illusion: cf. veridical memories, who needs them? hallucination
is Grice’s topic.Malcolm argues in Dreaming and Skepticism and in his Dreaming
that the notion of a dream qua conscious experience that occurs at a definite
time and has definite duration during sleep, is unintelligible. This
contradicts the views of philosophers like Descartes (and indeed Moore!), who, Malcolm
holds, assume that a human being may have a conscious thought and a conscious
experience during sleep. Descartes claims that he had been deceived during
sleep. Malcolms point is that ordinary language contrasts consciousness and
sleep. The claim that one is conscious while one is sleep-walking is stretching
the use of the term. Malcolm rejects the alleged counter-examples based on
sleepwalking or sleep-talking, e.g. dreaming that one is climbing stairs while
one is actually doing so is not a counter-example because, in such a case, the
individual is not sound asleep after all. If a person is in any state of
consciousness, it logically follows that he is not sound asleep. The concept of
dreaming is based on our descriptions of dreams after we have awakened in
telling a dream. Thus, to have dreamt that one has a thought during sleep is
not to have a thought any more than to have dreamt that one has climbed Everest
is to have climbed Everest. Since one cannot have an experience during sleep,
one cannot have a mistaken experience during sleep, thereby undermining the
sort of scepticism based on the idea that our experience might be wrong because
we might be dreaming. Malcolm further argues that a report of a conscious state
during sleep is unverifiable. If Grice claims that he and Strawson saw a
big-foot in charge of the reserve desk at the Bodleian library, one can verify
that this took place by talking to Strawson and gathering forensic evidence
from the library. However, there is no way to verify Grices claim that he
dreamed that he and Strawson saw a big-foot working at the Bodleian. Grices
only basis for his claim that he dreamt this is that Grice says so after he
wakes up. How does one distinguish the case where Grice dreamed that he saw a
big-foot working at The Bodleian and the case in which he dreamed that he saw a
person in a big-foot suit working at the library but, after awakening,
mis-remembered that person in a big-foot suit as a big-foot proper? If Grice
should admit that he had earlier mis-reported his dream and that he had
actually dreamed he saw a person in a big-foot suit at The Bodleian, there is
no more independent verification for this new claim than there was for the
original one. Thus, there is, for Malcolm, no sense to the idea of mis-remembering
ones dreams. Malcolm here applies one of Witters ideas from his private
language argument. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me
is right. And that only means that here we cannot talk about right. For a
similar reason, Malcolm challenges the idea that one can assign a definite
duration or time of occurrence to a dream. If Grice claims that he ran the mile
in 3.4 minutes, one could verify this in the usual ways. If, however, Grice
says he dreamt that he ran the mile in 3.4 minutes, how is one to measure the
duration of his dreamt run? If Grice says he was wearing a stopwatch in the
dream and clocked his run at 3.4 minutes, how can one know that the dreamt
stopwatch is not running at half speed (so that he really dreamt that he ran
the mile in 6.8 minutes)? Grice might argue that a dream report does not carry
such a conversational implicata. But Malcolm would say that just admits the
point. The ordinary criteria one uses for determining temporal duration do not
apply to dreamt events. The problem in both these cases (Grice dreaming one saw
a bigfoot working at The Bodleian and dreaming that he ran the mile in 3.4
minutes) is that there is no way to verify the truth of these dreamt events —
no direct way to access that dreamt inner experience, that mysterious glow of
consciousness inside the mind of Grice lying comatose on the couch, in order to
determine the facts of the matter. This is because, for Malcolm, there are no
facts of the matter apart from the report by the dreamer of the dream upon
awakening. Malcolm claims that the empirical evidence does not enable one to
decide between the view that a dream experience occurs during sleep and the
view that they are generated upon the moment of waking up. Dennett agrees with
Malcolm that nothing supports the received view that a dream involves a
conscious experience while one is asleep but holds that such issues might be
settled empirically. Malcolm also argues against the attempt to provide a
physiological mark of the duration of a dream, for example, the view that the
dream lasted as long as the rapid eye movements. Malcolm replies that there can
only be as much precision in that common concept of dreaming as is provided by
the common criterion of dreaming. These scientific researchers are misled by
the assumption that the provision for the duration of a dream is already there,
only somewhat obscured and in need of being made more precise. However, Malcolm
claims, it is not already there (in the ordinary concept of dreaming). These scientific
views are making radical conceptual changes in the concept of dreaming, not
further explaining our ordinary concept of dreaming. Malcolm admits, however,
that it might be natural to adopt such scientific views about REM sleep as a
convention. Malcolm points out, however, that if REM sleep is adopted as a
criterion for the occurrence of a dream, people would have to be informed
upon waking up that they had dreamed or not. As Pears observes, Malcolm does
not mean to deny that people have dreams in favour of the view that they only
have waking dream-behaviour. Of course it is no misuse of language to speak of
remembering a dream. His point is that since the concept of dreaming is so
closely tied to our concept of waking report of a dreams, one cannot form a
coherent concept of this alleged inner (private) something that occurs with a
definite duration during sleep. Malcolm rejects a certain philosophical
conception of dreaming, not the ordinary concept of dreaming, which, he holds,
is neither a hidden private something nor mere outward behaviour.The account of
dreaming by Malcolm has come in for considerable criticism. Some argue that
Malcolms claim that occurrences in dreams cannot be verified by others does not
require the strict criteria that Malcolm proposes but can be justified by
appeal to the simplicity, plausibility, and predictive adequacy of an
explanatory system as a whole. Some argue that Malcolms account of the sentence
I am awake is inconsistent. A comprehensive programme in considerable detail
has been offered for an empirical scientific investigation of dreaming of the
sort that Malcolm rejects. Others have proposed various counterexamples and counter
arguments against dreaming by Malcolm. Grices emphasis is in Malcolms easy way
out with statements to the effect that implicata do or do not operate in dream
reports. They do in mine! Grice considers, I may be dreaming in the two essays
opening the Part II: Explorations on semantics and metaphysics in WOW. Cf.
Urmson on ‘delusion’ in ‘Parentheticals’ as ‘conceptually impossible.’ Refs.: The
main reference is Grice’s essay on ‘Dreaming,’ but there are scattered
references in his treatment of Descartes, and “The causal theory of perception”
(henceforth, “Causal theory”), The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
imperatum – This starts with the Greeks, who had the klesis
porstktike, modus imperativus. But then, under the modus subjunctives, the
Romans added the modus prohibitivus. So this is interesting, because it seems
that most of Grice’s maxims are ‘prohibitions’: “Do not say what you believe to
be false.” “Do not that for which you lack adequate evidence.” And some while
formally in the ‘affirmative,’ look prohibitive with ‘negative-loaded’ verbs
like ‘avoid ambiguity,’ etc. hile an imperatus, m. is a command, ‘imperatum’
refers, diaphanously, to what is commanded. “Impero” is actually a derivation
from the intensive “in-“ and the “paro,” as in “prepare,” “Paratum” would thus
reflect the ssame cognateness with ‘imperatum.” Modus imperativus -- imperative mode: At one
point, Grice loved the “psi,” Actions are alright, but we need to stop at the
psi level. The emissor communicates that the addressee thinks that the emissor
has propositional attitude psi. No need to get into the logical form of action.
One can just do with the logical form of a ‘that’-clause in the ascription of a
state of the soul. This should usually INVOLVE an action, as in Hare, “The door
is shut, please.” like Hare, Grice loves an imperative. In this essay, Grice
attempts an exploration of the logical form of Kant’s concoction. Grice is
especially irritated by the ‘the.’ ‘They speak of Kant’s categorical
imperative, when he cared to formulate a few versions of it!” Grice lists them
all in Abbott’s version. There are nine of them! Grice is interested in the conceptual
connection of the categorical imperative with the hypothetical or suppositional
imperative, in terms of the type of connection between the protasis and the
apodosis. Grice spends the full second Carus lecture on the conception of
value on this. Grice is aware that the topic is central to Oxonian
philosophers such as Hare, a member of Austin’s Play Group, too, who regard the
universability of an imperative as a mark of its categoricity, and indeed,
moral status. Grice chose some of the Kantian terminology on purpose.Grice
would refer to this or that ‘conversational maxim.’A ‘conversational maxim’
contributes to what Grice jocularly refers to as the ‘conversational
immanuel.’But there is an admission test.The ‘conversational maxim’ has to be
shown that, qua items under an overarching principle of conversational
helpfulness, the maxim displays a quality associated with conceptual, formal,
and applicational generality. Grice never understood what Kant meant by the
categoric imperative. But for Grice, from the acceptability of the the immanuel
you can deduce the acceptability of this or that maxim, and from the
acceptability of the conversational immanuel, be conversationally helpful, you
can deduce the acceptability of this or that convesational maxim. Grice hardly
considered Kants approach to the categoric imperative other than via the
universability of this or that maxim. This or that conversational maxim,
provided by Grice, may be said to be universalisable if and only if it displays
what Grice sees as these three types of generality: conceptual, formal, and
applicational. He does the same for general maxims of conduct. The results are
compiled in a manual of universalisable maxims, the conversational immanuel, an
appendix to the general immanuel. The other justification by Kant of the
categoric imperative involve an approach other than the genitorial
justification, and an invocation of autonomy and freedom. It is the use by
Plato of imperative as per categoric imperative that has Grice expanding on
modes other than the doxastic, to bring in the buletic, where the categoric
imperative resides. Note that in the end Kant DOES formulate the categoric
imperative, as Grice notes, as a real imperative, rather than a command, etc.
Grice loved Kant, but he loved Kantotle best. In the last Kant lecture, he
proposes to define the categorical imperative as a counsel of prudence, with a
protasis Let Grice be happy. The derivation involves eight stages! Grice found
out that out of his play-group activities with this or that linguistic nuance
he had arrived at the principle, or imperative of conversational helpfulness,
indeed formulated as an imperative: Make your contribution such as is required,
at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of the conversation in
which you are engaged. He notes that the rationality behind the idea of
conversation as rational co-operation does not preclude seeing rationality in
conversation as other than cooperation. The fact that he chooses maxim, and explicitly
echoes Kant, indicates where Grice is leading! An exploration on Paton on the
categorical imperative. Grice had previously explored the logical form of
hypothetical or suppositional imperatives in the Kant (and later Locke)
lectures, notably in Lecture IV, Further remarks on practical and alethic
reasons. Here he considers topics related to Hares
tropic-clistic neustic-phrastic quartet. What does it mean to say that
a command is conditional? The two successors of Grices post as
Tutorial Fellow at St. Johns, Baker Hacker, will tackle the same issue with
humour, in Sense and nonsense, published by Blackwell (too irreverent to be
published by the Clarendon). Is the logical form of a maxim, .p⊃!q, or !(.p ⊃.q),
etc. Kant thought that there is a special
sub-class of hypothetical or suppositional imperative (which he
called a counsels of prudence) which is like his class of technical imperative,
except in that the end specified in a full specfication of the imperative is
the special end of eudæmonia (the agents eudæmonia). For
Grice, understanding Kant’s first version of the categorical imperative
involves understanding what a maxim is supposed to be. Grice
explores at some length four alternative interpretations of an
iffy buletic (as opposed to a non-iffy buletic): three formal, one material.
The first interpretation is the horseshoe interpretation. A blind logical
nose might lead us or be led to the assumption of a link between a
buletically iffy utterance and a doxastically iffy utterance. Such a link
no doubt exists, but the most obvious version of it is plainly
inadequate. At least one other philosopher besides Grice has noticed that If he
torments the cat, have him arrested! is unlikely to express an
buletically iffy utterance, and that even if one restricts oneself to
this or that case in which the protasis specifies a will, we find pairs of
examples like If you will to go to Oxford, travel by AA via Richmond! or
If you will to go to Cambridge, see a psychiatrist! where it is plain that one
is, and the other is not, the expression of a buletically iffy utterance. For
fun, Grice does not tell which! A less easily eliminable suggestion, yet one
which would still interprets the notion of a buletically iffy utterance in
terms of that particular logical form to which if, hypothetical or
suppositional and conditional attach,
would be the following. Let us assume that it is established, or conceded, as
legitimate to formulate an if utterance in which not only the apodosis is
couched in some mode other than the doxastic, as in this or that conditional
command. If you see the whites of their eyes, shoot fire! but also the protasis
or some part (clause) of them. In which case all of the following might be
admissible conditionals. Thus, we might have a doxastic protasis (If the cat is
sick, take it to the vet), or a mixed (buletic-cum-doxastic protasis (If you
are to take the cat to the vet and theres no cage available, put it on Marthas
lap!), and buletic protasis (If you are to take the cat to the vet, put it in a
cage!). If this suggestion seems rebarbative, think of this or that quaint if
utterance (when it is quaint) as conditionalised versions of this or that
therefore-sequence, such as: buletic-cum-doxastic premises (Take the cat
to the vet! There isnt a cage. Therefore; Put the cat on Marthas lap!), buletic
premise (Take the cat to the vet! Put it in a cage!). And then, maybe, the
discomfort is reduced. Grice next considers a second formal interpretation or
approach to the buletically iffy/non-iffy utterance. Among if utterances with a
buletic apodosis some will have, then, a mixed doxastic-cum buletic protasis
(partly doxastic, partly buletic), and some will have a purely doxastic
protasis (If the cat is sick, take him to the vet!). Grice proposes a
definition of the iffy/non-iffy distinction. A buletically iffy utterance is an
iffy utterance the apodosis of which is buletic and the protasis of which is
buletic or mixed (buletic-cum-dxastic) or it is an elliptical version of such
an iffy utterance. A buletically non-iffy utterance is a buletic utterance
which is not iffy or else, if it is iffy, has a purely doxastic protasis. Grice
makes three quick comments on this second interpretation. First, re: a real
imperative. The structures which are being offered as a way of interpreting an
iffy and a non-iffy imperative do not, as they stand, offer any room for
the appearance this or that buletic modality like ought and should which are so
prominently visible in the standard examples of those kinds of imperatives. The
imperatives suggested by Grice are explicit imperatives. An explicit buletic
utterance is Do such-and-such! and not You ought to do such and such or, worse,
One ought to do such and such. Grice thinks, however, that one can modify this
suggestion to meet the demand for the appearance or occurrence of ought (etc)
if such occurrence is needed. Second, it would remain to be decided how close
the preferred reading of Grices deviant conditional imperatives would be to the
accepted interpretation of standard hypothetical or
suppositional imperatives. But even if there were some divergence that
might be acceptable if the new interpretation turns out to embody a more
precise notion than the standard conception. Then theres the neustical versus
tropical protases. There are, Grice thinks, serious doubts of the admissibility
of conditionals with a NON-doxastic protasis, which are for Grice connected
with the very difficult question whether the doxastic and the buletic modes are
co-ordinate or whether the doxastic mode is in some crucial fashion (but
not in other) prior (to use Suppess qualification) to the buletic. Grice
confesses he does not know the answer to that question. A third formal interpretation links
the iffy/non-iffy distinction to the absolute-relative value distinction. An
iffy imperatives would be end-relative and might be analogous
to an evidence-relative probability. A non-iffy imperatives would not
be end-relative. Finally, a fourth Interpretation is not formal, but
material. This is close to part of what Kant says on the topic. It is a
distinction between an imperative being escapable (iffy), through the
absence of a particular will and its not being escapable (non-iffy). If
we understand the idea of escabability sufficiently widely, the
following imperatives are all escapable, even though their logical form is
not in every case the same: Give up popcorn!, To get slim, give up
popcorn!, If you will to get slim, give up popcorn! Suppose Grice has no
will to get slim. One might say that the first imperative (Give up
popcorn!) is escaped, provided giving up popcorn has nothing else
to recommend it, by falsifying You should give up popcorn. The
second and the third imperatives (To get slim, give up pocorn! and If
you will to get slim, give up popcorn!) would not, perhaps, involve
falsification but they would, in the circumstances, be inapplicable
to Grice – and inapplicability, too, counts, as escape. A non-iffy
imperative however, is in no way escapable. Re: the Dynamics of
Imperatives in Discourse, Grice then gives three examples which he had
discussed in “Aspects,” which concern arguments (or therefore-chains). This we
may see as an elucidation to grasp the logical form of buletically iffy
utterance (elided by the therefore, which is an if in the metalanguage)
in its dynamics in argumentation. We should, Grice suggests,
consider not merely imperatives of each sort, together with the range
of possible characterisations, but also the possible forms of argument into
which_particular_ hypothetical or suppositional imperatives might enter.
Consider: Defend the Philosophy Department! If you are to defend the
philosophy department, learn to use bows and arrows! Therefore, learn to
use bows and arrows! Grice says he is using the dichotomy of original-derived
value. In this example, in the first premise, it is not specified whether the
will is original or derived, the second premise specifies conducive to (means),
and the conclusion would involve a derived will, provided the second premise is
doxastically satisfactory. Another example would be: Fight for your country! If
you are to fight for your country, join up one of the services! Therefore, join
up! Here, the first premise and the conclusion do not specify the protasis. If
the conclusion did, it would repeat the second premise. Then theres Increase
your holdings in oil shares! If you visit your father, hell give you some oil
shares. Therefore, visit your father! This argument (purportedly) transmits
value. Let us explore these characterisations by Grice with the aid of
Hares distinctions. For Hare in a hypothetical or suppositional imperative, the
protasis contains a neustic-cum-tropic. A distinction may be made between this
or that hypothetical or suppositional imperative and a term used by Grice
in his first interpretation of the hypothetical or suppositional
imperative, that of conditional command (If you see the whites of their
eyes, shoot fire!). A hypothetical or suppositional imperative can
be distinguished from a conditional imperative (If you want to make bread,
use yeast! If you see anything suspicious, telephone the police!) by the
fact that modus ponens is not valid for it. One may use hypothetical,
suppositional or conditional imperative for a buletic utterance which features
if, and reserve conditional command for a command which is expressed by an
imperative, and which is conditional on the satisfaction of the protasis.
Thus, on this view, treating the major premise of an argument as a
hypothetical or suppositional imperative turns the therefore-chain invalid.
Consider the sequence with the major premise as a hypothetical or suppositional
imperative. If you will to make someone mad, give him drug D! You
will to make Peter mad; therefore, give Peter drug D! By uttering this
hypothetical or suppositional imperative, the utterer tells his addressee A
only what means to adopt to achieve a given end in a way which
does not necessarily endorse the adoption of that end, and hence of
the means to it. Someone might similarly say, if you will to make
someone mad, give him drug D! But, of course, even if you will to do
that, you must not try to do so. On the other hand, the
following is arguably valid because the major premise is a
conditional imperative and not a mere hypothetical or suppositional
one. We have a case of major premise as a conditional imperative: You will to
make someone mad, give him drug D! Make Peter mad! Therefore, give
Peter drug D!. We can explain this in terms of the presence of the neustic
in the antecedent of the imperative working as the major premise.
The supposition that the protasis of a hypothetical or suppositional
imperative contains a clause in the buletic mode neatly explains why the
argument with the major premise as a hypothetical or suppositional
imperative is not valid. But the argument with the major premise as a
conditional imperative is, as well as helping to differentiate a
suppositional or hypothetical or suppositional iffy imperative from a
conditional iffy imperative. For, if the protasis of the major premise in the
hypothetical or suppositional imperative is volitival, the mere fact that
you will to make Peter mad does not license the inference of the
imperative to give him the drug; but this _can_ be inferred from the
major premise of the hypothetical or suppositional imperative
together with an imperative, the minor premise in the conditional
imperative, to make Peter mad. Whether the subordinate
clause contains a neustic thus does have have a consequence as
to the validity of inferences into which the complex sentence
enters. Then theres an alleged principle of mode constancy in buletic and
and doxastic inference. One may tries to elucidate Grices ideas on the
logical form of the hypothetical or suppositional imperative proper.
His suggestion is, admittedly, rather tentative. But it might be
argued, in the spirit of it, that an iffy imperative is of the
form ((!p⊃!q) Λ .p)) ∴ !q
But this violates a principle of mode constancy. A phrastic must
remain in the same mode (within the scope of the same tropic) throughout
an argument. A conditional imperative does not violate the principle of
Modal Constancy, since it is of the form ((p⊃!q) Λ
!p)) ∴ !q The question of the logical form of
the hypothetical or suppositional imperative is
too obscure to base much on arguments concerning it. There is an
alternative to Grices account of the validity of an argument featuring a conditional
imperative. This is to treat the major premise of a conditional
imperative, as some have urged it should be as a doxastic utterance tantamount
to In order to make someone mad, you have to give him drug D. Then an
utterer who explicitly conveys or asserts the major premise of a conditional
imperative and commands the second premise is in consistency committed to
commanding the conclusion. If does not always connect phrastic with
phrastic but sometimes connects two expressions consisting of a phrastic
and a tropic. Consider: If you walk past the post office, post the
letter! The antecedent of this imperative states, it seems, the
condition under which the imperative expressed becomes operative,
and so can not be construed buletically, since by uttering a buletic
utterance, an utterer cannot explicitly convey or assert that a condition
obtains. Hence, the protasis ought not be within the scope of the
buletic !, and whatever we take to represent the form of the
utterance above we must not take !(if p, q) to do so. One way out. On
certain interpretation of the isomorphism or æqui-vocality Thesis between
Indicative and Imperative Inference the utterance has to be construed
as an imperative (in the generic reading) to make the doxasatic
conditional If you will walk past the post office, you will post
the letter satisfactory. Leaving aside issues of the implicature of if,
that the utterance can not be so construed seems to be shown by
the fact that the imperative to make the associated doxastically iffy
utterance satisfactory is conformed with by one who does not walk past the
post office. But it seems strange at best to say that the utterance
is conformed with in the same circumstances. This strangeness or
bafflingliness, as Grice prefers, is aptly explained away in terms of the implicatum.
At Oxford, Dummett is endorsing this idea that a
conditional imperative be construed as an imperative to make an
indicative if utterance true. Dummett urges to divide conditional
imperatives into those whose antecedent is within the power of
the addressee, like the utterance in question, and those in which it
is not. Consider: If you go out, wear your coat! One may be not so much
concerned with how to escape this, as Grice is, but how to conform it. A child
may choose not to go out in order to comply with the imperative. For an
imperative whose protasis is_not_ within the power of the addressee (If anyone
tries to escape, shoot him!) it is indifferent whether we treat it as a
conditional imperative or not, so why bother. A small
caveat here. If no one tries to escape, the imperative is *not violated*.
One might ask, might there not be an important practical difference
bewteen saying that an imperative has not been violated and that
it has been complied with? Dummett ignores this distinction. One may
feel think there is much of a practical difference there. Is Grice
an intuitionist? Suppose that you are a frontier guard and
the antecedent has remained unfulfilled. Then, whether we say that you complied with
it, or simply did not *violate* it will make a great deal
of difference if you appear before a war crimes tribunal. For
Dummett, the fact that in the case of an imperative expressed by a conditional
imperative in which the antecedent is not within the agents power, we should
*not* say that the agent had obeyed just on the ground that the protassi is
false, is no ground for construing an imperative as expressing a
conditional command: for there is no question of fixing what shall
constitute obedience independently of the determination of what shall
constitute disobedience. This complicates the issues. One may with Grice (and
Hare, and Edgley) defend imperative inference against other Oxonian
philosophers, such as Kenny or Williams. What is questioned by the sceptics
about imperative inference is whether if each one of a set of imperatives
is used with the force of a command, one can infer a _further_ imperative
with that force from them. Cf. Wiggins on Aristotle on the practical
syllogism. One may be more conservative than Hare, if not Grice. Consider If
you stand by Jane, dont look at her! You stand by Jane; therefore, dont look at
her! This is valid. However, the following, obtained by anti-logism, is not: If
you stand by Jane, dont look at her! Look at her! Therefore, you dont stand by
Jane. It may seem more reasonable to some to deny Kants thesis, and maintain
that anti-logism is valid in imperative inference than it is to hold onto Kants
thesis and deny that antilogism is valid in the case in question. Then theres
the question of the implicata involved in the ordering of modes. Consider:
Varnish every piece of furniture you make! You are going to make a table;
therefore, varnish it! This is prima facie valid. The following, however,
switching the order of the modes in the premises is not. You are going to
varnish every piece of furniture that you make. Make a table! Therefore;
varnish it! The connection between the if and the therefore is metalinguistic,
obviously – the validity of the therefore chain is proved by the associated if
that takes the premise as, literally, the protasis and the consequence as the
apodosis. Conversational Implicature at the Rescue. Problems with
or: Consider Rosss infamous example: Post the letter! Therefore, post the
letter or burn it! as invalid, Ross – and endorsed at Oxford by Williams.
To permit to do p or q is to permit to do p and to permit to do q.
Similarly, to give permission to do something is to lift a prohibition
against doing it. Admittedly, Williams does not need this so we are
stating his claim more strongly than he does. One may review Grices way
out (defense of the validity of the utterance above in terms of the
implicatum. Grice claims that in Rosss infamous example (valid, for Grice),
whilst (to state it roughly) the premises permissive presupposition (to
use the rather clumsy term introduced by Williams) is entailed by it, the
conclusions is only conversationally implicated. Typically for an
isomorphist, Grice says this is something shared by
indicative inferences. If, being absent-minded, Grice asks his wife, What
have I done with the letter? And she replies, You have posted it or burnt it,
she conversationally implicates that she is not in a position to say which
Grice has done. She also conversationally implicates that Grice may not have
post it, so long as he has burnt it. Similarly, the future tense indicative, You
are going to post the letter has the conversational implicature You may be not
going to post the letter so long as you are going to burn it. But this
surely does not validate the introduction rule for OR, to wit: p;
therefore, p or q. One can similarly, say: Eclipse will win. He may not, of
course, if it rains. And I *know* it will *not* rain. Problems with and.
Consider: Put on your parachute AND jump out! Therefore, jump out! Someone who
_only_ jumps out of an æroplane does not fulfil Put on your parachute and
jump out! He has done only what is necessary, but not sufficient to
fulfil it. Imperatives do not differ from indicatives in this respect,
except that fulfilment takes the place of belief or doxa, which is the form of
acceptance apprpriate to a doxasatic utterance, as the Names implies.
Someone who is told Smith put on his parachute AND jumped out is entitled
to believe that Smith jumped out. But if he believes that this is _all_
Smith did he is in error (Cf. Edgley). One may discuss Grices test of
cancellability in the case of the transport officer who says: Go via Coldstream
or Berwick! It seems the transport officers way of expressing himself is
extremely eccentric, or conversationally baffling, as Grice prefers – yet
validly. If the transport officer is not sure if a storm may block one
of the routes, what he should say is _Prepare_ to go via Coldstream or
Berwick! As for the application of Grices test of explicit cancellation here,
it yield, in the circumstances, the transport officer uttering Go either via
Coldstream or Berwick! But you may not go via Coldstream if you do
not go via Berwick, and you may not go via Berwick if you do not go via Coldstream.
Such qualifications ‒ what Grice calls explicit cancellation of the
implicature ‒ seem to the addressee to empty the buletic mode of
utterance of all content and is thus reminiscent of Henry Fords utterance to
the effect that people can choose what colour car they like provided it is
black. But then Grice doesnt think Ford is being illogical, only Griceian and
implicatural! Refs.: There is at least one essay just about the categorical
imperative, but there are scattered references wherever Grice considers the
mood markers, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
implicatum: or, Grice’s implication. Grice makes an important
distinction which he thinks Austin doesn’t make because what a philosopher
EXPLICITLY conveys and what he IMPLICITLY conveys. It was only a few years
Grice was interacting philosophically with Austin and was reading some material
by Witters, when Grice comes with this criticism and complaint. Austin ignores
“all too frequently” a distinction that Witters apparently dnies. This is a
distinction between what an emissor communicates (e. g. that p), which can be
either explicitly (that p1) or implicitly (that p2) and what, metabolically,
and derivatively, the emissum ‘communictates’ (explicitly or implicitly). At
the Oxford Philosophical Society, he is considering Moore’s ‘entailment.’ This
is not a vernacular expression, but a borrowing from a Romance language. But
basically, Moore’s idea is that ‘p’ may be said to ‘entail’ q iff at least two
conditions follow. Surely ‘entail’ has only one sense. In this metabolically
usage where it is a ‘p’ that ‘entails’ the conditions are that there is a
property and that there is a limitation. Now suppose Grice is discussing with
Austin or reading Witters. Grice wants to distinguish various things: what the
emissor communicates (explicitly or implicitly) and the attending diaphanous
but metabolical, what WHAT THE EMSSOR COMMUNICATES (explicitly or implicitly)
ENTAILS, AND the purely metabolical what the emissum ‘entails’ (explicitly or
implicitly). This is Grice’s wording:“If we can elucidate the meaning of
"A meantNN by x that p (on a particular occasion)," this might
reasonably be expected to help us with the explication of "entails.”The
second important occasion is in the interlude or excursus of his Aristotelian
Society talk. How does he introduce the topic of ‘implication’? At that time
there was a lot being written about ‘contextual’ or ‘pragmatic’ implication –
even within Grice’s circle – as in D. K. Grant’s essay on pragmatic implication
for Philosophy, and even earlier Nowell-Smith’s on ‘contextual implication’ in
“Ethics,” and even earlier, and this is perhaps Grice’s main trigger, P. F.
Strawson’s criticism of Whitehead and Russell, with Strawson having that, by
uttering ‘The king of France is not bald,’ the emissor IMPLIES that there is a
king of France (Strawson later changes the idiom from ‘imply,’ and the
attending ‘implication, to ‘presuppose,’ but he keeps ‘imply’ in all the
reprints of his earlier essays). In “Causal Theory,” Grice surely cannot just
‘break’ the narrative and start with ‘implication’ in an excursus. So the first
stage is to explore the use of ‘implication’ or related concepts in the first
part of “Causal Theory” LEADING to the excursus for which need he felt. The
first use appears in section 2. The use is the noun, ‘implication.’ And
Grice is reporting the view of an objector, so does not care to be to careful
himself.“the OBJECTION MIGHT run as follows.” “… When someone makes a remark
such as “The pillar box seems red” A CERTAIN IMPLICATION IS CARRIED.” He goes
on “This implication is “DISJUNCTIVE IN FORM,” which should not concerns us
here. Since we are considering the status of the implication, as seen by the
objector as reported by Grice. He does not give a source, so we may assume G.
A. Paul reading Witters, and trying to indoctrinate a few Oxonians into
Wittgensteinianism (Grice notes that besides the playgroup there was Ryle’s
group at Oxford and a THIRD, “perhaps more disciplined” group, that tended
towards Witters.Grice goes on:“It IS implied that…” p. Again, he expands it,
and obviously shows that he doesn’t care to be careful. And he is being ironic,
because the implication is pretty lengthy! Yet he says, typically:“This may not
be an absolutely EXACT or complete characterisation of the implication, but it
is, perhaps, good ENOUGH to be going with!” Grice goes on to have his objector
a Strawsonian, i. e. as REFUSING TO ASSIGN A TRUTH-VALUE to the utterance,
while Grice would have that it is ‘uninterestingly true. In view of this it may
to explore the affirmative and negative versions. Because the truth-values may
change:In Grice’s view: “The pillar box seems red to me” IS “UNINTERESTINGLY
TRUE,” in spite of the implication.As for “It is not the case that the pillar
box seems red,” this is more of a trick. In “Negation,” Grice has a similar
example. “That pillar box is red; therefore, it is not blue.”He is concerned
with “The pillar box is not blue,” or “It is not the case that the pillar box
is blue.”What about the truth-value now of the utterance in connection with the
implication attached to it?Surely, Grice would like, unless accepting
‘illogical’ conversationalists (who want to make that something is UNASSERTIBLE
or MISLEADING by adding ‘not’), the utterance ‘It is not the case that the
pillar box seems red to me’ is FALSE in the scenario where the emissor would be
truthful in uttering ‘The pillar box seems red to me.” Since Grice allows that
the affirmative is ‘uninterestingly true,’ he is committed to having ‘It is not
the case that the pillar box seems red’ as FALSE.For the Strawsonian
Wittgensteinian, or truth-value gap theorist, the situation is easier to
characterise. Both ‘The pillar box seems red to me” and its negation, “The
pillar box does not seem red to me” lack a truth value, or in Grice’s word, as
applied to the affirmative, “far from being uninterestingly true, is neither
true nor false,” i. e. ‘neuter.’ It wold not be true but it would not be false
either – breakdown of bivalence. Grice’s case is a complicated one because he
distinguishes between the sub-perceptual “The pillar box seems red” from the
perceptual ‘vision’ statement, “Grice sees that the pillar box is red.” So the
truth of “The pillar box seems red” is a necessary condition for the statement
about ‘seeing.’ This is itself controversial. Some philosophers have claimed
that “Grice knows that p” does NOT entail “Grice believes that p,” for example.
