a marker of pretty much like ‘concusively,’
as applied to both credibility and desirability, we may focus on what Grice
sees as ‘bonum’ as one of the ‘absolutes,’ the absolute in the desirability
realm, as much as the ‘verum’ is the absolute in the credibility realm. Grice
has an excellent argument regarding ‘good.’ His example is ‘cabbage,’ but also
‘sentence.’ Grice’s argument is to turn the disimpicatum into an explicitum. To
know what a ‘cabbage,’ or a formula is, you need to know first what a ‘good’
cabbage is or a ‘well-formed formula,’ is. An ill-formed sentence is not deemed
by Grice a sentence. This means that we define ‘x’ as ‘optimum x.’ This is not
so strange, seeing that ‘optimum’ is actually the superlative of ‘bonum’ (via
the comparative). It does not require very
sharp eyes, but only the willingness to use the eyes one has, to see that our
speech and thought are permeated with the notion of purpose; to say what a
certain kind of thing is is only too frequently partly to say what it is for.
This feature applies to our talk and thought of, for example, ships, shoes,
sealing wax, and kings; and, possibly and perhaps most excitingly, it extends
even to cabbages.“There is a range of cases in which, so far from its
being the case that, typically, one first learns what it is to be a F and then,
at the next stage, learns what criteria distinguish a good F from a F which is
less good, or not good at all, one needs first to learn what it is to be a good
F, and then subsequently to learn what degree of approximation to being a good
F will qualify an item as a F; if the gap between some item x and good Fs is
sufficently horrendous, x is debarred from counting as a F at all, even as a
bad F.”“In the John Locke Lectures, I called a concept which exhibits this feature
as a ‘value-paradeigmatic’ concept. One example of a value-paradeigmatic
concept is the concept of reasoning; another, I now suggest, is that of
sentence. It may well be that the existence of value-oriented concepts (¢b ¢ 2
. • • . ¢n) depends on the prior existence of pre-rational concepts ( ¢~, ¢~ .
. . . ¢~), such that an item x qualifies for the application of the concept ¢ 2
if and only if x satisfies a rationally-approved form or version of the
corresponding pre-rational concept ¢'. We have a (primary) example of a step in
reasoning only if we have a transition of a certain rationally approved kind
from one thought or utterance to another.
bootstrap: Grice certainly didn’t have a problem with
meta-langauge paradoxes. Two of his maxims are self refuting and ‘sic’-ed: “be
perspicuous [sic]” and “be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) [sic].” The principle
introduced by Grice in “Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life
and opinions of H. P. Grice,” to limit the power of the meta-language. The
weaker your metalanguage the easier you’ll be able to pull yourself by your own
bootstraps. He uses bootlaces in “Metaphysics, Philosophical Eschatology, and
Plato’s Republic.”
byzantine. This is important since it displays Grice’s
disrespect for stupid traditions. There is Austin trying to lecture what he
derogatorily called ‘philosophical hack’ (“I expect he was being ironic”) into
learning through the Little Oxford Dictionary. HARDLY Grice’s cup of tea.
Austiin, or the ‘master,’ as Grice ironically calls him, could patronize less
patrician play group members, but not him! In any case, Austin grew so
tiresome, that Grice grabbed the Little Dictionary. Austin had gave him license
to go and refute Ryle on ‘feeling’. “So, go and check with the dictionary, to
see howmany things you can feel.” Grice started with the A and got as far as
the last relevant item under the ‘B,” he hoped. “And then I realised it was all
hopeless. A waste. Language botany, indeed!” At a later stage, he grew more
affectionate, especially when seeing that this was part of his armoury (as
Gellner had noted): a temperament, surely not shared by Strawson, for
subtleties and nuances. How Byzantine can Grice feel? Vide ‘agitation.’ Does
feeling Byzantine entail a feeling of BEING Byzantine? originally used of the style of art and architecture developed there
4c.-5c. C.E.; later in reference to the complex, devious, and intriguing
character of the royal court of Constantinople (1937). Bȳzantĭum , ii, n., = Βυζάντιον,I.a city in Thrace, on the Bosphorus, opposite the Asiatic Chalcedon, later
Constantinopolis, now Constantinople; among
the Turks, Istamboul or Stamboul (i.e. εις τὴν πόλιν), Mel. 2, 2, 6; Plin. 4, 11, 18, § 46; 9, 15, 20, § 50 sq.; Nep. Paus. 2, 2; Liv. 38, 16, 3 sq.; Tac. A. 12, 63 sq.; id. H. 2. 83; 3, 47 al.—II. Derivv.A. Bȳzantĭus , a, um, adj., of Byzantium, Byzantine:
“litora,” the Strait of
Constantinople, Ov. Tr. 1, 10, 31: “portus,” Plin. 9, 15, 20, § 51.—Subst.: Bȳ-zantĭi , ōrum, m., the inhabitants of Byzantium, Cic. Prov. Cons. 3, 5; 4, 6 sq.; Cic. Verr. 2, 2, 31, § 76; Nep. Timoth. 1, 2; Liv. 32, 33, 7.—B. Bȳzantĭăcus , a, um, adj., of Byzantium: “lacerti,” Stat. S. 4, 9, 13. — C. Bȳzantīnus , a, um, adj., the same (post-class.): “Lygos,” Aus.
Clar. Urb. 2: “frigora,” Sid. Ep.
7, 17.
cæteris paribus: Strawson and Wiggins: that the principle holds ceteris paribus is a
necessary condition for the very existence of the activity in question.
Central. Grice technically directs his attenetion to this in his “Method”.
There, he tries to introduce “WILLING” as a predicate, i.e. a theoretical
concept which is implicitly defined by the LAW in a THEORY that it occurs. This
theory is ‘psychology,’ but understood as a ‘folk science.’ So the conditionals
are ‘ceteris paribus.’ Schiffer and Cartwright were aware of this. Especially
Cartwright who attended seminars on this with Grice on ‘as if.’ Schiffer was
well aware of the topic via Loar and others. Griceians who were trying to come
up with a theory of content without relying on semantic stuff would involve
‘caeteris paribus’ ‘laws.’ Grice in discussion with Davidson comes to the same
conclusion, hence his “A T C,’ all things considered and prima facie. H. L. A.
Hart, with his concept of ‘defeasibility’ relates. Vide Baker. And obviously
those who regard ‘implicature’ as nonmonotonic.
captainship. Strawson calls Grice his captain. In the
inaugural lecture. . A struggle on what seems to be such a From Meaning and
Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970) TRUTH AND MEANING central issue
in philosophy should have something of a Homeric quality; and a Homeric
struggle calls for gods and heroes. I can at least, though tentatively, name
some living captains and benevolent shades: on the one side, say, Grice,
Austin, and the later Wittgenstein; on the other, Chomsky, Frege, and the
earlier Wittgenstein.
category of
conversational mode: This category
posed a special conceptual problem to Grice. Recall that his categories are
invoked only by their power to generate conversational implciata. But a
conversational implicatum is non-detachable. That is, being based on
universalistic principles of general rationality, it cannot attach to an
EXPRESSION, less so to the ‘meaning’ of an EXPRESSION: “if” and “provided” are
REALISATIONS of the concept of the conditionality. Now, the conversational
supra-maxim, ‘be perspicuous’ [sic], is supposed to apply NOT to the content,
or matter, but to the FORM. (Strictly, quantitas and qualitas applies to
matter, RELATIO applies to the link between at least two matters). Grice tweaks
things in such a way that he is happy, and so am I. This is a pun on Aristkant’s
Kategorie (Ammonius, tropos, Boëthius, modus,
Kant Modalitat). Gesichtspuncte der Modalität in assertorische, apodiktische
und problematische hat sich aus der Aristotelischen Eintheilung hervorgebildet
(Anal. Dr. 1, 2): 7@ợc gócois atv n 100 incozy h kỹ kvayxns Úndozav û toù
{VJÉZEo fai Úndozev: Doch geht diese Aristotelische Stelle vielmehr auf die
analogen objectiven Verhältnisse, als auf den subjectiven Gewissheitsgrad. Der
Zusatz Svvatóv, įvsezóuevov, és åviyans, jedoch auch eine adverbiale Bestimmung
wie taméws in dem Satze ý σελήνη ταχέως αποκαθίσταται, heisst bei Ammonius
τρόπος (zu περί ερμ. Cap. 12) und bei Boëthius modus. Kant (Kritik der r. Vern.
§ 9-11; Prolegom. $ 21, Log. § 30) gründet die Eintheilung nach der Modalität
auf die modalen Kategorien: Möglichkeit und Unmöglichkeit, Dasein und
Nichtsein, Nothwendigkeit und Zufälligkeit, wobei jedoch die Zusammenstellung
der Unmöglichkeit, die eine negative Nothwendigkeit ist, mit der Möglichkeit,
und ebenso der Zufälligkeit, die das nicht als nothwendig erkannte Dasein
bezeichnet, mit der Nothwendigkeit eine Ungenauigkeit enthält: die Erkenntniss
der Unmöglichkeit ist nicht ein problematisches, sondern ein (negativ-)
apodiktisches Urtheil (was Kant in der Anwendung selbst anerkennt, indem er z.
B. Krit. der r. V. S. 191 die Formel: es ist unmöglich etc. als Ausdruck einer
apodiktischen Gewissheit betrachtet), und die Erkenntniss des Zufälligen ist
nicht ein apodiktisches, sondern ein assertorisches Urtheil. Ausserdem aber hat
Kant das subjective und objective Element in den Kategorien der Qualität und
Modalität nicht bestimmt genug unterschieden.
category of
conversational quality: This was
originally the desideratum of conversational candour. At that point, there was
no Kantian scheme of categories in the horizon. Candour Grice arbitrarily
contrasts with clarity – and so the desideratum of conversational candour
sometimes clashes with the desideratum of conversational clarity. One may not
be able to provide a less convoluted utterance (“It is raining”) but use the
less clear, but more candid, “It might be raining, for all I know.” A pun on
Aristkan’s Kategorie, poiotes, qualitas, Qualitat. Expressions which are in no way composite
signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state,
action, or affection. To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are
'man' or 'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two cubits long' or 'three
cubits long', of quality, such attributes as 'white', 'grammatical'.
category of
conversational quantity: Grice would
often use ‘a fortiori,’ and then it dawned on him. “All I need is a principle
of conversational fortitude. This will give the Oxonians the Graeco-Roman
pedigree they deserve.’ a pun on
Ariskant’s Kategorie, posotes, quantitas, Quantitat. Grice expands this as
‘quantity of information,’ or ‘informative content’ – which then as he
recognises overlaps with the category of conversational quality, because ‘false
information’ is a misnomer. Expressions which are in no way composite signify
substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action,
or affection. To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are 'man' or
'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two cubits long' or 'three cubits
long'
category of
conversational relation: If there are
categories of being, and categories of thought, and categories of expression,
surely there is room for the ‘conversational category.’ A pun on Ariskant’s
Kategorie (pros ti, ad aliquid, Relation). Surely a move has to relate to the
previous move, and should include a tag as to what move will relate. Expressions
which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place,
time, position, state, action, or affection. To sketch my meaning roughly,
examples of substance are 'man' or 'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two
cubits long' or 'three cubits long', of quality, such attributes as 'white',
'grammatical'. 'Double', 'half', 'greater', fall under the category of
relation.
causatum: Grice’s idea of ‘cause’ is his ‘bite’ on reality. He
chooses ‘Phenomenalism’ as an enemy. Causal realism is at the heart of Grice’s
programme. As an Oxonian, he was well aware that to trust a cause is to be
anti-Cambridge, where they follow Hume’s and Kant’s scepticism. Grice uses
‘cause’ rather casually. His most serious joke is “Charles I’s decapitation
willed his death” – but it is not easy to trace a philosopher who explicitly claim
that ‘to cause’ is ‘to will.’ For in God
the means and
the end preexist in the cause as willed together. Causation
figures large in Grice, notably re: the perceptum. The agent perceives that the
pillar box is red. The cause is that the pillar box is red. Out of that, Grice
constructs a whole theory of conversation. Why would someone just report what a
THING SEEMS to him when he has no doubt that it was THE THING that caused the
thing to SEEM red to him? Applying some sort of helpfulness, it works: the addressee
is obviously more interested in what the thing IS, not what it seems. A
sense-datum is not something you can eat. An apple is. So, the assumption is
that a report of what a thing IS is more relevant than a report about what a
thing SEEMS. So, Grice needs to find a
rationale that justifies, ceteris paribus, the utterance of “The thing seems
phi.” Following helpfulness, U utters “The thing seems phi” when the U is not
in a position to say what the thing IS phi. The denial, “The thing is not phi”
is in the air, and also the doubt, “The thing may not be phi.” Most without a
philosophical background who do not take Grice’s joke of echoing Kant’s
categories (Kant had 12, not 4!) play with quantitas, qualitas, relatio and
modus. Grice in “Causal” uses ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ but grants he won’t
‘determine’ in what way ‘the thing seems phi’ is ‘weaker’ than ‘the thing is
phi.’ It might well be argued that it’s STRONGER: the thing SEEEMS TO BE phi.’