But for the causal theory Grice is thinking of an analysis of “Grice sees that
the pillar box is red” in terms of three conditions: First, the pillar box
seems red to Grice. Second, the pillar box is red. And third, it is the pillar
box being red that causes it seeming red to Grice. Grice goes to reformulate
the idea that “The pillar box seems red” being true. But now not
“uninterestingly true,” but “true (under certain conditions),” or as he puts it
“(subject to certain qualifications) true.” He may be having in mind a clown in
a circus confronted with the blue pillar box and making a joke about it. Those ‘certain
qualifications’ would not apply to the circus case. Grice goes on to change the
adverb, it’s ‘boringly true,’ or ‘highly boringly true.’ He adds ‘suggestio
falsi,’ which seems alright but which would not please the Wittgensteinian who
would also reject the ‘false.’ We need a ‘suggestio neutri.’ In this second
section, he gives the theoretical explanation. The “implication” arises “in
virtue of a GENERAL FEATURE OR PRINCIPLE” of conversation, or pertaining to a
system put in ‘communication,’ or a general feature or principle governing an
emissor communicating that p. Note that ‘feature’ and ‘principle’ are
appropriately ‘vague.’ “Feature” can be descriptive. “Principle” is
Aristotelian. Boethius’s translation for Aristotle’s ‘arche.’ It can be
descriptive. The first use of ‘principle’ in a ‘moral’ or ‘practical’ context
seems to post-date its use in, say, geometry – Euclid’s axioms as ‘principia
mathematica,’ or Newton’s “Principia.” Grice may be having in mind Moore’s
‘paradox’ (true, surely) when Grice adds ‘it is raining.’Grice’s careful
wording is worth exploring. “The mistake
[incorrectness, falsehood] of supposing the implication to constitute a
"part of the meaning [sense]” of "The Alpha seems Beta" is
somewhat similar to, though MORE INSIDUOUS …”[moral implication here: 1540s, from Middle French insidieux "insidious"
(15c.) or directly from Latin insidiosus "deceitful, cunning, artful,
treacherous," from insidiae (plural) "plot, snare, ambush,"
from insidere "sit
on, occupy," from in- "in" (from PIE root *en "in")
+ sedere "to
sit," from PIE root *sed- (1) "to
sit." Figurative, usually with a suggestion of lying in wait and the
intent to entrap. Related: Insidiously; insidiousness]“than,
the mistake which one IF one supposes that the SO-CALLED [‘pragmatic’ or
‘contextual – implicatum, “as I would not,” and indeed he does not – he prefers
“expresses” here, not the weak ‘imply’] “implication” that one believes it to
be raining is "a part of the meaning [or sense]" of the expression
[or emissum] "It is raining.”Grice allows that no philosopher may have
made this mistake. He will later reject the view that one conversationally
implicates that one believes that it is raining by uttering ‘It is raining.’
But again he does not give sources. In these case, while without the
paraphernalia about the ‘a part of the ‘sense’” bit, can be ascribed at Oxford
to Nowell-Smith and Grant (but not, we hope to Strawson). Nowell-Smith is clear
that it is a contextual implication, but one would not think he would make the
mistake of bringing in ‘sense’ into the bargain. Grice goes on:“The short and
literally inaccurate reply to such a supposition [mistake] might be that the so-called
“implication” attaches because the expression (or emissum) is a PROPOSITIONAL
one [expressable by a ‘that so-and-so’ clause] not because it is the particular
propositional expression which it happens to be.”By ‘long,’ Grice implicates:
“And it is part of the function of the informative mode that you utter an
utterance in the informative mode if you express your belief in the content of
the propositonal expression.”Grice goes on to analyse ‘implication’ in terms of
‘petitio principii.’ This is very interesting and requires exploration. Grice
claims that his success the implicature in the field of the philosophy of
perception led his efforts against Strawson on the syncategoremata.But here we
see Grice dealing what will be his success.One might, for example, suggest that
it is open to the champion of sense_data to lay down that the sense-datum
sentence " I have a pink sense-datum " should express truth if and
only if the facts are as they would have to be for it to be true, if it were in
order, to say .. Something looks pink to me ", even though it may not
actually be in ordei to say this (because the D-or-D condition is unfulfilled).
But this attempt to by-pass the objector's position would be met by the reply
that it begs the question; for it assumes that there is some way of specifying
the facts in isolation from the implication standardly carried by such a
specification; and this is precisely what the objector is denying.Rephrasing
that:“One might, for example, suggest that it is open to the champion of
sense_data to lay down that the sense-datum sentence "The pillar box seems
red” is TRUE if and only if the facts are as the facts WOULD HAVE to be for
“The pillar box seems red” to be true, IF (or provided that) it were IN ORDER
[i. e. conversationally appropriate], to utter or ‘state’ or explicitly convey
that the pillar box seems red, even though it may NOT actually be in order
[conversationally appropriate] to explicitly convey that the pillar box seems
red (because the condition specified in the implication is unfulfilled).”“But
this attempt to by-pass the objector's position would be met by a charge of
‘petitio principia,’ i. e. the reply that it begs the question.”“Such a manoeuvre is invalid in that it assumes that
there IS some way of providing a SPECIFICATION of the facts of the matter in
isolation from, or without recourse to, the implication that is standardly
carried by such a specification.”“This is precisely what the objector is
denying, i. e. the objector believes it is NOT the case that there is a way of
giving a specification of the scenario without bringing in the implication.”Grice
refers to the above as one of the “frustrations,” implicating that the above,
the ‘petitio principia,’ is just one of the trials Grice underwent before
coming with the explanation in terms of the general feature of communication,
or as he will late express, in terms of ‘what the hell’ the
‘communication-function’ of “The pillar seems red to me” might be when the
implicatum is not meant – and you have to go on and cancel it (“That pillar box
seems red; mind, I’m not suggesting that it’s not – I’m practicing my
sub-perceptual proficiency.”).Grice goes on to note the generality he saw in
the idea of the ‘implication.’ Even if “The pillar box seems red” was his FIRST
attack, the reason he was willing to do the attacking was that the
neo-Wittgensteinian was saying things that went against THE TENOR OF THE THINGS
GRICE would say with regard to other ‘linguistic philosophical’ cases OTHER
than in the philosophy of perception, notably his explorations were against
Malcolm reading of Moore, about Moore ‘misusing’ “know.”Grice:“I was inclined
to rule against my objector, partly because his opponent's position was more in
line with the kind of thing I was inclined to say about other linguistic
phenomena which are in some degree comparable.”Rephrase:“My natural inclination
was to oppose the objector.”“And that was because his opponent's position is
more “in line” with the kind of thing Grice is inclined to say – or thesis he
is willing to put forward-- about OTHER phenomena involving this or that
‘communication-function’ of this or that philosophical adage, which are in some
degree comparable to “The pillar box seems red.””So just before the ‘excursus,’
or ‘discursus,’ as he has it – which is then not numbered – but subtitlted
(‘Implication’), he embark on a discursus about “certain ASPECTS of the concept
OR CONCEPTS of implication.”He interestingly adds: “using some more or less
well-worn examples.” This is not just a reference to Strawson, Grant, Moore,
Hungerland and Nowell-Smith, but to the scholastics and the idea of the ‘suppositio’
as an ‘implicatio,’: “Tu non cessas edere ferrum.” Grice says he will consider
only four aspects or FOUR IDEAS (used each as a ‘catalyst’) in particular
illustrations.“Smith has not ceased beating his wife.”“Smith’s girlfriend is
poor, but honest.”“Smith’s handwriting is beautiful”“Smith’s wife is in the kitchen
or in the bathroom.”Each is a case, as Grice puts it, “in which in ordinary
parlance, or at least in Oxonian philosophical parlance, something might be
said to be ‘implied’ (hopefully by the emissor) -- as distinct from being
‘stated,’ or ‘explicitly put.’One first illustrationEXPLICITLY CONVEYED: “Smith
has not ceased beating his wife.” IMPLICITLY CONVEYED, but cancellable: “Smith
has been beating his wife.”CANCELLATION: “Smith has not ceased beating his
wife; he never started.”APPLY THREE OTHER IDEAS.A second illustrationEXPLICITLY
CONVEYED:“Smith’s girlfriend is poor, but honest.”IMPLICITLY CONVEYED: “There
is some contrast between Smith’s girlfriend’s honesty and her poverty; and possibly
between Smith and the utterer.”CANCELLATION: “I’m sorry, I cannot cancel
that.”TRY OTHER THREE IDEAS.A third illustrationEXPLICITLY CONVEYED “Smith’s
handwriting is beautiful” – “Or “If only his outbursts were more angelic.”IMPLICITLY
CONVEYED: “He possibly cannot read Hegel in German.”CANCELLATION: “Smith’s
handwriting is beautiful; on top, he reads Hegel in German.”TRY THREEOTHER
IDEASA fourth illustration:EXPLICITLY CONVEYED: “Smith’s wife is in the kitchen
or in the bathroom.”IMPLICITLY CONVEYED: “It is not the case that I have
truth-functional grounds to express disjunct D1, and it is not the case that I
have truth-functional grounds to express disjunct D2; therefore, I am
introducting the disjunction EITHER than by the way favoured by Gentzen.” (Grice
actually focuses on the specific ‘doxastic’ condition: emissor believes
…CANCELLATION: “I know perfectly well where she is, but I want you to find out
for yourself.”TRY THREE OTHER IDEAS.Within the discursus he gives SIX (a
sextet) other examples, of the philosophical type, because he is implicating
the above are NOT of the really of philosophical type, hence his reference to
‘ordinary parlance.’ He points out that he has no doubt there are other
candidates besides his sextet.FIRST IN THE SEXTETEXPLICITLY CONVEYED: “You
cannot see a knife as a knife, though you may see what is not a knife as a
knife.”IMPLICITLY CONVEYED: “”AS” REQUIRES A GESTALT.”CANCELLATION: “I see the
horse as a horse, because my gestalt is mine.”TRY THREE OTHER IDEASSECOND IN
THE SEXTET:EXPLICITLY CONVEYED:“When Moore said he knew that the objects before
him were human hands, he was guilty of misusing the word "know".”IMPLICITLY
CONVEYED: “You can only use ‘know’ for ‘difficult cases.’CANCELLATION: “If I
know that p iff I believe that p, p, and p causes my belief in p, I know that
the objects before me are human hands.”TRY THREE OTHER IDEAS.THIRD IN THE
SEXTETEXPLICITLY CONVEYED: “For an occurrence to be properly said to have a
‘cause,’ the occurrence must be something abnormal or unusual.”IMPLICILTY
CONVEYED: “Refrain from using ‘cause’ when the thing is normal and usual.”CANCELLATION:
“If I see that the pillar box is red iff the pillar box seems red, the pillar
box is red, and the pillar box being red causes the pillar box seeming red, the
cause of the pillar box seeming red is that the pillar box is red.”TRY OTHER
THREE IDEAS.FOURTH IN THE SEXTET: EXPLICITLY
CONVEYED: “For an action to be properly described as one for which the agent is
responsible, it must be the sort of action for which people are condemned.”IMPLICITLY
CONVEYED: “Refrain ascribing ‘responsibility’ to Timmy having cleaned up his
bedroom.”CANCELLATION: “Timmy is very responsible. He engages in an action for
which people are not condemned.”TRY THREE OTHER IDEAS.FIFTH IN THE SEXTET:EXPLICITLY
CONVEYED: “What is actual is not also possible.”IMPLICITLY CONVEYED: “There is
a realm of possibilities which does not overlap with the realm of
actualities.”CANCELLATION: “If p is actual iff p obtains in world w1, and p is
possible iff p obtains in any world wn which includes w1, p is possible.”TRY
THREE OTHER IDEAS.SIXTH IN THE SEXTETEXPLICITLY CONVEYED: “What is known by me
to be the case is not also believed by me to be the case.”IMPLICITLY CONVEYED:
“To know is magical!”CANCELLATION: “If I know that p iff I believe that p, p,
and p causes my believing that p, then what is known by me to be the case is
also believed by me to be the case.”TRY THREE OTHER IDEAS.CASE IN QUESTION:EXPLICITLY
CONVEYED: “The pillar box seems red.”IMPLICITLY CONVEYED: “One will doubt it
is.”CANCELLATION: “The pillar box seems red and I hope no one doubt it is.”TRY
THREE OTHER IDEAS. THAT LISTING became commonplace for Grice. In
ProlegomenaGROUP A: EXAMPLE I: RYLE on ‘voluntarily’ and “involuntarily” in “The
Concept of Mind.” RYLE WAS LISTENING! BUT GRICE WAS without reach! Grice would
nothavecriticised Ryle at a shorter distance.EXAMPLE II: MALCOLM IN “Defending
common sense” in the Philosophical Review, on Moore’s misuse of ‘know’ – also
in Causal, above, as second in the sextet.EXPLICITLY CONVEYED:“When Moore said
he knew that the objects before him were human hands, he was guilty of misusing
the word "know".REPHRASE IN “PROLEGOMENA.”IMPLICITLY CONVEYED: “You
can only use ‘know’ for ‘difficult cases.’CANCELLATION: “If I know that p iff I
believe that p, p, and p causes my belief in p, I know that the objects before
me are human hands.”EXAMPLE III: BENJAMIN ON BROAD ON THE “SENSE” OF
“REMEMBERING”EXPLICITLY CONVEYED;IMPLICITLY CONVEYEDCANCELLATIONEXAMPLES, GROUP
A, CLASS IV: philosophy of perception FIRST EXAMPLE: Witters on ‘seeing as’ in
Philosophical InvestigationsEXPLICITLY CONVEYEDIMPLICITLY CONVEYEDCANCELLATION.Previously
used in Causal as first in the sextet: FIRST IN THE SEXTETEXPLICITLY CONVEYED:
“You cannot see a knife as a knife, though you may see what is not a knife as a
knife.”Rephrased in Prolegomena. IMPLICITLY CONVEYED: “”AS” REQUIRES A
GESTALT.”CANCELLATION: “I see the horse as a horse, because my gestalt is
mine.”GROUP A – CLASS IV – PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTIONEXAMPLE II – “The pillar box
seems red to me.”Used in“Causal”EXPLICITLY CONVEYED: “The pillar box seems
red.”IMPLICITLY CONVEYED: “One will doubt it is.”CANCELLATION: “The pillar box
seems red and I hope no one doubt it is.”GROUP A – CLASS V – PHILOSOPHY OF
ACTION – Here unlike Class IV, he uses (a), etc.EXAMPLE A: WITTERS AND OTHERS
on ‘trying’ EXPLICITLY CONVEYEDIMPLICITLY CONVEYED:CANCELLATIONGROUP A – CLASS
V – “ACTION,” not ‘philosophy of action’ – cf. ‘ordinary parlance.’EXAMPLE B: Hart
on ‘carefully.’EXPLICITLY CONVEYEDIMPLICITLY CONVEYEDCANCELLATION
GROUP A – CLASS V – ACTIONEXAMPLE C:
Austin in “A plea for excuses” on ‘voluntarily’ and ‘involuntarily’ – a
refinement on Ryle above – using variable “Mly” – Grice would not have criticised
Austin in the play group. He rather took it against his tutee, Strawson.EXPLICITLY
CONVEYED
IMPLICITLY CONVEYEDCANCELLATIONGROUP B:
syncategorema – not lettered butFIRST EXAMPLE: “AND” (not ‘not’)SECOND EXAMPLE:
“OR”THIRD EXAMPLE: “IF” – particularly relevant under ‘implication.’ STRAWSON, Introduction
to logical theory.GRICE’S PHRASING: “if p, q” ENTAILS ‘p horseshoe q.’ The
reverse does not hold: it is not the case that ‘p horseshoe q’ ENTAILS ‘if p,
q’. Odd way of putting it, but it was all from Strawson. It may be argued that
‘entail’ belongs in a system, and ‘p horseshoe q’ and ‘if p, q’ are DISPARATE. Grice
quotes verbatim from Strawson: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 onestatement 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 implicationeither of uncertainty about, or
of disbelief in, the fulfilment of both antecedent and consequent.Grice
rephrases that by stating that for Grice “a primary or standard use of ‘if,
then’” is characterised as follows:“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.”Grice rephrases the characterisation as from “each” and eliding a
middle part, but Grice does not care to add the fastidious “[…],” or quote,
unquote.“each hypothetical ‘statement’ made by this use of “if” 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 thehypothetical statement carries the
implication either of uncertainty about, or of disbelief in, the fulfilment of
both antecedent and consequent. “A
hypothetical, or conditional ‘statement’ or composite proposition such as “If
it is day, I talk”is acceptable (or TRUE, or ‘reasonable’) if (but not only
if), first, the antecedent ‘statement,’ ‘It is day,’ IF made on its own, or
accepted on its own, i. e. simpliciter, would, in the circumstances, be a good
ground or ‘reason’ for accepting the consequent ‘statement,’ to wit: “I talk;”
and, second, that the making of the conditional proposition or hypothetical ‘statement’
carries the implication, or rather the emissor of the emissum IMPLIES, either it
is not the case that the emissor is CERTAIN about or that it is day and CERTAIN
about or that he talks, or BELIEVES that it is day and BELIEVES that he
talks.”More or less Grice’s denial or doubt. Or rather ‘doubt’ (Strawson’s
‘uncertainty about’) or denial (‘disbelief in’). But it will do at this point
to explore the argument by Strawson to which Grice is responding. First two
comments. Strawson has occasion to respond to Grice’s response in more than one
opportunity. But Grice never took up the issue again in a detailed fashion –
after dedicating a full lecture to it. One occasion was Strawson’s review of
the reprint of Grice in 1989. Another is in the BA memorial. The crucial one is
repr. by Strawson (in a rather otiose way) in his compilation, straight from
PGRICE. This is an essay which Strawson composed soon after the delivery by
Grice of the lecture without consulting. Once Stawson is aware of Grice’s
terminology, he is ready to frame his view in Grice’s terms: for Strawson,
there IS an implicature, but it is a conventional one. His analogy is with the
‘asserted’ “therefore” or “so.” Since this for Grice was at least the second
exemplar of his manoeuvre, it will do to revise the argument from which Grice
extracts the passage in “Prolegomena.” In the body of the full lecture IV,
Grice does not care to mention Strawson at all; in fact, he makes rather hasty
commentaries generalising on both parties of the debate: the formalists, who
are now ‘blue-collared practitioners of the sciences,” i. e. not philosophers
like Grice and Strawson; and the informalists or ‘traditionalists’ like
Strawson who feel offended by the interlopers to the tranquil Elysium of
philosophy. Grice confesses a sympathy for the latter, of course. So here is
straight from the tranquil Elysium of philosophy. For Strawson, the relations
between “if” and “⊃” have already, but only in part, been discussed (Ch. 2, S.
7).” So one may need to review those passages. But now he has a special section
that finishes up the discussion which has been so far only partial. So Strawson
resumes the points of the previous partial discussion and comes up with the
‘traditionalist’ tenet. The sign “⊃” is called the material implication sign. Only by Whitehead
and Russell, that is, ‘blue-collared practitioners of the sciences,’ in Grice’s
wording. Whitehead and Russell think that ‘material’ is a nice opposite to
‘formal,’ and ‘formal implication’ is something pretty complex that only they
know to which it refers! Strawson goes on to explain, and this is a reminder of
his “Introduction” to his “Philosophical Logic” where he reprints Grice’s
Meaning (for some reason). There Strawson has a footnote quoting from Quine’s
“Methods of Logic,” where the phrasing is indeed about the rough phrase, ‘the
meaning of ‘if’’ – cf. Grice’s laughter at philosophers talking of ‘the sense
of ‘or’’ – “Why, one must should as well talk of the ‘sense’ of ‘to,’ or ‘of’!’
– Grice’s implicature is to O. P. Wood, whose claim to fame is for having
turned Oxford into the place where ‘the sense of ‘or’’ was the key issue with
which philosophers were engaged. Strawson goes on to say that 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 of its falsity. The standard or primary -- the importance of this
qualifying phrase, ‘primary,’ can scarcely be overemphasized – Grice omits this
bracket when he expolates the quote. The bracket continues. The place where
Strawson opens the bracket is a curious one: it is obvious he is talking about
the primary use of ‘if’. So here he continues the bracket with the observation
that there are uses of “if” which do not
answer to the description given here, or to any other descriptions given in
this [essay] -- use of “if” sentence, on the other hand [these are
Strawson’s two hands], are seen 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 sub-ordinated clause of the utterance is
true or not, or believing it to be false, the emissor nevertheless considers that
a step in reasoning from THAT statement to a statement related in a similar way
to the main clause would be a sound or reasonable step [a reasonable reasoning,
that is]; this statement related to the main clause also being one of whose
truth the emissor is in doubt, or which the emissor believes to be false. Even
in such circumstances as these a philosopher may sometimes hesitate to apply
‘true’ to a conditional or hypothetical statement, i.e., a statement which
could be made by the use of “if ”(Philo’s ‘ei,’ Cicero’s ‘si’) in its standard significance, preferring to
call a conditional statement reasonable or well-founded. But if the philosopher
does apply ‘true’ to an ‘if’ utterance at all, it will be in such circumstances
as these. Now one of the sufficient conditions of the truth of a ‘statement’ or
formula of material implication may very well be fulfilled without the
conditions for the truth, or reasonableness, of the corresponding hypothetical
or conditional statement being fulfilled. A statement of the form ‘p ⊃ q’ (where the horseshoe is meant to represent an inverted
‘c’ for ‘contentum’ or ‘consequutum’ -- does not entail the corresponding statement
of the ‘form’ “if p, q.” But if the emissor is prepared to accept the hypothetical
statement, he must in consistency be prepared to deny the conjunction of the
statement corresponding to the sub-ordinated clause of the sentence used to
make the hypothetical statement with the negation of the statement
corresponding to its main or super-ordinated clause. A statement of the ‘form’
“if p, q” does entail the corresponding statement of the form ‘p ⊃ q.’ The force of “corresponding” may need some elucidation.
Consider the following very ‘ordinary’ or ‘natural’ specimens of a hypothetical
sentence. Strawson starts with a totally unordinary subjective counterfactual
‘if,’ an abyss with Philo, “If it’s day, I talk.” Strawson surely involves The
Hun. ‘If the Germans had invaded England in 1940, they, viz. the Germans, would
have won the war.’ Because for the Germans, invading England MEANT winning the
war. They never cared much for Wales or Scotland, never mind Northern Ireland.
Possibly ‘invaded London’ would suffice. Strawson’s second instantiation again
is the odd subjective counter-factual ‘if,’ an abyss or chasm from Philo, ‘If
it’s day, I talk.’ “If Smith were in charge, half the staff would have been
dismissed.’ Strawson is thinking Noel Coward, who used to make fun of the
music-hall artist Wade. “If you WERE the only girl in the world, and I WAS the
only boy…’. The use of ‘were’ is Oxonian. A Cockney is forbidden to use it,
using ‘was’ instead. The rationale is Philonian. ‘was’ is indicative. “If Smith were in charge, half the staff
would have been dismissed.’ Strawson’s third instantiation is, at last, more or
less Philonian, a plain indicative ‘weather’ protasis, etc. “If it rains, the
match will be cancelled.” The only reservation Philo would have is ‘will’.
Matches do not have ‘will,’ and the sea battle may never take place – the world
may be destroyed by then. “If it rains, the match will be cancelled.” Or “If it
rains, the match is cancelled – but there is a ‘rain date.’” The sentence which
could be used to make a statement corresponding in the required ‘sense’ to the
sub-ordinate clause can be ascertained by considering what it is that the
emissor of each hypothetical sentence must (in general) be assumed either to be
in doubt about or to believe to be not the case. Thus, the corresponding
sentences. ‘The Germans invaded England in 1940.’ Or ‘The Germans invade
England’ – historical present -- ‘The Germans won the war.’ Or ‘The Germans win
the war’ – historical present. ‘Smith is in charge.’ ‘Half the staff has been
dismissed.’ Or ‘Half the staff is dismissed.’ ‘It will rain.’ Or ‘It
rains.’‘The match will be cancelled.’ Or ‘The match is cancelled.’ A sentence could
be used to make a statement of material implication corresponding to the
hypothetical statement made by the
sentence is framed, in each case, from these pairs of sentences as
follows. ‘The Germans invaded England in 1940 ⊃
they won the war.’ Or in the historical present,’The Germans invade London ⊃ The Germans win the war. ‘ ‘Smith is in charge ⊃ half the staff has been, dismissed.’ Or in the present
tense, ‘Smith is in charge ⊃ half the staff is dismissed.’ ‘ It
will rain ⊃ the match will be cancelled.’ Or in the present ‘It rains ⊃ the match is cancelled.’ The very fact that a few verbal modifications
are necessary to please the Oxonian ear, 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 a hypothetical
statement and a truth-functional statement. Some detailed differences are also
evident from these instantiations. The falsity of a statement made by the use
of ‘The Germans invade London in 1940’ or ‘Smith is in charge’ is a sufficient
condition of the truth of the corresponding statements made by the use of the ⊃-utterances. But not, of course, of the corresponding
statement made by the use of the ‘if’ utterance. Otherwise, there would
normally be no point in using an ‘if’ sentence at all.An ‘if’ sentence 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
mode of the verb, an implication (or implicature) of the emissor’s belief in
the FALSITY of the statements corresponding to the clauses of the hypothetical.That
it is not the case that it rains is sufficient to verify (or truth-functionally
confirm) a statement made by the use of “⊃,”
but not a statement made by the use of ‘if.’ That it is not the case that it
rains is also sufficient to verify (or truth-functionally confirm) a statement
made by the use of ‘It will rain ⊃
the match will not be cancelled.’ Or ‘It rains ⊃
the match is cancelled.’ The formulae ‘p ⊃
q’ and ‘p ⊃ ~ q' are consistent with one another.The joint assertion of
corresponding statements of these forms is equivalent to the assertion of the
corresponding statement of the form ‘~ p.’ But, and here is one of Philo’s
‘paradoxes’: “If it rains, the match will be cancelled” (or ‘If it rains, the
match is cancelled’) seems (or sounds) inconsistent with “If it rains, the match
will not be cancelled,’ or ‘If it rains, it is not the case that the match is
cancelled.’But here we add ‘not,’ so Philo explains the paradox away by noting
that his account is meant for ‘pure’ uses of “ei,” or “si.”Their joint assertion
in the same context sounds self-contradictory. But cf. Philo, who wisely said
of ‘If it is day, it is night’ “is true only at night.”
(Diog. Laert. Repr. in Long, The Hellenistic Philosophers). Suppose we call the statement corresponding to the
sub-ordinated clause of a sentence used to make a hypothetical statement the
antecedent of the hypothetical statement; and the statement corresponding to
the super-ordinated clause, its consequent. It is sometimes fancied that, whereas
the futility of identifying a conditional ‘if’ statement with material
implication is obvious in those cases where the implication of the falsity of
the antecedent is normally carried by the mode or tense of the verb – as in “If
the Germans invade London in 1940, they, viz. the Germans, win the war’ and ‘If
Smith is in charge, half the staff is dismissed’ -- 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 – as in ‘If it rains, the match is cancelled.’ In cases
of the first kind (an ‘unfulfilled,’ counterfactual, or ‘subjunctive’
conditional) the intended addressee’s attention is directed, as Grice taught J.
L. Mackie, in terms of the principle of conversational helpfulness, ONLY TO THE
LAST TWO ROWS of the truth-tables for ‘ p ⊃
q,’ where the antecedent has the truth-value, falsity. Th suggestion that ‘~p’ ‘entails’
‘if p, q’ is felt or to be or ‘sounds’ – if not to Philo’s or Grice’s ears -- obviously
wrong. But in cases of the second kind
one inspects also the first two ROWS. The possibility of the antecedent's being
fulfilled is left open. It is claimed that it is NOT the case that the
suggestion that ‘p ⊃ q’ ‘entails’ ‘if p, q’ is felt to be or sound obviously
wrong, to ANYBODY, not just the bodies of Grice and Philo. This Strawson calls,
to infuriate Grice, ‘an illusion,’ ‘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 is right. It is not the case that
the man would be right, Strawson claims, if the consequent is made true as a
result of this or that factor unconnected with, or in spite of, rather than ‘because’
of, the fulfilment of the antecedent. E.
g. if Grice’s unmissable match is missed because the Germans invade – and not
because of the ‘weather.’ – but cf. “The weather in the streets.” Strawson is prepared
to say that the man (e. g., Grice, or Philo) who makes the hypothetical
statement is right only if Strawson is also prepared to say that the antecedent
being true is, at least in part, the ‘explanation’ of the consequent being
true. The reality behind the illusion Strawson naturally finds ‘complex,’ for
surely there ain’t one! Strawson thinks that this is due to two phenomena. First,
Strawson claims, in many cases, the fulfilment of both antecedent and
consequent provides confirmation for the view that the existence of states of
affairs like those described by the antecedent IS a good ‘reason’ for expecting
(alla Hume, assuming the uniformity of nature, etc.) a states of affair like
that described by the consequent. Second, Starwson claims, a man (e. g. Philo,
or Grice) who (with a straight Grecian or Griceian face) says, e. g. ‘If it
rains, the match is cancelled’ makes a bit of a prediction, assuming the
‘consequent’ to be referring to t2>t1 – but cf. if he is reporting an event
taking place at THE OTHER PLACE. The prediction Strawson takes it to be ‘The
match is cancelled.’And the man is making the prediction ONLY under what
Strawson aptly calls a “proviso,” or “caveat,” – first used by Boethius to
translate Aristotle -- “It rains.” Boethius’s terminology later taken up by the
lawyers in Genoa. mid-15c., from Medieval Latin proviso (quod) "provided
(that)," phrase at the beginning of clauses in legal documents (mid-14c.),
from Latin proviso "it
being provided," ablative neuter of provisus, past participle
of providere (see provide).
Related: Provisory. 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 it is not the case that a statement of
the form ‘ p ⊃ q’ entails the corresponding statement of the form ' if p, q
' (in its standard employment), Strawson thinks he can find a divergence
between this or that ‘rule’ for '⊃'
and this or that ‘rule’ for '’if ,’ in its standard employment. Because ‘if p, q’
does entail ‘p ⊃ q,’ we shall also expect to find some degree of parallelism
between the rules. For whatever is entailed by ‘p ⊃ q’ is entailed by ‘if p, q,’ though not everything which
entails ‘p ⊃ q’ does Strawson claims, entail ‘if p, q.’ Indeed, we find further parallels than those
which follow simply from the facts that ‘if p, q’ entails ‘p ⊃ q’ and that entailment is transitive. To some laws for ‘⊃,’ Strawson finds no parallels for ‘if.’ Strawson notes that
for at least four laws for ‘⊃,’ we find that parallel laws ‘hold’
good for ‘if. The first law is mentioned by Grice, modus ponendo ponens, as
elimination of ‘⊃.’ Strawson does not consider the introduction of the
horseshoe, where p an q forms a collection of all active
assumptions previously introduced which could have been used in the deduction
of ‘if p, q.’ When inferring ‘if p, q’ one is allowed to discharge
assumptions of the form p. The fact that after deduction of ‘if p, q’
this assumption is discharged (not active is pointed out by using [ ] in
vertical notation, and by deletion from the set of assumptions in horizontal
notation. The latter notation shows better the character of the rule; one
deduction is transformed into the other. It shows also that the rule for
the introduction of ‘if’ corresponds to an important metatheorem, the
Deduction Theorem, which has to be proved in axiomatic formalizations of logic. But back to the elimination of ‘if’. Modus ponendo ponens.
‘‘((p ⊃ q).p) ⊃ q.’ For some reason, Strawson here mixes horseshoes and ifs
as if Boethius is alive! Grice calls these “half-natural, half-artificial.’ Chomsky
prefers ‘semi-native.’ ‘(If p, q, and p) ⊃q.’
Surely what Strawson wants is a purely ‘if’ one, such as ‘If, if p, q, and p,
q.’ Some conversational implicature! As
Grice notes: “Strawson thinks that one can converse using his converses, but we
hardly.’ The second law. Modus tollendo tollens. ‘((p⊃q). ~ q)) ⊃ (~ p).’ Again, Strawson uses a
‘mixed’ formula: (if p, q, and it is not the case that q) ⊃ it is not the case that p. Purely unartificial: If, if p,
q, and it is not the case that q, it is not the case that p. The third law,
which Strawson finds problematic, and involves an operator that Grice does not even
consider. ‘(p ⊃ q) ≡ (~ q ⊃
~ p). Mixed version, Strawson simplifies ‘iff’ to ‘if’ (in any case, as Pears
notes, ‘if’ IMPLICATES ‘iff.’). (If p, q) ⊃
if it is not the case that q, it is not the case that p. Unartificial: If, if
p, q, it is not the case that if q, it is not the case that p. The fourth law. ((p
⊃ q).(q ⊃ r)) ⊃ (p ⊃ r). Mixed: (if p, q, and if q, r) ⊃ (if p, r). Unartificial: ‘If, if p, q, and if q, r, if p,
r.’ Try to say that to Mrs. Grice! (Grice: “It’s VERY SURPRISING that Strawson
think we can converse in his lingo!”). Now Strawson displays this or that
‘reservation.’ Mainly it is an appeal to J. Austen and J. Austin. Strawson’s
implicature is that Philo, in Megara, has hardly a right to unquiet the
tranquil Elysium. This or that ‘reservation’ by Strawson takes TWO pages of his
essay. Strawson claims that 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. Alas, Whitehead and Russell give us little
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 Austin would not call ‘ordinary
language,’ or Austen, for that matter, if not Macaulay. If we preserve as nearly as possible the
tense-mode structure, in the simplest way consistent with grammatical requirements,
we obtain this or that sentence. TOLLENDO TOLLENS. ‘If it is not the case that
the Germans win the war, it is not the case that they, viz. the Germans, invade
England in 1940.’ ‘If it is not the case that half the staff is dismissed, it
is not the case that Smith is in charge.’ ‘If it is not the case that the match
is cancelled, it is not the case that it rains.’ But, Strawson claims, these
sentences, so far from SOUNDING or seeming logically equivalent to the
originals, have in each case a quite different ‘sense.’ It is possible, at
least in some cases, to frame, via tollendo tollens a target setence of more or
less the appropriate pattern for which one can imagine a use and which DOES
stand in the required relationship to the source sentence. ‘If it is not the
case that the Germans win the war, (trust) it is not the case that they, viz.
the Germans, invade England in 1940,’ with the attending imlicatum: “only
because they did not invade England in 1940.’ or even, should historical
evidence be scanty). ‘If it is not the case that the Germans win the war, it SURELY
is not the case that they, viz. the Germans, invade London in 1940.’ ‘If it is
not the case that half the staff is dismissed, it surely is not the case that
Smith is in charge.’ These changes reflect differences in the circumstances in
which one might use these, as opposed to the original, sentences. The sentence beginning ‘If Smith is in charge
…’ is normally, though not necessarily, used by a man who antecedently knows
that it is not the case that Smith is in charge. The sentence beginning ‘If it
is not the case that half the staff is dismissed …’ is normally, though not necessarily, used by
by a man who is, as Cook Wilson would put it, ‘working’ towards the ‘consequent’
conclusion that Smith is not in charge. To
say that the sentences are nevertheless truth-functionally equivalent seems to
point to the fact that, given the introduction rule for ‘if,’ the grounds for
accepting the original ‘if’-utterance AND the ‘tollendo tollens’ correlatum, would,
in two different scenarios, have been grounds for accepting the soundness or
validity of the passage or move from a premise ‘Smith is in charge’ to its
‘consequentia’ ‘consequutum,’ or ‘conclusion,’ ‘Half the staff is dismissed.’ One
must remember that calling each formula (i)-(iv) a LAW or a THEOREM is the same
as saying that, e.g., in the case of (iii), ‘If p, q’ ‘ENTAILS’ ‘If it is not
the case that q, it is not the case that p.’ Similarly, Strawson thinks, for
some steps which would be invalid for ‘if,’ there are corresponding steps that
would be invalid for ‘⊃.’ He gives two example using a symbol Grice does not
consider, for ‘therefore,’ or ‘ergo,’ and lists a fallacy. First example. ‘(p ⊃ q).q ∴ p.’ Second example of a fallacy:‘(p ⊃ q). ~p ∴
~q.’ These are invalid
inference-patterns, and so are the correlative patterns with ‘if’: ‘If p, q; and
q ∴ p’ ‘If p, q; and it is not the case
that p ∴
it is not the case that q. The formal analogy here may be described
by saying that neither ‘p ⊃ q’ nor ‘if p, q’ is
a simply convertible (“nor hardly conversable” – Grice) formula. Strawson
thinks, and we are getting closer to Philo’s paradoxes, revisied, that there
may be this or that laws which holds for ‘p ⊃
q’ and not for ‘If p, q.’ As an example
of a law which holds for ‘if’ but not for ‘⊃,’
one may give an analytic formula. ~[(if p, q) . (if p, it is not the case that
q)]’. The corresponding formula with the horseshoe is not analytic. ‘~[(p ⊃ q) . (p ⊃ ~q)]’ is not analytic, and is
equivalent to the contingent formula ‘~ ~p.’ The rules to the effect that this
or that formula is analytic is referred to by Johnson, in the other place, as
the ‘paradox of implication.’ This Strawson finds a Cantabrigian misnomer. If Whitehead’s
and Russell’s ‘⊃’ is taken as identical either with Moore’s ‘entails’ or, more
widely, with Aelfric’s‘if’ – as in his
“Poem to the If,” MSS Northumberland – “If” meant trouble in Anglo-Saxon -- in
its standard use, the rules that yield this or that so-called ‘paradox’ -- are
not, for Strawson, “just paradoxical.” With an attitude, he adds. “They are
simply incorrect.”This is slightly illogical.“That’s not paradoxical; that’s
incorrect.”Cf. Grice, “What is paradoxical is not also incorrect.” And cf. Grice:
“Philo defines a ‘paradox’ as something that surprises _his father_.’ He is
‘using’ “father,” metaphorically, to refer to his tutor. His father was unknown
(to him). On the other hand (vide Strawson’s Two Hands), with signs you can
introduce alla Peirce and Johnson by way of ostensive definition any way you
wish! If ‘⊃’ is given the meaning it is given by what Grice calls the
‘truth-table definition,’ or ‘stipulation’ in the system of truth functions,
the rules and the statements they represent, may be informally dubbed
‘paradoxical,’ in that they don’t agree with the ‘man in the street,’ or ‘the
man on High.’ The so-called ‘paradox’ would be a simple and platitudinous
consequence of the meaning given to the symbol. Strawson had expanded on the
paradoxes in an essay he compiled while away from Oxford. On his return to
Oxford, he submitted it to “Mind,” under the editorship by G. Ryle, where it
was published. The essay concerns the ‘paradoxes’ of ‘entailment’ in detail,
and mentions Moore and C. I. Lewis. He makes use of modal operators, nec. and
poss. to render the ‘necessity’ behind ‘entail.’ He thinks the paradoxes of
‘entailment’ arise from inattention to this modality. At the time, Grice and
Strawson were pretty sure that nobody then accepted, if indeed anyone ever did
and did make, the identification of the relation symbolised by the horseshoe, ⊃, with the relation which Moore calls ‘entailment,’ p⊃q, i. e. The mere truth-functional ‘if,’ as in ‘p ⊃ q,’ ‘~(pΛ~q)’ is rejected as an analysis of the
meta-linguistic ‘p entails q.’ Strawson thinks that the identification is
rejected because ‘p ⊃ q’ involves this or that allegedly paradoxical implicatum.Starwson
explicitly mentions ‘ex falso quodlibeet.’ Any FALSE proposition entails any
proposition, true or false. And any TRUE proposition is entailed by any
proposition, true or falso (consequentia mirabilis). It is a commonplace that
Lewis, whom Grice calls a ‘blue-collared practioner of the sciences,’
Strawson thinks, hardly solved the thing. The amendment by Lewis, for Strawson,
has consequences scarcely less paradoxical in terms of the implicata. For if p
is impossible, i.e. self-contradictory, it is impossible that p and ~q.
And if q is necessary, ~q is impossible and it is impossible that p and ~q; i.
e., if p entails q means it is impossible that p and ~q any necessary
proposition is entailed by any proposition and any self-contradictory
proposition entails any proposition. On the other hand, the definition by Lewis
of ‘strict’ implication or entailment (i.e. of the relation which holds from p
to q whenever q is deducible from p), Strawson thinks, obviously commends
itself in some respects. Now, it is clear that the emphasis laid on the
expression-mentioning character of the intensional contingent statement by
writing ‘ ‘pΛ~q’ is impossible instead’ of ‘It is impossible that p and ~q’ does
not avoid the alleged paradoxes of entailment. But, Starwson optimistically
thinks, it is equally clear that the addition of some provision does avoid
them. Strawson proposes that one should use “p entails q” such that no
necessary statement and no negation of a necessary statement can significantly
be said to “entail” or be entailed by any statement; i. e. the function “p
entails q” cannot take necessary or self-contradictory statements as arguments.
The expression “p entails q” is to be used to mean “ ‘p ⊃ q’ is necessary, and neither ‘p’ nor ‘q’ is either necessary
or self-contradictory.” Alternatively, “p entails q” should be used only to
mean “ ‘pΛ~q’ is impossible and neither ‘p’ nor ‘q,’ nor either of their
contradictories, is necessary. In this way, Strawson thinks the paradoxes are
avoided. Strawson’s proof. Let us assume that p1 expresses a contingent, and q1
a necessary, proposition. p1 and ~q1 is now impossible because ~q1 is
impossible. But q1 is necessary. So, by that provision, p1 does not entail q1.
We may avoid the paradoxical assertion “p1 entails q2” as merely falling into
the equally paradoxical assertion “ “p1 entails q1” is necessary.” For: If ‘q’ is
necessary, ‘q is necessary’ is, though true, not necessary, but a CONTINGENT
INTENSIONAL (Latinate) statement. This
becomes part of the philosophers lexicon: intensĭo, f. intendo, which L and S
render as a stretching out, straining, effort. E. g. oculorum, Scrib.
Comp. 255. Also an intensifying, increase. Calorem suum (sol) intensionibus ac
remissionibus temperando fovet,” Sen. Q. N. 7, 1, 3. The tune: “gravis, media,
acuta,” Censor. 12. Hence: ‘~ (‘q’ is necessary)’ is, though false,
possible. Hence “p1 Λ ~ (q1 is necessary)” is, though false, possible. Hence ‘p1’ does NOT entail ‘q1 is necessary.’ Thus,
by adopting the view that an entailment statement, and other intensional
statements, are contingent, viz. non-necessary, and that no necessary statement
or its contradictory can entail or be entailed by any statement, Strawson
thinks he can avoid the paradox that a necessary proposition is entailed by any
proposition, and indeed all the other associated paradoxes of entailment. Grice objects that the alleged cure by
Strawson is worse than disease of Moore! The denial that a necessary proposition can
entail or be entailed by any proposition, and, therefore, that necessary
propositions can be related to each other by the entailment relation, is too
high a price to pay for the solution of the paradoxes, which are perfectly true
utterances with only this or that attending cancellable implicature. Strawson’s
introduction of ‘acc.’ makes sense. Which makes sense in that Philo first
supplied his truth-functional account of ‘if’ to criticise his tutor Diodorus
on modality. Philo reported to Diodorus something he had heard from Neptune. In
dreams, Neptune appeared to Philo and told him: “I saw down deep in the waters
a wooden trunk of a plant that only grows under weather – algae -- The trunk
can burn!” Neptune said.Awakening, Philo ran to Diodorus: “A wooden trunk deep
down in the ocean can burn.” Throughout this section, Strawson refers to a
‘primary or standard’ use of ‘if,’ of which the main characteristics are
various. First, 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. Second, 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. Third, the making of the
hypothetical statement carries the implication either of uncertainty about, or
of disbelief in, the fulfilment of both antecedent and consequent.’ This above
is the passage extrapolated by Grice. Grice does not care to report the
platitudionous ‘first’ ‘characteristic’ as Strawson rather verbosely puts it.
The way Grice reports it, it is not clear Strawson is listing THREE
characteristics. Notably, from the extrapolated quote, it would seem as if
Grice wishes his addressee to believe that Strawson thinks that characteristic
2 and characteristic 3 mix. On top, Grice omits a caveat immediately after the
passage he extrapolates. Strawso notes: “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.’ Grice does not care to include a caveat by Strawson: “Not all uses of ‘if
,’ however, exhibit all these three characteristics.” In particular, there is a
use which has an equal claim to rank as standard ‘if’ 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. Strawson has in mind what
is sometimes called a ‘formal’ (by Whitehead and Russell) or 'variable' or
'general’ or ‘generic’ hypothetical. Strawson gives three examples. The first
example is ‘lf ice is left in the sun, it melts.’ This is Kantian. Cf. Grice on
indicative conditionals in the last Immanuel Kant Lecture. Grice: "It should
be, given that it is the case that one smears one's skin with peanut butter
before retiring and that it is the case that one has a relatively insensitive
skin, that it is the case that one preserves a youthful complexion." More
generally, there is some plausibility to the idea that an exemplar of the form
'Should (! E, ⊢F;
! G)' is true just in case a corresponding examplar of the form 'Should (⊢ F, ⊢G; ⊢E)' is true. Before
proceeding further, I will attempt to deal briefly with a possible objection
which might be raised at this point. I can end imagine an ardent descriptivist,
who first complains, in the face of someone who wishes to allow a legitimate
autonomous status to practical acceptability generalizations, that
truth-conditions for such generalizations are not available, and perhaps are in
principle not available; so such generalizations are not to be taken seriously.
We then point out to him that, at least for a class of such cases,
truth-conditions are available, and that they are to be found in related
alethic generalizations, a kind of generalization he accepts. He then complains
that, if finding truth-conditions involves representing the practical
acceptability generalizations as being true just in case related alethic
generalizations are true, then practical acceptability generalizations are
simply reducible to alethic generalizations, and so are not to be taken
seriously for another reason, namely, that they are simply transformations of
alethic generalizations, and we could perfectly well get on without them. Maybe
some of you have heard some ardent descriptivists arguing in a style not so
very different from this. Now a deep reply to such an objection would involve
(I think) a display of the need for a system of reasoning in which the value to
be transmitted by acceptable inference is not truth but practical value,
together with a demonstration of the role of practical acceptability
generalizations in such a system. I suspect that such a reply could be
constructed, but I do not have it at my fingertips (or tongue-tip), so I shall
not try to produce it. An interim reply, however, might take the following
form: even though it may be true (which is by no means certain) that certain
practical acceptability generalizations have the same truth-conditions as
certain corresponding alethic generalizations, it is not to be supposed that
the former generalizations are simply reducible to the latter (in some
disrespectful sense of 'reducible'). For though both kinds of generalization are defeasible, they are not defeasible in the same
way; more exactly, what is a defeating condition for a given practical
generalization is not a defeating condition for its alethic counterpart. A
generalization of the form 'should (! E, ⊢F; ! G)' may have, as a defeating condition, 'E*'; that is
to say, consistently with the truth of this generalization, it may be true that
'should (! E & ! E*, ⊢F;
! G*)' where 'G*' is
inconsistent with 'G'. But since, in the
alethic counterpart generalization 'should (⊢ F, ⊢G; ⊢E)', 'E' does not occur
in the antecedent, 'E*' cannot be a defeating end p.92 condition for this
generalization. And, since liability to defeat by a certain range of defeating
conditions is essential to the role which acceptability generalizations play in
reasoning, this difference between a practical generalization and its alethic
counterpart is sufficient to eliminate the reducibility of the former to the
latter. To return to the main theme of this section. If, without further ado,
we were to accept at this point the suggestion that 'should (! E, ⊢F; ! G)' is true just
in case 'should (⊢
F, ⊢G;
⊢E)'
is true, we should be accepting it simply on the basis of intuition (including,
of course, linguistic or logical intuition under the head of 'intuition'). If
the suggestion is correct then we should attain, at the same time, a stronger
assurance that it is correct and a better theoretical understanding of the
alethic and practical acceptability, if we could show why it is correct by
deriving it from some general principle(s). Kant, in fact, for reasons not
unlike these, sought to show the validity of a different but fairly closely
related Technical Imperative by just such a method. The form which he selects
is one which, in my terms, would be represented by "It is fully
acceptable, given let it be that B, that let it be that A" or "It is
necessary, given let it be that B, that let it be that A". Applying this
to the one fully stated technical imperative given in Grundlegung, we get
Kant’s hypothetical which is of the type Strawson calls ‘variable,’ formal,
‘generic,’ or ‘generic.’ Kant: “It is necessary, given let it be that one
bisect a line on an unerring principle, that let it be that I draw from its
extremities two intersecting arcs". Call this statement, (α). Though he
does not express himself very clearly, I am certain that his claim is that this
imperative is validated in virtue of the fact that it is, analytically, a
consequence of an indicative statement which is true and, in the present
context, unproblematic, namely, the statement vouched for by geometry, that if
one bisects a line on an unerring principle, then one does so only as a result
of having drawn from its extremities two intersecting arcs. Call this
statement, (β). His argument seems to be expressible as follows. (1) It is
analytic that he who wills the end (so far as reason decides his conduct),
wills the indispensable means thereto. (2) So it is analytic that (so far as
one is rational) if one wills that A, and judges that if A, then A as a result
of B, then one wills that B. end p.93 (3) So it is analytic that (so far as one
is rational) if one judges that if A, then A as a result of B, then if one
wills that A then one wills that B. (4) So it is analytic that, if it is true
that if A, then A as a result of B, then if let it be that A, then it must be
that let it be that B. From which, by substitution, we derive (5): it is
analytic that if β then α. Now it seems to me to be meritorious, on Kant's
part, first that he saw a need to justify hypothetical imperatives of this
sort, which it is only too easy to take for granted, and second that he invoked
the principle that "he who wills the end, wills the means";
intuitively, this invocation seems right. Unfortunately, however, the step from
(3) to (4) seems open to dispute on two different counts. (1) It looks as if an
unwarranted 'must' has appeared in the consequent of the conditional which is
claimed, in (4), as analytic; the most that, to all appearances, could be
claimed as being true of the antecedent is that 'if let it be that A then let
it be that B'. (2) (Perhaps more serious.) It is by no means clear by what
right the psychological verbs 'judge' and 'will', which appear in (3), are
omitted in (4); how does an (alleged) analytic connection between (i) judging
that if A, A as a result of B and (ii) its being the case that if one wills
that A then one wills that B yield an analytic connection between (i) it's
being the case that if A, A as a result of B and (ii) the 'proposition' that if
let it be that A then let it be that B? Can the presence in (3) of the phrase
"in so far as one is rational" legitimize this step? I do not know
what remedy to propose for the first of these two difficulties; but I will
attempt a reconstruction of Kant's line of argument which might provide relief
from the second. It might, indeed, even be an expansion of Kant's actual
thinking; but whether or not this is so, I am a very long way from being
confident in its adequacy. Back to
Strawson. First example: ‘lf ice is left
in the sun, it melts.’Or “If apple goes up, apple goes down.” – Newton,
“Principia Mathematica.” “If ice is left in the sun, it, viz. ice, melts.” Strawson’s
second example of a formal, variable, generic, or general ‘if’ ‘If the side of
a triangle is produced, the exterior angle is equal to the sum of the two interior
and opposite angles.’ Cf. Kant: “If a line on an unerring principle
is bisected, two intersecting arcs are drawn from its extremities.” Synthetical
propositions must no doubt be employed in defining the means to a proposed end;
but they do not concern the principle, the act of the will, but the object and
its realization. E.g., that in order to bisect a line on an unerring principle
I must draw from its extremities two intersecting arcs; this no doubt is taught
by mathematics only in synthetical propositions; but if I know that it is only
by this process that the intended operation can be performed, then to say that,
if I fully will the operation, I also will the action required for it, is an
analytical proposition; for it is one and the same thing to conceive something
as an effect which I can produce in a certain way, and to conceive myself as
acting in this way. Strawson’s third example: ‘If a child is very strictly
disciplined in the nursery, it, viz. the child, that should be seen but not
heard, will develop aggressive tendencies in adult life.’ 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 hand, for every such statement
there is an indefinite number of NON-general, or not generic, 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, viz. this piece, melts.’Strawson,
about to finish his section on “ ‘⊃’
and ‘if’,” – the expression, ‘’ ⊃’ and ‘if’” only occurs in the
“Table of Contents,” on p. viii, not in the body of the essay, as found
redundant – it is also the same title Strawson used for his essay which
circulated (or ‘made the rounds’) soon after Grice delivered his attack on
Strawson, and which Strawson had, first, the cheek to present it to PGRICE, and
then, voiding the idea of a festschrift, reprint it in his own compilation of
essays. -- from which Grice extracted the quote for “Prolegomena,” notes that
there are two ‘relatively uncommon uses of ‘if.’‘If he felt embarrassed, he
showed no signs of it.’It is this example that Grice is having in mind in the
fourth lecture on ‘indicative conditionals.’ “he didn’t show it.”Grice is giving an instantiation
of an IMPLICIT, or as he prefers, ‘contextual,’ cancellation of the implicatum
of ‘if.’ He does this to show that even
if the implicatum of ‘if’ is a ‘generalised,’ not ‘generic,’ or ‘general,’ one,
it need not obtain or be present in every PARTICULAR case. “That is why I use
the weakened form ‘generalISED, not general. It’s all ceteris paribus always
with me).” The example Grice gives corresponds to the one Strawson listed as
one of the two ‘relatively uncommon’ uses of ‘if.’ By sticking with the biscuit
conditional, Grice is showing Strawson that this use is ‘relatively uncommon’
because it is absolutely otiose! “If he
was surprised, he didn’t show it.”Or cf. AustinIf you are hungry, there are. Variants
by Grice on his own example:“If Strawson was surprised, he did not show it.”“If
he was surprised, it is not the case that Strawson showed it, viz. that he was
surprised.”Grice (on the phone with Strawson’s friend) in front of Strawson –
present tense version:“If he IS surprised, it is not th case that he, Strawson,
is showing it, viz. the clause that he is surprised. Are you implicating he
SHOULD?”and a second group:‘If Rembrandt
passes the exam at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, I am a Dutchman.’‘If the Mad Hatter is not mad, I'll eat
my hat.’(as opposed to ‘If the Mad Hatter IS mad, I’ll eat HIS hat.’)Hats were
made at Oxford in a previous generation, by mad ‘hatters.’ “To eat one’s hat,”
at Oxford, became synonymous with ‘I’ll poison myself and die.’ The reason of
the prevalence of Oxonian ‘lunatic’ hatters is chemical. Strawson is referring
to what he calls an ‘old wives’ tale’As every grandmother at Oxford knows, the
chemicals used in hat-making include mercurious nitrate, which is used in ‘curing’
felt. Now exposure to the mercury vapours cause mercury poisoning. Or, to use
an ‘if’: “If Kant is exposed to mercury vapour, Kant gets poisoned. A poisoned
victim develops a severe and
uncontrollable muscular tremors and twitching limbs, distorted vision and
confused speech, hallucinations and psychosis, if not death. For a time, it was
at Oxford believed that a wearer of a hat could similarly die, especially by
eating the felt containing the mercurial nitrate. The sufficient and necessary condition of the truth of a
statement made by “If he was surprised, it is not the case that Strawson showed
it, viz. that he was surprised” is that it is not the case that Strawson showed
that he was surprised. The antecedent is otiose. Cf. “If you are hungry, there
are biscuits in the cupboard.’ Austin used to expand the otiose antecedent
further, ‘If you are hungry – AND EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT – there are biscuits in
the cupboard,” just in case someone was ignorant of Grice’s principle of
conversational helpfulness. Consequently, Strawson claims that such a statement
cannot be treated either as a standard hypothetical or as a material
implication. This is funny because by the time Grice is criticizing Strawson he
does take “If Strawson is surprised, it is not the case that he is showing it,
viz. that he is surprised.” But when it comes to “Touch the beast and it will
bite you” he is ready to say that here we do not have a case of
‘conjunction.’Why? Stanford.Stanford is the answer.Grice had prepared the text
to deliver at Stanford, of all places. Surely, AT STANFORD, you don’t want to
treat your addressee idiotically. What Grice means is:“Now let us consider
‘Touch the beast and it will bite you.’ Symbolise it: !p et !q. Turn it into
the indicative: You tell your love and love bites you (variant on William Blake).”
Grice: “One may object to the use of
‘p.q’ on Whiteheadian grounds. Blue-collared practitioners of the sciences will
usually proclaim that they do not care about the ‘realisability’ of this or
that operator. In fact, the very noun, ‘realisability,’ irritated me so that I
coined non-detachability as a balance. The blue-collared scientist will say
that ‘and’ is really Polish, and should be PRE-FIXED as an “if,” or condition,
or proviso. So that the conjunction becomes “Provided you tell your love, love
bites you.”Strawson gives his reason about the ‘implicatum’ of what P. L.
Gardiner called the ‘dutchman’ ‘if,’ after G. F. Stout’s “ ‘hat-eating’ if.” Examples of the second kind are sometimes
erroneously treated as evidence that Philo was not crazy, and that ‘if’ does,
after all, behave somewhat as ‘⊃’ behaves. Boethius appropriately comments: “Philo had
two drawbacks against his favour. He had no drawing board, and he couldn’t
write. Therefore he never symbolized, other than ‘via verba,’ his ‘ei’ utterance, “If it is day, it is
night,” which he held to be true “at night only.”” Strawson echoes Grice. The
evidence for this conversational explanation of the oddity of the ‘dutcham’ if,
as called by Gardiner, and the ‘hat-eating’ if, as called by Stout, is,
presumably, the facts, first, that the relation between antecedent and
consequent is non-Kantian. Recall that Kant has a ‘Funktion’ which, after
Aristotle’s ‘pros ti,’ and Boethius’s ‘relatio,’ he called ‘Relation’ where he
considers the HYPOTHETICAL. Kant expands in section 8.5. “In the hypothetical,
‘If God exists, I’ll eat my hat,’ existence is no predicate.”Strawson appeals
to a second, “more convincing,” fact, viz. that the consequent is obviously not
– in the Dutchman ‘if,’ or not to be, in the ‘hat-eating’ if, fulfilled, or
true.Grice’s passing for a Dutchman and sitting for an exam at the Koninklijke
Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, hardly makes him a Dutchman.Dickens was well
aware of the idiocy of people blaming hatters for the increases of deaths at
Oxford. He would often expand the consequent in a way that turned it “almost a
Wittgensteinian ‘contradiction’” (“The Cricket in the House, vii). “If the
Hatter is not mad, I will eat my hat, with my head in it.”Grice comments:
“While it is analytic that you see with your eyes, it is not analytic that you
eat with your mouth. And one can imagine Dickens’s mouth to be situated in his
right hand. Therefore, on realizing that the mad hatter is not mad, Dickens is
allowing for it to be the case that he shall eat his hat, with his head in it.
Since not everybody may be aware of the position of Dickens’s mouth, I shall
not allot this common-ground status.”Strawson
gives a third Griciean fact.“The intention of the emissor, by uttering a
‘consequens falsum’ that renders the ‘conditionalis’ ‘verum’ only if the
‘antecedens’ is ‘falsum, is an emphatic, indeed, rude, gesture, with a
gratuitious nod to Philo, to the conviction that the antecedens is not
fulfilled either. The emissor is further abiding by what Grice calls the
‘principle of truth,’ for the emissor would rather see himself dead than
uttering a falsehood, even if he has to fill the conversational space with
idiocies like ‘dutchman-being’ and ‘hat-eating.’ The fourth Griceian fact is
obviously Modus Tollendo Tollens, viz. that “(p ⊃
q) . ~q” entails “~p,” or rather, to avoid the metalanguage (Grice’s Bootlace:
Don’t use a metalanguage: you can only implicate that your object-language is
not objectual.”), “[(p ⊃ q) . ~ q] ⊃ ~ p.”At this point, Strawson
reminisces: “I was slightly surprised that on my first tutorial with Grice, he
gave me “What the Tortoise Said To Achilles,” with the hint, which I later took
as a defeasible implicatum, “See if you can resolve this!” ACHILLEs had
overtaken the Tortoise, and had seated himself comfortably on its back.
"So you've got to the end of our race-course?" said the Tortoise.
"Even though it does consist of an infinite series of distances ? I
thought some wiseacre or other had proved that the thing couldnl't be doiie ?
" " It can be done," said Achilles. " It has been done!
Solvitur ambulando. You see the distances were constaiitly diminishing; and
so-" "But if they had beenl constantly increasing?" the Tortoise
interrupted. "How then?" "Then I shouldn't be here,"
Achilles modestly replied; "and you would have got several times round the
world, by this time! " "You flatter me-flatten, I mean," said
the Tortoise; "for you are a heavy weight, and no mistake! Well now, would
you like to hear of a race-course, that most people fancy they can get to the end
of in two or three steps, while it really consists of an infinite number of
distances, each one longer than the previous one? " "Very much indeed
!" said the Grecian warrior, as he drew from his helmet (few Grecian
warriors possessed pockets in those days) an enormous note-book and a pencil.
"Proceed! And speak slowly, please! Shorthand isn't invented yet !"
"That beautiful First Proposition of Euclid! " the Tortoise miurmured
dreamily. "You admire Euclid?" "Passionately! So far, at least,
as one can admire a treatise that wo'n't be published for some centuries to
come ! " "Well, now, let's take a little bit of the argument in that
First Proposition-just two steps, and the conclusion drawn from them. Kindly
enter them in your note-book. And in order to refer to them conveniently, let's
call them A, B, and Z:- (A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each
other. (B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the
same. (Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other. Readers of
Euclid will grant, I suppose, that Z follows logically from A and B, so that
any one who accepts A and B as true, must accept Z as true?" "
Undoubtedly! The youngest child in a High School-as. soon as High Schools are
invented, which will not be till some two thousand years later-will grant
that." " And if some reader had not yet accepted A and B as true, he
might still accept the sequence as a valid one, I suppose?" NOTES. 279
"No doubt such a reader might exist. He might say 'I accept as true the
Hypothetical Proposition that, if A and B be true, Z must be true; but, I don't
accept A and B as true.' Such a reader would do wisely in abandoning Euclid,
and taking to football." " And might there not also be some reader
who would say ' I accept A anld B as true, but I don't accept the
Hypothetical'?" "Certainly there might. He, also, had better take to
football." "And neither of these readers," the Tortoise
continued, "is as yet under any logical necessity to accept Z as
true?" "Quite so," Achilles assented. "Well, now, I want
you to consider me as a reader of the second kind, and to force me, logically,
to accept Z as true." " A tortoise playing football would be--"
Achilles was beginning " -an anomaly, of course," the Tortoise
hastily interrupted. "Don't wander from the point. Let's have Z first, and
football afterwards !" " I'm to force you to accept Z, am I?"