In the previous “Introduction to Logical Theory,” Strawson just refers to
Grice’s idea of a ‘pragmatic rule’ to the effect that one utter the LOGICALLY
stronger proposition. Let’s revise dates. Whereas Grice says that his
confidence in the success of “Causal,” he ventured with Strawson’s “Intro,”
Strawson is citing Grice already. Admittedly, Strawson adds, “in a different
context.” But Grice seems pretty sure that “The thing seems phi” is WEAKER than
“The thing is phi.” In 1961 he is VERY CLEAR that while what he may have said
to Strawson that Strawson reported in that footnote was in terms of LOGICAL
STRENGTH (in terms of entailment, for extensional contexts). In “Causal,” Grice
is clear that he does not think LOGICAL STRENGTH applies to intensional
contexts. In later revisions, it is not altogether clear how he deals with the
‘doubt or denial.’ He seems to have been more interested in refuting G. A. Paul
(qua follower of Witters) than anything else. In his latest reformulation of
the principle, now a conversational category, he is not specific about
phenomenalist reports.
certum: To be certain is to have dis-cerned. Oddly, Grice
‘evolved’ from an interest in the certainty and incorrigibility that ‘ordinary’
and the first-person gives to situations of ‘conversational improbability’ and
indeterminate implicata under conditions of ceteris paribus risk and
uncertainty in survival. “To be certain that p” is for Grice one of those
‘diaphanous’ verbs. While it is best to improve Descartes’s fuzzy lexicon – and
apply ‘certus’ to the emissor, if Grice is asked, “What are you certain of?,”
“I have to answer, ‘p’”. certum: certitude,
from ecclesiastical medieval Roman “certitudo,” designating in particular
Christian conviction, is heir to two meanings of “certum,” one objective and
the other subjective: beyond doubt, fixed, positive, real, regarding a thing or
knowledge, or firm in his resolutions, decided, sure, authentic, regarding an
individual. Although certitudo has no Grecian equivalent, the Roman verb
“cernere,” (cf. discern), from which “certum” is derived, has the concrete
meaning of pass through a sieve, discern, like the Grecian “ϰρίνειν,” select,
sieve, judge, which comes from the same root. Thus begins the relationship
between certitude, judgment, and truth, which since Descartes has been
connected with the problematics of the subject and of self-certainty. The whole
terminological system of truth is thus involved, from unveiling and adequation
to certitude and obviousness. Then there’s Certainty, Objectivity,
Subjectivity, and Linguistic Systems The
objective aspect manifests itself first, “certitudo” translating e. g. the determined nature of objects or known
properties as the commentaries on Aristotle’s Met. translated into Roman, or
the incontestably true nature of principles. With the revolution of the subject
inaugurated by Cartesian Phil. , the second aspect comes to the fore: some
reasons, ideas, or propositions are true and certain, or true and evident, but
the most certain and the most evident of all, and thus in a sense the truest,
is the certitude of my own existence, a certainty that the subject attributes to
itself: The thematics of certainty precedes that of consciousness both
historically and logically, but it ends up being incorporated and subordinated
by it. Certainty thus becomes a quality or disposition of the subject that
reproduces, in the field of rational knowledge, the security or assurance that
the believer finds in religious faith, and that shields him from the wavering
of the soul. It will be noted that Fr.
retains the possibility of reversing the perspective by exploiting the
Roman etymology, as Descartes does in the Principles of Phil. when he transforms the certitudo probabilis
of the Scholastics Aquinas into moral certainty. On the other hand, Eng. tends
to objectify “certainty” to the maximum in opposition to belief v. BELIEF,
whereas G. hears in “Gewissheit” the
root “wissen,” to know, to have learned and situates it in a series with
Bewusstsein and Gewissen, clearly marking the constitutive relationship to the
subject in opposition to Glaube on the one hand, and to Wahrheit and Wahrscheinlichkeit
lit., appearance of truth, i.e., probability on the other. Then there’s Knots
of Problems On the relations between
certainty and belief, the modalities of subjective experience. On the relation
between individual certainty and the wise man’s constancy. On the relations
between certainty and truth, the confrontation between subjectivity and
objectivity in the development of knowledge. On the relations between certainty
and probability, the modalities of objective knowledge insofar as it is related
to a subject’s experience. uncertainty.
This is Grice’s principle of uncertainty. One of Grice’s problem is with ‘know’
and ‘certainty.’ He grants that we only know that 2 + 2 = 4. He often
identifies ‘knowledge’ with ‘certainty.’ He does not explore a cancellation
like, “I am certain but I do not know.” The reason being that he defends common
sense against the sceptic, and so his attitude towards certainty has to be very
careful. The second problem is that he wants ‘certainty’ to deal within the
desiderative realm. To do that, he divides an act of intending into two: an act
of accepting and act of willing. The ‘certainty’ is found otiose if the
intender is seen as ‘willing that p’ and accepting that the willing will be the
cause for the desideratum to obtain. n
WoW:141, Grice proposes that ‘A is certain that p’ ENTAILS either ‘A is certain
that he is certain that p, OR AT LEAST that it is not the case that A is
UNCERTAIN that A is certain that p.” ‘Certainly,’ appears to apply to
utterances in the credibility and the desirability realm. Grice sometimes uses
‘to be sure.’ He notoriously wants to distinguish it from ‘know.’ Grice
explores the topic of incorrigibility and ends up with corrigibility which
almost makes a Popperian out of him. In the end, its all about the
converational implciata and conversation as rational co-operation. Why does P2
should judge that P1 is being more or less certain about what he is talking?
Theres a rationale for that. Our conversation does not consist of idle remarks.
Grices example: "The Chairman of the British Academy has a corkscrew in
his pocket. Urmsons example: "The king is visiting Oxford tomorrow. Why?
Oh, for no reason at all. As a philosophical psychologist, and an empiricist
with realist tendencies, Grice was obsessed with what he called (in a nod to
the Kiparskys) the factivity of know. Surely, Grices preferred collocation,
unlike surely Ryles, is "Grice knows that p." Grice has no problem in
seeing this as involving three clauses: First, p. Second, Grice believes that
p, and third, p causes Grices belief. No mention of certainty. This is the
neo-Prichardian in Grice, from having been a neo-Stoutian (Stout was obsessed,
as a few Oxonians like Hampshire and Hart were, with certainty). If the
three-prong analysis of know applies to the doxastic, Grices two-prong analysis
of intending in ‘Intention and UNcertainty,’ again purposively avoiding
certainty, covers the buletic realm. This does not mean that Grice, however
proud he was of his ignorance of the history of philosophy (He held it as a
badge of honour, his tuteee Strawson recalls), had read some of the
philosophical classics to realise that certainty had been an obsession of what
Ryle abusively (as he himself puts it) called Descartes and the Establishments
"official doctrine"! While ps true in Grices analysis of know is
harmless enough, there obviously is no correlate for ps truth in the buletic
case. Grices example is Grice intending to scratch his head, via his willing
that Grice scratches his head in t2. In this case, as he notes, the doxastic
eleent involves the uniformity of nature, and ones more or less relying that if
Grice had a head to be scratched in t1, he will have a head to be sratched in
t2, when his intention actually GETS satisfied, or fulfilled. Grice was never
worried about buletic satisfaction. As the intentionalist that Suppes showed us
Grice was, Grice is very much happy to say that if Smith intends to give Joness
a job, the facct as to whether Jones actually gets the job is totally
irrelevant for most philosophical purposes. He gets more serious when he is
happier with privileged access than incorrigibility in “Method.” But he is less
strict than Austin. For Austin, "That is a finch implies that the utterer
KNOWS its a finch. While Grice has a maxim, do not say that for which you lack
adequate evidence (Gettiers analysandum) and a super-maxim, try to make
your contribution one that is true, the very phrasing highlights Grices
cavalier to this! Imagine Kant turning on his grave. "Try!?". Grice
is very clever in having try in the super-maxim, and a prohibition as the
maxim, involving falsehood avoidance, "Do not say what you believe to be
false." Even here he is cavalier. "Cf. "Do not say what you KNOW
to be false." If Gettier were wrong, the combo of maxims yields, "Say
what you KNOW," say what you are certain about! Enough for Sextus
Empiricus having one single maxim: "Either utter a phenomenalist
utterance, a question or an order, or keep your mouth shut!." (cf. Grice,
"My lips are sealed," as cooperative or helfpul in ways -- "At
least he is not lying."). Hampshire, in the course of some recent
remarks,l advances the view that self-prediction is (logically) impossible.
When I say I know that I shall do X (as against, e.g., X will happen to me, or You
will do X), I am not contemplating myself, as I might someone else, and giving
tongue to a conjecture about myself and my future acts, as I might be doing
about someone else or about the behaviour ofan animal -for that would be
tantamount (if I understand him rightly) to looking upon myself from outside,
as it were, and treating my own acts as mere caused events. In saying that I
know that I shall do X, I am, on this view, saying that I have decided to do X:
for to predict that I shall in certain circumstances in fact do X or decide to
do X, with no reference to whether or not I have already decided to do it - to
say I can tell you now that I shall in fact act in manner X, although I am, as
a matter of fact, determined to do the very opposite - does not make sense. Any
man who says I know myself too well to believe that, whatever I now decide, I
shall do anything other than X when the circumstances actually arise is in
fact, if I interpret Hampshires views correctly, saying that he does not
really, i.e. seriously, propose to set himself against doing X, that he does
not propose even to try to act otherwise, that he has in fact decided to let
events take their course. For no man who has truly decided to try to avoid X
can, in good faith, predict his own failure to act as he has decided. He may
fail to avoid X, and he may predict this; but he cannot both decide to try to
avoid X and predict that he will not even try to do this; for he can always
try; and he knows this: he knows that this is what distinguishes him from
non-human creatures in nature. To say that he will fail even to try is
tantamount to saying that he has decided not to try. In this sense I know means
I have decided and (Murdoch, Hampshire, Gardiner and Pears, Freedom and
Knowledge, in Pears, Freedom and the Will) cannot in principle be predictive.
That, if I have understood it, is Hampshires position, and I have a good deal
of sympathy with it, for I can see that self-prediction is often an evasive way
of disclaiming responsibility for difficult decisions, while deciding in fact
to let events take their course, disguising this by attributing responsibility
for what occurs to my own allegedly unalterable nature. But I agree with
Hampshires critics in the debate, whom I take to be maintaining that, although
the situation he describes may often occur, yet circumstances may exist in
which it is possible for me both to say that I am, at this moment, resolved not
to do X, and at the same time to predict that I shall do X, because I am not
hopeful that, when the time comes, I shall in fact even so much as try to
resist doing X. I can, in effect, say I know myself well. When the crisis
comes, do not rely on me to help you. I may well run away; although I am at
this moment genuinely resolved not to be cowardly and to do all I can to stay
at your side. My prediction that my resolution will not in fact hold up is
based on knowledge of my own character, and not on my present state of mind; my
prophecy is not a symptom of bad faith (for I am not, at this moment,
vacillating) but, on the contrary, of good faith, of a wish to face the facts.
I assure you in all sincerity that my present intention is to be brave and
resist. Yet you would run a great risk if you relied too much on my present
decision; it would not be fair to conceal my past failures of nerve from you. I
can say this about others, despite the most sincere resolutions on their part,
for I can foretell how in fact they will behave; they can equally predict this
about me. Despite Hampshires plausible and tempting argument, I believe that
such objective self-knowledge is possible and occur. From Descartes to
Stout and back. Stout indeed uses both intention and certainty, and in the
same paragraph. Stout notes that, at the outset, performance falls far short of
intention. Only a certain s. of contractions of certain muscles, in proper
proportions and in a proper order, is capable of realising the end aimed at,
with the maximum of rapidity and certainty, and the minimum of obstruction and
failure, and corresponding effort. At the outset of the process of acquisition,
muscles are contracted which are superfluous, and which therefore operate as
disturbing conditions. Grices immediate trigger, however, is Ayer on sure
that, and having the right to be sure, as his immediate trigger later will be
Hampshire and Hart. Grice had high regard for Hampshires brilliant Thought and
action. He was also concerned with Stouts rather hasty UNphilosophical,
but more scientifically psychologically-oriented remarks about assurance in
practical concerns. He knew too that he was exploring an item of the
philosophers lexicon (certus) that had been brought to the forum when Anscombe
and von Wright translate Witters German expression Gewißheit in Über
Gewißheit as Certainty. The Grecians were never sure about being sure. But
the modernist turn brought by Descartes meant that Grice now had to deal with
incorrigibility and privileged access to this or that P, notably himself (When
I intend to go, I dont have to observe myself, Im on the stage, not in the
audience, or Only I can say I will to London, expressing my intention to do so.
If you say, you will go you are expressing yours! Grice found Descartes
very funny ‒ in a French way. Grice is interested in contesting Ayer and other
Oxford philosophers, on the topic of a criterion for certainty. In so
doing, Grice choses Descartess time-honoured criterion of clarity and
distinction, as applied to perception. Grice does NOT quote
Descartes in French! In the proceedings, Grice distinguishes between two
kinds of certainty apparently ignored by Descartes: (a) objective
certainty: Ordinary-language variant: It is certain that p, whatever
it refers to, cf. Grice, it is an illusion; what is it? (b) Subjective
certainty: Ordinary-language variant: I am certain that p. I
being, of course, Grice, in my bestest days, of course! There are further
items on Descartes in the Grice Collection, notably in the last s. of topics
arranged alphabetically. Grice never cared to publish his views on Descartes
until he found an opportunity to do so when compiling his WOW. Grice is not
interested in an exegesis of Descartess thought. He doesnt care to give a
reference to any edition of Descartess oeuvre. But he plays with certain. It is
certain that p is objective certainty, apparently. I am certain that p is
Subjectsive certainty, rather. Oddly, Grice will turn to UNcertainty as it
connects with intention in his BA lecture. Grices interest in Descartes
connects with Descartess search for a criterion of certainty in terms of
clarity and distinction of this or that perception. Having explored the
philosophy of perception with Warnock, its only natural he wanted to give
Descartess rambles a second and third look! Descartes on clear and distinct
perception, in WOW, II semantics and metaphysics, essay, Descartes on clear and
distinct perception and Malcom on dreaming, perception, Descartes, clear and
distinct perception, Malcolm, dreaming. Descartes meets Malcolm, and vice
versa. Descartes on clear and distinct perception, in WOW, Descartes
on clear and distinct perception, Descartes on clear and distinct perception,
in WOW, part II, semantics and metaphysics, essay. Grice gives a short overview
of Cartesian metaphysics for the BBC 3rd programme. The best example,
Grice thinks, of a metaphysical snob is provided by Descartes, about
whose idea of certainty Grice had philosophised quite a bit, since it is in
total contrast with Moore’s. Descartes is a very scientifically
minded philosopher, with very clear ideas about the proper direction for science. Descartes,
whose middle Names seems to have been Euclid, thinks that mathematics, and in
particular geometry, provides the model for a scientific procedure, or
method. And this determines all of Descartess thinking in two ways. First,
Descartes thinks that the fundamental method in science is the axiomatic
deductive method of geometry, and this Descartes conceives (as Spinoza morality
more geometrico) of as rigorous reasoning from a self-evident axiom (Cogito,
ergo sum.). Second, Descartes thinks that the Subjects matter of physical
science, from mechanics to medicine, must be fundamentally the same as the
Subjects matter of geometry! The only characteristics that the objects studied
by geometry poses are spatial characteristics. So from the point of view of
science in general, the only important features of things in the physical world
were also their spatial characteristics, what he called extensio, res extensa.
Physical science in general is a kind of dynamic, or kinetic, geometry.