Achilles said musingly. "And your present position is that you accept A
and B, but you don't accept the Hypothetical-" " Let's call it
C," said the Tortoise. "-but you don't accept (C) If A and B are
true, Z must be true." "That is my present position," said the
Tortoise. "Then I must ask you to accept C." - "I'll do
so," said the Tortoise, "as soon as you've entered it in that
note-book of yours. What else have you got in it?" " Only a few
memoranda," said Achilles, nervously fluttering the leaves: "a few
memoranda of-of the battles in which I have distinguished myself!"
"Plenty of blank leaves, I see !" the Tortoise cheerily remarked.
"We shall need them all !" (Achilles shuddered.) "Now write as I
dictate: (A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other. (B) The
two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same. (C) If A and
B are true, Z must be true. (Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to
each other." " You should call it D, not Z," said Achilles.
" It comes next to the other three. If you accept A and B and C, you must
accept Z." "And why must I?" "Because it follows logically
from them. If A and B and C are true, Z must be true. You don't dispute that, I
imagine ?" "If A and B and C are true, Z must be true," the
Tortoise thoughtfully repeated. " That's another Hypothetical, isn't it?
And, if I failed to see its truth, I might accept A and B and C, and still not
accept Z, mightn't I?" "You might," the candid hero admitted;
"though such obtuseness would certainly be phenomenal. Still, the event is
possible. So I must ask you to grant one more Hypothetical." " Very
good. I'm quite willing to grant it, as soon as you've written it down. We will
call it (D) If A and B and C are true, Z must be true. Have you entered that in
your note-book ? " " I have! " Achilles joyfully exclaimed, as
he ran the pencil into its sheath. "And at last we've got to the end of
this ideal race-course! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you
accept Z." " Do I ? " said the Tortoise innocently. " Let's
make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refused to
accept Z? " 280 NOTES. " Then Logic would take you by the throat, and
force you to do it !" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would
tell you 'You ca'n't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and
D, you mvust accept Z!' So you've no choice, you see." "Whatever
Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise.
" So enter it in your book, please. We will call it (E) If A and B and C
and Dare true, Zmust be true. Until I've granted that, of course I needn't
grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?" "I see," said
Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone. Here the narrator,
having pressing business at the Bank, was obliged to leave the happy pair, and
did not again pass the spot until some months afterwards. When he did so,
Achilles was still seated on the back of the much-enduring Tortoise, and was
writing in his note-book, which appeared to be nearly full. The Tortoise was
saying " Have you got that last step written down ? Unless I've lost
count, that makes a thousand and one. There are several millions more to come.
And would you mind, as a personal favour, considering what a lot of instruction
this colloquy of ours will provide for the Logicians of the Nineteenth
Century-would you mnind adopting a pun that my cousin the Mock-Turtle will then
make, and allowing yourself to be re-named Taught- Us ?" "As you
please !" replied the weary warrior, in the hollow tones of despair, as he
buried his face in his hands. " Provided that you, for your part, will
adopt a pun the Mock-Turtle never made, and allow yourself to be re-named A
Kill-Ease !"Strawon protests:“But this is a
strange piece of logic.”Grice corrects: “Piece – you mean ‘piece’ simpliciter.”“But
what do you protest that much!?”“Well, it seems that, on any possible
interpretation, “if p, q” has, in respect of modus tollendo tollens the same powers
as ‘p ⊃ q.’“And it is just these
powers that you, and Cook Wilson before you, are jokingly (or
fantastically) exploiting!”“Fantastically?” “You call Cook Wilson
‘fantastical’? You can call me exploitative.’Strawson: “It is the absence of
Kantian ‘Relation,’ Boethius’s ‘relatio,’ Aristotle’s ‘pros ti,’ referred to in
that makes both Stout’s hat-eating if and Gardiner’s dutchman if quirks (as per
Sir Randolph Quirk, another Manx, like Quine), a verbal or conversational
flourish, an otiosity, alla Albritton, an odd, call it Philonian, use of ‘if.’
If a hypothetical statement IS, as Grice, after Philo, claims, is what
Whitehead and Russell have as a ‘material’ implication, the statements would be
not a quirkish oddity, but a linguistic sobriety and a simple truth. Or rather
they are each, the dutchman if and the
hat-eating if, each a ‘quirkish oddity’ BECAUSE each is a simple, sober, truth.
“Recall my adage,” Grice reminded Strawson, “Obscurely baffling, but Hegelianly
true!”Strawson notes, as a final commentary on the relevant section, that
‘if’ can be employed PERFORMATORILY,
which will have Grice finding his topic for the Kant lectures at Stanford:
“must” is univocal in “Apples must fall,” and “You must not lie.”An ‘if’ is
used ‘performatorily’ when it is used not simply in making this or that
statement, but in, e.g., making a provisional announcement of an intention.
Strawson’s example:“If it rains, I shall stay at home.”Grice corrected:“*I*
*will* stay at home. *YOU* *shall.*”“His quadruple implicata never ceased to
amaze me.”Grice will take this up later in ‘Ifs and cans.’“If I can, I intend
to climb Mt Everest on hands and knees, if I may disimplicate that to
Davidson.”This hich, like an unconditional announcement of intention, Strawson
“would rather not” call ‘truly true’ or ‘falsely false.’ “I would rather
describe it in some other way – Griceian perhaps.” “A quessertion, not to be
iterated.”“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 –
which, Strawson adds, “is a form of lying to your former self.” “I agreed with
you!” Grice screamed from the other side of the Quadrangle!Strawson notes: “There
are further uses of ‘if’ which I shall not discuss.”This is a pantomime for
Austin (Strawson’s letter to Grice, “Austin wants me to go through the
dictionary with ‘if.’ Can you believe it, Grice, that the OED has NINE big
pages on it?! And the sad thing is that Austin has already did ‘if’ in “Ifs and
cans.” Why is he always telling OTHERS what to do?”Strawson’s Q. E. D.: “The
safest way to read the material implication sign is, perhaps, ‘not both … and
not …,” and avoid the ‘doubt’ altogether. (NB: “Mr. H. P. Grice, from whom I
never ceased to learn about logic since he was my tutor for my Logic paper in
my PPE at St. John’s back in the day, illustrates me that ‘if’ in Frisian means
‘doubt.’ And he adds, “Bread, butter, green cheese; very good English, very
good Friese!”. GROUP C – “Performatory” theories – descriptive,
quasi-descriptive, prescriptive – examples not lettered.EXAMPLE I: Strawson on
‘true’ in Analysis.EXAMPLE II: Austin on ‘know’ EXAMPLE III: Hare on ‘good.’EXPLICITLY
CONVEYED: if p, qIMPLICITLY CONVEYED: p is the consequensCANCELLATION: “I know
perfectly well where your wife is, but all I’ll say is that if she is not in kitchen
she is in the bedroom.”Next would be to consider uses of ‘implication’ in the
essay on the ‘indicative conditional.’ We should remember that the titling came
out in 1987. The lecture circulated without a title for twenty years. And in
fact, it is about ‘indicative conditional’ AND MORE BESIDES, including Cook
Wilson, if that’s a plus. Grice states the indirectness condition in two terms:One
in the obviously false terms “q is INFERRABLE, that’s the word Grice uses, from
p”The other one is in terms of truth-value assignment:The emissor has
NON-TRUTH-FUNCTIONAL GROUNDS for the emissum, ‘if p, q’. In Grice’s parlance:
“Grounds for ACCEPTING “p ⊃ q.”This way Grice chooses is
controversial in that usually he holds ‘accept’ as followed by the
‘that’-clause. So ‘accepting ‘p ⊃ q’” is not clear
in that respect. A rephrase would be, accepting that the emissor is in a
position to emit, ‘if p, q’ provided that what he EXPLICITLY CONVEYS by that is
what is explicitly conveyed by the Philonian ‘if,’ in other words, that the
emissor is explicitly conveying that it is the case of p or it is not the case
of q, or that it is not the case that a situation obtains such that it is the
case that p and it is not the case that q.“p ⊃ q” is F only in
the third row. It is no wonder that Grice says that the use-mention was only
used correctly ONCE.For Grice freely uses ‘the proposition that p ⊃
q.’ But this may be licensed because it was meant as for ‘oral delivery.’ THE
FIRST INSTANTIATION GRICE GIVES (WoW:58) is“If Smith is in London, he, viz. Smith,
is attending the meeting.”Grice goes on (WoW:59) to give FIVE alternatives to
the ‘if’ utterance, NOT using ‘if.’ For the first four, he notes that he fells
the ‘implicature’ of ‘indirectness’ seems ‘persistent.’On WoW:59, Grice refers
to Strawson as a ‘strong theorist,’ and himself as a ‘weak theorist,’ i. e. an
Occamist. Grice gives a truth-table or the ‘appropriate truth table,’ and its
formulation, and notes that he can still detect the indirectness condition
implication. Grice challenges Strawson. How is one to learn that what one
conveys by the scenario formulated in the truth-table for the pair “Smith is in
London” and “Smith is attending the meeting” – without using ‘if’ because this
is Grice’s exercise in detachment – is WEAKER than what one would convey by “If
Smith is in London, he, viz. Smith, is attending the meeting”?This sort of
rhetorical questions – “Of course he can’t” are a bit insidious. Grice failed
to give Strawson a copy of the thing. And Strawson is then invited to
collaborate with P. G. R. I. C. E., so he submits a rather vague “If and ⊃,”
getting the rebuke by Grice’s friend Bennett – “Strawson could at least say
that Grice’s views were published in three different loci.” BUT: Strawson
compiled that essay in 1968. And Strawson was NOT relying on a specific essay
by Grice, but on his memory of the general manoeuvre. Grice had been lecturing
on ‘if’ before at Oxford, in seminars entitled “Logic and Convesation.” But surely
at Oxford you are not supposed to ‘air’ your seminar views. Outside Oxford it
might be different. It shoud not!And surely knowing Grice, why would *GRICE*
provide the input to Strawson. For Grice, philosophy is very personal, and
while Grice might have thought that Sir Peter was slightly interested in what
his former tutor would say about ‘if,’ it would be inappropriate of the tutor
to overwhelm the tutee, or keep informing the tutee how wrong he is. For a
tutor, once a tutee, always a tutee. On WoW:59, Grice provides the FIRST
CANCELLATION of an ‘if,’ and changes it slightly from the one on p. 58. The
‘if’ now becomesIf Smith is in the library, he, viz. Smith, is working.’In
Wiltshire:“If Smith is in the swimming-pool library, he, viz. Smith, is
swimming.”THE CANCELLATION GOES by ‘opting out’:“I know just where Smith is and
what he, viz. Smith, is doing, but all I will tell you is that if he is in the
library he is working.”Grice had to keep adding his ‘vizes’ – viz. Smith –
because of the insidious contextualists – some of them philosophical!“What do
you mean ‘he,’ – are you sure you are keeping the denotatum constant?”Grice is
challenging Strawson’s ‘uncertainty and disbelief.’No one would be surprised if
Grice’s basis for his saying “I know just where Smith is and what he, viz.
Smith, is doing, but all I will tell you is that if he is in the library, he is
working” is that Grice has just looked in the library and found Smith working. So,
Grice IS uttering “If Smith is in the library, he is working” WHEN THE INDIRECT
(strong) condition ceteris-paribus carried by what Grice ceteris paribus
IMPLIES by uttering “If Smith is in the library, Smith is working.”The
situation is a bit of the blue, because Grice presents it on purpose as
UNVOLUNTEERED. The ‘communication-function’ does the trick. GRICE THEN GIVES
(between pages WoW: 59 and 60) TWO IMPLICIT cancellations of an implicature,
or, to avoid the alliteration, ‘contextual’ cancellation. Note incidentally
that Grice is aware of the explicit/implicit when he calls the cancellation,
first, EXPLICIT, and then contextual. By ‘explicit,’ he means, ‘conveying
explicitly’ in a way that commits you. THE THIRD INSTANTIATION refers to this
in what he calls a ‘logical’ puzzle, which may be a bit question-begging, cf.
‘appropriate truth-table.’ For Strawson would say that Grice is using ‘if’ as a
conscript, when it’s a civil. “If Smith has black, Mrs. Smith has black.”Grice
refers to ‘truth-table definition’ OR STIPULATION. Note that the horseshoe is
an inverted “C” for ‘contentum.’F. Cajori, “A history of mathematical
notations,” SYMBOLS IN MATHEMATICAL LOGIC, §667-on : [§674] “A theory of the ‘meccanisme
du raisonnement’ is offered by J. D. Gergonne in his “Essai de dialectique
rationnelle.”In Gergonne’s “Essai,” “H” stands for complete logical
disjunction, X” for logical product, “I” for "identity," [cf. Grize
on izzing] “C” for "contains," and "Ɔ (inverted C)" for
"is contained in." [§685] Gergonne
is using the Latinate, contineoIn rhet., the neuter substantive “contĭnens”
is rendered as “that on which something rests or depends, the chief point, hinge: “causae,” Cic. Part. Or. 29, 103; id. Top. 25, 95: “intuendum videtur, quid sit quaestio, ratio, judicatio, continens, vel ut alii vocant, firmamentum,” Quint. 3, 11, 1; cf. id. ib. § 18 sqq.—Adv.: contĭnen-ter .
So it is a natural evolution in matters of implication. while Giusberti
(“Materiale per studio,” 31) always reads “pro constanti,” the MSS occasionally
has the pretty Griciean “precontenti,” from “prae” and “contenti.” Cf. Quine,
“If my father was a bachelor, he was male. And I can say that, because ‘male’
is CONTAINED in ‘bachelor.’”E. Schröder, in his “Vorlesungen über die Algebra
der Logik,” [§690] Leipzig, uses “⊂”
for "untergeordnet”, roughly, “is included in,” and the inverted “⊃”
for the passive voice, "übergeordnet,” or includes. Some additional symbols are introduced by
Peano into Number 2 of Volume II of his influential “Formulaire.” Thus "ɔ"
becomes ⊃. By “p.⊃ x ... z. q” is
expressed “from p one DEDUCES, whatever x ... z may be, and q." In “Il calcolo geometrico,” – “according to
the Ausdehnungslehre of H. Grassmann, preceded by the operations of deductive
logic,” Peano stresses the duality of interpretations of “p.⊃
x ... z. q” in terms of classes and propositions. “We shall indicate [the
universal affirmative proposition] by the expression A < B, or B > A, which can be read "every A is a B,"
or "the class B CONTAINS A." [...]
Hence, if a,b,... are CONDITIONAL propositions, we have: a < b, or b > a, ‘says’ that "the
class defined by the condition a is part of that defined by b," or [...]
"b is a CONSEQUENCE of a," "if a is true, b is true." In Peano’s “Arithmetices principia: nova
methodo exposita,” we have: “II.
Propositions.” “The sign “C” means is a consequence of [“est consequentia.” Thus
b C a is read b is a consequence of the proposition a.” “The sign “Ɔ” means one
deduces [DEDUCITUR]; thus “a Ɔ b” ‘means’ the same as b C a. [...] IV. Classes “The sign Ɔ ‘means’ is contained
in. Thus a Ɔ b means class a is contained in class b. a, b ∈ K Ɔ (a Ɔ b) :=: (x)(x
∈ a Ɔ x ∈ b). In his “Formulaire,” Peano writes: “Soient a et b des Cls. a ⊃
b signifie "tout a est b".
Soient p et q des propositions contenant une variable x; p ⊃x
q, signifie "de p on déduit, quel que soit x, la q", c'est-à-dire:
"les x qui satisfont à la condition p satisferont aussi à la q". Russell criticizes Peano’s dualism in “The
Principles of mathematics,” §13. “The subject of Symbolic Logic consists of
three parts, the calculus of propositions, the calculus of classes and the
calculus of relations. Between the first two, there is, within limits, a
certain parallelism, which arises as follows: In any symbolic expression, the
letters may be interpreted as classes or as propositions, and the relation of
inclusion in the one case may be replaced by that of formal implication in the
other. A great deal has been made of
this duality, and in the later editions of his “Formulaire,” Peano appears to
have sacrificed logical precision to its preservation. But, as a matter of
fact, there are many ways in which the calculus of propositions differs from
that of classes.” Whiehead and Russell borrow the basic logical symbolism from
Peano, but they freed it from the "dual" interpretation. Thus, Whitehead and Russell adopt Schröder's ⊂
for class inclusion: a ⊂
b :=: (x)(x ∈ a Ɔ x ∈ b) Df. and restricted the use of the
"horseshoe" ⊃ to the connective "if’: “p⊃q.’
Whitehead’s and Russell’s decision isobvious, if we consider the following
example from Cesare Burali-Forti, “Logica Matematica,” a Ɔ b . b Ɔ c : Ɔ : a Ɔ
c [...] The first, second and fourth
[occurrences] of the sign Ɔ mean is contained, the third one means one deduces.So
the horseshoe is actually an inverted “C” meant to read “contentum” or
“consequens” (“consequutum”). Active Nominal Forms Infinitive: implicā́re
Present participle: implicāns; implicántis Future participle: implicītúrus;
implicātúrus Gerund: implicándum Gerundive: implicándus Passive Nominal Forms Infinitive: implicā́re
Perfect participle: implicī́tum; implicā́tumGRICE’s second implicit or
contextual cancellation does not involve a ‘logical puzzle’ but bridge – and
it’s his fourth instantiation:“If I have a red king, I also have a black king.”
– to announce to your competititve opponents upon inquiry a bid of five no
trumps. Cf. Alice, “The red Queen” which is a chess queen, as opposed to the
white queen. After a precis, he gives a FIFTH instantiation to prove that ‘if’
is always EXPLICITLY cancellable.WoW:60“If you put that bit of sugar in water, it
will dissolve, though so far as I know there can be no way of knowing in
advance that this will happen.”This is complex. The cancellation turns the ‘if
p, q’ into a ‘guess,’ in which case it is odd that the emissor would be
guessing and yet be being so fortunate as to make such a good guess. At the end
of page 60, Grice gives THREE FURTHER instantations which are both of
philosophical importance and a pose a problem to such a strong theorist as
Strawson.The first of the trio is:“If the Australians win the first Test, they
will win the series, you mark my words.”The second of the trio is:“Perhaps if
he comes, he will be in a good mood.”The third in the trio is:“See that, if he
comes, he gets his money.”Grice’s point is that in the three, the implicature
is cancelled. So the strong theorist has to modify the thesis ‘a sub-primary
case of a sub-primary use of ‘if’ is…” which seems like a heavy penalty for the
strong theorist. For Grice, the strong theorist is attaching the implicatum to
the ‘meaning’ of ‘if,’ where, if attached at all, should attach to some
mode-marker, such as ‘probably,’ which may be contextual. On p. 61 he is
finding play and using ‘logically weaker’ for the first time, i. e. in terms of
entailment. If it is logically weaker, it is less informative. “To deny that p,
or to assert that q.”Grice notes it’s ceteris paribus.“Provided it would be
worth contributing with the ‘more informative’ move (“why deny p? Why assert
q?) While the presumption that one is interested in the truth-values of at
least p or q, this is ceteris paribus. A philosopher may just be interested in
“if p, q” for the sake of exploring the range of the relation between p and q,
or the powers of p and q. On p. 62 he uses the phrase “non-truth functional” as
applied not to grounds but to ‘evidence’: “non-truth-functional evidence.”Grice
wants to say that emissor has implicated, in a cancellable way, that he has
non-truth-functional evidence for “if p, q,” i. e. evidence that proceeds by
his inability to utter “if p, q” on truth-functional grounds. The emissor is
signaling that he is uttering “if p, q” because he cannot deny p, or that he
cannot assert q(p ⊃ q) ≡
((~p) v q)Back to the first instantiation“If Smith is in London, he, viz. Smith
is attending the meeting there, viz. in London”I IMPLICATE, in a cancellable
way, that I have no evidence for “Smith is not in London”I IMPLICATE, in a
cancellable way, that I have no evidence for “Smith is attending the lecture.On
p. 61 he gives an example of an contextual cancellation to show that even if
the implicatum is a generalised one, it need not be present in every PARTICULAR
case (hence the weakned form ‘generalISED, not general). “If he was surprised,
he didn’t show it.”Or cf. AustinIf you are hungry, there are biscuits in the
cupboard. Traditionalist Grice on the tranquil Elysium of philosophyĒlysĭum ,
ii, n., = Ἠλύσιον, the abode of the blest, I.Elysium, Verg. A. 5, 735 Serv.; 6,
542; 744 al.; cf. Heyne Verg. A. 6, 675 sq.; and ejusd. libri Exc. VIII. p.
1019 Wagn.—Hence, II. Ēlysĭus , a, um, adj., Elysian: “campi,” Verg. G. 1, 38;
Tib. 1, 3, 58; Ov. Ib. 175; cf. “ager,” Mart. 10, 101: “plagae,” id. 6, 58:
“domus,” Ov. M. 14, 111; cf. “sedes,” Luc. 3, 12: “Chaos,” Stat. Th. 4, 520:
“rosae,” Prop. 4 (5), 7, 60. “puella,” i. e. Proserpine, Mart. 10, 24.—On p.
63, Grice uses ‘sense’ for the first time to apply to a Philonian ‘if p, q.’He
is exploring that what Strawson would have as a ‘natural’ if, not an artificial
‘if’ like Philo’s, may have a sense that descends from the sense of the
Philonian ‘if,’ as in Darwin’s descent of man. Grice then explores the ‘then’
in some formulations, ‘if p, then q’, and notes that Philo never used it, “ei”
simpliciter – or the Romans, “si.”Grice plays with the otiosity of “if p, in
that case q.”And then there’s one that Grice dismisses as ultra-otiose:“if p,
then, in that case, viz. p., q.”Grice then explores ‘truth-functional’ now
applied not to ‘evidence’ but to ‘confirmation.’“p or q” is said to be
truth-functionally confirmable.While “p horseshoe q’ is of course truth-functionally
confirmable.Grice has doubts that ‘if p, q’ may be regarded by Strawson as NOT
being ‘truth-functionally confirmable.’ If would involve what he previously
called a ‘metaphysical excrescence.’Grice then reverts to his bridge example“If
I have a red king, I have a black king.”And provides three scenarios for a
post-mortem truth-functional confirmability.For each of the three rowsNo red,
no blackRed, no blackRed, blackWhich goes ditto for the ‘logical’ puzzleIf Jones has black, Mrs.
Jones has black. The next crop of instantiations come from PM, and begins on p.
64.He kept revising these notes. And by the time he was submitting the essay to
the publisher, he gives up and kept the last (but not least, never latter)
version. Grice uses the second-floor ‘disagree,’ and not an explicit ‘not.’ So
is partially agreeing a form of disagreeing? In 1970, Conservative Heath won to
Labour Wilson.He uses ‘validate’ – for ‘confirm’. ‘p v q’ is validated iff
proved factually satisfactory.On p. 66 he expands“if p, q”as a triple
disjunction of the three rows when ‘if p, q’ is true:“(not-p and not-q) or
(not-p and q) or (p and q)”The only left out is “(p and not-q).”Grice gives an
instantiation for [p et]q“The innings closed at 3:15, Smith no batting.”as
opposed to“The inning close at 3:15, and Smith did not bat.”as displayed byp.qAfter
using ‘or’ for elections he gives the first instantation with ‘if’:“If Wilson
will not be prime minister, it will be Heath.”“If Wilson loses, he loses to
Heath.”‘if’ is noncommutative – the only noncommutative of the three dyadic
truth-functors he considers (‘and,’ ‘or’ and ‘if’).This means that there is a
‘semantic’ emphasis here.There is a distinction between ‘p’ and ‘q’. In the
case of ‘and’ and ‘or’ there is not, since ‘p and q’ iff ‘q and p’ and ‘p or q’
iff ‘q or p.’The distinction is expressed in terms of truth-sufficiency and
false-sufficiency.The antecedent or protasis, ‘p’ is FALSE-SUFFICIENT for the
TRUTH of ‘if p, q.’The apodosis is TRUE-sufficient for the truth of ‘if p, q.’On
p. 67 he raises three questions.FIRST QUESTIONHe is trying to see ‘if’ as
simpler:The three instantiations areIf Smith rings, the butler will let Smith
inIt is not the case that Smith rings, or the butler will let Smith in.It is
not the case both Smith rings and it is not the the butler will let Smith in. (Grice
changes the tense, since the apodosis sometimes requires the future tense)
(“Either Smith WILL RING…”)SECOND QUESTIONWhy did the Anglo-Saxons feel the
need for ‘if’ – German ‘ob’? After all, if Whitehead and Russell are right, the
Anglo-Saxons could have done with ‘not’ and ‘and,’ or indeed with
‘incompatible.’The reason is that ‘if’ is cognate with ‘doubt,’ but The
Anglo-Saxons left the doubt across the North Sea. it
originally from an oblique case of the substantive which may be rendered as
"doubt,” and cognate with archaic German “iba,” which may be rendered as
“condition, stipulation, doubt," Old Norse if "doubt,
hesitation," modern Swedish jäf "exception,
challenge")It’s all different with ‘ei’ and ‘si.’For sisī (orig.
and ante-class. form seī ),I.conj. [from a pronominal stem = Gr. ἑ; Sanscr.
sva-, self; cf. Corss. Ausspr. 1, 778; Georg Curtius Gr. Etym. 396],
a conditional particle, if.As for “ei”εἰ ,
Att.-Ion. and Arc. (for εἰκ, v.
infr. 11 ad
init.), = Dor. and Aeol. αἰ, αἰκ (q.
v.), Cypr.A.“ἤ” Inscr.Cypr.135.10 H.,
both εἰ and αἰ in
Ep.:— Particle used interjectionally with imper. and to express a wish, but
usu. either in conditions, if,
or in indirect questions, whether. In
the former use its regular negative is μή; in the
latter, οὐ.THIRD
QUESTION. Forgetting Grecian neutral apodosis and protasis, why did the Romans
think that while ‘antecedens’ is a good Humeian rendition of ‘protasis,’ yet
instead they chose for the Grecian Humeian ‘apodosis,’ the not necessarily
Humeian ‘con-sequens,’ rather than mere ‘post-sequens’?The Latin terminology is antecedens and consequens, the
ancestors and ... tothem the way the Greek grammatical termsή πρότασιs and
ήαπόδοσιsBRADWARDINE: Note that a consequence is an argumentation made up of an
antecedent and a consequent. He starts with the métiers.For ‘or’ he speaks of
‘semiotic economy’ (p. 69). Grice’s Unitarianism – unitary particle.If,
like iff, is subordinating, but only if is
non-commutative. Gazdar considers how many dyadic particles are possible and
why such a small bunch is chosen. Grice did not even care, as Strawson did, to take
care of ‘if and only if.’ Grice tells us the history behind the ‘nursery rhyme’
about Cock Robin. He learned it from his mother,
Mabel Fenton, at Harborne. Clifton almost made it forget it! But he recovered
in the New World, after reading from Colin Sharp that many of those nursery
rhymes travelled “with the Mayflower.” "Who Killed Cock Robin" is an
English nursery rhyme, which has been much used as a murder archetype[citation
needed] in world culture. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 494. Contents 1 Lyrics
2Origin and meaning 3Notes 4 External
links Lyrics[edit] The earliest record of the rhyme is in Tommy Thumb's Pretty
Song Book, published c. 1744, which noted only the first four verses. The
extended version given below was not printed until c. 1770.[1] Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow,
with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin. Who saw him die? I, said the Fly,
with my little eye, I saw him die. Who caught his blood? I, said the Fish, with
my little dish, I caught his blood. Who'll make the shroud? I, said the Beetle,
with my thread and needle, I'll make the shroud. Who'll dig his grave? I, said
the Owl, with my little trowel, I'll dig his grave. Who'll be the parson? I,
said the Rook, with my little book, I'll be the parson. Who'll be the clerk? I,
said the Lark, if it's not in the dark, I'll be the clerk. Who'll carry the
link? I, said the Linnet, I'll fetch it in a minute, I'll carry the link.
Who'll be chief mourner? I, said the Dove, I mourn for my love, I'll be chief
mourner. Who'll carry the coffin? I, said the Kite, if it's not through the
night, I'll carry the coffin. Who'll bear the pall? We, said the Wren, both the
cock and the hen, We'll bear the pall. Who'll sing a psalm? I, said the Thrush,
as she sat on a bush, I'll sing a psalm. Who'll toll the bell? I, said the
Bull, because I can pull, I'll toll the bell. All the birds of the air fell
a-sighing and a-sobbing, when they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin. The
rhyme has often been reprinted with illustrations, as suitable reading material
for small children.[citation needed] The rhyme also has an alternative ending,
in which the sparrow who killed Cock Robin is hanged for his crime.[2] Several
early versions picture a stocky, strong-billed bullfinch tolling the bell,
which may have been the original intention of the rhyme.[3] Origin and meaning[edit] Although the song
was not recorded until the mid-eighteenth century,[4] there is some evidence
that it is much older. The death of a robin by an arrow is depicted in a
15th-century stained glass window at Buckland Rectory, Gloucestershire,[5] and
the rhyme is similar to a story, Phyllyp Sparowe, written by John Skelton about
1508.[1] The use of the rhyme 'owl' with 'shovel', could suggest that it was
originally used in older middle English pronunciation.[1] Versions of the story
appear to exist in other countries, including Germany.[1] A number of the stories have been advanced to
explain the meaning of the rhyme: The
rhyme records a mythological event, such as the death of the god Balder from
Norse mythology,[1] or the ritual sacrifice of a king figure, as proposed by
early folklorists as in the 'Cutty Wren' theory of a 'pagan survival'.[6][7] It
is a parody of the death of King William II, who was killed by an arrow while
hunting in the New Forest (Hampshire) in 1100, and who was known as William
Rufus, meaning "red".[8] The rhyme is connected with the fall of
Robert Walpole's government in 1742, since Robin is a diminutive form of Robert
and the first printing is close to the time of the events mentioned.[1] All of
these theories are based on perceived similarities in the text to legendary or
historical events, or on the similarities of names. Peter Opie pointed out that
an existing rhyme could have been adapted to fit the circumstances of political
events in the eighteenth century.[1] The
theme of Cock Robin's death as well as the poem's distinctive cadence have
become archetypes, much used in literary fiction and other works of art, from
poems, to murder mysteries, to cartoons.[1]
Notes[edit] ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford
Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997),
pp. 130–3. ^ * Cock Robin at Project Gutenberg ^ M. C. Maloney, ed., English
illustrated books for children: a descriptive companion to a selection from the
Osborne Collection (Bodley Head, 1981), p. 31. ^ Lockwood, W. B. "The
Marriage of the Robin and the Wren." Folklore 100.2 (1989): 237–239. ^ The
gentry house that became the old rectory at Buckland has an impressive timbered
hall that dates from the fifteenth century with two lights of contemporary
stained glass in the west wall with the rebus of William Grafton and arms of
Gloucester Abbey in one and the rising sun of Edward IV in the other light;
birds in various attitudes hold scrolls "In Nomine Jesu"; none is
reported transfixed by an arrow in Anthony Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England
and Wales, 1300–1500: Southern England, s.v. "Buckland Old Rectory,
Gloucestershire", (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 80. ^ R. J.
Stewart, Where is St. George? Pagan Imagery in English Folksong (1976). ^ B.
Forbes, Make Merry in Step and Song: A Seasonal Treasury of Music, Mummer's
Plays & Celebrations in the English Folk Tradition (Llewellyn Worldwide,
2009), p. 5. ^ J. Harrowven, The origins of rhymes, songs and sayings (Kaye
& Ward, 1977), p. 92. External links[edit] Children's literature portal
Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin, by H. L. Stephens, from Project Gutenberg
Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin From the Collections at the Library of
Congress Categories: Robert Walpole1744 songsFictional passerine birdsEnglish
nursery rhymesSongwriter unknownEnglish folk songsEnglish children's
songsTraditional children's songsSongs about birdsSongs about deathMurder
balladsThe train from Oakland to
Berkeley.Grice's aunt once visited him, and he picked her up at the Oakland
Railway Station. On
p. 74, Grice in terms of his aunt, mentions for the first time ‘premise’ and
‘conclusion.’On same p. for the record he uses ‘quality’ for affirmative,
negative or infinite. On p. 74 he uses for the first time, with a point, the
expression ‘conditional’ as attached to ‘if.’Oddly on the first line of p. 75,
he uses ‘material conditional,’ which almost nobody does – except for a
blue-collared practitioner of the sciences. ‘Material’ was first introduced by
blue-collared Whitehead and Russell, practictioners of the sciences. They used
‘material’ as applied to ‘implication,’ to distinguish it, oddly, and
unclassily, from ‘formal’ implication. It is only then he quotes Wilson
verbatim in quotes“The question whether so and so is a case of a question
whether such and such” This actually influenced Collingwood, and Grice is
trying to tutor Strawson here once more!For the
logic of question and
answer has roots in the very philosophy that it was ... is John Cook Wilson,
whose Statement
and Inference can be regarded as the STATEMENT AND ITS
RELATION TO THINKING AND APREHENSIOTHE DISTINCTION OF SUBJECT AND PREDICATE IN
LOGIC AND GRAMMAR The influence of Strawson on Cook Wilson.“The building is the
Bodleian.”As answer to“What is that building?”“Which building is the
Bodleian”If the proposition is answer to first question, ‘that building’ is the
subject, if the proposition is answer to second question, ‘the bodleian’ is the
subject. Cf. “The exhibition was not visited by a bald king – of France, as it doesn’t
happen.SUBJECT AS TOPICPREDICATE AS COMMENT.Cf. Grice, “The dog is a shaggy
thig”What is shaggy?What is the dog?THIS DOG – Subject – TopicTHAT SHAGGY THING
– Subject – occasionally, but usually Predicate, Comment.In fact, Wilson bases
on StoutI am hungryWho is hungry?: subject IIs there anything amiss with you?
‘hungry’ is the subjectAre you really hungry? ‘am’ is the subject.Grice used to
be a neo-Stoutian before he turned a neo-Prichardian so he knew. But perhaps
Grice thought better of Cook Wilson. More of a philosopher. Stout seemed to
have been seen as a blue-collared practioner of the SCIENCE of psychology, not
philosophical psychology! Cf. Leicester-born B. Mayo, e: Magdalen, Lit. Hum.
(Philosophy) under? on ‘if’ and Cook Wilson in Analysis.Other example by
Wilson:“Glass is elastic.”Grice is motivated to defend Cook Wilson because
Chomsky was criticizing him (via a student who had been at Oxford). [S]uppose
instruction was being given in the properties of glass, and the instructor said
‘glass is elastic’, it would be natural to say that what was being talkedabout
and thought about was ‘glass’, and that what was said of it was that it was
elastic. Thus glass would be the subject and that it is elastic would be the
predicate. (Cook Wilson 1926/1969, Vol. 1:117f.) What Cook Wilson discusses
here is a categorical sentence. The next two quotes are concerned with an
identificational sentence. [I]n the statement ‘glass is elastic’, if the matter
of inquiry was elasticity and the question was what substances possessed the
property of elasticity, glass, in accordance with the principle of the
definition, would no longer be subject, and the kind of stress which fell upon
‘elastic’ when glass was the subject, would now be transferred to ‘glass’. [. .
.] Thus the same form of words should be analyzed differently according as the
words are the answer to one question or another. (Cook Wilson 1926/1969, Vol.
1:119f.) When the stress falls upon ‘glass’, in ‘glass is elastic’, there is no
word in the sentence which denotes the actual subject elasticity; the word
‘elastic’ refers to what is already known of the subject, and glass, which has
the stress, is the only word which refers to the supposed new fact in the
nature of elasticity, that it is found in glass. Thus, according to the
proposed formula, ‘glass’ would have to be the predicate. [. . .] Introduction
and overview But the ordinary analysis would never admit that ‘glass’ was the
predicate in the given sentence and elasticity the subject. (Cook Wilson
1926/1969, Vol. 1:121)H. P. Grice knew that P. F. Strawson knew of J. C.
Wilson on “That building is the
Bodleian” via Sellars’s criticism.There is a strong
suggestion in Sellars' paper that I would have done
better if I had stuck to Cook Wilson. This suggestion I want equally strongly
to repudiate. Certainly Cook Wilson draws
attention to an interesting difference in ways in which items
may appear in discourse. It may be roughly expressed as follows.
When we say Glass is elastic we may be talking about glass or we
may be talking about elasticity (and we may, in the relevant sense of
'about' be doing neither). We are talking about glass if we are citing
elasticity as one of the properties of glass, we
are talking about elasticity if we are citing
glass as one of the substances which are elastic. Similarly
when we say Socrates is wise, we may be citing Socrates as an
instance of wisdom or wisdom as one of the proper- ties
of Socrates. And of course we may be doing
neither but, e.g., just imparting miscellaneous
information. Now how, if at all, could this
difference help me with my question? Would it help at all, for example,
if it were plausible (which it is not) to say that we were
inevitably more interested in determining what properties a given
particular had,than in determining what particular had a given property?
Wouldn't this at least suggest that particulars were the natural
subjects, in the sense of subjects of &erest? Let
me answer this question by the reminder that what I have
to do is to establish a connexion between some
formal linguistic difference and a category
difference; and a formal linguistic difference is
one which logic can take cognizance of, in abstraction from pragmatic
considerations, like the direction of interest. Such
a formal ditference exists in the difference between appearing in
discourse directly designated and appearing in discourse
under the cloak of quantification. ““But the difference in the
use of unquantified statements to which Cook Wilson draws
attention is not a formal difference at all.”Both glass and elasticity,
Socrates and wisdom appear named in such statements,
whichever, in Cook Wilson's sense, we are talking
about. An appeal to pragmatic considerations is,
certainly, an essential part of my own
account at a certain point: but this is the point at which
such considerations are in- voked to explain why a certain formal
difference should be particularly closely linked, in common speech, with
a certain category difference. The difference of which Cook
Wilson speaks is, then, though interesting in itself, irrelevant to my
question. Cook Wilson is, and I am not, concerned with what Sellars
calls dialectical distinctions.”
On p.76 Grice mentions
for the first time the “ROLE” of if in an indefinite series of ‘interrogative
subordination.”For
Cook Wilson,as Price knew (he quotes him in Belief), the function of ‘if’ is to
LINK TWO QUESTIONS. You’re the cream in my coffee as ‘absurd’ if literally (p.
83). STATEMENT
In
this entry we will explore how Grice sees the ‘implicatum’ that he regards as
‘conversational’ as applied to the emissor and in reference to the Graeco-Roman
classical tradition. Wht is implicated may not be the result of any maxim, and
yet not conventional – depending on a feature of context. But nothing like a
maxim – Strawson Wiggins p. 523. Only a CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATUM is the result
of a CONVERSATIONAL MAXIM and the principle of conversational helpfulness. In a
‘one-off’ predicament, there may be an ‘implicatum’ that springs from the
interaction itself. If E draws a skull, he communicates that there is danger.
If addressee runs away, this is not part of the implicatum. This Grice
considers in “Meaning.” “What is meant” should cover the immediate effect, and
not any effect that transpires out of the addressee’s own will. Cf. Patton on
Kripke. One thief to another: “The cops are coming!” The expressiom
“IMPLICATION” is figures, qua entry, in a philosophical dictionary that Grice
consulted at Oxford. In the vernacular, there are two prominent relata:
entailment and implicature, the FRENCH have their “implication.” When it comes
to the Germans, it’s more of a trick. There’s the “nachsichziehen,” the
“zurfolgehaben,” the “Folge(-rung),” the “Schluß,” the “Konsequenz,” and of
course the “Implikation” and the “Implikatur,” inter alia. In Grecian, which Grice learned at Clifton, we
have the “sumpeplegmenon,” or “συμπεπλεγμένον,” if you must, i. e. the
“sum-peplegmenon,” but there’s also the “sumperasma,” or “συμπέϱασμα,” if you
must, “sum-perasma;” and then there’s the “sunêmmenon,” or “συνημμένον,” “sun-emmenon,”
not to mention (then why does Grice?) the “akolouthia,” or “ἀϰολουθία,” if you
must, “akolouthia,” and the “antakolouthia,” ἀνταϰολουθία,” “ana-kolouthia.”
Trust clever Cicero to regard anything ‘Grecian’ as not displaying enough
gravitas, and thus rendering everything into Roman. There’s the “illatio,” from
‘in-fero.’ The Romans adopted two different roots for this, and saw them as
having the same ‘sense’ – cf. referro, relatum, proferro, prolatum; and then
there’s the “inferentia,”– in-fero; and then there’s the “consequentia,” --
con-sequentia. The seq- root is present in ‘sequitur,’ non sequitur. The ‘con-‘
is transliterating Greek ‘syn-’ in the three expressions with ‘syn’:
sympleplegmenon, symperasma, and synemmenon. The Germans, avoiding the
Latinate, have a ‘follow’ root: in “Folge,” “Folgerung,” and the verb
“zur-folge-haben. And perhaps ‘implicatio,’
which is the root Grice is playing with. In Italian and French it
underwent changes, making ‘to imply’ a doublet with Grice’s ‘to implicate’ (the
form already present, “She was implicated in the crime.”). The strict opposite
is ‘ex-plicatio,’ as in ‘explicate.’ ‘implico’ gives both ‘implicatum’ and
‘implicitum.’ Consequently, ‘explico’ gives both ‘explicatum’ and ‘explicitum.’
In English Grice often uses ‘impicit,’ and ‘explicit,’ as they relate to communication,
as his ‘implicatum’ does. His ‘implicatum’ has more to do with the contrast
with what is ‘explicit’ than with ‘what follows’ from a premise. Although in
his formulation, both readings are valid: “by uttering x, implicitly conveying
that q, the emissor CONVERSATIONALY implicates that p’ if he has explicitly
conveyed that p, and ‘q’ is what is required to ‘rationalise’ his
conversational behavioiur. In terms of the emissor, the distinction is between
what the emissor has explicitly conveyed and what he has conversationally
implicated. This in turn contrasts what some philosophers refer metabolically
as an ‘expression,’ the ‘x’ ‘implying’ that p – Grice does not bother with this
because, as Strawson and Wiggins point out, while an emissor cannot be true,
it’s only what he has either explicitly or implicitly conveyed that can be
true. As Austin says, it’s always a FIELD where you do the linguistic botany.
So, you’ll have to vide and explore: ANALOGY, PROPOSITION, SENSE, SUPPOSITION,
and TRUTH. Implication denotes a relation between propositions and statements
such that, from the truth-value of the protasis or antecedent (true or false),
one can derive the truth of the apodosis or consequent. More broadly, we can
say that one idea ‘implies’ another if the first idea cannot be thought without
the second one -- RT: Lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la
philosophie. Common usage makes no strict differentiation between “to imply,”
“to infer,” and “to lead to.” Against Dorothy Parker. She noted that those of
her friends who used ‘imply’ for ‘infer’ were not invited at the Algonquin. The
verb “to infer,” (from Latin, ‘infero,’ that gives both ‘inferentia,’
inference, and ‘illatio,’ ‘illatum’) meaning “to draw a consequence, to deduce”
(a use dating to 1372), and the noun “inference,” meaning “consequence” (from
1606), do not on the face of it seem to be manifestly different from “to imply”
and “implication.” But in Oxonian usage, Dodgson avoided a confusion. “There
are two ways of confusing ‘imply’ with ‘infer’: to use ‘imply’ to mean ‘infer,’
and vice versa. Alice usually does the latter; the Dodo the former.” Indeed,
nothing originally distinguishes “implication” as Lalande defines it — “a
relation by which one thing ‘implies’ another”— from “inference” as it is
defined in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1765): “An operation by which
one ACCEPTS (to use a Griceism) a proposition because of its connection to
other propositions held to be true.” The same phenomenon can be seen in the
German language, in which the terms corresponding to “implication,” “Nach-sich-ziehen,”
“Zur-folge-haben,” “inference,” “Schluß”-“Folgerung,” “Schluß,” “to infer,”
“schließen,” “consequence,” “Folge” “-rung,” “Schluß,” “Konsequenz,”
“reasoning,” “”Schluß-“ “Folgerung,” and “to reason,” “schließen,” “Schluß-folger-ung-en
ziehen,” intersect or overlap to a large extent. In the French language, the
expression “impliquer” reveals several characteristics that the expression does
not seem to share with “to infer” or “to lead to.” First of all, “impliquer” is
originally (1663) connected to the notion of contradiction, as shown in the use
of impliquer in “impliquer contradiction,” in the sense of “to be
contradictory.” The connection between ‘impliquer’ and ‘contradiction’ does
not, however, explain how “impliquer” has passed into its most commonly
accepted meaning — “implicitly entail” — viz. to lead to a consequence. Indeed,
the two usages (“impliquer” connected with contradiction” and otherwise)
constantly interfere with one another, which certainly poses a number of
difficult problems. An analogous phenomenon can be found in the case of
“import,” commonly given used as “MEAN” or “imply,” but often wavering instead,
in certain cases, between “ENTAIL” and “imply.” In French, the noun “import” itself
is generally left as it I (“import existentiel,” v. SENSE, Box 4, and cf.
that’s unimportant, meaningless). “Importer,”
as used by Rabelais, 1536, “to necessitate, to entail,” forms via It.“importare,” as used by Dante), from the Fr.
“emporter,” “to entail, to have as a consequence,” dropped out of usage, and
was brought back through Engl. “import.” The nature of the connection between
the two primary usages of L. ‘implicare,’ It. ‘implicare,’ and Fr. ‘impliquer,’
“to entail IMPLICITitly” and “to lead to a consequence,” nonetheless remains obscure,
but not to a Griceian, or Grecian. Another difficulty is understanding how the
transition occurs from Fr. “impliquer,” “to lead to a consequence,” to
“implication,” “a logical relation in which one statement necessarily supposes
another one,” and how we can determine what in this precise case distinguishes
“implication” from “PRAE-suppositio.” We therefore need to be attentive to what
is implicit in Fr. “impliquer” and “implication,” to the dimension of Fr.
“pli,” a pleat or fold, of Fr. “re-pli,” folding back, and of the Fr. “pliure,”
folding, in order to separate out “imply,” “infer,” “lead to,” or
“implication,” “inference,” “consequence”—which requires us to go back to
Latin, and especially to medieval Latin. Once we clarify the relationship
between the usage of “implication” and the medieval usage of “implicatio,” we
will be able to examine certain derivations (as in Sidonius’s ‘implicatura,”
and H. P. Grice’s “implicature,” after ‘temperature,’ from ‘temperare,’) or
substitutes (“entailment”) of terms related to the generic field (for
linguistic botanising) of “implicatio,” assuming that it is difficulties with
the concept of implication (e. g., the ‘paradoxes,’ true but misleading, of material
versus formal implication – ‘paradox of implication’ first used by Johnson
1921) that have given rise to this or that newly coined expression
corresponding to this or that original attempt. This whole set of difficulties
certainly becomes clearer as we leave Roman and go further upstream to Grecian,
using the same vocabulary of implication, through the conflation of several
heterogeneous gestures that come from the systematics in Aristotle and the
Stoics. The Roman Vocabulary of Implication and the Implicatio has the
necessary ‘gravitas,’ but Grice, being a Grecian at heart, found it had ‘too
much gravitas,’ hence his ‘implicature,’ “which is like the old Roman
‘implicare,’ but for fun!” A number of different expressions in medieval Latin
can express in a more or less equivalent manner the relationship between
propositions and statements such that, from the truth-value of the antecedent
(true or false), one can derive the truth-value of the consequent. There is
“illatio,” and of course “illatum,” which Varro thought fell under ‘inferre.’
Then there’s the feminine noun, ‘inferentia,’ from the ‘participium praesens’
of ‘inferre,’ cf. ‘inferens’ and ‘ilatum.’ There is also ‘consequentia,’ which
is a complex transliterating the Greek ‘syn-,’ in this case with ‘’sequentia,’
from the deponent verb. “I follow you.” Peter Abelard (Petrus Abelardus, v.
Abelardus) makes no distinction in using the expression “consequentia” for the
‘propositio conditionalis,’ hypothetical. Si est homo, est animal. If Grice is
a man, Grice is an animal (Dialectica, 473 – Abelardus uses ‘Greek man,’ not
Grice.’ His implicature is ‘if a Greek man is a man, he is therefore also some
sort of an animal’). But Abelardus also uses the expression “inferentia” for ‘same
old same old’ (cf. “Implicature happens.”). Si non est iustus homo, est non
iustus homo. Grice to Strawson on the examiner having given him a second. “If
it is not the case that your examiner was a fair man, it follows thereby that
your examiner was not a fair man, if that helps.” (Dialectica., 414). For some reason, which Grice found obscure,
‘illatio” appears “almost always” in the context of commenting on Aristotle’s
“Topics,” – “why people found the topic commenting escapes me” -- aand denotes
more specifically a reasoning, or “argumentum,” in Boethius, allowing for a “consequentia”
to be drawn from a given place. So Abelardus distinguishes: “illatio a causa.”
But there is also “illatio a simili.” And there is “iillatio a pari.” And there
is “illatio a partibus.” “Con-sequentia” sometimes has a very generic usage,
even if not as generic as ‘sequentia.” “Consequentia est quaedam habitudo inter
antecedens et consequens,” “Logica modernorum,” 2.1:38 – Cfr. Grice on
Whitehead as a ‘modernist’! Grice draws his ‘habit’ from the scholastic
‘habitudo.’ Noe that ‘antededens’ and ‘consequens.’ The point is a tautological
formula, in terms of formation. Surely ‘consequentia’ relates to a
‘consequens,’ where the ‘consequens’ is the ‘participium praesens’ of the verb
from which ‘consequentia’ derives. It’s like deving ‘love’ by ‘to have a
beloved.’ “Consequentia” is in any case present, in some way, without the
intensifier ‘syn,’ which the Roman gravitas added to transliterate the Greek
‘syn,’ i. e. ‘cum.’ -- in the expression “sequitur” and in the expression
“con-sequitur,” literally, ‘to follow,’ ‘to ensue,’ ‘to result in’). Keenan
told Grice that this irritated him. “If there is an order between a premise and
a conclusion, I will stop using ‘follow,’ because that reverts the order. I’ll use
‘… yields …’ and write that ‘p yields q.’” “Inferentia,” which is cognate (in
the Roman way of using this expression broadly) with ‘illatio,’ and ‘illatum,’
-- frequently appears, by contrast, and “for another Grecian reason,” as Grice
would put it -- in the context of the Aristotle’s “De Interpretatione,” on which
Grice lectures only with J. L. Austin (Grice lectured with Strawson on
“Categoriae,” only – but with Austin, from whom Grice learned – Grice lectured
on both “Categoriae’ AND “De Interpretatione.” -- whether it is as part of a commentarium on Apuleius’s
Isagoge and the Square of Oppositions (‘figura quadrata spectare”), in order to
explain this or that “law” underlying any of the four sides of the square. So,
between A and E we have ‘propositio opposita.’ Between A and I, and between E
and O, we have propositio sub-alterna. Between A and O, and between E and I, we
have propositio contradictoria. And between I and O, we have “propositio
sub-alterna.” -- Logica modernorum, 2.1:115. This was irritatingly explored by
P. F. Strawson and brought to H. P. Grice’s attention, who refused to accept
Strawson’s changes and restrictions of the ‘classical’ validities (or “laws”)
because Strawson felt that the ‘implication’ violated some ‘pragmatic rule,’
while still yielding a true statement. Then there’s the odd use of “inferentia”
to apply to the different ‘laws’ of ‘conversio’ -- from ‘convertire,’
converting one proposition into another (Logica modernorum 131–39). Nevertheless,
“inferentia” is used for the dyadic (or triadic, alla Peirce) relationship of ‘implicatio,’
which for some reason, the grave Romans were using for less entertaining
things, and not this or that expressions from the “implication” family, or
sub-field. Surprisingly, a philosopher
without a classical Graeco-Roman background could well be mislead into thinking
that “implicatio” and “implication” are disparate! A number of treatises,
usually written by monks – St. John’s, were Grice teaches, is a Cicercian
monastery -- explore the “implicits.” Such a “tractatus” is not called
‘logico-philosophicus,’ but a “tractatus implicitarum,” literally a treatise on
this or that ‘semantic’ property of the
proposition said to be an ‘implicatum’ or an ‘implication,’ or ‘propositio re-lativa.’
This is Grice’s reference to the conversational category of ‘re-lation.’
“Re-latio” and “Il-latio” are surely cognate. The ‘referre’ is a bring back;
while the ‘inferre’ is the bring in. The propositio is not just ‘brought’
(latum, or lata) it is brought back. Proposition Q is brought back (relata) to
Proposition P. P and Q become ‘co-relative.’ This is the terminology behind the
idea of a ‘relative clause,’ or ‘oratio relativa.’ E.g. “Si Plato tutee
Socrates est, Socratos tutor Platonis est,” translated by Grice, “If Strawson was
my tutee, it didn’t show!”. Now, closer to Grice “implicitus,” with an “i”
following the ‘implic-‘ rather than the expected ‘a’ (implica), “implicita,”
and “implicitum,” is an alternative “participium passatum” from “im-plic-are,”
in Roman is used for “to be joined, mixed, enveloped.” implĭco (inpl- ), āvi,
ātum, or (twice in Cic., and freq. since the Aug. per.) ŭi, ĭtum (v. Neue,
Formenl. 2, 550 sq.), 1, v. a. in-plico, to fold into; hence, I.to infold,
involve, entangle, entwine, inwrap, envelop, encircle, embrace, clasp, grasp
(freq. and class.; cf.: irretio, impedio). I. Lit.: “involvulus in pampini
folio se,” Plaut. Cist. 4, 2, 64: “ut tenax hedera huc et illuc Arborem
implicat errans,” Cat. 61, 35; cf. id. ib. 107 sq.: “et nunc huc inde huc
incertos implicat orbes,” Verg. A. 12, 743: “dextrae se parvus Iulus
Implicuit,” id. ib. 2, 724; cf.: “implicuit materno bracchia collo,” Ov. M. 1,
762: “implicuitque suos circum mea colla lacertos,” id. Am. 2, 18, 9:
“implicuitque comam laevā,” grasped, Verg. A. 2, 552: “sertis comas,” Tib. 3,
6, 64: “crinem auro,” Verg. A. 4, 148: “frondenti tempora ramo,” id. ib. 7,
136; cf. Ov. F. 5, 220: in parte inferiore hic implicabatur caput, Afran. ap.
Non. 123, 16 (implicare positum pro ornare, Non.): “aquila implicuit pedes
atque unguibus haesit,” Verg. A. 11, 752: “effusumque equitem super ipse
(equus) secutus Implicat,” id. ib. 10, 894: “congressi in proelia totas
Implicuere inter se acies,” id. ib. 11, 632: “implicare ac perturbare aciem,”
Sall. J. 59, 3: “(lues) ossibus implicat ignem,” Verg. A. 7, 355.—In part.
perf.: “quini erant ordines conjuncti inter se atque implicati,” Caes. B. G. 7,
73, 4: “Canidia brevibus implicata viperis Crines,” Hor. Epod. 5, 15: “folium
implicatum,” Plin. 21, 17, 65, § 105: “intestinum implicatum,” id. 11, 4, 3, §
9: “impliciti laqueis,” Ov. A. A. 2, 580: “Cerberos implicitis angue minante
comis,” id. H. 9, 94: “implicitamque sinu absstulit,” id. A. A. 1, 561:
“impliciti Peleus rapit oscula nati,” held in his arms, Val. Fl. 1, 264. II.
Trop. A. In gen., to entangle, implicate, involve, envelop, engage: “di
immortales vim suam ... tum terrae cavernis includunt, tum hominum naturis
implicant,” Cic. Div. 1, 36, 79: “contrahendis negotiis implicari,” id. Off. 2,
11, 40: “alienis (rebus) nimis implicari molestum esse,” id. Lael. 13, 45:
“implicari aliquo certo genere cursuque vivendi,” id. Off. 1, 32, 117:
“implicari negotio,” id. Leg. 1, 3: “ipse te impedies, ipse tua defensione
implicabere,” Cic. Verr. 2, 2, 18, § 44; cf.: multis implicari erroribus, id.
Tusc. 4, 27, 58: “bello,” Verg. A. 11, 109: “eum primo incertis implicantes
responsis,” Liv. 27, 43, 3: “nisi forte implacabiles irae vestrae implicaverint
animos vestros,” perplexed, confounded, id. 40, 46, 6: “paucitas in partitione
servatur, si genera ipsa rerum ponuntur, neque permixte cum partibus
implicantur,” are mingled, mixed up, Cic. Inv. 1, 22, 32: ut omnibus copiis
conductis te implicet, ne ad me iter tibi expeditum sit, Pompei. ap. Cic. Att.
8, 12, D, 1: “tanti errores implicant temporum, ut nec qui consules nec quid
quoque anno actum sit digerere possis,” Liv. 2, 21, 4.—In part. perf.: “dum rei
publicae quaedam procuratio multis officiis implicatum et constrictum tenebat,”
Cic. Ac. 1, 3, 11: “Deus nullis occupationibus est implicatus,” id. N. D. 1,
19, 51; cf.: “implicatus molestis negotiis et operosis,” id. ib. 1, 20, 52:
“animos dederit suis angoribus et molestiis implicatos,” id. Tusc. 5, 1, 3:
“Agrippina morbo corporis implicata,” Tac. A. 4, 53: “inconstantia tua cum
levitate, tum etiam perjurio implicata,” Cic. Vatin. 1, 3; cf. id. Phil. 2, 32,
81: “intervalla, quibus implicata atque permixta oratio est,” id. Or. 56, 187:
“(voluptas) penitus in omni sensu implicata insidet,” id. Leg. 1, 17, 47: “quae
quatuor inter se colligata atque implicata,” id. Off. 1, 5, 15: “natura non tam
propensus ad misericordiam quam implicatus ad severitatem videbatur,” id. Rosc.
Am. 30, 85; “and in the form implicitus, esp. with morbo (in morbum): quies
necessaria morbo implicitum exercitum tenuit,” Liv. 3, 2, 1; 7, 23, 2; 23, 40,
1: “ubi se quisque videbat Implicitum morbo,” Lucr. 6, 1232: “graviore morbo
implicitus,” Caes. B. C. 3, 18, 1; cf.: “implicitus in morbum,” Nep. Ages. 8,
6; Liv. 23, 34, 11: “implicitus suspicionibus,” Plin. Ep. 3, 9, 19; cf.:
“implicitus terrore,” Luc. 3, 432: “litibus implicitus,” Hor. A. P. 424:
“implicitam sinu abstulit,” Ov. A. A. 1, 562: “(vinum) jam sanos implicitos
facit,” Cael. Aur. Acut. 3, 8, 87.— B. In partic., to attach closely, connect
intimately, to unite, join; in pass., to be intimately connected, associated,
or related: “(homo) profectus a caritate domesticorum ac suorum serpat longius
et se implicet primum civium, deinde mortalium omnium societate,” Cic. Fin. 2,
14, 45: “omnes qui nostris familiaritatibus implicantur,” id. Balb. 27, 60:
“(L. Gellius) ita diu vixit, ut multarum aetatum oratoribus implicaretur,” id.
Brut. 47, 174: “quibus applicari expediet, non implicari,” Sen. Ep. 105, 5.— In
part. perf.: “aliquos habere implicatos consuetudine et benevolentia,” Cic.
Fam. 6, 12, 2: “implicatus amicitiis,” id. Att. 1, 19, 8: “familiaritate,” id.
Pis. 29, 70: “implicati ultro et citro vel usu diuturno vel etiam officiis,”
id. Lael. 22, 85. —Hence, 1. implĭcātus (inpl- ), a, um, P. a., entangled,
perplexed, confused, intricate: “nec in Torquati sermone quicquam implicatum
aut tortuosum fuit,” Cic. Fin. 3, 1, 3: “reliquae (partes orationis) sunt
magnae, implicatae, variae, graves, etc.,” id. de Or. 3, 14, 52: vox rauca et
implicata, Sen. Apocol. med. — Comp.: “implicatior ad loquendum,” Amm. 26, 6,
18. — Sup.: “obscurissima et implicatissima quaestio,” Gell. 6, 2, 15: “ista
tortuosissima et implicatissima nodositas,” Aug. Conf. 2, 10 init.— 2.
im-plĭcĭtē (inpl- ), adv., intricately (rare): “non implicite et abscondite,
sed patentius et expeditius,” Cic. Inv. 2, 23, 69. -- “Implicare” adds to these
usages the idea of an unforeseen difficulty, i. e. a hint of “impedire,” and
even of deceit, i. e. a hint of “fallere.” Why imply what you can exply? Cf.
subreptitious. subreption (n.)"act
of obtaining a favor by fraudulent suppression of facts," c. 1600, from
Latin subreptionem (nominative subreptio),
noun of action from past-participle stem of subripere, surripere (see surreptitious).
Related: Subreptitious.
surreptitious (adj.)mid-15c., from Latin surrepticius "stolen,
furtive, clandestine," from surreptus, past participle
of surripere "seize
secretly, take away, steal, plagiarize," from assimilated form of sub "from
under" (hence, "secretly;" see sub-) + rapere "to
snatch" (see rapid). Related: Surreptitiously.
The source of the philosophers’s usage of ‘implicare’ is a passage from
Aristotle’s “De Int.” on the contrariety of proposition A and E (14.23b25–27),
in which “implicita” (that sould be ‘com-plicita,’ and ‘the emissor complicates
that p”) renders Gk. “sum-pepleg-menê,” “συμ-πεπλεγμένη,” f. “sum-plek-ein,”
“συμ-πλέϰein,” “to bind together,” as in ‘com-plicatio,’ complication, and
Sidonius’s ‘complicature,’ and Grice’s ‘complicature,’ as in ‘temperature,’
from ‘temperare.’ “One problem with P. F. Strawson’s exegesis of J. L. Austin
is the complicature is brings.” This is from the same family or field as
“sum-plokê,” “συμ-πλοϰή,” which Plato (Pol. 278b; Soph. 262c) uses for the
‘second articulation,’ the “com-bination” of sounds (phone) that make up a word
(logos), and, more philosophically interesting, for ‘praedicatio,’ viz., the
interrelation within a ‘logos’ or ‘oratio’ of a noun, or onoma or nomen, as in
“the dog,” and a verb, or rhema, or verbum, -- as in ‘shaggisising’ -- that
makes up a propositional complex, as “The dog is shaggy,” or “The dog
shaggisises.” (H. P. Grice, “Verbing from adjectiving.”). In De Int. 23b25-27,
referring to the contrariety of A and O, Aristotle, “let’s grant it” – as Grice
puts it – “is hardly clear.” Aristotle writes: “hê de tou hoti kakon to agathon
SUM-PEPLEG-MENÊ estin.” “Kai gar hoti ouk agathon anagkê isôs hupolambanein ton
auton.”“ἡ δὲ τοῦ ὅτι ϰαϰὸν τὸ ἀγαθὸν συμπεπλεγμένη ἐστίν.”“ϰαὶ γὰϱ ὅτι οὐϰ ἀγαθὸν
ἀνάγϰη ἴσως ὑπολαμϐάνειν τὸν αὐτόν.” Back in Rome, Boethius thought of bring
some gravitas to this. “Illa vero quae est,” Boethius goes,” Quoniam malum est
quod est bonum, IMPLICATA est. Et enim: “Quoniam non bonum est.” necesse est
idem ipsum opinari (repr. in Aristoteles latinus, 2.1–2.4–6. In a later vulgar
Romance, we have J. Tricot). “Quant au jugement, “Le bon est mal” ce n’est en
réalité qu’une COMBINAISON de jugements, cars sans doute est-il nécessaire de
sous-entendre en même temps “le bon n’est pas le bon.” Cf. Mill on ‘sous-entendu’
of conversation. This was discussed by H. P. Grice in a tutorial with
Reading-born English philosopher J. L. Ackrill at St. John’s. With the help of H. P. Grice, J. L. Ackrill
tries to render Boethius into the vernacular (just to please Austin) as
follows. “Hê de tou hoti kakon to agathon SUM-PEPLEG-MENÊ estin, kai gar hoti
OUK agathon ANAGKê isôs hupo-lambanein ton auton” “Illa vero quae est, ‘Quoniam
malum est quod est bonum,’ IMPLICATA est, et enim, ‘Quoniam non bonum est,’ necesse
est idem ipsum OPINARI. In the vernacular: “The belief expressed by the
proposition, ‘The good is bad,’ is COM-PLICATED or com-plex, for the same
person MUST, perhaps, suppose also the proposition, ‘The good it is not good.’”