Here we have an exclusive preference for a certain type of scientific
method, and a certain type of scientific explanation: the method is deductive,
the type of explanation mechanical. These beliefs about the right way to do
science are exactly reflected in Descartess ontology, one of the two branches
of metaphysics; the other is philosophical eschatology, or the study of
categories), and it is reflected in his doctrine, that is, about what really
exists. Apart from God, the divine substance, Descartes recognises just
two kinds of substance, two types of real entity. First, there is material
substance, or matter; and the belief that the only scientifically important
characteristics of things in the physical world are their spatial
characteristics goes over, in the language of metaphysics, into the doctrine
that these are their only characteristics. Second, and to Ryle’s horror,
Descartes recognizes the mind or soul, or the mental substance, of which the
essential characteristic is thinking; and thinking itself, in its pure form at
least, is conceived of as simply the intuitive grasping of this or
that self-evident axiom and this or that of its deductive consequence. These
restrictive doctrines about reality and knowledge naturally call for adjustments
elsewhere in our ordinary scheme of things. With the help of the divine
substance, these are duly provided. It is not always obvious that the
metaphysicians scheme involves this kind of ontological preference, or
favoritism, or prejudice, or snobbery this tendency, that is, to promote one or
two categories of entity to the rank of the real, or of the ultimately real, to
the exclusion of others, Descartess entia realissima. One is taught at Oxford
that epistemology begins with the Moderns such as Descartes, which is not true.
Grice was concerned with “certain,” which was applied in Old Roman times to
this or that utterer: the person who is made certain in reference to a thing,
certain, sure. Lewis and Short have a few quotes: “certi sumus periisse omnia;”
“num quid nunc es certior?,” “posteritatis, i. e. of posthumous fame,”
“sententiæ,” “judicii,” “certus de suā geniturā;” “damnationis;” “exitii,”
“spei,” “matrimonii,” “certi sumus;” in the phrase “certiorem facere aliquem;”
“de aliquā re, alicujus rei, with a foll, acc. and inf., with a rel.-clause or
absol.;” “to inform, apprise one of a thing: me certiorem face: “ut nos facias
certiores,” “uti Cæsarem de his rebus certiorem faciant;” “qui certiorem me sui
consilii fecit;” “Cæsarem certiorem faciunt, sese non facile ab oppidis vim
hostium prohibere;” “faciam te certiorem quid egerim;” with subj. only,
“milites certiores facit, paulisper intermitterent proelium,” pass., “quod
crebro certior per me fias de omnibus rebus,” “Cæsar certior factus est, tres
jam copiarum partes Helvetios id flumen transduxisse;” “factus certior, quæ res
gererentur,” “non consulibus certioribus factis,” also in posit., though
rarely; “fac me certum quid tibi est;” “lacrimæ suorum tam subitæ matrem certam
fecere ruinæ,” uncertainty, Grice loved the OED, and its entry for will
was his favourite. But he first had a look to shall. For Grice, "I shall
climb Mt. Everest," is surely a prediction. And then Grice turns to the
auxiliary he prefers, will. Davidson, Intending, R. Grandy and Warner, PGRICE.
“Uncertainty,” “Aspects.” “Conception,” Davidson on intending, intending and
trying, Brandeis.”Method,” in “Conception,” WOW . Hampshire and Hart. Decision,
intention, and certainty, Mind, Harman, Willing and intending in PGRICE.
Practical reasoning. Review of Met. 29.
Thought, Princeton, for functionalist approach alla Grice’s “Method.”
Principles of reasoning. Rational action and the extent of intention. Social
theory and practice. Jeffrey, Probability kinematics, in The logic of decision,
cited by Harman in PGRICE. Kahneman and Tversky, Judgement under uncertainty,
Science, cited by Harman in PGRICE. Nisbet and Ross, Human inference, cited by
Harman in PGRICE. Pears, Predicting and deciding. Prichard, Acting, willing,
and desiring, in Moral obligations, Oxford ed. by Urmson Speranza, The Grice Circle Wants You. Stout,
Voluntary action. Mind 5, repr in Studies in philosophy and psychology,
Macmillan, cited by Grice, “Uncertainty.” Urmson, ‘Introduction’ to Prichard’s
‘Moral obligations.’ I shant but Im not certain I wont – Grice. How
uncertain can Grice be? This is the Henriette Herz BA lecture, and as such
published in The Proceedings of the BA. Grice calls himself a
neo-Prichardian (after the Oxford philosopher) and cares to quote from a few
other philosophers ‒ some of whom he was not necessarily associated
with: such as Kenny and Anscombe, and some of whom he was, notably
Pears. Grices motto: Where there is a neo-Prichardian willing, there is a
palæo-Griceian way! Grice quotes Pears, of Christ Church, as the philosopher he
found especially congenial to explore areas in what both called philosophical
psychology, notably the tricky use of intending as displayed by a few
philosophers even in their own circle, such as Hampshire and Hart in Intention,
decision, and certainty. The title of Grices lecture is meant to provoke
that pair of Oxonian philosophers Grice knew so well and who were too ready to
bring in certainty in an area that requires deep philosophical
exploration. This is the Henriette Herz Trust annual lecture. It
means its delivered annually by different philosophers, not always Grice! Grice
had been appointed a FBA earlier, but he took his time to deliver his
lecture. With your lecture, you implicate, Hi! Grice, and indeed Pears,
were motivated by Hampshires and Harts essay on intention and certainty in
Mind. Grice knew Hampshire well, and had actually enjoyed his Thought and
Action. He preferred Hampshires Thought and action to Anscombes Intention.
Trust Oxford being what it is that TWO volumes on intending are published in
the same year! Which one shall I read first? Eventually, neither ‒ immediately.
Rather, Grice managed to unearth some sketchy notes by Prichard (he calls
himself a neo-Prichardian) that Urmson had made available for the Clarendon
Press ‒ notably Prichards essay on willing that. Only a Corpus-Christi genius
like Prichard will distinguish will to, almost unnecessary, from will that, so
crucial. For Grice, wills that , unlike
wills to, is properly generic, in that p, that follows the that-clause,
need NOT refer to the Subjects of the sentence. Surely I can will that Smith
wins the match! But Grice also quotes Anscombe (whom otherwise would not count,
although they did share a discussion panel at the American Philosophical Association)
and Kenny, besides Pears. Of Anscombe, Grice borrows (but never returns)
the direction-of-fit term of art, actually Austinian. From Kenny, Grice borrows
(and returns) the concept of voliting. His most congenial approach was
Pearss. Grice had of course occasion to explore disposition and intention
on earlier occasions. Grice is especially concerned with a dispositional
analysis to intending. He will later reject it in “Uncertainty.” But
that was Grice for you! Grice is especially interested in distinguishing his
views from Ryles over-estimated dispositional account of intention, which Grice
sees as reductionist, and indeed eliminationist, if not boringly behaviourist,
even in analytic key. The logic of dispositions is tricky, as Grice will later
explore in connection with rationality, rational propension or propensity, and
metaphysics, the as if operator). While Grice focuses on uncertainty, he is
trying to be funny. He knew that Oxonians like Hart and Hampshire were obsessed
with certainty. I was so surprised that Hampshire and Hart were claiming
decision and intention are psychological states about which the agent is
certain, that I decided on the spot that that could certainly be a nice
topic for my BA lecture! Grice granted that in some cases, a declaration of an
intention can be authorative in a certain certain way, i. e. as implicating
certainty. But Grice wants us to consider: Marmaduke Bloggs intends to climb
Mt. Everest. Surely he cant be certain hell succeed. Grice used the
same example at the APA, of all places. To amuse Grice, Davidson, who was
present, said: Surely thats just an implicature! Just?! Grice was
almost furious in his British guarded sort of way. Surely not
just! Pears, who was also present, tried to reconcile: If I may,
Davidson, I think Grice would take it that, if certainty is implicated, the
whole thing becomes too social to be true. They kept discussing
implicature versus entailment. Is certainty entailed then? Cf. Urmson on
certainly vs. knowingly, and believably. Davidson asked. No,
disimplicated! is Grices curt reply. The next day, he explained to
Davidson that he had invented the concept of disimplicature just to tease him,
and just one night before, while musing in the hotel room! Talk of uncertainty
was thus for Grice intimately associated with his concern about the misuse of
know to mean certain, especially in the exegeses that Malcolm made popular
about, of all people, Moore! V. Scepticism and common sense and Moore and
philosophers paradoxes above, and Causal theory and Prolegomena for a summary
of Malcoms misunderstanding Moore! Grice manages to quote from Stouts Voluntary
action and Brecht. And he notes that not all speakers are as sensitive as they
should be (e.g. distinguishing modes, as realised by shall vs. will). He
emphasizes the fact that Prichard has to be given great credit for seeing that
the accurate specification of willing should be willing that and not willing
to. Grice is especially interested in proving Stoutians (like Hampshire and
Hart) wrong by drawing from Aristotles prohairesis-doxa distinction, or in his
parlance, the buletic-doxastic distinction. Grice quotes from Aristotle.
Prohairesis cannot be opinion/doxa. For opinion is thought to relate to all
kinds of things, no less to eternal things and impossible things than to things
in our own power; and it is distinguished by its falsity or truth, not by its
badness or goodness, while choice is distinguished rather by these. Now with
opinion in general perhaps no one even says it is identical. But it is not
identical even with any kind of opinion; for by choosing or deciding, or
prohairesis, what is good or bad we are men of a certain character, which we
are not by holding this or that opinion or doxa. And we choose to get or avoid
something good or bad, but we have opinions about what a thing is or whom it is
good for or how it is good for him; we can hardly be said to opine to get or
avoid anything. And choice is praised for being related to the right object
rather than for being rightly related to it, opinion for being truly related to
its object. And we choose what we best know to be good, but we opine what we do
not quite know; and it is not the same people that are thought to make the best
choices and to have the best opinions, but some are thought to have fairly good
opinions, but by reason of vice to choose what they should not. If opinion
precedes choice or accompanies it, that makes no difference; for it is not this
that we are considering, but whether it is identical with some kind of opinion.
What, then, or what kind of thing is it, since it is none of the things we have
mentioned? It seems to be voluntary, but not all that is voluntary to be an
object of choice. Is it, then, what has been decided on by previous
deliberation? At any rate choice involves a rational principle and thought.
Even the Names seems to suggest that it is what is chosen before other things.
His final analysis of G intends that p is in terms of, B1, a buletic condition,
to the effect that G wills that p, and D2, an attending doxastic condition, to
the effect that G judges that B1 causes p. Grice ends this essay with a nod to
Pears and an open point about the justifiability (other than evidential) for
the acceptability of the agents deciding and intending versus the evidential
justifiability of the agents predicting that what he intends will be satisfied.
It is important to note that in his earlier Disposition and intention, Grice
dedicates the first part to counterfactual if general. This is a logical point.
Then as an account for a psychological souly concept ψ. If G does A, sensory
input, G does B, behavioural output. No ψ without the behavioural output that ψ
is meant to explain. His problem is with the first person. The functionalist I
does not need a black box. The here
would be both incorrigibility and privileged access. Pology only explains their
evolutionary import. Refs.: The main source is his BA lecture on ‘uncertainty,’
but using the keyword ‘certainty’ is useful too. His essay on Descartes in WoW
is important, and sources elsehere in the Grice Papers, such as the predecessor
to the “Uncertainty” lecture in “Disposition and intention,” also his
discussion of avowal (vide references above), incorrigibility and privileged
access in “Method,” repr. in “Conception,” BANC
chiliagon: referred to by Grice in “Some remarks about the
senses.’ In geometry, a chiliagon, or 1000-gon is a polygon with 1,000 sides. Philosophers commonly refer to chiliagons
to illustrate ideas about the nature and workings of thought, meaning, and
mental representation. A chiliagon is a regular
chiliagon Polygon 1000.svg A regular chiliagon Type Regular polygon Edges and
vertices 1000 Schläfli symbol {1000}, t{500}, tt{250}, ttt{125} Coxeter diagram
CDel node 1.pngCDel 10.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel node.png CDel node
1.pngCDel 5.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel node 1.png Symmetry group Dihedral
(D1000), order 2×1000 Internal angle (degrees) 179.64° Dual polygon Self
Properties Convex, cyclic, equilateral, isogonal, isotoxal A whole
regular chiliagon is not visually discernible from a circle. The lower section
is a portion of a regular chiliagon, 200 times as large as the smaller one,
with the vertices highlighted. In geometry, a chiliagon (/ˈkɪliəɡɒn/) or
1000-gon is a polygon with 1,000 sides. Philosophers commonly refer to
chiliagons to illustrate ideas about the nature and workings of thought,
meaning, and mental representation. Contents 1 Regular chiliagon 2
Philosophical application 3 Symmetry 4 Chiliagram 5 See also 6 References
Regular chiliagon A regular chiliagon is represented by Schläfli symbol {1,000}
and can be constructed as a truncated 500-gon, t{500}, or a twice-truncated
250-gon, tt{250}, or a thrice-truncated 125-gon, ttt{125}. The measure of
each internal angle in a regular chiliagon is 179.64°. The area of a regular
chiliagon with sides of length a is given by {\displaystyle
A=250a^{2}\cot {\frac {\pi }{1000}}\simeq 79577.2\,a^{2}}A=250a^{2}\cot
{\frac {\pi }{1000}}\simeq 79577.2\,a^{2} This result differs from the
area of its circumscribed circle by less than 4 parts per million. Because
1,000 = 23 × 53, the number of sides is neither a product of distinct Fermat
primes nor a power of two. Thus the regular chiliagon is not a constructible
polygon. Indeed, it is not even constructible with the use of neusis or an
angle trisector, as the number of sides is neither a product of distinct
Pierpont primes, nor a product of powers of two and three. Philosophical
application René Descartes uses the chiliagon as an example in his Sixth
Meditation to demonstrate the difference between pure intellection and
imagination. He says that, when one thinks of a chiliagon, he "does not
imagine the thousand sides or see them as if they were present" before him
– as he does when one imagines a triangle, for example. The imagination
constructs a "confused representation," which is no different from
that which it constructs of a myriagon (a polygon with ten thousand sides).
However, he does clearly understand what a chiliagon is, just as he understands
what a triangle is, and he is able to distinguish it from a myriagon.
Therefore, the intellect is not dependent on imagination, Descartes claims, as
it is able to entertain clear and distinct ideas when imagination is unable to.