Aristotle goes on, “For what kind of utterance is “The good is not good,” or as
they say in Sparta, “The good is no good”? Surely otiose. “The good” is a
Platonic ideal, a universal, separate from this or that good thing. So surely,
‘the good,’ qua idea ain’t good in the sense that playing cricket is good. But
playing cricket is NOT “THE” good: philosophising is.” H. P. Grice found
Boethius’s commentary “perfectly elucidatory,” but Ackrill was perplexed, and
Grice intended Ackrill’s perplexity to go ‘unnoticed’ (“He is trying to
communicate his perplexity, but I keep ignoring it.” For Ackrill was
surreptitiously trying to ‘correct’ his tutor. Aristotle, Acrkill thought, is
wishing to define the ‘contrariety’ between two statements or opinions, or not
to use a metalanguage second order, that what is expressed by ‘The good is bad’
is a contrarium of what is expressed by ‘The good is no good.’” Aristotle starts,
surely, from a principle. The principle states that a maximally false
proposition, set in opposition to a maximally true proposition (such as “The
good is good”), deserves the name “contraria” – and ‘contrarium’ to what is
expressed by it. In a second phase, Aristotle then tries to demonstrate, in a
succession of this or that stage, that ‘The good is good’ understood as a
propositio universalis dedicativa – for all x, if x is (the) good, x is good (To
agathon agathon estin,’ “Bonum est bonum”) is a maximally true proposition.” And
the reason for this is that “To agathon agathon estin,” or “Bonum bonum est,”
applies to the essence (essentia) of “good,” and ‘predicates’ “the same of the
same,” tautologically. Now consider Aristotle’s other proposition “The good is
the not-bad,” the correlative E form, For all x, if x is good, x is not bad. This
does not do. This is not a maximally true proposition. Unlike “The good is
good,” The good is not bad” does not apply to the essence of ‘the good,’ and it
does not predicate ‘the same of the same’ tautologically. Rather, ‘The good is
not bad,’ unless you bring one of those ‘meaning postulates’ that Grice rightly
defends against Quine in “In defense of a dogma,” – in this case, (x)(Bx iff
~Gx) – we stipulate something ‘bad’ if it ain’t good -- is only true notably
NOT by virtue of a necessary logical implication, but, to echo my tutor, by
implicature, viz. by accident, and not by essence (or essential) involved in
the ‘sense’ of either ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ or ‘not’ for that matter. Surely Aristotle
equivocates slightly when he convinced Grice that an allegedly maximally false
proposition (‘the good is bad’) entails or yields the negation of the same
attribute, viz., ‘The good is not good,’ or more correctly, ‘It is not the case
that the good is good,’ for this is axiomatically contradictory, or
tautologically and necessarily false without appeal to any meaning postulate.
For any predicate, Fx and ~Fx. The question then is one of knowing whether ‘The
good is bad’ deserves to be called the contrary proposition (propositio
contraria) of ‘The good is good.’ Aristotle notes that the proposition, ‘The
good is bad,’ “To agathon kakon estin,” “Bonum malum est,” is NOT the maximally
false proposition opposed to the maximally true, tautological, and empty,
proposition, “The good is good,” ‘To agathon agathon estin,’ “Bonum bonum est.”
“Indeed, “the good is bad” is sumpeplegmenê, or COMPLICATA. What the emissor
means is a complicatum, or as Grice preferred, a ‘complicature. Grice’s
complicature (roughly rendered as ‘complification’) condenses all of the
moments of the transition from the simple idea of a container (cum-tainer) to
the “modern” ideas of implication, Grice’s implicature, and prae-suppositio.
The ‘propositio complicate,’ is, as Boethius puts it, duplex, or equivocal. The
proposition has a double meaning – one
explicit, the other implicit. “A ‘propositio complicata’ contains within itself
[“continet in se, intra se”]: bonum non est.” Boethius then goes rightly to
conclude (or infer), or stipulate, that only a “simplex” proposition, not a
propositio complicata, involving some ‘relative clause,’ can be said to be
contrary to another -- Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Peri hermêneais, 219.
Boethius’s exegesis thesis is faithful to Aristotle. For Aristotle, nothing
like “the good is not bad,” but only the tautologically false “the good is not
good,” or it is not the case that the good is good, (to agathon agathon esti,
bonum bonum est), a propositio simplex, and not a propositio complicate, is the
opposite (oppositum, -- as per the ‘figura quadrata’ of ‘oppoista’ -- of “the
good is good,” another propositio simplex. Boethius’s analysis of “the good is
bad,” a proposition that Boethius calls ‘propositio complicate or ‘propositio
implicita’ are manifestly NOT the same as Aristotle’s. For Aristotle, the “doxa
hoti kakon to agathon [δόξα ὅτι ϰαϰὸν τὸ ἀγαθόν],” the opinion according to
which the good is bad, is only ‘contrary’ to “the good is good” to the extent
that it “con-tains” (in Boethius’s jargon) the tautologically false ‘The good
is not good.’ For Boethius, ‘The good is bad’ is contrary to ‘the good is good’
is to the extent that ‘the good is bad’ contains, implicitly, the belief which
Boethius expresses as ‘Bonum NON est —“ cf. Grice on ‘love that never told can
be” – Featuring “it is not the case that,” the proposition ‘bonum non est’ is a
remarkably complicated expression in Latin, a proposition complicata indeed.
‘Bonum non est’ can mean, in the vernacular, “the good is not.” “Bonum non est”
can only be rendered as “there is nothing good.’ “Bonum non est’ may also be
rendered, when expanded with a repeated property, the tautologically false ‘The
good is not good” (Bonum non bonum est). Strangely, Abelard goes in the same
direction as Aristotle, contra Boethius. “The good is bad” (Bonum malum est) is “implicit” (propositio implicita or
complicate) with respect to the tautologically false ‘Bonum bonum non est’ “the
good is not good.”Abelardus, having read Grice – vide Strawson, “The influence
of Grice on Abelardus” -- explains clearly the meaning of “propositio
implicita”: “IMPLYING implicitly ‘bonum non bonum est,’ ‘the good is not good’
within itself, and in a certain wa containing it [“IM-PLICANS eam in se, et
quodammodo continens.” Glossa super Periermeneias, 99–100. But Abelard expands
on Aristotle. “Whoever thinks ‘bonum malum est,’ ‘the good is bad’ also thinks
‘bonum non bonum est,’ ‘the good is not good,’ whereas the reverse does not
hold true, i. e. it is not the case that whoever thinks the tautologically
false ‘the good is not good’ (“bonum bonum non est”) also think ‘the good is
bad’ (‘bonum malum est’). He may refuse to even ‘pronounce’ ‘malum’ (‘malum
malum est’) -- “sed non convertitur.” Abelard’s explanation is decisive for the
natural history of Grice’s implication. One can certainly express in terms of
“implication” what Abelard expresses when he notes the non-reciprocity or
non-convertibility of the two propositions. ‘The good is bad,’ or ‘Bonum malum
est’ implies or presupposes the tautologically true “the good is not good;’It
is not the case that the tautologically false “the good is not good” (‘Bonum
bonum non est’) implies ridiculous “the good is bad.” Followers of Aristotle
inherit these difficulties. Boethius and
Abelard bequeath to posterity an interpretation of the passage in Aristotle’s
“De Interpretatione” according to which “bonum malum est” “the good is bad” can
only be considered the ‘propositio opposita’ of the tautologically true ‘bonum
bonum est’ (“the good is good”) insofar as, a ‘propositio implicita’ or
‘relativa’ or ‘complicata,’ it contains the ‘propositio contradictoria, viz.
‘the good is not good,’ the tautologically false ‘Bonum non bonum est,’ of the
tautologically true ‘Bonum bonum est’ “the good is good.” It is this meaning of
“to contain a contradiction” that, in a still rather obscure way, takes up this
analysis by specifying a usage of “impliquer.” The first attested use in French
of the verb “impliquer” is in 1377 in Oresme, in the syntagm “impliquer
contradiction” (RT: DHLF, 1793). These same texts give rise to another
analysis. A propositio implicita or pregnant, or complicate, is a proposition
that “implies,” that is, that in fact contains two propositions, one
principalis, and the other relative, each a ‘propositio explicita,’ and that
are equivalent or equipollent to the ‘propositio complicata’ when paraphrased.
Consider. “Homo qui est albus est animal quod currit,” “A man who is white is
an animal who runs.” This ‘propositio complicate contains the the propositio
implicita, “homo est albus” (“a man is white”) and the propositio implicita,
“animal currit” (“an animal runs.”). Only
by “exposing” or “resolving” (via ex-positio, or via re-solutio) such an ‘propositio
complicata’ can one assign it a truth-value. “Omnis proposition implicita habet
duas propositiones explicitas.” “A proposition implicita “P-im” has (at least)
a proposition implicita P-im-1 and a different proposition implicita P-im-2.”
“Verbi gratia.” “Socrates est id quod est homo.” “Haec propositio IMplicita
aequivalet huic copulativae constanti ex duis propositionis explicitis. Socrates
est aliquid est illud est homo. Haec proposition est vera, quare et propositio
implicita vera. Every “implicit proposition” has two explicit propositions.”
“Socrates is something (aliquid) which is a man.” This implicit proposition,
“Socrates is something shich is a man,” is equivalent or equipoent to the
following conjunctive proposition made up of two now EXplicit propositions, to
wit, “Socrates is something,” and “That something is a man.” This latter
conjunctive proposition of the two explicit propositions is true. Therefore,
the “implicit” proposition is also true” (Tractatus implicitarum, in Giusberti –
Materiale per studum, 43). The two “contained” propositions are usually relative
propositions. Each is called an ‘implicatio.’ ‘Implicatio’ (rather than
‘implicitio’) becomes shorthand for “PROPOSITIO implicita.” An ‘implicatio’
becomes one type of ‘propositio
exponibilis,’ i. e. a proposition that is to be “exposed” or paraphrased for
its form or structure to be understood. In
the treatises of Terminist logic, one chapter is by custom devoted to the
phenomenon of “restrictio,” viz. a restriction in the denotation or the
suppositio of the noun (v. SUPPOSITION). A relative expression (an
implication), along with others, has a restrictive function (viz., “officium
implicandi”), just like a sub-propositional expression like an adjective or a
participle. Consider. “A man, Grice, who
argues, runs to the second base.” “Man,”
because of the relative expression or clause “who runs,” is restricted to
denoting the present time (it is not Grice, who argues NOW but ran YESTERDAY).
Moreover there is an equivalence or equipolence between the relative expression
“qui currit” and the present participle “currens.” Running Grice argues. Grice
who runs argues. Summe metenses, Logica modernorum, 2.1:464. In the case in
which a relative expression is restrictive, its function is to “leave something
that is constant,” “aliquid pro constanti relinquere,” viz., to produce a pre-assertion
that conditions the truth of the main super-ordinate assertion without being
its primary object or topic or signification or intentio. “Implicare est pro
constanti et involute aliquid significare.” “Ut cum dicitur homo qui est albus
currit.” “Pro constanti” dico, quia
praeter hoc quod assertitur ibi cursus de homine, aliquid datur intelligi,
scilicet hominem album; “involute” dico quia praeter hoc quod ibi proprie et
principaliter significatur hominem currere, aliquid intus intelligitur,
scilicet hominem esse album. Per hoc patet quod implicare est intus plicare. Id
enim quod intus “plicamus” sive “ponimus,” pro constanti relinquimus. Unde
implicare nil aliud est quam subiectum sub aliqua dispositione pro constanti
relinquere et de illo sic disposito aliquid affirmare. Ackrill translates to
Grice: “To imply” is to signify something by stating it as constant, and in a pretty
‘hidden’ manner – “involute.” When I state that the man
runs, I state, stating it as constant, because, beyond (“praeter”) the main
supra-ordinate assertion or proposition that predicates the running of the man,
my addressee is given to understand something else (“aliquid intus
intelligitur”), viz. that the man is white; This is communicated in a hidden
manner (“involute”) because, beyond (“praeter”) what is communicated (“significatur”)
primarily, principally (“principaliter”) properly (“proprie”), literally, and
explicitly, viz. that the man is running, we are given to understand something
else (“aliquid intus intelligutur”) within (“intus”), viz. that the man is white. It follows from this that implicare is
nothing other than what the form of the expression literally conveys, intus
plicare (“folded within”). What we fold
or state within, we leave as a constant.
It follows from this that “to imply” is nothing other than leaving
something as a constant in the subject (‘subjectum’), such that the subject (subjectum,
‘homo qui est albus”) is under a certain disposition, and that it is only under
this disposition that something about the subjectum is affirmed” -- De
implicationibus, Nota, 100) For the record: while Giusberti (“Materiale per
studio,” 31) always reads “pro constanti,” the MSS occasionally has the pretty
Griciean “precontenti.” This is a case of what the “Logique du Port-Royal”
describes as an “in-cidental” assertion. The situation is even more complex,
however, insofar as this operation only relates to one usage of a relative
proposition, viz. when the proposition is restrictive. A restriction can
sometimes be blocked, or cancelled, and the reinscriptions are then different
for a nonrestrictive and a restrictive
relative proposition. One such case of a blockage is that of “false
implication” (Johnson’s ‘paradox of ‘implicatio’) as in “a [or the] man who is
a donkey runs,” (but cf. the centaur, the man who is a horse, runs) where there
is a conflict (“repugnantia”) between what the determinate term itself denotes
(homo, man) and the determination (ansinus, donkey). The truth-values of a
proposition containing a relative clause or propositio thus varies according to
whether it is restrictive, and of composite meaning, as in “homo, qui est albus,
currit” (A man, who is white, runs), or non-restrictive, and of divided
meaning, as in “Homo currit qui est albus” (Rendered in the vernacular in the
same way, the Germanic languages not having the syntactic freedom the classical
languages do: A man, who is white, is running. When the relative is
restrictive, as in “Homo, qui est albus, curris”, the propositio implicits only
produces one single assertion, since the relative corresponds to a pre-assertion.
Thus, it is the equivalent, at the level of the underlying form, to a
proposition conditionalis or hypothetical. Only in the second case can there be
a “resolution” of the proposition implicita into the pair of this and that
‘propositio explicita, to wit, “homo currit,”
“homo est albus.”—and an equipolence between the complex proposition
implicita and the conjunction of the first proposition explicita and the second
proposition explicitta. Homo currit et ille est albus. So it is only in this second
case of proposition irrestrictiva that
one can say that “Homo currit, qui est albus implies “Homo currit,” and “Homo
est albus” and therefore, “Homo qui est albus currit.” The poor grave Romans
are having trouble with Grecisms. The Grecist vocabulary of implication is both
disparate and systematic, in a Griceian oxymoronic way. The grave Latin
“implicare” covers and translates an extremely varied Grecian field of
expressions ready to be botanized, that bears the mark of heterogeneous rather
than systematic operations, whether one is dealing Aristotle or the Stoics. The
passage through grave Roman allows us to understand retrospectively the
connection in Aristotle’s jargon between the “implicatio” of the “propositio
implicita,” sum-pepleg-menê, as an interweaving or interlacing, and conclusive
or con-sequential implicatio, sumperasma, “συμπέϱασμα,” or “sumpeperasmenon,” “συμπεπεϱασμένον,”
“sumpeperasmenê,” “συμπεπεϱασμένη,” f. perainein, “πεϱαίνein, “to limit,” which
is the jargon Aristotle uses in the Organon to denote the conclusion of a
syllogism (Pr. Anal. 1.15.34a21–24). If one designates as A the premise, tas
protaseis, “τὰς πϱοτάσεις,” and as B the con-clusion, “to sumperasma,” συμπέϱασμα.”
Cf. the Germanic puns with ‘closure,’ etc.
When translating Aristotle’s definition of the syllogism at Prior
Analytics 1.1.24b18–21, Tricot chooses to render as the “con-sequence”
Aristotle’s verb “sum-bainei,” “συμ-ϐαίνει,” that which “goes with” the premise
and results from it. A syllogism is a discourse, “logos,” “λόγος,” in which,
certain things being stated, something other than what is stated necessarily
results simply from the fact of what is stated. Simply from the fact of what is
stated, I mean that it is because of this that the consequence is obtained, “legô
de tôi tauta einai to dia tauta sumbainei,” “λέγω δὲ τῷ ταῦτα εἶναι τὸ διὰ ταῦτα
συμϐαίνει.” (Pr. Anal. 1.1, 24b18–21). To make the connection with
“implication,” though, we also have to take into account, as is most often the
case, the Stoics’ own jargon. What the Stoics call “sumpeplegmenon,” “συμπεπλεγμένον,”
is a “conjunctive” proposition; e. g. “It is daytime, and it is light” (it is
true both that A and that B). The conjunctive is a type of molecular
proposition, along with the “conditional” (sunêmmenon [συνημμένον] -- “If it is
daytime, it is light”) and the “subconditional” (para-sunêmmenon [παϱασυνημμένον];
“SINCE it is daytime, it is light”), and the “disjunctive” (diezeugmenon
[διεζευγμένον] -- “It is daytime, or it
is night.” Diog. Laert. 7.71–72; cf. RT: Long and Sedley, A35, 2:209 and
1:208). One can see that there is no ‘implicatio’ in the conjunctive, whereas
there is one in the ‘sunêmmenon’ (“if p, q”), which constitutes the Stoic
expression par excellence, as distinct from the Aristotelian categoric
syllogism.Indeed, it is around the propositio conditionalis that the question
and the vocabulary of ‘implicatio’ re-opens. The Aristotelian sumbainein [συμϐαίνειν],
which denotes the accidental nature of a result, however clearly it has been
demonstrated (and we should not forget that sumbebêkos [συμϐεϐηϰός] denotes
accident; see SUBJECT, I), is replaced by “akolouthein” [ἀϰολουθεῖν] (from the
copulative a- and keleuthos [ϰέλευθος], “path” [RT: Chantraine, Dictionnaire
étymologique de la langue grecque, s.v. ἀϰόλουθος]), which denotes instead
being accompanied by a consequent conformity. This connector, i. e. the “if”
(ei, si) indicates that the second proposition, the con-sequens (“it is light”)
follows (akolouthei [ἀϰολουθεῖ]) from the first (“it is daytime”) (Diog. Laert,
7.71). Attempts, beginning with Philo or Diodorus Cronus up to Grice and
Strawson to determine the criteria of a “valid” conditional (to hugies
sunêmmenon [τὸ ὑγιὲς συνημμένον] offer, among other possibilities, the notion
of emphasis [ἔμφασις], which Long and Sedley translate as “G. E. Moore’s entailment”
and Brunschwig and Pellegrin as “implication” (Sextus Empiricus, The Skeptic
Way, in RT: Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 35B, 2:211 and
1:209), a term that is normally used to refer to a reflected image and to the
force, including rhetorical force, of an impression. Elsewhere, this “emphasis”
is explained in terms of dunamis [δύναμις], of “virtual” content (“When we have
the premise which results in a certain conclusion, we also have this conclusion
virtually [dunamei (δυνάμει)] in the premise, even if it is not explicitly
indicated [kan kat’ ekphoran mê legetai (ϰἂν ϰατ̕ ἐϰφοϱὰν μὴ λέγεται)], Sextus
Empiricus, Against the Grammarians 8.229ff., D. L. Blank, 49 = RT: Long and
Sedley, G36 (4), 2:219 and 1:209)—where connecting the different usages of
“implication” creates new problems. One has to understand that the type of
implicatio represented by the proposition conditionalis implies, in the double
usage of “contains implicitly” and “has as its consequence,” the entire Stoic
system. It is a matter of to akolouthon en zôêi [τὸ ἀϰόλουθον ἐν ζωῇ],
“consequentiality in life,” or ‘rational life, as Grice prefers, as Long and
Sedley translate it (Stobeus 2.85.13 = RT: Long and Sedley, 59B, 2:356; Cicero
prefers “congruere,” (congruential) De finibus 3.17 = RT: Long and Sedley, 59D,
2:356). It is akolouthia [ἀϰολουθία] that refers to the conduct con-sequent
upon itself that is the conduct of the wise man, the chain of causes defining
will or fate, and finally the relationship that joins the antecedent to the con-sequent
in a true proposition. Goldschmidt, having cited Bréhier (Le système stoïcien),
puts the emphasis on antakolouthia [ἀνταϰολουθία], a Stoic neologism that may
be translated as “reciprocal” implicatio,” and that refers specifically to the
solidarity of virtues (antakolouthia tôn aretôn [ἀνταϰολουθία τῶν ἀϱετῶν],
Diog. Laert. 7.125; Goldschmidt, as a group that would be encompassed by
dialectical virtue, immobilizing akolouthia in the absolute present of the wise
man. “Implicatio” is, in the final analysis, from then on, the most literal
name of the Stoic system. Refs.: Aristotle.
Anal. Pr.. ed. H. Tredennick, in
Organon, Harvard; Goldschmidt, Le système stoïcien et l’idée de temps. Paris:
Vrin, Sextus Empiricus. Against the Grammarians, ed. D. L. Blank. Oxford:
Oxford. END OF INTERLUDE. Now for “Implication”/“Implicature.” Implicatura was
used by Sidonius in a letter (that Grice found funny) and used by Grice in
seminars on conversational helpfulness at Oxford. Grice sets out the basis of a
systematic approach to communication, viz, concerning the relation between a
proposition p and a proposition q in a conversational context. The need is felt
by Sidonius and Grice for ‘implicature,’ tdistinct from “implication,” insofar
as “implication” is used for a relation between a proposition p and a proposition
q, whereas an “implicature” is a relation between this or that statement,
within a given context, that results from an EMISSOR having utterered an
utterance (thereby explicitly conveying that p) and thereby implicitly
conveying and implicating that q. Grice thought the distinction was ‘frequently
ignored by Austin,’ and Grice thought it solved a few problems, initially in G.
A. Paul’s neo-Wttigensteinian objections to Price’s causal theory of perception
(“The pillar box seems red to me; which does not surprise me, seeing that it is
red”). An “implication” is a relation
bearing on the truth or falsity of this or that proposition (e. g. “The pillar
box seems red” and, say, “The pillar box MAY NOT be red”) whereas an “implicature”
brings an extra meaning to this or that statement it governs (By uttering “The
pillar box seems red” thereby explicitly conveying that the pillar box seems
red, the emissor implicates in a cancellable way that the pillar box MAY NOT be
red.”). Whenever “implicature” is determined according to its context (as at
Collections, “Strawson has beautiful handwriting; a mark of his character. And
he learned quite a bit in spite of the not precisely angelic temperament of his
tutor Mabbott”) it enters the field of pragmatics, and therefore has to be
distinguished from a presupposition. Implicatio simpliciter is a relation
between two propositions, one of which is the consequence of the other (Quine’s
example: “My father is a bachelor; therefore, he is male”). An equivalent of “implication”
is “entailment,” as used by Moore. Now, Moore was being witty. ‘Entail’ is
derived from “tail” (Fr. taille; ME entaill or entailen = en + tail), and prior
to its logical use, the meaning of “entailment” is “restriction,” “tail” having
the sense of “limitation.” As Moore explains in his lecture: “An entailment is
a limitation on the transfer or handing down of a property or an inheritance.
*My* use of ‘entailment’ has two features in common with the Legalese that
Father used to use; to wit: the handing down of a property; and; the limitation
on one of the poles of this transfer. As I stipulate we should use “entailment”
(at Cambridge, but also at Oxford), a PROPERTY is transferred from the
antecedent to the con-sequent. And also, normally in semantics, some LIMITATION
(or restriction, or ‘stricting,’ or ‘relevancing’) on the antecedent is
stressed.” The mutation from the legalese to Moore’s usage explicitly occurs by
analogy on the basis of these two shared common elements. Now, Whitehead had
made a distinction between a material (involving a truth-value) implication and
formal (empty) implication. A material implication (“if,” symbolized by the
horseshoe “ ⊃,” because “it resembles an arrow,”
Whitehead said – “Some arrow!” was Russell’s response) is a Philonian
implication as defined semantically in terms of a truth-table by Philo of
Megara. “If p, q” is false only when the antecedent is true and the con-sequent
false. In terms of a formalization of communication, this has the flaw of
bringing with it a counter-intuitive feeling of ‘baffleness’ (cf. “The pillar
box seems red, because it is”), since a false proposition implies materially
any proposition: If the moon is made of green cheese, 2 + 2 = 4. This “ex falso
quodlibet sequitur” has a pedigreed history. For the Stoics and the Megarian
philosophers, “ex falso quodlibet sequitur” is what distinguishes Philonian
implication and Diodorean implication. It traverses the theory of consequence
and is ONE of the paradoxes of material implication that is perfectly summed up
in these two rules of Buridan: First, if P is false, Q follows from P; Second, if
P is true, P follows from Q (Bochenski, History of Formal Logic). A formal (empty)
implication (see Russell, Principles of Mathematics, 36–41) is a universal
conditional implication: Ɐx (Ax ⊃ Bx), for any x, if
Ax, then Bx. Different means of resolving the paradoxes of implication have
been proposed. All failed except Grice’s. An American, C. I. Lewis’s “strict”
implication (Lewis and Langford, Symbolic Logic) is defined as an implication
that is ‘reinforced’ such that it is impossible for the antecedent to be true
and the con-sequent false. Unfortunately, as Grice tells Lewis in a
correspondence, “your strict implication, I regret to prove, has the same
alleged flaw as the ‘material’ implication that your strict implication was
meant to improve on. (an impossible—viz., necessarily false—proposition strictly
implies any proposition). The relation of entailment introduced by Moore in
1923 is a relation that seems to avoid this or that paradox (but cf. Grice,
“Paradoxes of entailment, followed by paradoxes of implication – all
conversationally resolved”) by requiring a derivation of the antecedent from
the con-sequent. In this case, “If 2 + 2 = 5, 2 + 3 = 5” is false, since the
con-sequent is stipulated not be derivable from the antecedent. Occasionally,
one has to call upon the pair “entailment”/“implication” in order to
distinguish between an implication in qua material implication and an
implication in Moore’s usage (metalinguistic – the associated material
implication is a theorem), which is also sometimes called “relevant” if not
strictc implication (Anderson and Belnap, Entailment), to ensure that the
entire network of expressions is covered. Along with this first series of
expressions in which “entailment” and “implication” alternate with one another,
there is a second series of expressions that contrasts two kinds of
“implicature,” or ‘implicata.’ “Implicature” (Fr. implicature, G. Implikatur)
is formed from “implicatio” and the suffix –ture, which expresses, as Grice
knew since his Clifton days, a ‘resultant aspect,’ ‘aspectum resultativus’ (as
in “signature”; cf. L. temperatura, from temperare). “Implicatio” may be thought as derived from
“to imply” (if not ‘employ’) and “implicature” may be thought as deriving from
“imply”’s doulet, “to implicate” (from L. “in-“ + “plicare,” from plex; cf. the
IE. plek), which has the same meaning. Some mistakenly see Grice’s
“implicature” as an extension and modification of the concept of presupposition,
which differs from ‘material’ implication in that the negation of the
antecedent implies the consequent (the question “Have you stopped beating your
wife?” presupposes the existence of a wife in both cases). An implicature
escapes the paradoxes of material implication from the outset. In fact, Grice,
the ever Oxonian, distinguishes “at least” two kinds of implicature,
conventional and non-conventional, the latter sub-divided into non-conventional
non-converastional, and non-conventional conversational. A non-conventional
non-conversational implicatum may occur in a one-off predicament. A Conventional
implicature and a conventional implicatum is practically equivalent, Strawson
wrongly thought, to presupposition prae-suppositum, since it refers to the presuppositions
attached by linguistic convention to a lexical item or expression. E. g. “Mary EVEN loves Peter” has a relation
of conventional implicature to “Mary loves other entities than Peter.” This is
equivalent to: “ ‘Mary EVEN loves Peter’ presupposes ‘Mary loves other entities
than Peter.’ With this kind of implicature, we remain within the expression,
and thus the semantic, field. A conventional implicature, however, is surely different
from a material implicatio. It does not concern the truth-values. With
conversational implicature, we are no longer dependent on this or that emissum,
but move into pragmatics (the area that covers the relation between statements and
contexts. Grice gives the following example: If, in answer to A’s question
about how C is getting on in his new job at a bank, B utters, “Well, he likes
his colleagues, and he hasn’t been to in prison yet,” what B implicates by the
proposition that it is not the case that C has been to prison yet depends on
the context. It compatible with two very different contexts: one in which C,
naïve as he is, is expected to be entrapped by unscrupulous colleagues in some
shady deal, or, more likely, C is well-known by A and B to tend towards
dishonesty (hence the initial question). References: Abelard, Peter.
Dialectica. Edited by L. M. De Rijk. Assen, Neth.: Van Gorcum, 1956. 2nd rev.
ed., 1970. Glossae super Periermeneias. Edited by Lorenzo Minio-Paluello. In
TwelfthCentury Logic: Texts and Studies, vol. 2, Abelaerdiana inedita. Rome:
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1958. Anderson, Allan Ross, and Nuel Belnap.
Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity. Vol. 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1975. Aristotle. De interpretatione. English translation by
J. L. Ackrill: Aristotle’s Categories and De interpretatione. Notes by J. L.
Ackrill. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963. French translation by J. Tricot: Organon.
Paris: Vrin, 1966. Auroux, Sylvain, and Irène Rosier. “Les sources historiques
de la conception des deux types de relatives.” Langages 88 (1987): 9–29. Bochenski,
Joseph M. A History of Formal Logic. Translated by Ivo Thomas. New York:
Chelsea, 1961. Boethius. Aristoteles latinus. Edited by Lorenzo Minio-Paluello.
Paris: Descleé de Brouwer, 1965. Translation by Lorenzo Minio-Paluello: The
Latin Aristotle. Toronto: Hakkert, 1972. Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Peri
hermêneias. Edited by K. Meiser. Leipzig: Teubner, 1877. 2nd ed., 1880. De
Rijk, Lambertus Marie. Logica modernorum: A Contribution to the History of
Early Terminist Logic. 2 vols. Assen, Neth.: Van Gorcum, 1962–67. “Some Notes on the Mediaeval Tract De
insolubilibus, with the Edition of a Tract Dating from the End of the
Twelfth-Century.” Vivarium 4 (1966): 100–103. Giusberti, Franco. Materials for
a Study on Twelfth-Century Scholasticism. Naples, It.: Bibliopolis, 1982.