Philosopher Pierre Gassendi, a contemporary of Descartes, was critical of this
interpretation, believing that while Descartes could imagine a chiliagon, he
could not understand it: one could "perceive that the word 'chiliagon'
signifies a figure with a thousand angles [but] that is just the meaning of the
term, and it does not follow that you understand the thousand angles of the
figure any better than you imagine them." The example of a chiliagon is
also referenced by other philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant. David Hume points
out that it is "impossible for the eye to determine the angles of a
chiliagon to be equal to 1996 right angles, or make any conjecture, that
approaches this proportion."[4] Gottfried Leibniz comments on a use of the
chiliagon by John Locke, noting that one can have an idea of the polygon
without having an image of it, and thus distinguishing ideas from images. Henri
Poincaré uses the chiliagon as evidence that "intuition is not necessarily
founded on the evidence of the senses" because "we can not represent
to ourselves a chiliagon, and yet we reason by intuition on polygons in
general, which include the chiliagon as a particular case." Inspired by Descartes's chiliagon example,
Grice, R. M. Chisholm and other 20th-century philosophers have used similar
examples to make similar points. Chisholm's ‘speckled hen,’ which need not have
a determinate number of speckles to be successfully imagined, is perhaps the
most famous of these. Symmetry The symmetries of a regular chiliagon.
Light blue lines show subgroups of index 2. The 4 boxed subgraphs are
positionally related by index 5 subgroups. The regular chiliagon has Dih1000
dihedral symmetry, order 2000, represented by 1,000 lines of reflection. Dih100
has 15 dihedral subgroups: Dih500, Dih250, Dih125, Dih200, Dih100, Dih50,
Dih25, Dih40, Dih20, Dih10, Dih5, Dih8, Dih4, Dih2, and Dih1. It also has 16
more cyclic symmetries as subgroups: Z1000, Z500, Z250, Z125, Z200, Z100, Z50,
Z25, Z40, Z20, Z10, Z5, Z8, Z4, Z2, and Z1, with Zn representing π/n radian
rotational symmetry. John Conway labels these lower symmetries with a letter
and order of the symmetry follows the letter.[8] He gives d (diagonal) with
mirror lines through vertices, p with mirror lines through edges
(perpendicular), i with mirror lines through both vertices and edges, and g for
rotational symmetry. a1 labels no symmetry. These lower symmetries allow
degrees of freedom in defining irregular chiliagons. Only the g1000 subgroup
has no degrees of freedom but can be seen as directed edges. Chiliagram A
chiliagram is a 1,000-sided star polygon. There are 199 regular forms[9] given
by Schläfli symbols of the form {1000/n}, where n is an integer between 2 and
500 that is coprime to 1,000. There are also 300 regular star figures in the
remaining cases. For example, the regular {1000/499} star polygon is constructed
by 1000 nearly radial edges. Each star vertex has an internal angle of 0.36
degrees.[10] {1000/499} Star polygon 1000-499.svg Star polygon 1000-499
center.png Central area with moiré patterns See also Myriagon Megagon
Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Language References Meditation VI by
Descartes (English translation). Sepkoski, David (2005). "Nominalism
and constructivism in seventeenth-century mathematical philosophy".
Historia Mathematica. 32: 33–59. doi:10.1016/j.hm.2003.09.002. Immanuel
Kant, "On a Discovery," trans. Henry Allison, in Theoretical
Philosophy After 1791, ed. Henry Allison and Peter Heath, Cambridge UP, 2002
[Akademie 8:121]. Kant does not actually use a chiliagon as his example,
instead using a 96-sided figure, but he is responding to the same question
raised by Descartes. David Hume, The Philosophical Works of David Hume,
Volume 1, Black and Tait, 1826, p. 101. Jonathan Francis Bennett (2001),
Learning from Six Philosophers: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley,
Hume, Volume 2, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198250924, p. 53. Henri
Poincaré (1900) "Intuition and Logic in Mathematics" in William Bragg
Ewald (ed) From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of
Mathematics, Volume 2, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 0198505361, p.
1015. Roderick Chisholm, "The Problem of the Speckled Hen",
Mind 51 (1942): pp. 368–373. "These problems are all descendants of
Descartes's 'chiliagon' argument in the sixth of his Meditations" (Joseph
Heath, Following the Rules: Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint, Oxford:
OUP, 2008, p. 305, note 15). The Symmetries of Things, Chapter 20
199 = 500 cases − 1 (convex) − 100 (multiples of 5) − 250 (multiples of 2) + 50
(multiples of 2 and 5) 0.36 = 180 (1 - 2 /(1000 / 499) ) = 180 ( 1 – 998 /
1000 ) = 180 ( 2 / 1000 ) = 180 / 500 chiliagon vte Polygons (List) Triangles
Acute Equilateral Ideal IsoscelesObtuseRight Quadrilaterals Antiparallelogram Bicentric
CyclicEquidiagonalEx-tangentialHarmonic Isosceles trapezoidKiteLambertOrthodiagonal
Parallelogram Rectangle Right kite Rhombus Saccheri SquareTangentialTangential
trapezoidTrapezoid By number of sides Monogon (1) Digon (2) Triangle (3) Quadrilateral
(4) Pentagon (5) Hexagon (6) Heptagon (7) Octagon (8) Nonagon (Enneagon, 9) Decagon
(10) Hendecagon (11) Dodecagon (12) Tridecagon (13) Tetradecagon (14) Pentadecagon
(15) Hexadecagon (16) Heptadecagon (17) Octadecagon (18) Enneadecagon
(19)Icosagon (20)Icosihenagon [de] (21)Icosidigon (22) Icositetragon (24) Icosihexagon
(26) Icosioctagon (28) Triacontagon (30) Triacontadigon (32) Triacontatetragon
(34) Tetracontagon (40) Tetracontadigon (42)Tetracontaoctagon (48)Pentacontagon
(50) Pentacontahenagon [de] (51) Hexacontagon (60) Hexacontatetragon (64) Heptacontagon
(70)Octacontagon (80) Enneacontagon (90) Enneacontahexagon (96) Hectogon (100) 120-gon257-gon360-gonChiliagon
(1000) Myriagon (10000) 65537-gonMegagon (1000000) 4294967295-gon [ru;
de]Apeirogon (∞) Star polygons Pentagram Hexagram Heptagram Octagram Enneagram Decagram
Hendecagram Dodecagram Classes Concave Convex Cyclic Equiangular Equilateral Isogonal
Isotoxal Pseudotriangle Regular Simple SkewStar-shaped Tangential Categories:
Polygons1000 (number).
choice, v. rational choice.
commitment: Grice’s commitment to the 39 Articles. An
utterer is committed to those and only those entities to which the bound
variables of his utterance must be capable of referring in order that the
utterance made be true.” Cf. Grice on substitutional quantification for his
feeling Byzantine, and ‘gap’ sign in the analysis.
common-ground status assignment:
Strwson and Wiggins view that this is only tentative for Grice. the regulations
for common-ground assignment have to do with general rational constraints on conversation.
Grice is clear in “Causal,” and as Strawson lets us know, he was already clear
in “Introduction” when talking of a ‘pragmatic rule.’ Strawson states the rule
in terms of making your conversational contribution the logically strongest
possible. 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.’“Causal” provides a more difficult
version, because it deals with non-extensional contexts where ‘strong’ need not
be interpreted as ‘logical strength’ in terms of entailment. Common ground
status assignment springs from the principle of conversational helpfulness or
conversational benevolence. What would be the benevolent point of ‘informing’
your addressee what you KNOW your addressee already knows? It is not even
CONCEPTUALLY possible. You are not ‘informing’ him if you are aware that he
knows it. So, what Strawson later calls the principle of presumption of
ignorance and the principle of the presumption of knowledge are relevant. There
is a balance between the two. If Strawson asks Grice, “Is the king of France
bald?” Grice is entitled to assume that Strawson thinks two things Grice will
perceive as having been assigned a ‘common-ground’ status as uncontroversial
topic not worth conversing about. First, Strawson thinks that there is one
king. (∃x)Fx.
Second, Strawson thinks that there is at most
one king. (x)(y)((Fx.Fy)⊃ x=y).
That the king is bald is NOT assigned common-ground status, because Grice
cannot expect that Strawson thinks that Grice KNOWS that. Grice symbolises the
common-ground status by means of subscripts. He also uses square-bracekts, so
that anything within the scope of the square brackets is immune to controversy,
or as Grice also puts it, conversationally _inert_: things we don’t talk about.
communicatum: By psi-transmission, something that belonged in the
emissor becomes ‘common property,’ ‘communion’ has been achived. Now the
recipient KNOWS that it is raining (shares the belief with the emissor) and IS
GOING to bring that umbrella (has formed a desire). “Communication” is cognate
with ‘communion,’ while conversation is cognate with ‘sex’! When Grice hightlights
the ‘common ground’ in ‘communication’ he is being slightly rhetorical, so it
is good when he weakens the claim from ‘common ground’ to ‘non-trivial.’ A: I’m
going to the concert. My uncle’s brother went to that concert. The emissor
cannot presume that his addressee KNEW that he had an unlce let alone that his
uncle had a brother (the emissor’s father). But any expansion would trigger the
wrong implicatum. One who likes ‘communication’ is refined Strawson (I’m using
refined as J. Barnes does it, “turn Plato into refined Strawson”). Both in his
rat-infested example and at the inaugural lecture at Oxford. Grice, for one,
has given us reason to think that, with sufficient care, and far greater
refinement than I have indicated, it is possible to expound such a concept of
communication-intention or, as he calls it, utterer's meaning, which is proof
against objection. it is a commonplace
that Grice belongs, as most philosophers of the twentieth century, to the
movement of the linguistic turn. Short and Lewis have “commūnĭcare,” earlier
“conmunicare,” f. communis, and thus sharing the prefix with “conversare.” Now
“communis” is an interesting lexeme that Grice uses quite centrally in his idea
of the ‘common ground’ – when a feature of discourse is deemed to have been
assigned ‘common-ground status.’ “Communis” features the “cum-” prefix, commūnis
(comoinis); f. “con” and root “mu-,” to bind; Sanscr. mav-; cf.: immunis,
munus, moenia. The ‘communicatum’ (as used by Tammelo in social philosophy) may well cover what Grice
would call the total ‘significatio,’ or ‘significatum.’ Grice takes this
seriously. Let us start then by examining what we mean by ‘linguistic,’ or
‘communication.’ It is curious that while most Griceians overuse
‘communicative’ as applied to ‘intention,’ Grice does not. Communicator’s
intention, at most. This is the Peirce in Grice’s soul. Meaning provides an
excellent springboard for Grice to centre his analysis on psychological or
soul-y verbs as involving the agent and the first person: smoke only
figuratively means fire, and the expression smoke only figuratively (or
metabolically) means that there is fire. It is this or that utterer (say,
Grice) who means, say, by uttering Where theres smoke theres fire, or ubi
fumus, ibi ignis, that where theres smoke theres fire. A means something
by uttering x, an utterance-token is roughly equivalent to utterer U intends
the utterance of x to produce some effect in his addressee A by means of the
recognition of this intention; and we may add that to ask what U means 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 He does provide a
more specific example involving the that-clause at a later stage. By uttering
x, U means that-ψb-dp ≡ (Ǝφ)(Ǝf)(Ǝc) U
utters x intending x to be such that anyone who
has φ think that x has f, f is correlated in way c
with ψ-ing that p, and (Ǝφ') U intends x to be such
that anyone who has φ' think, via thinking that x has
f and that f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing that p, that U ψ-s that
p, and in view of (Ǝφ') U intending x to be such
that anyone who has φ' think, via thinking that x has
f, and f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing that p, that U ψ-s that
p, U ψ-s that p, and, for some
substituends of ψb-d, U utters x
intending that, should there actually be anyone who
has φ, he will, via thinking in view of (Ǝφ') U
intending x to be such that anyone who has φ' think, via
thinking that x has f, and f is correlated in way c
with ψ-ing that p, that U ψ-s that p, U ψ-s that
p himself ψ that p, and it is not
the case that, for some inference element E, U intends x to be such
that anyone who has φ both rely on E in coming to ψ, or think that U ψ-s, that p and think that (Ǝφ) U intends x to be
such that anyone who has φ come to ψ (or think that U ψ-s) that
p without relying on E. Besides St. John The Baptist, and Salome, Grice
cites few Namess in Meaning. But he makes a point about Stevenson! For
Stevenson, smoke means fire. Meaning develops out of an interest by Grice on
the philosophy of Peirce. In his essays on Peirce, Grice quotes from many other
authors, including, besides Peirce himself (!), Ogden, Richards, and Ewing, or
A. C. Virtue is not a fire-shovel Ewing, as Grice calls him, and this or that
cricketer. In the characteristic Oxonian fashion of a Lit. Hum., Grice has no
intention to submit Meaning to publication. Publishing is vulgar. Bennett,
however, guesses that Grice decides to publish it just a year after his Defence
of a dogma. Bennett’s argument is that Defence of a dogma pre-supposes some
notion of meaning. However, a different story may be told, not necessarily
contradicting Bennetts. It is Strawson who submits the essay by Grice to The
Philosophical Review (henceforth, PR) Strawson attends Grices talk on Meaning
for The Oxford Philosophical Society, and likes it. Since In defence of a dogma
was co-written with Strawson, the intention Bennett ascribes to Grice is
Strawsons. Oddly, Strawson later provides a famous alleged counter-example to
Grice on meaning in Intention and convention in speech acts, following J. O.
Urmson’s earlier attack to the sufficiency of Grices analysans -- which has
Grice dedicating a full James lecture (No. 5) to it. there is Strawsons
rat-infested house for which it is insufficient. An interesting fact,
that confused a few, is that Hart quotes from Grices Meaning in his critical
review of Holloway for The Philosophical Quarterly. Hart quotes Grice pre-dating
the publication of Meaning. Harts point is that Holloway should have gone to
Oxford! In Meaning, Grice may be seen as a practitioner of ordinary-language
philosophy: witness his explorations of the factivity (alla know, remember, or
see) or lack thereof of various uses of to mean. The second part of the essay,
for which he became philosophically especially popular, takes up an
intention-based approach to semantic notions. The only authority Grice cites,
in typical Oxonian fashion, is, via Ogden and Barnes, Stevenson, who, from The
New World (and via Yale, too!) defends an emotivist theory of ethics, and
making a few remarks on how to mean is used, with scare quotes, in something
like a causal account (Smoke means fire.). After its publication Grices account
received almost as many alleged counterexamples as rule-utilitarianism (Harrison),
but mostly outside Oxford, and in The New World. New-World philosophers seem to
have seen Grices attempt as reductionist and as oversimplifying. At Oxford, the
sort of counterexample Grice received, before Strawson, was of the Urmson-type:
refined, and subtle. I think your account leaves bribery behind. On the other
hand, in the New World ‒ in what Grice calls the Latter-Day School of
Nominalism, Quine is having troubles with empiricism. Meaning was repr. in various
collections, notably in Philosophical Logic, ed. by Strawson. It should be
remembered that it is Strawson who has the thing typed and submitted for
publication. Why Meaning should be repr. in a collection on Philosophical Logic
only Strawson knows. But Grice does say that his account may help clarify the
meaning of entails! It may be Strawsons implicature that Parkinson should have repr.
(and not merely credited) Meaning by Grice in his series for Oxford on The
theory of meaning. The preferred quotation for Griceians is of course The
Oxford Philosophical Society quote, seeing that Grice recalled the exact year
when he gave the talk for the Philosophical Society at Oxford! It is however,
the publication in The Philosophi, rather than the quieter evening at the
Oxford Philosophical Society, that occasioned a tirade of alleged
counter-examples by New-World philosophers. Granted, one or two Oxonians ‒
Urmson and Strawson ‒ fell in! Urmson criticises the sufficiency of Grices
account, by introducing an alleged counter-example involving bribery. Grice
will consider a way out of Urmsons alleged counter-example in his fifth Wiliam
James Lecture, rightly crediting and thanking Urmson for this! Strawsons alleged
counter-example was perhaps slightly more serious, if regressive. It also
involves the sufficiency of Grices analysis. Strawsons rat-infested house
alleged counter-example started a chain which required Grice to avoid,
ultimately, any sneaky intention by way of a recursive clause to the effect
that, for utterer U to have meant that p, all meaning-constitutive intentions
should be above board. But why this obsession by Grice with mean? He is being
funny. Spots surely dont mean, only mean.They dont have a mind. Yet Grice opens
with a specific sample. Those spots mean, to the doctor, that you, dear, have
measles. Mean? Yes, dear, mean, doctors orders. Those spots mean measles. But
how does the doctor know? Cannot he be in the wrong? Not really, mean is factive,
dear! Or so Peirce thought. Grice is amazed that Peirce thought that some
meaning is factive. The hole in this piece of cloth means that a bullet went
through is is one of Peirce’s examples. Surely, as Grice notes, this is an
unhappy example. The hole in the cloth may well have caused by something else,
or fabricated. (Or the postmark means that the letter went through the post.)
Yet, Grice was having Oxonian tutees aware that Peirce was krypto-technical.
Grice chose for one of his pre-Meaning seminars on Peirce’s general theory of
signs, with emphasis on general, and the correspondence of Peirce and Welby.
Peirce, rather than the Vienna circle, becomes, in vein with Grices dissenting
irreverent rationalism, important as a source for Grices attempt to English
Peirce. Grices implicature seems to be that Peirce, rather than Ayer, cared for
the subtleties of meaning and sign, never mind a verificationist theory about
them! Peirce ultra-Latinate-cum-Greek taxonomies have Grice very nervous,
though. He knew that his students were proficient in the classics, but still. Grice
thus proposes to reduce all of Peirceian divisions and sub-divisions (one
sub-division too many) to mean. In the proceedings, he quotes from Ogden,
Richards, and Ewing. In particular, Grice was fascinated by the correspondence of
Peirce with Lady Viola Welby, as repr. by Ogden/Richards in, well, their study
on the meaning of meaning. Grice thought the science of symbolism pretentious,
but then he almost thought Lady Viola Welby slightly pretentious, too, if youve
seen her; beautiful lady. It is via Peirce that Grice explores examples such as
those spots meaning measles. Peirce’s obsession is with weathercocks almost as
Ockham was with circles on wine-barrels. Old-World Grices use of New-World Peirce
is illustrative, thus, of the Oxonian linguistic turn focused on ordinary
language. While Peirce’s background was not philosophical, Grice thought it
comical enough. He would say that Peirce is an amateur, but then he said the
same thing about Mill, whom Grice had to study by heart to get his B. A. Lit.
Hum.! Plus, as Watson commented, what is wrong with amateur? Give me an amateur
philosopher ANY day, if I have to choose from professional Hegel! In finding
Peirce krypo-technical, Grice is ensuing that his tutees, and indeed any
Oxonian philosophy student (he was university lecturer) be aware that to mean
should be more of a priority than this or that jargon by this or that (New
World?) philosopher!? Partly! Grice wanted his students to think on their own,
and draw their own conclusions! Grice cites Ewing, Ogden/Richards, and many
others. Ewing, while Oxford-educated, had ended up at Cambridge (Scruton almost
had him as his tutor) and written some points on Meaninglessness! Those spots
mean measles. Grice finds Peirce krypto-technical and proposes to English him
into an ordinary-language philosopher. Surely it is not important whether we
consider a measles spot a sign, a symbol, or an icon. One might just as well
find a doctor in London who thinks those spots symbolic. If Grice feels like
Englishing Peirce, he does not altogether fail! meaning, reprints, of
Meaning and other essays, a collection of reprints and offprints of Grices
essays. Meaning becomes a central topic of at least two strands in
Retrospective epilogue. The first strand concerns the idea of the centrality of
the utterer. What Grice there calls meaning BY (versus meaning TO), i.e. as he
also puts it, active or agents meaning. Surely he is right in defending an
agent-based account to meaning. Peirce need not, but Grice must, because he is
working with an English root, mean, that is only figurative applicable to
non-agentive items (Smoke means rain). On top, Grice wants to conclude that
only a rational creature (a person) can meanNN properly. Non-human animals may
have a correlate. This is a truly important point for Grice since he surely is
seen as promoting a NON-convention-based approach to meaning, and also
defending from the charge of circularity in the non-semantic account of
propositional attitudes. His final picture is a rationalist one. P1 G
wants to communicate about a danger to P2. This presupposes there IS
a danger (item of reality). Then P1 G believes there is a
danger, and communicates to P2 G2 that there is a danger. This
simple view of conversation as rational co-operation underlies Grices account
of meaning too, now seen as an offshoot of philosophical psychology, and indeed
biology, as he puts it. Meaning as yet another survival mechanism. While he
would never use a cognate like significance in his Oxford Philosophical Society
talk, Grice eventually starts to use such Latinate cognates at a later stage of
his development. In Meaning, Grice does not explain his goal. By sticking with
a root that the Oxford curriculum did not necessarily recognised as
philosophical (amateur Peirce did!), Grice is implicating that he is starting
an ordinary-language botanising on his own repertoire! Grice was amused by the
reliance by Ewing on very Oxonian examples contra Ayer: Surely Virtue aint a fire-shovel
is perfectly meaningful, and if fact true, if, Ill admit, somewhat misleading
and practically purposeless at Cambridge. Again, the dismissal by Grice of
natural meaning is due to the fact that natural meaning prohibits its use in
the first person and followed by a that-clause. ‘I mean-n that p’ sounds
absurd, no communication-function seems in the offing, there is no ‘sign for,’
as Woozley would have it. Grice found, with Suppes, all types of primacy
(ontological, axiological, psychological) in utterers meaning. In Retrospective
epilogue, he goes back to the topic, as he reminisces that it is his
suggestion that there are two allegedly distinguishable meaning concepts, even
if one is meta-bolical, which may be called natural meaning and non-natural
meaning. There is this or that test (notably factivity-entailment vs.
cancelation, but also scare quotes) which may be brought to bear to distinguish
one concept from the other. We may, for example, inquire whether a particular
occurrence of the predicate mean is factive or non-factive, i. e., whether for
it to be true that [so and so] means that p, it does or does not have to be the
case that it is true that p. Again, one may ask whether the use of quotation
marks to enclose the specification of what is meant would be inappropriate or
appropriate. If factivity, as in know, remember, and see, is present and
quotation marks, oratio recta, are be inappropriate, we have a case of natural
meaning. Otherwise the meaning involved is non-natural meaning. We may now ask
whether there is a single overarching idea which lies behind both members of
this dichotomy of uses to which the predicate meaning that seems to be
Subjects. If there is such a central idea it might help to indicate to us which
of the two concepts is in greater need of further analysis and elucidation and
in what direction such elucidation should proceed. Grice confesses that he has
only fairly recently come to believe that there is such an overarching idea and
that it is indeed of some service in the proposed inquiry. The idea behind both
uses of mean is that of consequence, or consequentia, as Hobbes has it. If x
means that p, something which includes p or the idea of p, is a consequence of
x. In the metabolic natural use of meaning that p, p, this or that consequence,
is this or that state of affairs. In the literal, non-metabolic, basic,
non-natural use of meaning that p, (as in Smith means that his neighbour’s
three-year child is an adult), p, this or that consequence is this or that
conception or complexus which involves some other conception. This perhaps
suggests that of the two concepts it is, as it should, non-natural meaning
which is more in need of further elucidation. It seems to be the more
specialised of the pair, and it also seems to be the less determinate. We may,
e. g., ask how this or that conception enters the picture. Or we may ask
whether what enters the picture is the conception itself or its justifiability.
On these counts Grice should look favorably on the idea that, if further
analysis should be required for one of the pair, the notion of non-natural
meaning would be first in line. There are factors which support the suitability
of further analysis for the concept of non-natural meaning. MeaningNN that
p (non-natural meaning) does not look as if it Namess an original feature of
items in the world, for two reasons which are possibly not mutually
independent. One reason is that, given suitable background conditions, meaning,
can be changed by fiat. The second reason is that the presence of meaningNN is
dependent on a framework provided by communication, if that is not too
circular. Communication is in the philosophical lexicon. Lewis and
Short have “commūnĭcātĭo,” f. communicare,"(several times in Cicero,
elsewhere rare), and as they did with negatio and they will with significatio,
Short and Lewis render, unhelpfully, as a making common, imparting,
communicating. largitio et communicatio civitatis;” “quaedam societas et
communicatio utilitatum,” “consilii communicatio, “communicatio sermonis,” criminis
cum pluribus; “communicatio nominum, i. e. the like appellation of several objects;
“juris; “damni; In rhetorics, communicatio, trading on the communis, a figure,
translating Grecian ἀνακοίνωσις, in accordance with which the utterer turns to
his addressee, and, as it were, allows him to take part in the inquiry. It
seems to Grice, then, at least reasonable and possibly even emphatically
mandatory, to treat the claim that a communication vehicle, such as this and
that expression means that p, in this transferred, metaphoric, or meta-bolic
use of means that as being reductively analysable in terms of this or that
feature of this or that utterer, communicator, or user of this or that expression.
The use of meaning that as applied to this or that expression is posterior
to and explicable through the utterer-oriented, or utterer-relativised use,
i.e. involving a reference to this or that communicator or user of this or that
expression. More specifically, one should license a metaphorical use of mean,
where one allows the claim that this or that expression means that p, provided
that this or that utterer, in this or that standard fashion, means that p, i.e.
in terms of this or that souly statee toward this or that propositional
complexus this or that utterer ntends, in a standardly fashion, to produce by
his uttering this or that utterance. That this or that expression means (in
this metaphorical use) that p is thus explicable either in terms of this
or that souly state which is standardly intended to produce in this or that
addressee A by this or that utterer of this or that expression, or in this or
that souly staken up by this or that utterer toward this or that activity or
action of this or that utterer of this or that expression. Meaning was in
the air in Oxfords linguistic turn. Everybody was talking meaning. Grice
manages to quote from Hares early “Mind” essay on the difference between
imperatives and indicatives, also Duncan-Jones on the fugitive
proposition, and of course his beloved Strawson. Grice was also concerned
by the fact that in the manoeuvre of the typical ordinary-language philosopher,
there is a constant abuse of mean. Surely Grice wants to stick with the
utterers meaning as the primary use. Expressions mean only derivatively. To do
that, he chose Peirce to see if he could clarify it with meaning that. Grice
knew that the polemic was even stronger in London, with Ogden and Lady Viola
Welby. In the more academic Oxford milieu, Grice knew that a proper examination
of meaning, would lead him, via Kneale and his researches on the history of
semantics, to the topic of signification that obsessed the modistae (and their
modus significandi). For what does L and S say about about this? This is
Grice’s reply to popular Ogden. They want to know what the meaning of meaning
is? Here is the Oxononian response by Grice, with a vengeance. Grice is not an
animist nor a mentalist, even modest. While he allows for natural
phenomena to mean (smoke means fire), meaning is best ascribed to some utterer,
where this meaning is nothing but the intentions behind his
utterance. This is the fifth James lecture. Grice was careful enough to
submit it to PR, since it is a strictly philosophical development of the views
expressed in Meaning which Strawson had submitted on Grice’s behalf to the same
Review and which had had a series of responses by various philosophers. Among
these philosophers is Strawson himself in Intention and convention in the the
theory of speech acts, also in PR. Grice quotes from very many other
philosophers in this essay, including: Urmson, Stampe,
Strawson, Schiffer, and Searle. Strawson is especially relevant since
he started a series of alleged counter-examples with his infamous example of
the rat-infested house. Grice particularly treasured Stampes alleged
counter-example involving his beloved bridge! Avramides earns a D. Phil Oxon.
on that, under Strawson! This is Grices occasion to address some of the
criticisms ‒ in the form of alleged counter-examples, typically, as his
later reflections on epagoge versus diagoge note ‒ by Urmson,
Strawson, and other philosophers associated with Oxford, such as Searle,
Stampe, and Schiffer. The final analysandum is pretty complex (of the type that
he did find his analysis of I am hearing a sound complex in Personal
identity ‒ hardly an obstacle for adopting it), it became yet
another target of attack by especially New-World philosophers in the pages of
Mind, Nous, and other journals, This is officially the fifth James lecture.
Grice takes up the analysis of meaning he had presented way back at the Oxford
Philosophical Society. Motivated mainly by the attack by Urmson and by Strawson
in Intention and convention in speech acts, that offered an alleged
counter-example to the sufficiency of Grices analysis, Grice ends up
introducing so many intention that he almost trembled. He ends up seeing
meaning as a value-paradeigmatic concept, perhaps never realisable in a
sublunary way. But it is the analysis in this particular essay where he is at
his formal best. He distinguishes between protreptic and exhibitive utterances,
and also modes of correlation (iconic, conventional). He symbolises the utterer
and the addressee, and generalises over the type of psychological state,
attitude, or stance, meaning seems to range (notably indicative vs.
imperative). He formalises the reflexive intention, and more importantly, the
overtness of communication in terms of a self-referential recursive intention
that disallows any sneaky intention to be brought into the picture of
meaning-constitutive intentions. Grice thought he had dealt with Logic and
conversation enough! So he feels of revising his Meaning. After all, Strawson
had had the cheek to publish Meaning by Grice and then go on to criticize it in
Intention and convention in speech acts. So this is Grices revenge, and he
wins! He ends with the most elaborate theory of mean that an Oxonian could ever
hope for. And to provoke the informalists such as Strawson (and his disciples
at Oxford – led by Strawson) he pours existential quantifiers like the plague!