Grice, H. P. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts,
edited by P. Cole and J. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press, 1975. (Also
in The Logic of Grammar, edited by D. Davidson and G. Harman, 64–74. Encino,
CA: Dickenson, 1975.) Lewis, Clarence Irving, and Cooper Harold Langford.
Symbolic Logic. New York: New York Century, 1932. Meggle, Georg. Grundbegriffe
der Kommunikation. 2nd ed. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1997. Meggle, Georg, and
Christian Plunze, eds. Saying, Meaning, Implicating. Leipzig: Leipziger
Universitätsverlag, 2003. Moore, G. E.. Philosophical Studies. London: Kegan
Paul, 1923. Rosier, I. “Relatifs et relatives dans les traits terministes des
XIIe et XIIIe siècles: (2) Propositions relatives (implicationes), distinction
entre restrictives et non restrictives.” Vivarium 24: 1 (1986): 1–21. Russell,
Bertrand. The Principles of Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1903. Speranza, Luigi. Join the Grice Club! Strawson, P. F.. “On Referring.”
Mind 59 (1950): 320–44.
incorrigibility: opposite ‘corrigibility.’ Who is corrigible? The emissor.
“I am sorry I have to tell you you are wrong.” On WoW: 142, Grice refers to the
‘authority’ of the utterer as a ‘rational being’ to DEEM that an M-intention is
an antecedent condition for his act of meaning. Grice uses ‘privilege’ as
synonym for ‘authority’ here. But not in the phrase ‘privileged access.’ His
point is not so much about the TRUTH (which ‘incorrigibility’ suggests), but
about the DEEMING. It is part of the authority or privilege of the utterer as
rational to provide an ACCEPTABLE assignment of an M-intention behind his
utterance.
Indeterminacy.
Grice was always cautious and self-apologetic. “I’m not expecting that you’ll
find this to be a complete theory of implication, but that was not my goal, and
the endeavour should be left for another day, etc.” But consider the detail
into which he, like any other philosopher before, went when it came to what he
called the ‘catalyst’ tests or ideas or tests or ideas for the implicatum. In
“Causal Theory” there are FOUR ideas. It is good to revise the treatment in
“Causal.” He proposes two ideas with the first two examples and two further
ideas with the two further examples. Surely his goal is to apply the FOUR ideas
to his own example of the pillar box. Grice notes re: “You have not ceased
eating iron” –
the cxample is “a stock case of what is sometimes called " prcsupposition
" and it is often held that here 1he truth of what is irnplicd is a
necessary condition of the original statement's beirrg cither true or false.”
So the first catalyst in the first published version concerns the value, or
satisfactory value. This will be retained and sub-grouped in Essay II. “It is
often held” Implicture: but often not, and trust me I won’t. “that here the
truth of what is implied [implicated in the negative, entailed in the
affirmative] is a necessary condition of the original statement's being either
true or false.” So the first catalyst in the first published version concerns
the value, or satisfactory value. This will be retained and sub-grouped in
Essay II. “This might be disputed, but it is at least arguable that it is so,
and its being arguable might be enough to distinguish this type of case from
others.” So he is working on a ‘distinctive feature’ model. And ‘feature’ is
exactly the expression he uses in Essay II. He is looking for ‘distinctive features’
for this or that implication. When phonologists speak of ‘distinctive feature’
they are being philosophical or semioticians.“I shall however for convenience
assume that the common view mentioned is correct.”“This consideration clearly
distinguishes “you have not ceased eating iron” from [a case of a conventional
implicatum] “poor BUT honest.”“Even if the implied proposition were false, i.e.
if there were no reason in the world to contrast poverty with honesty either in
general or in her case, the original statement COULD still be false.” “She
[is] poor but she [is] honest” would be
false if for example she were rich and dishonest.”“One might perhaps be less
comfortable about assenting to its TRUTH if the implied contrast did not in
fact obtain; but the possibility of falsity is enough for the immediate
purpose.”“My next experiment [test, litmus idea – that he’ll apply as one of
the criteria to provide distinctive features for this or that implicatum, with
a view to identify the nature of the animal that a conversational implicatum
is] on these examples is to ask what it is in each case which could properly be
said to be the vehicle of implication (to do the implying).”In Essay II, since
he elaborates this at an earlier stage than when he is listing the distinctive
features, he does not deal much. It is understood that in Essay II by the time
he is listing the distinctive features, the vehicle is the UTTERER. But back in
“Causal,” he notes: “There are AT LEAST FOUR candidates, not necessarily
mutually exclusive.”“Supposing someone to have ‘uttered’ one or other of [the] sample
sentences, we may ask whether the vehicle of implication would be (FIRST) WHAT
the emissor communicated (or asserted or stated or explicitly conveyed), or
(SECOND) the emissor himself ("Surely you’re not implying that ….’ ) or (THIRD) the
utterance (FOURTH) his communicating, or
explicitly conveying that (or again his explicitly conveying that in that way);
or possibly some plurality of these items.”“As regards the first option for the
vehicle, ‘what the emissor has explicitly conveyed,’ Grice takes it that “You
have not ceased eating iron” and “Poor but honest” may differ.It seems correct
for Grice to say in the case of “eating iron” that indeed it is the case that
it is what he emissor explicitly conveys which implies that Smith has been
eating iron.On the other hand, Grice feels it would be ‘incorrect,’ or
improper, or bad, or unnatural or artificial, to say in the case of “poor but
honest” that it is the case. Rather it is NOT the case that it is WHAT the emissor explicitly conveys
which implies that there is a contrast between, e. g., honesty and poverty.”“A sub-test
on which Grice would rely is the following.If accepting that the conventional
implicatum holds (contrast between honesty and poverty) involves the emissor in
accepting an hypothetical or conditional ‘if p, q,’ where 'p’ represents the
original statement (“She [is] poor and she [is] honest) and 'q' represents what
is implied (“There is a contrast between honesty and poverty”), it is the case
that it is what the emissor explicitly conveys which is a (or the) vehicle of
implication. If that chain of acceptances does not hold, it is not. To apply
this rule to the “eat iron” and “poor but honest”, if the emissor accepts the
implication alleged to hold in the case of “eat iron”, I should feel COMPELLED
(forced, by the force of entailment) to accept the conditional or hypothetical
"If you have not ceased eating iron, you may have never started.”[In
“Causal,” Grice has yet not stressed the asymmetry between the affirmative and
the negative in alleged cases of presupposition. When, due to the success of
his implicatum, he defines the presuppositum as a form of implicatum, he does
stress the asymmetry: the entailment holds for the affirmative, and the
implicatum for the negative). On the other hand, when it comes to a
CONVENTIONAL implicatum (“poor but honest”) if the emissor accepted the alleged
implication in the case of “poor but honest”, I should NOT feel compelled to
accept the conditional or hypothetical "If she was poor but honest, there
is some contrast between poverty and honesty, or between her poverty and her
honesty." Which would yield that in the presuppositum case, we have what
is explicitly conveyed as a vehicle, but not in the case of the conventional
implicatum.The rest of the candidates (Grice lists four and allows for a
combination) can be dealt with more cursorily.As regards OPTION II (second):Grice
should be inclined to say with regard to both “eat iron” and “poor but honest”
that the emissor could be said to have implied whatever it is that is irnplied.As
regards Option III (third: the utterance): In the case of “poor but honest” it
seems fairly clear that the utterance could be said, if metabolically, and
animistically, to ‘imply’ a contrast.It is much less clear whether in the case
of “eat iron” the utterance could be said to ‘imply’ that Smith has been eating
iron.As for option IV, in neither case would it be evidently appropriate (correct,
natural) to speak of the emissor’s explicitly conveying that, or of his
explicitly conveying that in that way, as ‘implying’ what is implied. A third
catalyst idea with which Grice wish to assail my two examples is really a TWIN
idea, or catalyst, or test [That’s interesting – two sides of the same coin] that
of the detachability or cancellability of the implication. Consider “eat iron.”One
cannot find an alternative utterance which could be used to assert explicitly
just what the utterance “Smith has not ceased from eating iron" might be
used to convey explicitly, such that when this alternative utterance is used
the implication that Smith never started eating iron is absent. Any way of (or
any utterance uttered with a view to) conveying explicitly what is explicitly
conveyed in (1) involves the implication in question. Grice expresses this fact
– which he mentioned in seminars, but this is the first ‘popularisation’ -- by
saying that in the case of (l) the implication is NOT detachable FROM what is
asserted (or simpliciter, is not detachable). Furthermore, and here comes the
twin of CANCELLABILITY: one cannot take any form of words for which both what
is asserted and what is implied is the same as for (l), AND THEN ADD a further
clause withholding commitment from what would otherwise be implied, with the
idea of ANNULLING THE IMPLICATUM *without* ANNULLING annulling the EXPLICITUM. One cannot intelligibly say " Smith has
left off beating his wife but I do not mean to imply that he has been beating
her." But one surely can intelligibly say, “You have not ceased eating iron
because you never started.”While Grice uses “Smith,” the sophisma (or
Griceisma) was meant in the second person, to test the tutee’s intelligence
(“Have you stopped beating your dog?”). The point is that the tutee will be
offended – whereas he shouldn’t, and answer, “I never started, and I never
will.”Grice expresses this fact by saying that in the case of ‘eat iron’ the
implication is not cancellable or annullable (without cancelling or annulling the
assertion). If we turn to “poor but honest” we find, Grice thinks, that there
is quite a strong case for saying that here the implication IS detachable. Therc
sccms quite a good case for maintaining that if, instead of saying " She
is poor but she is honcst " I were to say, alla Frege, without any shade,
" She is poor AND she is honcst", I would assert just what I would
havc asscrtcct ii I had used thc original senterrce; but there would now be no
irnplication of a contrast between e.g', povery and honesty. Of course, this is
not a philosophical example, and it would be good to revise what Frege thought
about ‘aber.’ By the time Grice is lecturing “Causal Theory” he had lectured
for the Logic Paper for Strawson before the war, so Whitehead and Russell are
in the air.Surely in Anglo-Saxon, the contrast is maintained, since ‘and’ means
‘versus.’“She is poor contra her being honest.”Oddly, the same contrariety is
present in Deutsche, that Frege speaks, with ‘UND.”It’s different with Roman
“et.” While Grecian ‘kai,’ even Plato thought barbaric!The etymology of
‘by-out’ yields ‘but.’So Grice is thinking that he can have a NEUTRAL
conjoining – but ‘and’ has this echo of contrariety, which is still present in
‘an-swer, i. e. and-swear, to contradict. Perhaps a better neutral version
would be. Let’s start with the past version and then the present tense version.“She
was pooo-ooor, she was honest, and her parents were the same, till she met a
city feller, and she lost her honest name.”In terms of the concepts CHOSEN, the
emissor wants to start the ditty with pointing to the fact that she is poor –
this is followed by stating that she is honest. There’s something suspicious
about that.I’m sure a lady may feel offended without the ‘and’ OR ‘but’ – just
the mere ‘succession’ or conjoining of ‘poor’ as pre-ceding the immediate
‘honest’ ‘triggers’ an element of contrast. The present tense seems similar:
“She is poooor, she is honest, and her parents are the same, but she’ll meet a
city feller, and she’ll lose her honest name.”The question whether, in thre
case of ‘poor but honest,’ the implication is cancellable, is slightly more
cornplex, which shouldn’t if the catalysts are thought of as twins.There is a
way in which we may say that it is not cancellable, or annullable.Imagine a Tommy
marching and screaming: “She is poor but
she is honest,”“HALT!” the sargent shouts.The Tommy catches the implicature:“though
of course, sir, I do not mean to imply, sir, that there is any contrast, sir,
between her poverty, sir, and her honesty, sir.”As Grice notes, this would be a
puzzling and eccentric thing for a Tommy to engage in.And though the sargent
might wish to quarrel with the tommy (Atkins – Tommy Atkins is the name”), an
Oxonian philosopher should NOT go so far as to say that the tommy’s utterance
is unintelligible – or as Vitters would say, ‘nunsense.’The sargent should
rather suppose, or his lieutenant, since he knows more, that private Tommy
Atkins has adopted a “most pecooliar” way of conveying the news that she was
poor and honest.The sargent’s argument to the lieu-tenant:“Atkins says he means
no disrespect, sir, but surely, sir, just conjoining poverty and honesty like
that makes one wonder.”“Vitters: this is a Cockney song! You’re reading too
much into it!”“Cockney? And why the citty feller, then – aren’t Cockneys citty
fellers. I would rather, sir, think it is what Sharp would call a ‘sharp’ folk,
sir, song, sir.”
The fourth and last test Grice imposes on
his examples is to ask whether we would be inclined to regard the fact that the
appropriate (or corresponding, since they are hardly appropriate – either of
them! – Grice changes the tune as many Oxford philosophers of ordinary language
do when some female joins the Union) implication is present as being a matter
of the, if we may be metabolic and animistic, ‘meaning’ of some particular word
or phrase occurring in the sentences in question. Grice is aware and thus
grants that this may not be always a very clear or easy question to answer.Nevertheless,
Grice risks the assertion that we would be fairly happy and contented to say
that, as regards ‘poor but honest,’ the fact that the implication obtains is a
matter of the ‘meaning’ of 'but ' – i. e. what Oxonians usually mean when they
‘but.’So far as “he has not ceased from…’ is concerned we should have at least
some inclination to say that the presence of the implication is a matter of
the, metabolically, ‘meaning’ of some of the words in the sentence, but we
should be in some difficulty when it came to specifying precisely which this
word, or words are, of which this is true. Well, it’s semantics. Why did Roman
think that it was a good thing to create a lexeme, ‘cease.’“Cease” means
“stop,” or ‘leave off.”It is not a natural verb, like ‘eat.’A rational creature
felt the need to have this concept: ‘stop,’ ‘leave off,’ ‘cease.’The
communication-function it serves is to indicate that SOMETHING has been taken
place, and then this is no longer the case.“The fire ceased,” one caveman said
to his wife.The wife snaps back – this is the Iron Age:“Have you ceased eating
iron, by the way, daa:ling?”“I never started!”So it’s the ‘cease’ locution that
does the trick – or equivalents, i.e. communication devices by which this or
that emissor explicitly convey more or less the same thing: a halting of some
activity.Surely the implication has nothing to do with the ‘beat’ and the
‘wife.’After third example (‘beautiful handwriting) introduced, Grice goes back
to IDEA OR TEST No. 1 (the truth-value thing). Grice notes that it is plain
that there is no case at all for regarding the truth of what is implied here (“Strawson
is hopeless at philosophy”) as a pre-condition of the truth or falsity of what
the tutor has asserted.A denial of the truth of what is implied would have no
bearing at all on whether what I have asserted is true or false. So ‘beautiful
handwring’ is much closer to ‘poor but honest’ than ‘cease eating iron’ in this
respect. Next, as for the vehicle we have the at least four options and
possible combinations.The emissor, the tutor, could certainly be said to have
implied that Strawson is hopeless (provided that this is what the tutor
intended to ‘get across’) and the emissor’s, the tutor’s explicitly saying that
(at any rate the emissor’s saying that and no more) is also certainly a vehicle
of implication. On the other hand the emissor’s words and what the emissor
explicitly conveys are, Grice thinks, not naturally here characterised as the
‘vehicle’ of implication. “Beautiful handwriting” thus differs from BOTH “don’t
cease eating iron” and “poor but honest” – so the idea is to have a table alla
distinctive features, with YES/NO questions answered for each of the four
implication, and the answers they get.As for the third twin, the result is as
expected: The implication is cancellable but not detachable. And it looks as if
Grice created the examples JUST to exemplify those criteria.If the tutor adds, 'I
do not of course mean to imply that Strawson is no good at philosophy” the
whole utterance is intelligible and linguistically impeccable, even though it may
be extraordinary tutorial behaviour – at the other place, not Oxford --.The
tutor can no longer be said to have, or be made responsible for having implied
that Strawson was no good, even though perhaps that is what Grice’s colleagues
might conclude to be the case if Grice had nothing else to say. The implication
is not however, detachable.Any other way of making, in the same context of
utterance, just the assertion I have made would involve the same implication.“His
calligraphy is splendid and he is on time.”“Calligraphy splendid,” Ryle
objected. “That’s slightly oxymoronic, Grice – ‘kallos agathos’”Finally, for
TEST No. 4, ‘meaning’ of expression? The fact that the implication holds is surely
NOT a matter of any particular word or phrase within the sentence which I have
uttered.It is just the whole sentence. Had he gone tacit and say,“Beautiful
handwriting!”Rather than“He has beautiful handwriting.”The implication SEEMS to
be a matter of two particular words: the handwriting word, viz. ‘handwriting.’
And the ‘beautiful’ word, i. e. ‘beautiful.’Any lexeme expressing same concept,
‘Calligraphy unique!’would do the trick because this is damn by faint praise,
or suggestio falsi, suppressio veri. So in this respect “Beautiful handwring”
is certainly different from “Poor but honest” and, possibly different from
“Don’t cease to eat iron!”One obvious fact should be mentioned before one
passes to the fourth example (“kitchen or bedroom”).This case of implication is
unlike the others in that the utterance of the sentence "Strawson has
beautiful handwriting" does not really STANDARDLY involve the implication
here attributed to it (but cf. “We should have lunch together sometime” meaning
“Get lost” – as Grice said, “At Oxford, that’s the standard – that’s what the
‘expression’ “means”); it requires a special context (that it should be uttered
at Collections) to attach the implication to its utterance. More generally: it
requires a special scenario (one should avoid the structuralist Derrideian
‘context’ cf. Grice, “The general theory of context”). If back in the house,
Mrs. Grice asks, “He has beautiful handwriting,” while not at Collections, the
implicature would hold. Similarly at the “Lamb and Flag,” or “Bird and Baby.”But
one gets Grice’s point. The scenario is one where Strawson is being assessed or
evaluated AS A PHILOSOPHER. Spinoza’s handwriting was, Stuart Hampshire said,
“terrible – which made me wonder at first whether I should actually waste my
time with him.”After fourth and last example is introduced (“kitchen or
bedroom”): in the case of the Test No. I (at least four possible vehicles) one can
produce a strong argument in favour of holding that the fulfllment of the
implication of the speaker's ignorance (or that he is introducing “or” on
grounds other than Whitehead’s and Russell’s truth-functional ones) is not a
precaution (or precondition) of the truth or falsity of the disjunctive
statement. Suppose that the emissor KNOWS that his wife IS in the KITCHEN, that
the house has only two rooms, and no passages. Even though the utterer knows
that his wife is in the kitchen (as per given), the utterer can certainly still
say truly (or rather truthfully) "She is IN THE HOUSE.”SCENARIOA: Where is
your wife? ii. Where in your house is your wife?B: i. In the kitchen. ii. In
the bedroom. iiia. She’s in the house, don’t worry – she’s in the house, last
time I checked. iii. In the HOUSE (but inappropriate if mentioned in the
question – unless answered: She’s not. iv. In the kitchen or in the bedroom (if
it is common ground that the house only has two rooms there are more options)
vi. v. I’m a bachelor. vi. If she’s not
in the bedroom, she is in the kitchen. vii. If she’s not in the kitchen, she’s
in the bedroom. viii. Verbose but informative: “If she’s not in the bedroom she’s
in the kitchen, and she’s not in the kitchen” Or consider By uttering “She is
in the house,” the utterer is answering in a way that he is merely not being as
informative as he could bc if need arose. But the true proposition [cf. ‘propositional
complex’] that his wife is IN THE HOUSE together with the true proposition that
‘THE HOUSE’ consists entirely of a ‘kitchen’ and a ‘bedroom,’ ENTAIL or yield
the proposition that his wife is in the kitchen or in the bedroom. But IF to express
the proposition p (“My wife is in the house, that much I can tell”) in certain
circumstances (a house consisting entirely of a kitchen and a bedroom – an
outback bathroom which actually belongs to the neighbour – cf. Blenheim) would
be to speak truly, and p (“My wife is, do not worry, in the house”) togelher with
another true proposition – assumed to be common ground, that the house consists
entirely of a kitchen and a bedroom -- entails q (“My wife is in the kitchen OR
in the bedroom”), surely to express what is entailed (“My wife is in the
kitchen or in the bedroom”) in the same circvmstances must be, has to be to
speak truly. So we have to take it that
the disjunctive statement – “kitchen or bedroom” -- does not fail to be TRUE or
FALSE if the implied ignorance (or the implied consideration that the utterer
is uttering ‘or’ on grounds other than the truth-functional ones that
‘introduce’ “or” for Gentzen) is in fact not realized, i. e. it is false. Secondly,
as for Test No. 2 (the four or combo vehicles), Grice thinks it is fairly clear
that in this case, as in the case of “beautiful handwriting”, we could say that
the emissor had implies that he did not know (or that his ground is other than
truth-functional – assuming that he takes the questioner to be interested in
the specific location – i. e. to mean, “where IN THE HOUSE is your wife?”) and
also that his conveying explicilty that (or his conveying explicitly that
rather than something else, viz, in which room or where in the house she is, or
‘upstairs,’ or ‘downstairs,’ or ‘in the basement,’ or ‘in the attic,’ ‘went
shopping,’ ‘at the greengrocer’ – ‘she’s been missing for three weeks’) implied
that he did not know in which one of the two selected rooms his wife is
‘resident’ (and that he has grounds other than Gentzen’s truth-functional ones for
the introduction of ‘or.’). Thirdly, the implication (‘kitchen or bedroom’) is
in a way non-detachable, in that if in a given context the utterance of the
disjunctive sentence would involve the implication that the emissor did not
know in which room his his wife was (or strictly, that the emissor is
proceeding along non-truth-functional grounds for the introduction of ‘or,’ or
even more strictly still, that the emissor has grounds other than
truth-functional for the uttering of the disjunction), this implication would
also be involved in the utterance of any other form of words which would make
the same disjunctive assertion (e.g., "Look, knowing her, the alternatives
are she is either preparing some meal in the kitchen or snoozing in the
bedroom;” “One of the following things is the case, I’m pretty confident. First
thing: she is in the kitchen, since she enjoys watching the birds from the
kitchen window. Second thing: she is in the bedroom, since she enjoys watching birds
from the bedroom window.” Etymologically, “or” is short for ‘other,’ meaning
second. So a third possibility: “I will be Anglo-Saxon: First, she is the
kitchen. Second, she is in the bedroom.” “She is in the kitchen UNLESS she is
in the bedroom”“She is in the kitchen IF SHE IS NOT in the bedroom.”“Well, it
is not the case that she is in the KITCHEN *AND* in the bedroom, De Morgan!” She
is in the kitchen, provided she is not in the bedroom” “If she is not in the kitchen,
she is in the bedroom” “Bedroom, kitchen; one of the two.” “Kitchen, bedroom;
check both just in case.”“Sleeping; alternatively, cooking – you do the maths.”“The
choices are: bedroom and kitchen.”“My choices would be: bedroom and kitchen.”“I
would think: bedroom? … kitchen?”“Disjunctively, bedroom – kitchen – kitchen –
bedroom.”“In alternation: kitchen, bedroom, bedroom, kitchen – who cares?”“Exclusively,
bedroom, kitchen.”ln another possible way, however, the implication could
perhaps bc said to BE indeed detachable: for there will be some contexts of
utterance (as Firth calls them) in which the ‘normal’ implication (that the
utterer has grounds other than truth-functional for the utterance of a
disjunction) will not hold.Here, for the first time, Grice brings a different
scenario for ‘or’:“Thc Secretary of the Aristotelian Society, announcing ‘Our
coming symposium will be in Oxford OR not take place at all” perhaps does not
imply that he is has grounds other than truth-functional for the utterance of
the disjunction. He is just being wicked, and making a bad-taste joke. This totally
extraneous scenario points to the fact that the implication of a disjunction is
cancellable.Once we re-apply it to the ‘Where in the hell in your house your
wife is? I hear the noise, but can’t figure!’ Mutatis mutandi with the
Secretary to The Aristotelian Socieety, a man could say, “My wife is in the
kitchen or in the bedroorn.”in circumstances in which the implication (that the
man has grounds other than truth-functional for the uttering of the
disjunction) would normally be present, but he is not being co-operative –
since one doesn’t HAVE to be co-operative (This may be odd, that one appeals to
helpfulness everywhere but when it comes to the annulation!).So the man goes
on, “Mind you, I am not saying that I do not know which.”This is why we love
Grice. Why I love Grice. One would never think of finding that sort of wicked
English humour in, say Strawson. Strawson yet says that Grice should ‘let go.’
But to many, Grice is ALWAYS humorous, and making philosophy fun, into the
bargain, if that’s not the same thing. Everybody else at the Play Group
(notably the ones Grice opposed to: Strawson, Austin, Hare, Hampshire, and
Hart) would never play with him. Pears, Warnock, and Thomson would!“Mind you, I
am not saying that I do not know which.”A: Where in the house is your wife? I
need to talk to her.B: She is in the kitchen – or in the bedroom. I know where
she is – but since you usually bring trouble, I will make you decide so that
perhaps like Buridan’s ass, you find the choice impossible and refrain from
‘talking’ (i. e. bringing bad news) to her.A: Where is your wife? B: In the
kitchen or in the bedroom. I know where she is. But I also know you are always
saying that you know my wife so well. So, calculate, by the time of the day –
it’s 4 a.m – where she could be. A: Where is your wife? B: In the bedroom or in
the kitchen. I know where she is – but remember we were reading Heidegger
yesterday? He says that a kitchen is where one cooks, and a bedroom is where
one sleeps. So I’ll let you decide if Heidegger has been refuted, should you
find her sleeping in the kitchen, or cooking in the bedroom.A: Where is your
wife? B: In the kitchen or the bedroom. I know where she is. What you may NOT
know, is that we demolished the separating wall. We have a loft now. So all
I’ll say is that she may be in both! All
this might be unfriendly, unocooperative, and perhaps ungrammatical for Austen
[Grice pronounced the surname so that the Aristotelian Society members might
have a doubt] – if not Vitters, but, on the other hand, it would be a perfectly
intelligible thing for a (married) man to say. We may not even GO to bachelors.
Finally, the fact that the utterance of the disjunctive sentence normally or
standardly or caeteris paribus involves the implication of the emissor's
ignorance of the truth-values of the disjuncts (or more strictly, the
implication of the emissor’s having grounds other than truth-functional for the
uttering of the disjunctive) is, I should like to say, to be ‘explained’ – and
Grice is being serious here, since Austin never cared to ‘explain,’ even if he
could -- by reference to a general principle governing – or if that’s not too
strong, guiding – conversation, at least of the cooperative kind the virtues of
which we are supposed to be exulting to our tuttees. Exactly what this
principle we should not go there. To explain why the implicatum that the
emissor is having grounds other than truth-functional ones for the utterance of
a disjunction one may appeal to the emissor being rational, assuming his
emissee to be rational, and abiding by something that Grice does NOT state in
the imperative form, but using what he calls a Hampshire modal (Grice divides
the modals as Hampshire: ‘should,’ the weakest, ‘ought’ the Hare modal, the medium,
and ‘must,’ Grice, the stronges)"One, a man, a rational man, should not
make conversational move communicating ‘p’ which may be characterised (in
strict terms of entailment) as weaker (i.e. poor at conversational fortitude)
rather than a stronger (better at conversational fortitude) one unless there is
a good reason for so doing." So Gentzen is being crazey-basey if he
thinks:p; therefore, p or q.For who will proceed like that?“Or” is complicated,
but so is ‘if.’ The Gentzen differs from the evaluation assignemt:‘p or q’ is 1
iff p is 1 or q is 1. When we speak of ‘truth-functional’ grounds it is this
assignment above we are referring to.Of courseif p, p or q [a formulation of
the Gentzen introduction]is a TAUTOLOGY [which is what makes the introduction a
rule of inference].In terms of entailment P Or Q (independently) Is stronger than ‘p v q’ In that either p or q
entail ‘p or q’ but the reverse is not true. Grice says that he first thought
of the pragmatic rule in terms of the theory of perception, and Strawson hints
at this when he says in the footnote to “Introduction to Logical theory” that
the rule was pointed out by his tutor in the Logic Paper, Grice, “in a
different connection.” The logic paper took place before the war, so this is
early enough in Grice’s career – so the ghosts of Whitehead and Russell were
there! We can call the above ‘the principle of conversational fortitude.’ This
is certainly not an adequate formulation but will perhaps be good enough for
Grice’s purpose in “Causal.”
On the assumption that such a principle as
this is of general application, one can DRAW or infer or explain the conclusion
that the utterance of a disjunctive sentence would imply that the emissor has
grounds other than truth-functional for the uttering of a disjunctum, given
that, first, the obvious reason for not making a statemcnt which there is some
call on one to make VALIDLY is that one is not in a position (or entitled) to
make it, and given, second, the logical ‘fact’ that each disjunct entails the
disjunctive, but not vice versa; which being so, each disjunct is stronger (bears
more conversational ‘fortitude’) than the disjunctive. If the outline just
given is on the right lines, Grice would wish to say, we have a reason for
REFUSING (as Strawson would not!) in the case of “kitchen or bedroom” to regard
the implication of the emissor having grounds other than truth-functional for
the uttering of the disjunctive as being part of the ‘meaning’ (whatever that
‘means’) of 'or' – but I should doublecheck with O. P. Wood – he’s our man in
‘or’ – A man who knows about the logical relation between a disjunction and
each disjunct, i. e. a man who has at least BROWSED Whitehead and Russell – and
diregards Bradley’s exclusivist account -- and who also ‘knew,’ qua Kantian
rational agent, about the alleged general principle or guiding conversational,
could work out for hirnself, surely, that a disjunctive utterance would involve
the implication which it does in fact involve. Grice insists, however, that his
aim in discussing this last point – about the principle of conversational
fortitude EXPLAING the generation of the implicatum -- has been merelyto
indicate the position I would wish to take up, and not to argue scriously in
favour of it. Grice’s main purpose in the excursus on implication was to
introduce four ideas or catalysts, or tesets – TEST No. I: truth-value; TEST
No. 2: Vehicle out of four; Test No. 3/Twin Test: Annulation and Non-Detachment
(is there a positive way to express this – non-detached twins as opposed to
CONJOINT twins), and Test No. 4 – ‘Meaning’ of expression? -- of which Grice
then goes to make some use re: the pillar box seeming red.; and to provide some
conception of the ways in which each of the four tests apply or fail to apply
to various types of implication. By the numbering of it, it seems that by the
time of Essay II he has, typically, added an extra. It’s FIVE catalysts now,
but actually, since he has two of the previous tests all rolled up in one, it
is SIX CATALSTS. He’ll go back to them in Essay IV (“Indicative conditionals”
with regard to ‘if’), and in Presupposition and Conversational (with regard to
Example I here: “You have not ceased eating iron”). Implicature.He needs those
catalysts. Why? It seems like he is always thinking that someone will challenge
him! This is Grice: “We can now show that, it having been stipulated as being
what it is, a conversational implicatum must possess certain distinctive
features, they are six. By using distinctive feature Grice is serious. He wants
each of the six catalysts to apply to each type of ‘implicatum’, so that a
table can be constructed. With answers yes/no. Or rather here are some catalyst
ideas which will help us to determine or individuate. Six tests for implicatum
as it were. SO THESE FEATURES – six of them – apply to three of the examples –
not the ‘poor but honest’ – but the “you have not ceased eating iron,”
“Beautiful handwriting,” and “Kitchen or bedroom.”First test – nothing about
the ‘twin’ – it’s ANNULATION or CANCELLABILITY – as noted in “Causal Theory” –
for two of the examples (‘beautiful handwriting’ and ‘kitchen or bedroom’ and
NEGATIVE version of “You don’t cease to eat iron”) and the one of the pillar
box – He adds a qualifier now: the annulation should best be IMPLICIT. But for
the fastidious philosopher, he allows for an EXPLICITATION which may not sound
grammatical enough to Austen (pronounced to rhyme with the playgroup master, or
the kindergarten’s master). To assume the presence of a conversational implicatum,
the philosopher (and emissee) has to assume that the principle of
conversational co-operation (and not just conversational fortitude) is being
observed.However, it is mighty possible to opt out of this and most things at
Oxford, i. e. the observation of this principle of conversational cooperation
(or the earlier principle of conversational fortitude).It follows then that now
we CAN EXPLAIN WHY CANCELLABILITY IS A DISTINCTIVE FEATURE. He left it to be
understood in “Causal.”It follows then, deductively, that an implicatum can be
canceled (or annulled) in a particular case. The conversational implicatum may
be, drearily – but if that’s what the fastidious philosopher axes -- explicitly
canceled, if need there be, by the addition of a clause by which the utterer
states or implies that he opts out (e. g. “The pillar box seems red but it is.”