He manages to quote from Urmson, whom he loved! No word on Peirce, though, who
had originated all this! His implicature: Im not going to be reprimanted in
informal discussion about my misreading Peirce at Harvard! The concluding note
is about artificial substitutes for iconic representation, and meaning as a
human institution. Very grand. This is Grices metabolical projection of
utterers meaning to apply to anything OTHER than utterers meaning, notably a
token of the utterers expression and a TYPE of the utterers expression, wholly
or in part. Its not like he WANTS to do it, he NEEDS it to give an account of
implicatum. The phrase utterer is meant to provoke. Grice thinks that speaker
is too narrow. Surely you can mean by just uttering stuff! This is the
sixth James lecture, as published in “Foundations of Language” (henceforth,
“FL”), or “The foundations of language,” as he preferred. As it happens, it
became a popular lecture, seeing that Searle selected this from the whole set
for his Oxford reading in philosophy on the philosophy of language. It is also
the essay cited by Chomsky in his influential Locke lectures. Chomsky
takes Grice to be a behaviourist, even along Skinners lines, which provoked a
reply by Suppes, repr. in PGRICE. In The New World, the H. P. is often given in
a more simplified form. Grice wants to keep on playing. In Meaning, he had said
x means that p is surely reducible to utterer U means that p. In this lecture,
he lectures us as to how to proceed. In so doing he invents this or that
procedure: some basic, some resultant. When Chomsky reads the reprint in
Searles Philosophy of Language, he cries: Behaviourist! Skinnerian! It was
Suppes who comes to Grices defence. Surely the way Grice uses expressions like
resultant procedure are never meant in the strict behaviourist way. Suppes
concludes that it is much fairer to characterise Grice as an intentionalist.
Published in FL, ed. by Staal, Repr.in Searle, The Philosophy of Language,
Oxford, the sixth James Lecture, FL, resultant procedure, basic
procedure. Staal asked Grice to publish the sixth James lecture for a
newish periodical publication of whose editorial board he was a member. The fun
thing is Grice complied! This is Grices shaggy-dog story. He does not seem too
concerned about resultant procedures. As he will ll later say, surely I can
create Deutero-Esperanto and become its master! For Grice, the primacy is the
idiosyncratic, particularized utterer in this or that occasion. He knows a
philosopher craves for generality, so he provokes the generality-searcher with
divisions and sub-divisions of mean. But his heart does not seem to be there,
and he is just being overformalistic and technical for the sake of it. I am
glad that Putnam, of all people, told me in an aside, you are being too formal,
Grice. I stopped with symbolism since! Communication. This is Grice’s clearest
anti-animist attack by Grice. He had joins Hume in mocking causing and willing:
The decapitation of Charles I as willing Charles Is death. Language semantics
alla Tarski. Grice know sees his former self. If he was obsessed, after Ayer,
with mean, he now wants to see if his explanation of it (then based on his
pre-theoretic intuition) is theoretically advisable in terms other than dealing
with those pre-theoretical facts, i.e. how he deals with a lexeme like mean.
This is a bit like Grice: implicatum, revisited. An axiological approach to
meaning. Strictly a reprint of Grice, which should be the preferred citation.
The date is given by Grice himself, and he knew! Grice also composed some notes
on Remnants on meaning, by Schiffer. This is a bit like Grices meaning
re-revisited. Schiffer had been Strawsons tutee at Oxford as a Rhode Scholar in
the completion of his D. Phil. on Meaning, Clarendon. Eventually, Schiffer
grew sceptic, and let Grice know about it! Grice did not find Schiffers
arguments totally destructive, but saw the positive side to them. Schiffers
arguments should remind any philosopher that the issues he is dealing are
profound and bound to involve much elucidation before they are solved. This is
a bit like Grice: implicatum, revisited. Meaning revisited (an ovious nod to
Evelyn Waughs Yorkshire-set novel) is the title Grice chose for a contribution
to a symposium at Brighton organised by Smith. Meaning revisited (although
Grice has earlier drafts entitled Meaning and philosophical psychology)
comprises three sections. In the first section, Grice is concerned with the application
of his modified Occam’s razor now to the very lexeme, mean. Cf. How many senses
does sense have? Cohen: The Senses of Senses. In the second part, Grice
explores an evolutionary model of creature construction reaching a stage of
non-iconic representation. Finally, in the third section, motivated to solve what
he calls a major problem ‒ versus the minor problem concerning the
transition from the meaning by the utterer to the meaning by the
expression. Grice attempts to construct meaning as a value-paradeigmatic
notion. A version was indeed published in the proceedings of the Brighton
symposium, by Croom Helm, London. Grice has a couple of other drafts with
variants on this title: philosophical psychology and meaning, psychology and
meaning. He keeps, meaningfully, changing the order. It is not arbitrary that
the fascinating exploration by Grice is in three parts. In the first, where he
applies his Modified Occams razor to mean, he is revisiting Stevenson. Smoke
means fire and I mean love, dont need different senses of mean. Stevenson is
right when using scare quotes for smoke ‘meaning’ fire utterance. Grice is very
much aware that that, the rather obtuse terminology of senses, was exactly the
terminology he had adopted in both Meaning and the relevant James lectures (V
and VI) at Harvard! Now, its time to revisit and to echo Graves, say, goodbye
to all that! In the second part he applies Pology. While he knows his audience
is not philosophical ‒ it is not Oxford ‒ he thinks they still may get
some entertainment! We have a P feeling pain, simulating it, and finally
uttering, I am in pain. In the concluding section, Grice becomes Plato. He sees
meaning as an optimum, i.e. a value-paradeigmatic notion introducing value in
its guise of optimality. Much like Plato thought circle works in his idiolect.
Grice played with various titles, in the Grice Collection. Theres philosophical
psychology and meaning. The reason is obvious. The lecture is strictly divided
in sections, and it is only natural that Grice kept drafts of this or that section
in his collection. In WOW Grice notes that he re-visited his Meaning re-visited
at a later stage, too! And he meant it! Surely, there is no way to understand
the stages of Grice’s development of his ideas about meaning without Peirce! It
is obvious here that Grice thought that mean two figurative or metabolical
extensions of use. Smoke means fire and Smoke means smoke. The latter is a
transferred use in that impenetrability means lets change the topic if
Humpty-Dumpty m-intends that it and Alice are to change the topic. Why did
Grice feel the need to add a retrospective epilogue? He loved to say that what
the “way of words” contains is neither his first, nor his last word. So trust
him to have some intermediate words to drop. He is at his most casual in the
very last section of the epilogue. The first section is more of a very
systematic justification for any mistake the reader may identify in the offer.
The words in the epilogue are thus very guarded and qualificatory. Just one
example about our focus: conversational implicate and conversation as rational
co-operation. He goes back to Essay 2, but as he notes, this was hardly the
first word on the principle of conversational helpfulness, nor indeed the first
occasion where he actually used implicature. As regards co-operation, the retrospective
epilogue allows him to expand on a causal phrasing in Essay 2, “purposive,
indeed rational.” Seeing in retrospect how the idea of rationality was the one
that appealed philosophers most – since it provides a rationale and
justification for what is otherwise an arbitrary semantic proliferation. Grice
then distinguishes between the thesis that conversation is purposive, and the
thesis that conversation is rational. And, whats more, and in excellent
Griceian phrasing, there are two theses here, too. One thing is to see
conversation as rational, and another, to use his very phrasing, as rational
co-operation! Therefore, when one discusses the secondary literature, one
should be attentive to whether the author is referring to Grices qualifications
in the Retrospective epilogue. Grice is careful to date some items. However,
since he kept rewriting, one has to be careful. These seven folder contain the
material for the compilation. Grice takes the opportunity of the compilation by
Harvard of his WOW, representative of the mid-60s, i. e. past the heyday of
ordinary-language philosophy, to review the idea of philosophical progress in
terms of eight different strands which display, however, a consistent and
distinctive unity. Grice keeps playing with valediction, valedictory,
prospective and retrospective, and the different drafts are all kept in The
Grice Papers. The Retrospective epilogue, is divided into two sections. In the
first section, he provides input for his eight strands, which cover not just meaning,
and the assertion-implication distinction to which he alludes to in the
preface, but for more substantial philosophical issues like the philosophy of
perception, and the defense of common sense realism versus the sceptial
idealist. The concluding section tackles more directly a second theme he had
idenfitied in the preface, which is a methodological one, and his long-standing
defence of ordinary-language philosophy. The section involves a fine
distinction between the Athenian dialectic and the Oxonian dialectic, and tells
the tale about his fairy godmother, G*. As he notes, Grice had dropped a few
words in the preface explaining the ordering of essays in the compilation. He
mentions that he hesitated to follow a suggestion by Bennett that the ordering
of the essays be thematic and chronological. Rather, Grice chooses to
publish the whole set of seven James lectures, what he calls the centerpiece,
as part I. II, the explorations in semantics and metaphysics, is organised more
or less thematically, though. In the Retrospective epilogue, Grice takes up
this observation in the preface that two ideas or themes underlie his Studies:
that of meaning, and assertion vs. implication, and philosophical methodology.
The Retrospective epilogue is thus an exploration on eight strands he
identifies in his own philosophy. Grices choice of strand is careful. For
Grice, philosophy, like virtue, is entire. All the strands belong to the same
knit, and therefore display some latitudinal, and, he hopes, longitudinal unity,
the latter made evidence by his drawing on the Athenian dialectic as a
foreshadow of the Oxonian dialectic to come, in the heyday of the Oxford school
of analysis, when an interest in the serious study of ordinary language had
never been since and will never be seen again. By these two types of unity,
Grice means the obvious fact that all branches of philosophy (philosophy of
language, or semantics, philosophy of perception, philosophical psychology,
metaphysics, axiology, etc.) interact and overlap, and that a historical regard
for ones philosophical predecessors is a must, especially at Oxford. Why is
Grice obsessed with asserting? He is more interested, technically, in the
phrastic, or dictor. Grice sees a unity, indeed, equi-vocality, in the
buletic-doxastic continuum. Asserting is usually associated with the doxastic.
Since Grice is always ready to generalise his points to cover the buletic
(recall his Meaning, “theres by now no reason to stick to informative cases,”),
it is best to re-define his asserting in terms of the phrastic. This is enough
of a strong point. As Hare would agree, for emotivists like Barnes, say, an
utterance of buletic force may not have any content whatsoever. For Grice,
there is always a content, the proposition which becomes true when the action
is done and the desire is fulfilled or satisfied. Grice quotes from Bennett.
Importantly, Grice focuses on the assertion/non-assertion distinction. He
overlooks the fact that for this or that of his beloved imperative utterance,
asserting is out of the question, but explicitly conveying that p is not.
He needs a dummy to stand for a psychological or souly state, stance, or
attitude of either boule or doxa, to cover the field of the utterer
mode-neutrally conveying explicitly that his addressee A is to entertain that
p. The explicatum or explicitum sometimes does the trick, but sometimes it does
not. It is interesting to review the Names index to the volume, as well as the
Subjects index. This is a huge collection, comprising 14 folders. By contract,
Grice was engaged with Harvard, since it is the President of the College that
holds the copyrights for the James lectures. The title Grice eventually chooses
for his compilation of essays, which goes far beyond the James, although
keeping them as the centerpiece, is a tribute to Locke, who, although obsessed
with his idealist and empiricist new way of ideas, leaves room for both the
laymans and scientists realist way of things, and, more to the point, for this
or that philosophical semiotician to offer this or that study in the way of
words. Early in the linguistic turn minor revolution, the expression the new
way of words, had been used derogatorily. WOW is organised in two parts: Logic
and conversation and the somewhat pretentiously titled Explorations in
semantics and metaphysics, which offers commentary around the centerpiece. It
also includes a Preface and a very rich and inspired Retrospective epilogue.
From part I, the James lectures, only three had not been previously published.
The first unpublished lecture is Prolegomena, which really sets the scene, and
makes one wonder what the few philosophers who quote from The logic of grammar
could have made from the second James lecture taken in isolation. Grice
explores Aristotle’s “to alethes”: “For the true and the false exist with respect
to synthesis and division (peri gar synthesin kai diaireisin esti to pseudos
kai to alethes).” Aristotle insists upon the com-positional form of truth in
several texts: cf. De anima, 430b3 ff.: “in truth and falsity, there is a
certain composition (en hois de kai to pseudos kai to alethes, synthesis tis)”;
cf. also Met. 1027b19 ff.: the true and the false are with respect to (peri)
composition and decomposition (synthesis kai diaresis).” It also shows that
Grices style is meant for public delivery, rather than reading. The second
unpublished lecture is Indicative conditionals. This had been used by a few
philosophers, such as Gazdar, noting that there were many mistakes in the
typescript, for which Grice is not to be blamed. The third is on some models
for implicature. Since this Grice acknowledges is revised, a comparison with
the original handwritten version of the final James lecture retrieves a few
differences From Part II, a few essays had not been published before, but
Grice, nodding to the longitudinal unity of philosophy, is very careful and
proud to date them. Commentary on the individual essays is made under the
appropriate dates. Philosophical correspondence is quite a genre. Hare would
express in a letter to the Librarian for the Oxford Union, “Wiggins does not
want to be understood,” or in a letter to Bennett that Williams is the worse
offender of Kantianism! It was different with Grice. He did not type. And he
wrote only very occasionally! These are four folders with general
correspondence, mainly of the academic kind. At Oxford, Grice would hardly keep
a correspondence, but it was different with the New World, where academia turns
towards the bureaucracy. Grice is not precisely a good, or reliable, as The BA
puts it, correspondent. In the Oxford manner, Grice prefers a face-to-face
interaction, any day. He treasures his Saturday mornings under Austins
guidance, and he himself leads the Play Group after Austins demise, which, as
Owen reminisced, attained a kind of cult status. Oxford is different. As a
tutorial fellow in philosophy, Grice was meant to tutor his students; as a
University Lecturer he was supposed to lecture sometimes other fellowss tutees!
Nothing about this reads: publish or perish! This is just one f. containing
Grices own favourite Griceian references. To the historian of analytic
philosophy, it is of particular interest. It shows which philosophers Grice
respected the most, and which ones the least. As one might expect, even on the
cold shores of Oxford, as one of Grices tutees put it, Grice is cited by
various Oxford philosophers. Perhaps the first to cite Grice in print is his
tutee Strawson, in “Logical Theory.” Early on, Hart quotes Grice on meaning in
his review in The Philosophical Quarterly of Holloways Language and
Intelligence before Meaning had been published. Obviously, once Grice and
Strawson, In defense of a dogma and Grice, Meaning are published by The
Philosophical Review, Grice is discussed profusely. References to the implicatum
start to appear in the literature at Oxford in the mid-1960s, within the playgroup,
as in Hare and Pears. It is particularly intriguing to explore those
philosophers Grice picks up for dialogue, too, and perhaps arrange them
alphabetically, from Austin to Warnock, say. And Griceian philosophical
references, Oxonian or other, as they should, keep counting! The way to search
the Grice Papers here is using alternate keywords, notably “meaning.” “Meaning”
s. II, “Utterer’s meaning and intentions,” s. II, “Utterer’s meaning,
sentence-meaning, and word meaning,” s. II, “Meaning revisited,” s. II. – but
also “Meaning and psychology,” s. V, c.7-ff.
24-25. While Grice uses “signification,” and lectured on Peirce’s
“signs,” “Peirce’s general theory of signs,” (s. V, c. 8-f. 29), he would avoid
such pretentiously sounding expressions. Searching under ‘semantic’ and
‘semantics’ (“Grammar and semantics,” c. 7-f. 5; “Language semantics,” c.
7-f.20, “Basic Pirotese, sentence semantics and syntax,” c. 8-f. 30, “Semantics
of children’s language,” c. 9-f. 10, “Sentence semantics” (c. 9-f. 11);
“Sentence semantics and propositional complexes,” c. 9-f.12, “Syntax and
semantics,” c. 9-ff. 17-18) may help, too. Folder on Schiffer (“Schiffer,” c.
9-f. 9), too.
complexum: Vide the altogether nice girl, and the one-at-a-time
sailor. The topic is essential in seeing Grice within the British empiricist
tradition. Empiricists always loved a simplex, like ‘red.’ In his notes on
‘Meaning’ and “Peirce,’ Grice notes that for a ‘simplex’ like “red,” the best
way to deal with it is via a Russellian function, ‘x is red.’ The opposite of
‘simplex’ is of course a ‘complexum.’ hile Grice does have an essay on the
‘complexum,’ he is mostly being jocular. His dissection of the proposition
proceds by considering ‘the a,’ and its denotatum, or reference, and ‘is the
b,’ which involves then the predication. This is Grice’s shaggy-dog story. Once
we have ‘the dog is shaggy,’ we have a ‘complexum,’ and we can say that the
utterer means, by uttering ‘Fido is shaggy,’ that the dog is hairy-coated.
Simple, right? It’s the jocular in Grice. He is joking on philosophers who look
at those representative of the linguistic turn, and ask, “So what do you have
to say about reference and predication,’ and Grice comes up with an
extra-ordinary analysis of what is to believe that the dog is hairy-coat, and
communicating it. In fact, the ‘communicating’ is secondary. Once Grice has
gone to metabolitical extension of ‘mean’ to apply to the expression, communication
becomes secondary in that it has to be understood in what Grice calls the
‘atenuated’ usage involving this or that ‘readiness’ to have this or that
procedure, basic or resultant, in one’s repertoire! Bealer is one of Grices
most brilliant tutees in the New World. The Grice collection contains a full f.
of correspondence with Bealer. Bealer refers to Grice in his influential
Clarendon essay on content. Bealer is concerned with how pragmatic inference
may intrude in the ascription of a psychological, or souly, state, attitude, or
stance. Bealer loves to quote from Grice on definite descriptions in Russell
and in the vernacular, the implicature being that Russell is impenetrable!
Bealers mentor is Grices close collaborator Myro, so he knows what he is
talking about. Grice explored the matter of subperception at Oxford only with
G. J. Warnock. Refs.: The main reference is in ‘Reply to Richards.’ But there
is “Sentence semantics and propositional complexes,” c. 9-f. 12, BANC.
conatum: Aristotle
distinguishes three types of living beings: vegetables, φυτά, which possess
only the ability to nourish themselves τὸ θϱεπτιϰόν; animals, ζαῷ, which
possess the faculty of sensing τὸ αἰσθητιϰόν, which opens onto that of
desiring, τὸ ὀϱεϰτιϰόν, to orektikon, (desdideratum); and man and — he says—any
other similar or superior being, who possess in addition the ability to think,
“τὸ διανοητιϰόν τε ϰαὶ νοῦς.” -- De An., 414a 29-b.orme, the technical Stoic
definition of πάθος, viz. as a particular kind of conation, or impulse (ορμή). ...
4 ' This definition (amorem ipsum conatum amicitiae faeiendae ex ... emotion and moral
self-management in Galen's philosophical
psychology', ..cōnātum ,
i, usu. in plur.: cōnāta ,
ōrum, n., v. conor.. The term is used by an the
Wilde Reader at Oxford, that Grice once followed – until he became a
neo-Prichardian instead.(philosophy) The power or act which directs or
impels to effort of any kind, whether muscular or psychical. quotations 1899, George Frederick Stout, A
Manual of Psychology, page 234:Any pleasing sense-experience, when it has once taken
place, will, on subsequent occasions, give rise to a conation, when its conditions are only
partially repeated...
conceptum: Grice obviously uses Frege’s notion of a ‘concept.’ One of
Grice’s metaphysical routines is meant to produce a logical construction of a
concept or generate a new concept. Aware of the act/product distinction, Grice
distinguishes between the conceptum, or concept, and the conception, or
conceptio. Grice allows that ‘not’ may be a ‘concept,’ so he is not tied to the
‘equine’ idea by Frege of the ‘horse.’ Since an agent can fail to conceive that
his neighbour’s three-year old is an adult, Grice accepts that ‘conceives’ may
take a ‘that’-clause. In ‘ordinary’ language, one does not seem to refer, say,
to the concept that e = mc2, but that may be a failure or ‘ordinary’ language.
In the canonical cat-on-the-mat, we have Grice conceiving that the cat is on
the mat, and also having at least four concepts: the concept of ‘cat,’ the
concept of ‘mat,’ the concept of ‘being on,’ and the concept of the cat being
on the mat.
conditionalis: “This is an interesting Latinism,” as Grice puts it. For
those in the know, it’s supposed to translate ‘hypothetical,’ that Grice also
uses. But literally, the transliteration of ‘hypothetica’ is ‘sub-positio,’
i.e. ‘suppositio,’ so infamous in the Dark Ages! So one has to be careful. For
some reason, Boethius disliked ‘suppositio,’ and preferred to add to the
Latinate philosophical vocabulary, with ‘conditionalis,’ the hypothetical,
versus the categoric, become the ‘conditionale.’ And the standard was not the
Diodoran, but the Philonian, also known, after Whitehead, as the ‘implicatio
materialis.’ While this sounds scholastic, it isn’t. Cicero may have used
‘implicatio materialis.’ But Whitehead’s and Russell’s motivation is a
different one. They start with the ‘material’, by which they mean a proposition
WITH A TRUTH VALUE. For implication that does not have this restriction, they
introduce ‘implicatio formalis,’ or ‘formal implication.’ In their adverbial
ways, it goes p formally implies q. trictly,
propositio conditionalis: vel substitutive, versus propositio praedicativa in
Apuleius. Classical
Latin condicio was
confused in Late Latin with conditio "a making," from conditus,
past participle of condere "to put together." The sense
evolution in Latin apparently was from "stipulation" to
"situation, mode of being."
Grice lists ‘if’ as the third binary functor in his response to Strawson. The
relations between “if” and “⊃” have already, but only in part,
been discussed. 1 The sign “⊃” is called the Material Implication
sign a name I shall consider later. Its meaning is given by the rule that any
statement of the form ‘p⊃q’ is false in the case in which the first of its
constituent statements is true and the second false, and is true in every other
case considered in the system; i. e., the falsity of the first constituent
statement or the truth of the second are, equally, sufficient conditions of the
truth of a statement of material implication ; the combination of truth in the
first with falsity in the second is the single, necessary and sufficient,
condition (1 Ch. 2, S. 7) of its falsity. The standard or primary -- the
importance of this qualifying phrase can scarcely be overemphasized. There are
uses of “if … then … ” which do not
answer to the description given here,, or to any other descriptions given in this
chapter -- use of an “if … then …” sentence,
on the other hand, we saw to be in circumstances where, not knowing whether
some statement which could be made by the use of a sentence corresponding in a
certain way to the first clause of the hypothetical is true or not, or
believing it to be false, we nevertheless consider that a step in reasoning
from that statement to a statement related in a similar way to the second
clause would be a sound or reasonable step ; the second statement also being
one of whose truth we are in doubt, or which we believe to be false. Even in
such circumstances as these we may sometimes hesitate to apply the word ‘true’
to hypothetical statements (i.e., statements which could be made by the use of
“if ... then …,” in its standard significance), preferring to call them
reasonable or well-founded ; but if we apply ‘true’ to them at all, it will be
in such circumstances as these. Now one of the sufficient conditions of the
truth of a statement of material implication may very well be fulfilled without
the conditions for the truth, or reasonableness, of the corresponding
hypothetical statement being fulfilled ; i.e., a statement of the form ‘p⊃q’ does not entail the corresponding statement of the form
“if p then q.” But if we are prepared to accept the hypothetical statement, we
must in consistency be prepared to deny the conjunction of the statement
corresponding to the first clause of the sentence used to make the hypothetical
statement with the negation of the statement corresponding to its second clause
; i.e., a statement of the form “if p then q” does entail the corresponding statement
of the form ‘p⊃q.’ The force of “corresponding” needs elucidation. Consider
the three following very ordinary specimens of hypothetical sentences. If the
Germans had invaded England in 1940, they would have won the war. If Jones were
in charge, half the staff would have been dismissed. If it rains, the match
will be cancelled. The sentences which could be used to make statements
corresponding in the required sense to the subordinate clauses can be
ascertained by considering what it is that the speaker of each hypothetical
sentence must (in general) be assumed either to be in doubt about or to believe
to be not the case. Thus, for (1) to (8), the corresponding pairs of sentences
are as follows. The Germans invaded England in 1940; they won the war. Jones is
in charge; half the staff has been dismissed. It will rain; the match will be
cancelled. Sentences which could be used to make the statements of material
implication corresponding to the hypothetical statements made by these
sentences can now be framed from these pairs of sentences as follows. The Germans
invaded England in 1940 ⊃ they won the war. Jones is in charge ⊃ half the staff has been, dismissed. It will rain ⊃ the match will be cancelled. The very fact that these
verbal modifications are necessary, in order to obtain from the clauses of the
hypothetical sentence the clauses of the corresponding material implication
sentence is itself a symptom of the radical difference between hypothetical
statements and truth-functional statements. Some detailed differences are also
evident from these examples. The falsity of a statement made by the use of ‘The
Germans invaded England in 1940’ or ‘Jones is in charge’ is a sufficient
condition of the truth of the corresponding statements made by the use of (Ml)
and (M2) ; but not, of course, of the corresponding statements made by the use
of (1) and (2). Otherwise, there would normally be no point in using sentences
like (1) and (2) at all; for these sentences would normally carry – but not
necessarily: one may use the pluperfect or the imperfect subjunctive when one
is simply working out the consequences of an hypothesis which one may be
prepared eventually to accept -- in the tense or mood of the verb, an
implication of the utterer's belief in the falsity of the statements
corresponding to the clauses of the hypothetical. It is not raining is
sufficient to verify a statement made by the use of (MS), but not a
statement made by the use of (3). Its not raining Is also sufficient to verify
a statement made by the use of “It will rain ⊃
the match will not be cancelled.” The formulae ‘p revise ⊃q’ and ‘q revise⊃
q' are consistent with one another, and the joint assertion of corresponding
statements of these forms is equivalent to the assertion of the corresponding
statement of the form * *-~p. But “If it rains, the match will be cancelled” is
inconsistent with “If it rains, the match will not be cancelled,” and their
joint assertion in the same context is self-contradictory. Suppose we call the
statement corresponding to the first clause of a sentence used to make a
hypothetical statement the antecedent of the hypothetical statement; and the
statement corresponding to the second clause, its consequent. It is sometimes
fancied that whereas the futility of identifying conditional statements with
material implications is obvious in those cases where the implication of the
falsity of the antecedent is normally carried by the mood or tense of the verb
(e.g., (I) or (2)), there is something to be said for at least a partial
identification in cases where no such implication is involved, i.e., where the
possibility of the truth of both antecedent and consequent is left open (e.g.,
(3). In cases of the first kind (‘unfulfilled’ or ‘subjunctive’ conditionals)
our attention is directed only to the last two lines of the truth-tables for *
p ⊃ q ', where the antecedent has the truth-value, falsity; and
the suggestion that ‘~p’ entails ‘if p, then q’ is felt to be obviously wrong.
But in cases of the second kind we may inspect also the first two lines, for
the possibility of the antecedent's being fulfilled is left open; and the
suggestion that ‘p . q’ entails ‘if p, then q’ is not felt to be obviously
wrong. This is an illusion, though engendered by a reality. The fulfilment of
both antecedent and consequent of a hypothetical statement does not show that
the man who made the hypothetical statement was right; for the consequent might
be fulfilled as a result of factors unconnected with, or in spite of, rather
than because of, the fulfilment of the antecedent. We should be prepared to say
that the man who made the hypothetical statement was right only if we were also
prepared to say that the fulfilment of the antecedent was, at least in part,
the explanation of the fulfilment of the consequent. The reality behind the
illusion is complex : en. 3 it is, partly, the fact that, in many cases, the
fulfilment of both antecedent and consequent may provide confirmation for the
view that the existence of states of affairs like those described by the
antecedent is a good reason for expecting states of affairs like those
described by the consequent ; and it is, partly, the fact that a man whosays,
for example, 4 If it rains, the match will be cancelled * makes a prediction
(viz.. that the match will be cancelled) under a proviso (viz., that it rains),
and that the cancellation of the match because of the rain therefore leads us
to say, not only that the reasonableness of the prediction was confirmed, but
also that the prediction itself was confirmed. Because a statement of the form
“p⊃q” does not entail the corresponding statement of the form '
if p, then q ' (in its standard employment), we shall expect to find, and have
found, a divergence between the rules for '⊃'
and the rules for ' if J (in its standard employment). Because ‘if p, then q’
does entail ‘p⊃q,’ we shall also expect to find some degree of parallelism
between the rules; for whatever is entailed by ‘p "3 q’ will be entailed
by ‘if p, then q,’ though not everything which entails ‘p⊃q’ will entail ‘if p, then q.’ Indeed, we find further
parallels than those which follow simply from the facts that ‘if p, then q’
entails ‘p⊃q’ and that entailment is transitive. To laws (19)-(23)
inclusive we find no parallels for ‘if.’ But for (15) (p⊃j).JJ⊃? (16) (P ⊃q).~qZ)~p (17) p'⊃q s ~q1)~p (18) (?⊃j).(?
⊃r) ⊃ (p⊃r) we find that, with certain reservations, 1 the following
parallel laws hold good : (1 The reservations are important. It is, e. g.,
often impossible to apply entailment-rule (iii) directly without obtaining
incorrect or absurd results. Some modification of the structure of the clauses
of the hypothetical is commonly necessary. But formal logic gives us no guide
as to which modifications are required. If we apply rule (iii) to our specimen
hypothetical sentences, without modifying at all the tenses or moods of the
individual clauses, we obtain expressions which are scarcely English. If we
preserve as nearly as possible the tense-mood structure, in the simplest way
consistent with grammatical requirements, we obtain the sentences : If the
Germans had not won the war, they would not have invaded England in
1940.) If half the staff had not been dismissed, Jones would not be in
charge. If the match is not cancelled, it will not rain. But these sentences,
so far from being logically equivalent to the originals, have in each case a
quite different sense. It is possible, at least in some such cases, to frame
sentences of more or less the appropriate pattern for which one can imagine a
use and which do stand in the required logical relationship to the original
sentences (e.g., ‘If it is not the case that half the staff has been dismissed,
then Jones can't be in charge;’ or ‘If the Germans did not win the war, it's
only because they did not invade England in 1940;’ or even (should historical
evidence become improbably scanty), ‘If the Germans did not win the war, it
can't be true that they invaded England in 1940’). These changes reflect
differences in the circumstances in which one might use these, as opposed to
the original, sentences. Thus the sentence beginning ‘If Jones were in charge
…’ would normally, though not necessarily, be used by a man who antecedently
knows that Jones is not in charge : the sentence beginning ‘If it's not the
case that half the staff has been dismissed …’ by a man who is working towards
the conclusion that Jones is not in charge. To say that the sentences are
nevertheless logically equivalent is to point to the fact that the grounds for
accepting either, would, in different circumstances, have been grounds for
accepting the soundness of the move from ‘Jones is in charge’ to ‘Half the
staff has been dismissed.’) (i) (if p,
then q; and p)^q (ii) (if p, then qt and not-g) Dnot-j? (iii) (if p, then f) ⊃ (if not-0, then not-j?) (iv) (if p, then f ; and iff, then
r) ⊃(if j>, then r) (One must remember that calling the
formulae (i)-(iv) is the same as saying that, e.g., in the case of (iii), c if
p, then q ' entails 4 if not-g, then not-j> '.) And similarly we find that,
for some steps which would be invalid for 4 if ', there are corresponding steps
that would be invalid for “⊃,” e. g. (p^q).q :. p are invalid inference-patterns,
and so are if p, then q ; and q /. p if p, then ; and not-j? /. not-f .The
formal analogy here may be described by saying that neither * p 13 q ' nor * if
j?, then q * is a simply convertible formula. We have found many laws (e.g.,
(19)-(23)) which hold for “⊃” and not for “if.” As an example of
a law which holds for “if,” but not for
“⊃,” we may give the analytic formula “ ~[(if p, then q) * (if
p, then not-g)]’. The corresponding formula 4 ~[(P 3 ?) * (j? 3 ~?}]’ is not
analytic, but (el (28)) is equivalent to the contingent formula ‘~~p.’ The
rules to the effect that formulae such as (19)-{23) are analytic are sometimes
referred to as ‘paradoxes of implication.’ This is a misnomer. If ‘⊃’ is taken as identical either with ‘entails’ or, more
widely, with ‘if ... then …’ in its
standard use, the rules are not paradoxical, but simply incorrect. If ‘⊃’ is given the meaning it has in the system of truth functions,
the rules are not paradoxical, but simple and platitudinous consequences of the
meaning given to the symbol. Throughout this section, I have spoken of a
‘primary or standard’ use of “if … then …,” or “if,” of which the main
characteristics were: that for each hypothetical statement made by this use of
“if,” there could be made just one statement which would be the antecedent of
the hypothetical and just one statement which would be its consequent; that the
hypothetical statement is acceptable (true, reasonable) if the antecedent
statement, if made or accepted, would, in the circumstances, be a good ground
or reason for accepting the consequent statement; and that the making of the
hypothetical statement carries the implication either of uncertainty about, or
of disbelief in, the fulfilment of both antecedent and consequent. (1 Not all
uses of * if ', however, exhibit all these characteristics. In particular,
there is a use which has an equal claim to rank as standard and which is
closely connected with the use described, but which does not exhibit the first
characteristic and for which the description of the remainder must consequently
be modified. I have in mind what are sometimes called 'variable' or 'general’
hypothetical : e.g., ‘lf ice is left in the sun, it melts,’ ‘If the side of a
triangle is produced, the exterior angle is equal to the sum of the two
interior and opposite angles ' ; ' If a child is very strictly disciplined in
the nursery, it will develop aggressive tendencies in adult life,’ and so on.
To a statement made by the use of a sentence such as these there corresponds no
single pair of statements which are, respectively, its antecedent and
consequent. On the other 1 There is much more than this to be said about this
way of using ‘if;’ in particular, about the meaning of the question whether the
antecedent would be a good ground or reason for accepting the consequent and
about the exact way in which this question is related to the question of
whether the hypothetical is true {acceptable, reasonable) or not hand, for
every such statement there is an indefinite number of non-general hypothetical
statements which might be called exemplifications, applications, of the
variable hypothetical; e.g., a statement made by the use of the sentence ‘If
this piece of ice is left in the sun, it will melt.’ To the subject of variable
hypothetical I may return later. 1 Two relatively uncommon uses of ‘if’ may be
illustrated respectively by the sentences ‘If he felt embarrassed, he showed no
signs of it’ and ‘If he has passed his exam, I’m a Dutchman (I'll eat my hat,
&c.)’ The sufficient and necessary condition of the truth of a statement
made by the first is that the man referred to showed no sign of embarrassment.
Consequently, such a statement cannot be treated either as a standard
hypothetical or as a material implication. Examples of the second kind are
sometimes erroneously treated as evidence that ‘if’ does, after all, behave
somewhat as ‘⊃’ behaves. The evidence for this is, presumably, the facts
(i) that there is no connexion between antecedent and consequent; (ii) that the
consequent is obviously not (or not to be) fulfilled ; (iii) that the intention
of the speaker is plainly to give emphatic expression to the conviction that
the antecedent is not fulfilled either ; and (iv) the fact that “(p ⊃ q) . ~q” entails “~p.” But this is a strange piece of
logic. For, on any possible interpretation, “if p then q” has, in respect of
(iv), the same logical powers as ‘p⊃q;’
and it is just these logical powers that we are jokingly (or fantastically)
exploiting. It is the absence of connexion referred to in (i) that makes it a
quirk, a verbal flourish, an odd use of ‘if.’ If hypothetical statements were
material implications, the statements would be not a quirkish oddity, but a
linguistic sobriety and a simple truth. Finally, we may note that ‘if’ can be employed not simply in making
statements, but in, e.g., making provisional announcements of intention (e.g.,
‘If it rains, I shall stay at home’) which, like unconditional announcements of
intention, we do not call true or false but describe in some other way. If the
man who utters the quoted sentence leaves home in spite of the rain, we do not
say that what he said was false, though we might say that he lied (never really
intended to stay in) ; or that he changed his mind. There are further uses of
‘if’ which I shall not discuss. 1 v. ch. 7, I. The safest way to read the
material implication sign is, perhaps, ‘not both … and not …’ The material
equivalence sign ‘≡’ has the meaning given by the
following definition : p q =df=⊃/'(p⊃ff).(sOj)'
and the phrase with which it is sometimes identified, viz., ‘if and only if,’
has the meaning given by the following definition: ‘p if and only if q’ =df ‘if
p then g, and if q then p.’ Consequently, the objections which hold against the
identification of ‘p⊃q” with ‘if p then q’ hold with double force against the
identification of “p≡q’ with ‘p if and only if q.’ ‘If’
is of particular interest to Grice. The interest in the ‘if’ is double in
Grice. In doxastic contexts, he needs it for his analysis of ‘intending’
against an ‘if’-based dispositional (i.e. subjective-conditional) analysis. He
is of course, later interested in how Strawson misinterpreted the ‘indicative’
conditional! It is later when he starts to focus on the ‘buletic’ mode marker,
that he wants to reach to Paton’s categorical (i.e. non-hypothetical)
imperative. And in so doing, he has to face the criticism of those Oxonian
philosophers who were sceptical about the very idea of a conditional buletic
(‘conditional command – what kind of a command is that?’. Grice would refere to
the protasis, or antecedent, as a relativiser – where we go again to the
‘absolutum’-‘relativum’ distinction. The conditional is also paramount in
Grice’s criticism of Ryle, where the keyword would rather be ‘disposition.’
Then ther eis the conditional and disposition. Grice is a philosophical
psychologist. Does that make sense? So are Austin (Other Minds), Hampshire
(Dispositions), Pears (Problems in philosophical psychology) and Urmson
(Parentheticals). They are ALL against Ryle’s silly analysis in terms of
single-track disposition" vs. "many-track disposition," and
"semi-disposition." If I hum and walk, I can either hum or walk. But
if I heed mindfully, while an IN-direct sensing may guide me to YOUR soul, a
DIRECT sensing guides me to MY soul. When Ogden consider attacks to meaning,
theres what he calls the psychological, which he ascribes to Locke Grices
attitude towards Ryle is difficult to assess. His most favourable assessment
comes from Retrospective epilogue, but then he is referring to Ryle’s fairy
godmother. Initially, he mentions Ryle as a philosopher engaged in, and
possibly dedicated to the practice of the prevailing Oxonian methodology, i.e.
ordinary-language philosophy. Initially, then, Grice enlists Ryle in
the regiment of ordinary-language philosophers. After introducing Athenian
dialectic and Oxonian dialectic, Grice traces some parallelisms, which should
not surprise. It is tempting to suppose that Oxonian dialectic reproduces some
ideas of Athenian dialectic. It would actually be surprising if there
were no parallels. Ryle was, after all, a skilled and enthusiastic student of
Grecian philosophy. Interestingly, Grice then has Ryles fairy godmother as
proposing the idea that, far from being a basis for rejecting the
analytic-synthetic distinction, opposition that there are initially two
distinct bundles of statements, bearing the labels analytic and synthetic,
lying around in the world of thought waiting to be noticed, provides us with the
key to making the analytic-synthetic distinction acceptable. The essay has
a verificationist ring to it. Recall Ayer and the verificationists trying to
hold water with concepts like fragile and the problem of counterfactual
conditionals vis-a-vis observational and theoretical concepts. Grices
essay has two parts: one on disposition as such, and the second,
the application to a type of psychological disposition, which
would be phenomenalist in a way, or verificationist, in that it derives from
introspection of, shall we say, empirical phenomena. Grice is going to
analyse, I want a sandwich. One person wrote in his manuscript, there is
something with the way Grice goes to work. Still. Grice says that I want a
sandwich (or I will that I eat a sandwich) is problematic, for analysis, in
that it seems to refer to experience that is essentially private and
unverifiable. An analysis of intending that p in terms of being disposed that p
is satisfied solves this. Smith wants a sandwich, or he wills that he eats a sandwich,
much as Toby needs nuts, if Smith opens the fridge and gets one. Smith is
disposed to act such that p is satisfied. This Grice opposes to the
‘special-episode’ analysis of intending that p. An utterance like I want a
sandwich iff by uttering the utterance, the utterer is describing this or that
private experience, this or that private sensation. This or that sensation
may take the form of a highly specific souly sate, like what Grice
calls a sandwich-wanting-feeling. But then, if he is not happy with the privacy
special-episode analysis, Grice is also dismissive of
Ryles behaviourism in The concept of mind, fresh from the press, which
would describe the utterance in terms purely of this or that observable
response, or behavioural output, provided this or that sensory input. Grice
became friendlier with functionalism after Lewis taught him how. The
problem or crunch is with the first person. Surely, Grice claims, one does not
need to wait to observe oneself heading for the fridge before one is in a position
to know that he is hungry. Grice poses a problem for the
protocol-reporter. You see or observe someone else, Smith, that Smith wants a
sandwich, or wills that he eats a sandwich. You ask for evidence. But when it
is the agent himself who wants the sandwich, or wills that he eats a
sandwich, Grice melodramatically puts it, I am not in the
audience, not even in the front row of the stalls; I am on the
stage. Genial, as you will agree. Grice then goes on to offer an
analysis of intend, his basic and target attitude, which he has just used to
analyse and rephrase Peirces mean and which does relies on this or that piece
of dispositional evidence, without divorcing itself completely from the
privileged status or access of first-person introspective knowledge. In
“Uncertainty,” Grice weakens his reductive analysis of intending that, from
neo-Stoutian, based on certainty, or assurance, to neo-Prichardian, based on
predicting. All very Oxonian: Stout was the sometime Wilde reader in mental
philosophy (a post usually held by a psychologist, rather than a philosopher ‒
Stouts favourite philosopher is psychologist James! ‒ and Prichard was
Cliftonian and the proper White chair of moral philosophy. And while in
“Uncertainty” he allows that willing that may receive a physicalist treatment,
qua state, hell later turn a functionalist, discussed under ‘soul, below, in
his “Method in philosophical psychology (from the banal to the bizarre”
(henceforth, “Method”), in the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical
Association, repr. in “Conception.” Grice can easily relate to Hamsphires
"Thought and Action," a most influential essay in the Oxonian scene.
Rather than Ryle! And Grice actually addresses further topics on intention
drawing on Hampshire, Hart, and his joint collaboration with Pears. Refs.:
The main reference is Grice’s early essay on disposition and intention, The H.
P. Grice. Refs.: The main published source is Essay 4 in WOW, but there are
essays on ‘ifs and cans,’ so ‘if’ is a good keyword, on ‘entailment,’ and for
the connection with ‘intending,’ ‘disposition and intention,’ BANC.
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