“Where is your wife?” “My lips are sealed”). Then again the conversational
implicatum may be contextually (or implicitly) canceled, as Grice prefers (e.
g. to a very honest person, who knows I disbelieve the examiner exists, “The
loyalty examiner won’t be summoning you at any rate”). The utterance that
usually would carry an implicatum is used on an occasion that makes it clear or
obvious that the utterer IS opting out without having to bore his addressee by
making this obviousness explicit. SECOND DISTINCTIVE FEATURE: CONJOINING, i.e.
non-detachability.There is a second litmus test or catalyst idea.Insofar as the
calculation that a implicatum is present requires, besides contextual and background
information only an intuitive rational knowledge or understanding or processing
of what has been explicitly conveyed (‘are you playing squash? B shows bandaged
leg) (or the, shall we say, ‘conventional’ ‘arbitrary’ ‘commitment’ of the
utterance), and insofar as the manner or style, of FORM, rather than MATTER, of
expression should play at best absolutely no role in the calculation, it is NOT
possible to find another way of explicitly conveying or putting forward the
same thing, the same so-and-so (say that q follows from p) which simply ‘lacks’
the unnecessary implicatum in question -- except [will his excluders never
end?] where some special feature of the substituted version [this other way
which he says is not conceivable] is itself relevant to the determination of
the implicatum (in virtue of this or that conversational maxims pertaining to
the category of conversational mode. THIS BIG CAVEAT makes you wonder that
Grice regretted making fun of Kant. By adopting jocularly the four
conversational categories, he now finds himself in having to give an excuse or
exception for those implicata generated by a flout to what he earlier referred
to as the ‘desideratum of conversational clarity,’ and which he jocularly
rephrased as a self-defeating maxim, ‘be perspicuous [sic], never mind
perspicacious!’If we call this feature, as Grice does in “Causal Theory,”
‘non-detachability’ (or conjoining)– in that the implicatum cannot be detached
or disjointed from any alternative expression that makes the same point -- one
may expect the implicatum carried by this or that locution to have a high
degree of non-detachability. ALTERNATIVES FOR “NOT” Not, it is not the case, it
is false that. There’s nothing unique about ‘not’.ALTERNATIVES FOR “AND” and,
nothing, furthermore, but. There isnothing unique about ‘and’ALTERNATIVES FOR
“OR”: One of the following is true. There is nothing unique about
‘or’ALTERNATIVES FOR “IF” Provided. ‘There is nothing unique about
‘if’ALTERNATIVES FOR “THE” – There is at least one and at most one. And it
exists. (existence and uniqueness). There is nothing unique about ‘the’.THIS
COVERS STRAWSON’S first problem.What about the other English
philosophers?AUSTIN – on ‘voluntarily’ ALTERNATIVES to ‘voluntarily,’ with the
will, willingly, intentionally. Nothing unique about ‘voluntarily.’STRAWSON on
‘true’ – it is the case, redundance theory, nothing. Nothing unique about
‘true’HART ON good. To say that ‘x is commendable’ is to recommend x. Nothing
unique about ‘good.’HART on ‘carefully.’ Da Vinci painted Mona Lisa carefully,
with caution, with precaution. Nothing unique about ‘carefully.’THIRD LITMUS
TEST or idea and ATTENDING THIRD DISTINCTIVE
FEATURE. THIRD DISTINCTIVE FEATURE is in the protasis of the conditional.The
implicatum depends on the explicatum or explicitum, and a fortiori, the
implicatum cannot INVOLVE anything that the explicatum involves – There is
nothing about what an emissor explicitly conveys about “or” or a disjunctum in
general, which has to do with the emissor having grounds other than
truth-functional for the utterance of a disjunctum.The calculation of the
presence of an implicatum presupposes an initial knowledge, or grasping, or
understanding, or taking into account of the ‘conventional’ force (not in
Austin’s sense, but translating Latin ‘vis’) of the expression the utterance of
which carries the implicatum.A conversational implicatum will be a condition (but
not a truth-condition), i. e. a condition that is NOT, be definition, on risk
of circularity of otiosity, included in what the emissor explicitly conveys, i.
e. the original specification of the expression's ‘conventional’ or arbitrary
forceIf I’m saying that ‘seems’ INVOLVES, as per conventional force, ‘doubt or
denial,’what’s my point? If Strawson is right that ‘if’ has the conventional
force of conventionally committing the utterer with the belief that q follows
from p, why bother? And if that were so, how come the implicatum is still
cancellable?Though it may not be impossible for what starts life, so to speak,
as a conversational implicature to become conventionalized, to suppose that
this is so in a given case would require special justification. (Asking Lewis).
So, initially at least, a conversational implicatum is, by definition and
stipulation, not part of the sense, truth-condition, conventional force, or
part of what is explicitly conveyed or put forward, or ‘meaning’ of the
expression to the employment of which the impicatum attaches. FOURTH LITMUS
TEST or catalyst idea. Mentioned in “Causal theory” YIELDS THE FOUTH DISICTINVE
FEATURE and the FIFTH distinctive feature.FOURTH DISTINCTIVE FEATURE: in the
protasis of the conditional – truth value.The alethic value – conjoined with
the test about the VEHICLE --. He has these as two different tests – and
correspondingly two distinctive features in “Causal”. The truth of a
conversational implicatum is not required by (is not a condition for) the truth
of what is said or explicitly conveyed (what is said or explicated – the
explicatum or explicitum, or what is explicitly conveyed or communicated) may
be true -- what is implicated may be false – that he has beautiful handwriting,
that q follows from p, that the utterer is ENDORSING what someone else said,
that the utterer is recommending x, that the person who is said to act
carefully has taken precaution), FIFTH DISTINCTIVE FEATURE: vehicle – this is
the FOURTH vehicle of the four he mentions in “Causal”: ‘what the emissor
explicitly conveys,’ ‘the emissor himself,’ the emissor’s utterance, and
fourth, the emissor’s explicitly conveying, or explicitly conveying it that way
--. The apodosis of the conditional – or inferrability schema, since he uses
‘since,’ rather than ‘if,’ i. e. ‘GIVEN THAT p, q. Or ‘p; therefore, q’. The
implicatum is NOT carried by what is said or the EXPLICATUM or EXPLICITUM, or
is explicitly conveyed, but only by the ‘saying’ or EXPLICATING or EXPLICITING
of what is said or of the explicatum or explicitum, or by 'putting it that
way.’The fifth and last litmus test or catalyst idea YIELDS A SIXTH DISTINCTIVE
FEATURE:Note that he never uses ‘first, second, etc.’ just the numerals, which
in a lecture format, are not visible!SIXTH DISTINCTIVE FEATURE: INDETERMINACY. Due
to the open character of the reasoning – and the choices available to fill the
gap of the content of the propositional attitude that makes the conversational
rational:“He is potentially dishonest.” “His colleagues are treacherous”Both
implicata possible for “He hasn’t been to prison at his new job at the bank –
yet.”Since, to calculate a conversational implicatum is to calculate what has
to be supposed in order to preserve the supposition that the utterer is a
rational, benevolent, altruist agent, and that the principle of conversational
cooperation is being observed, and since there may be various possible specific
explanations or alternatives that fill the gap here – as to what is the content
of the psychological attitude to be ascribed to the utterer, a list of which
may be open, or open-ended, the conversational implicatum in such cases will
technically be an open-ended disjunction of all such specific explanations,
which may well be infinitely non-numerable. Since the list of these IS open,
the implicatum will have just the kind of INDETERMINACY or lack of determinacy
that an implicatum appears in most cases to possess.
indicatum. Οριστική oristike. The Romans were never sure about this.
Literally for the Greeks it’s the ‘definitive’ – ‘horistike’ klesis, inclinatio
or modus animae affectationem demonstrans indefinitivus – While indefinitivus
is the transliteration, the Romans also used ‘finitivus’ ‘finitus,’ and
‘indicativus’ and ‘pronuntiativus’. ‘Grice distinguishes between the indicative
mode and the informational mode. One can hardly inform oneself. Yet one can
utter an utterance in the indicative mode without it being in what he calls the
informational sub-mode. It’s interesting that Grice thinks he has to
distinguish between the ‘informational’ and the mere ‘indicative.’ Oddly when
he sets the goal to which ‘co-operation’ leads, it’s the informing/being
informed, influencing/being influenced. Surely he could have simplified that
by, as he later will, psi-transmission, whatever. So the emissor INDICATES,
even in an imperative utterance, what his will is. All moves are primarily
‘exhibitive,’ (and the function of the mode is to EXPRESS the corresponding
attitude). Only some moves are ‘protreptic.’ Grice was well aware, if perhaps
not TOO aware, since Austin was so secretive, about Austin on the
‘perlocution.’ Because Austin wanted to deprieve the act from the cause of the
act. Thus, Austin’s communicative act may have a causal intention, leading to
this or that effect – but that would NOT be part of the philosopher’s interest.
Suppose !p; whether the order is successful and Smith does get a job he is
promised, it hardly matters to Kant, Austin, or Grice. Interestingly,
‘indicatum’ has the same root as ‘dic-‘, to say – but surely you don’t need to
say to indicate, as in Grice’s favourite indicative mood: a hand wave signaling
that the emissor knows the route or is about to leave the emissee.
inferentia: cf essentia, sententia,
prudentia, etc.. – see illatum -- Cf. illatio. Consequentia. Implicatio.
Grice’s implicature and what the emissor implicates as a variation on the
logical usage.
infinite-off
predicament, or ∞-off predicament.
inscriptum -- inscriptionalism -- nominalism. While Grice pours scorn
on the American School of Latter-Day
Nominalists, nominalism, as used by Grice is possibly a misnomer. He
doesn’t mean Occam, and Occam did not use ‘nominalismus.’ “Terminimus’ at most.
So one has to be careful. The implicature is that the nominalist calls a ‘name’
what others shouldn’t. Mind, Grice had
two nominalist friends: S. N. Hamphsire (Scepticism and meaning”) and A. M.
Quinton, of the play group! In “Properties and classes,” for the Aristotelian
Society. And the best Oxford philosophical stylist, Bradley, is also a
nominalist. There are other, more specific arguments against universals.
One is that postulating such things leads to a vicious infinite regress. For
suppose there are universals, both monadic and relational, and that when an
entity instantiates a universal, or a group of entities instantiate a
relational universal, they are linked by an instantiation relation. Suppose now
that a instantiates
the universal F. Since
there are many things that instantiate many universals, it is plausible to
suppose that instantiation is a relational universal. But if instantiation is a
relational universal, when a instantiates F, a, F and
the instantiation relation are linked by an instantiation relation. Call this
instantiation relation i2 (and suppose it, as is plausible, to be
distinct from the instantiation relation (i1) that links a and F). Then
since i2 is
also a universal, it looks as if a, F, i1 and i2 will have to
be linked by another instantiation relation i3, and so on ad infinitum.
(This argument has its source in Bradley 1893, 27–8.)
insinuatum: Oddly, Ryle found an ‘insinuation’ abusive, which Russell
found abusive. When McGuinness listed the abusive terms by Gellner, ‘insinuation’
was one of them, so perhaps Grice should take note! insinuation insinuate. The
etymology is abscure. Certainly not Ciceronian. A bit of linguistic botany, “E
implicates that p” – implicate to do duty for, in alphabetic order: mean,
suggest, hint, insinuate, indicate, implicitly convey, indirectly convey, imply.
Intransitive meaning "hint obliquely" is from
1560s. The problem is that Grice possibly used it transitively, with a
‘that’-clause. “Emissor E communicates that p, via insinuation,” i.e. E
insinuates that p.” In fact, there’s nothing odd with the ‘that’-clause
following ‘insinuate.’ Obviosuly, Grice will be saying that what is a mere
insinuation it is taken by Austin, Strawson, Hart or Hare or Hampshire – as he
criticizes him in the “Mind” article on intention and certainty -- (to restrict
to mistakes by the play group) as part of the ‘analysans.’ `Refs. D. Holdcroft,
“Forms of indirect communication,” Journal of Rhetoric.
intellectum (dianoia) “intelligere,” originally meaning to comprehend,
appeared frequently in Cicero, then underwent a slippage in its passive form,
“intelligetur,” toward to understand, to communicate, to mean, ‘to give it to
be understood.’ What is understood – INTELLECTUM -- by an expression can be not
only its obvious sense but also something that is connoted, implied,
insinuated, IMPLICATED, as Grice would prefer. Verstand, corresponding to Greek
dianoia and Latin intellectio] Kant distinguished understanding from
sensibility and reason. While sensibility is receptive, understanding is
spontaneous. While understanding is concerned with the range of phenomena and
is empty without intuition, reason, which moves from judgment to judgment
concerning phenomena, is tempted to extend beyond the limits of experience to
generate fallacious inferences. Kant claimed that the main act of understanding
is judgment and called it a faculty of judgment. He claimed that there is an a
priori concept or category corresponding to each kind of judgment as its
logical function and that understanding is constituted by twelve categories.
Hence understanding is also a faculty of concepts. Understanding gives the
synthetic unity of appearance through the categories. It thus brings together
intuitions and concepts and makes experience possible. It is a lawgiver of
nature. Herder criticized Kant for separating sensibility and understanding.
Fichte and Hegel criticized him for separating understanding and reason. Some
neo-Kantians criticized him for deriving the structure of understanding from
the act of judgment. “Now we can reduce all acts of the understanding to
judgements, and the understanding may therefore be represented as a faculty of
judgement.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
intensionalism: Grice finds a way to relieve a predicate that is vacuous
from the embarrassing consequence of denoting or being satisfied by the empty
set. Grice exploits the nonvoidness of a predicate which is part of the
definition of the void predicate. Consider the vacuous predicate:‘... is
married to a daughter of an English queen and a pope.'The class '... is a
daugther of an English queen and a pope.'is co-extensive with the
predicate '... stands in relation to a sequence composed of the
class married to, daughters, English queens, and popes.'We correlate the
void predicate with the sequence composed of relation R, the set ‘married
to,’ the set ‘daughters,’ the set ‘English queens,’ and the set ‘popes.'Grice
uses this sequence, rather than the empty set, to determine the explanatory
potentiality of a void predicate. The admissibility of a nonvoid predicate
in an explanation of a possible phenomenon (why it would happen if it did
happen) may depends on the availability of a generalisation whithin which the
predicate specifies the antecedent condition. A non-trivial generalisations
of this sort is certainly available if derivable from some further
generalisation involving a less specific antecedent condition, supported by an
antecedent condition that is specified by means a nonvoid predicate.
intentionalism: Grice analyses ‘intend’ in two prongs; the first is a
willing-clause, and the second is a causal clause about the willing causing the
action. It’s a simplified account that he calls Prichardian because he relies
on ‘willin that.’ The intender intends that some action takes place. It does
not have to be an action by the intender. Cf. Suppes’s specific section. when
Anscombe comes out with her “Intention,” Grice’s Play Group does not know what
to do. Hampshire is almost finished with his “Thought and action” that came out
the following year. Grice is lecturing on how a “dispositional” reductive
analysis of ‘intention’ falls short of his favoured instrospectionalism. Had he
not fallen for an intention-based semantics (or strictly, an analysis of
"U means that p" in terms of U intends that p"), Grice
would be obsessed with an analysis of ‘intending that …’ James makes an
observation about the that-clause. I will that the distant table slides over
the floor toward me. It does not. The Anscombe Society. Irish-born Anscombe’s
views are often discussed by Oxonian philosophers. She brings Witters to the
Dreaming Spires, as it were. Grice is especially connected with Anscombes
reflections on intention. While he favoures an approach such as that of
Hampshire in Thought and Action, Grice borrows a few points from Anscombe, notably
that of direction of fit, originally Austin’s. Grice explicitly refers to
Anscombe in “Uncertainty,” and in his reminiscences he hastens to add that
Anscombe would never attend any of the Saturday mornings of the play group, as
neither does Dummett. The view of Ryle is standardly characterised as a
weaker or softer version of behaviourism According to this standard
interpretation, the view by Ryle is that a statements containin this or that
term relating to the ‘soul’ can be translated, without loss of meaning, into an
‘if’ utterance about what an agent does. So Ryle, on this account, is to be
construed as offering a dispositional analysis of a statement about the soul
into a statement about behaviour. It is conceded that Ryle does not confine a
description of what the agent does to purely physical behaviour—in terms, e. g.
of a skeletal or a muscular description. Ryle is happy to speak of a
full-bodied action like scoring a goal or paying a debt. But the soft
behaviourism attributed to Ryle still attempts an analysis or translation of
statement about the soul into this or that dispositional statement which is
itself construed as subjunctive if describing what the agent does. Even this
soft behaviourism fails. A description of the soul is not analysable or
translatable into a statement about behaviour or praxis even if this
is allowed to include a non-physical descriptions of action. The list of
conditions and possible behaviour is infinite since any one proffered
translation may be ‘defeated,’ as Hart and Hall would say, by a slight
alteration of the circumstances. The defeating condition in any particular case
may involve a reference to a fact about the agent’s soul, thereby rendering the
analysis circular. In sum, the standard interpretation of Ryle construes him as
offering a somewhat weakened form of reductive behaviourism whose reductivist
ambition, however weakened, is nonetheless futile. This characterisation
of Ryle’s programme is wrong. Although it is true that he is keen to point out
the disposition behind this or that concept about the soul, it would be wrong
to construe Ryle as offering a programme of analysis of a ‘soul’ predicate in
terms of an ‘if’ utterance. The relationship between a ‘soul’ predicate and the
‘if’ utterance with which he unpack it is other than that required by this kind
of analysis. It is helpful to keep in mind that Ryle’s target is the
official doctrine with its eschatological commitment. Ryle’s argument serves to
remind one that we have in a large number of cases ways of telling or settling
disputes, e. g., about someone’s character or intellect. If A disputes a
characterisation of Smith as willing that p, or judging that p, B may point to
what Smith says and does in defending the attribution, as well as to features
of the circumstances. But the practice of giving a reason of this kind to
defend or to challenge an ascription of a ‘soul’ predicates would be put under
substantial pressure if the official doctrine is correct. For Ryle to
remind us that we do, as a matter of fact, have a way of settling disputes
about whether Smith wills that he eat an apple is much weaker than saying that
the concept of willing is meaningless unless it is observable or verifiable; or
even that the successful application of a soul predicate requires that we have
a way of settling a dispute in every case. Showing that a concept is one for
which, in a large number of cases, we have an agreement-reaching procedure,
even if it do not always guarantee success, captures an important point,
however: it counts against any theory of, e. g., willing that would render it
unknowable in principle or in practice whether or not the concept is
correctly applied in every case. And this is precisely the problem with the
official doctrine (and is still a problem, with some of its progeny. Ryle
points out that there is a form of dilemma that pits the reductionist against
the dualist: those whose battle-cry is ‘nothing but…’ and those who insist
on ‘something else as well.’ Ryle attempts a dissolution of the dilemma by
rejecting the two horns; not by taking sides with either one, though part of
what dissolution requires in this case, as in others, is a description of how
each side is to be commended for seeing what the other side does not, and
criticised for failing to see what the other side does. The attraction of
behaviourism, Ryle reminds us, is simply that it does not insist on an occult
happening as the basis upon which a ‘soul’ term is given meaning, and points to
a perfectly observable criterion that is by and large employed when we are
called upon to defend or correct our employment of a ‘soul’ term. The problem
with behaviourism is that it has a too-narrow view both of what counts as
behaviour and of what counts as observable. Then comes Grice to play with
meaning and intending, and allowing for deeming an avowal of this or that souly
state as, in some fashion, incorrigible. For Grice, while U does have, ceteris
paribus privileged access to each state of his soul, only his or that avowal of
this or that souly state is deemed incorrigible. This concerns communication as
involving intending. Grice goes back to this at Brighton. He plays with G
judges that it is raining, G judges that G judges that it is raining. Again, Grice
uses a subscript: “G judges2 that it is raining.” If now G
expresses that it is raining, G judges2 that it is raining. A
second-order avowal is deemed incorrigible. It is not surprising the the
contemporary progeny of the official doctrine sees a behaviourist in Grice. Yet
a dualist is badly off the mark in his critique of Grice. While Grice does
appeal to a practice and a habif, and even the more technical ‘procedure’ in
the ordinary way as ‘procedure’ is used in ordinary discussion. Grice does not
make a technical concept out of them as one expect of some behavioural
psychologist, which he is not. He is at most a philosophical psychologist, and
a functionalist one, rather than a reductionist one. There is nothing in any
way that is ‘behaviourist’ or reductionist or physicalist about Grice’s talk.
It is just ordinary talk about behaviour. There is nothing exceptional in
talking about a practice, a customs, or a habit regarding communication. Grice
certainly does not intend that this or that notion, as he uses it, gives anything
like a detailed account of the creative open-endedness of a
communication-system. What this or that anti-Griceian has to say IS essentially
a diatribe first against empiricism (alla Quine), secondarily against a
Ryle-type of behaviourism, and in the third place, Grice. In more reasoned and
dispassionate terms, one would hardly think of Grice as a behaviourist (he in
fact rejects such a label in “Method”), but as an intentionalist. When we call
Grice an intentionalist, we are being serious. As a modista, Grice’s keyword is
intentionalism, as per the good old scholastic ‘intentio.’ We hope so. This is
Aunt Matilda’s conversational knack. Grice keeps a useful correspondence with
Suppes which was helpful. Suppes takes Chomsky more seriously than an Oxonian
philosopher would. An Oxonian philosopher never takes Chomsky too seriously. Granted,
Austin loves to quote “Syntactic Structures” sentence by sentence for fun,
knowing that it would never count as tutorial material. Surely “Syntactic Structures”
would not be a pamphlet a member of the play group would use to educate his
tutee. It is amusing that when he gives the Locke lectures, Chomsky cannot not think
of anything better to do but to criticise Grice, and citing him from just one
reprint in the collection edited by, of all people, Searle. Some gratitude. The
references are very specific to Grice. Grice feels he needs to provide, he
thinks, an analysis ‘mean’ as metabolically applied to an expression. Why?
Because of the implicatum. By uttering x (thereby explicitly conveying that p),
U implicitly conveys that q iff U relies on some procedure in his and A’s
repertoire of procedures of U’s and A’s communication-system. It is this talk
of U’s being ‘ready,’ and ‘having a procedure in his repertoire’ that sounds to
New-World Chomsky too Morrisian, as it does not to an Oxonian. Suppes, a
New-Worlder, puts himself in Old-Worlder Grice’s shoes about this. Chomsky
should never mind. When an Oxonian philosopher, not a psychologist, uses ‘procedure’
and ‘readiness,’ and having a procedure in a repertoire, he is being Oxonian
and not to be taken seriously, appealing to ordinary language, and so on.
Chomsky apparently does get it. Incidentally, Suppess has defended Grice
against two other targets, less influential. One is Hungarian-born J. I. Biro,
who does not distinguish between reductive analysis and reductionist analysis,
as Grice does in his response to Somervillian Rountree-Jack. The other target
is perhaps even less influential: P. Yu in a rather simplistic survey of the
Griceian programme for a journal that Grice finds too specialized to count, “Linguistics
and Philosophy.” Grice is always ashamed and avoided of being described as “our
man in the philosophy of language.” Something that could only have happened in
the Old World in a red-brick university, as Grice calls it. Suppes contributes to PGRICE with an
excellent ‘The primacy of utterers meaning,’ where he addresses what he rightly
sees as an unfair characterisations of Grice as a behaviourist. Suppes’s use of
“primacy” is genial, since its metabole which is all about. Biro actually responds
to Suppes’s commentary on Grice as proposing a reductive but not reductionist
analysis of meaning. Suppes rightly characterises Grice as an Oxonian ‘intentionalist’
(alla Ogden), as one would characterize Hampshire, with philosophical
empiricist, and slightly idealist, or better ideationalist, tendencies, rather.
Suppes rightly observes that Grice’ use of such jargon is meant to impress.
Surely there are more casual ways of referring to this or that utterer having a
basic procedure in his repertoire. It is informal and colloquial, enough,
though, rather than behaviouristically, as Ryle would have it. Grice is very
happy that in the New World Suppes teaches him how to use ‘primacy’ with a
straight face! Intentionalism is also all the vogue in Collingwood reading
Croce, and Gardiner reading Marty via Ogden, and relates to expression. In his
analysis of intending Grice is being very Oxonian, and pre-Austinian: relying,
just to tease leader Austin, on Stout, Wilson, Bosanquet, MacMurray, and
Pritchard. Refs.: There are two sets of essays. An early one on ‘disposition
and intention,’ and the essay for The British Academy (henceforth, BA). Also
his reply to Anscombe and his reply to Davidson. There is an essay on the
subjective condition on intention. Obviously, his account of communication has
been labeled the ‘intention-based semantic’ programme, so references under
‘communication’ above are useful. BANC.Grice's reductIOn, or partial reduction
anyway, of meamng to intention places a heavy load on the theory of intentions.
But in the articles he has written about these matters he has not been very
explicit about the structure of intentIOns. As I understand his position on
these matters, it is his view that the defence of the primacy of utterer's
meaning does not depend on having worked out any detailed theory of intention.
It IS enough to show how the reduction should be thought of in a schematic
fashion in order to make a convincing argument. I do think there is a fairly
straightforward extenSIOn of Grice's ideas that provides the right way of
developing a theory of intentIOns appropnate for Ius theory of utterer's
meaning. Slightly changing around some of the words m Grice we have the
following The Primacy of Utterer's Meaning 125 example. U utters '''Fido is
shaggy", if "U wants A to think that U thinks that Jones's dog is
hairy-coated.'" Put another way, U's intention is to want A to think U
thinks that Jones's dog is hairy-coated. Such intentions clearly have a
generative structure similar but different from the generated syntactic
structure we think of verbal utterances' having. But we can even say that the
deep structures talked about by grammarians of Chomsky's ilk could best be
thought of as intentions. This is not a suggestion I intend to pursue
seriously. The important point is that it is a mistake to think about
classifications of intentions; rather, we should think in terms of mechanisms
for generating intentions. Moreover, it seems to me that such mechanisms in the
case of animals are evident enough as expressed in purposeful pursuit of prey
or other kinds of food, and yet are not expressed in language. In that sense
once again there is an argument in defence of Grice's theory. The primacy of
utterer's meaning has primacy because of the primacy of intention. We can have
intentions without words, but we cannot have words of any interest without
intentions. In this general context, I now turn to Biro's (1979) interesting
criticisms of intentionalism in the theory of meaning. Biro deals from his own
standpoint with some of the issues I have raised already, but his central
thesis about intention I have not previously discussed. It goes to the heart of
controversies about the use of the concept of intention to explain the meaning
of utterances. Biro puts his point in a general way by insisting that utterance
meaning must be separate from and independent of speaker's meaning or, in the
terminology used here, utterer's meaning. The central part of his argument is
his objection to the possibility of explaining meaning in terms of intentions.
Biro's argument goes like this: 1. A central purpose of speech is to enable
others to learn about the speaker's intentions. 2. It will be impossible to
discover or understand the intentions of the speaker unless there are
independent means for understanding what he says, since what he says will be
primary evidence about his intentions. 3. Thus the meaning of an utterance must
be conceptually independent of the intentions of the speaker. This is an
appealing positivistic line. The data relevant to a theory or hypothesis must
be known independently of the hypothesis. Biro is quick to state that he is not
against theoretical entities, but the way in which he separates theoretical
entities and observable facts makes clear the limited role he wants them to
play, in this case the theoretical entities being intentions. The central idea
is to be found in the following passage: The point I am insisting on here is
merely that the ascription of an intention to an agent has the character of an
hypothesis, something invoked to explain phenomena which may be described
independently of that explanation (though not necessarily independently of the
fact that they fall into a class for which the hypothesis in question generally
or normally provides an explanation). (pp. 250-1.) [The italics are Biro's.]
Biro's aim is clear from this quotation. The central point is that the data
about intentions, namely, the utterance, must be describable independently of
hypotheses about the intentions. He says a little later to reinforce this: 'The
central pointis this: it is the intention-hypothesis that is revisable, not the
act-description' (p. 251). Biro's central mistake, and a large one too, is to
think that data can be described independently of hypotheses and that somehow
there is a clean and simple version of data that makes such description a
natural and inevitable thing to have. It would be easy enough to wander off
into a description of such problems in physics, where experiments provide a
veritable wonderland of seemingly arbitrary choices about what to include and
what to exclude from the experimental experience as 'relevant data', and where
the arbitrariness can only be even partly understood on the basis of
understanding the theories bemg tested. Real data do not come in simple linear
strips like letters on the page. Real experiments are blooming confusions that
never get sorted out completely but only partially and schematically, as
appropriate to the theory or theories being tested, and in accordance with the
traditions and conventions of past similar experiments. makes a point about the
importance of convention that I agree but it is irrelevant to my central of
controversy with What I say about
experiments is even more true of undisciplined and unregulated human
interactiono Experiments, especially in physics, are presumably among the best
examples of disciplined and structured action. Most conversations, in contrast,
are really examples of situations of confusion that are only straightened out
under strong hypotheses of intentions on the of speakers and listeners as well.
There is more than one level at which the takes The Primacy of Utterer's
Meaning 127 place through the beneficent use of hypotheses about intentions. I
shall not try to deal with all of them here but only mention some salient
aspects. At an earlier point, Biro says:The main reason for introducing
intentions into some of these analyses is precisely that the public (broadly
speaking) features of utterances -the sounds made, the circumstances in which
they are made and the syntactic and semantic properties of these noises
considered as linguistic items-are thought to be insufficient for the specification
of that aspect of the utterance which we call its meaning. [po 244.] If we were
to take this line of thought seriously and literally, we would begin with the
sound pressure waves that reach our ears and that are given the subtle and
intricate interpretation required to accept them as speech. There is a great
variety of evidence that purely acoustical concepts are inadequate for the
analysis of speech. To determine the speech content of a sound pressure wave we
need extensive hypotheses about the intentions that speakers have in order to
convert the public physical features of utterances into intentional linguistic
items. Biro might object at where I am drawing the line between public and
intentional, namely, at the difference between physical and linguistic, but it
would be part of my thesis that it is just because of perceived and
hypothesized intentions that we are mentally able to convert sound pressure
waves into meaningful speech. In fact, I can envisage a kind of transcendental
argument for the existence of intentions based on the impossibility from the
standpoint of physics alone of interpreting sound pressure waves as speech.
Biro seems to have in mind the nice printed sentences of science and philosophy
that can be found on the printed pages of treatises around the world. But this
is not the right place to begin to think about meaning, only the end point.
Grice, and everybody else who holds an intentional thesis about meaning,
recognizes the requirement to reach an account of such timeless sentence
meaning or linguistic meaning.In fact, Grice is perhaps more ready than I am to
concede that such a theory can be developed in a relatively straightforward
manner. One purpose of my detailed discussion of congruence of meaning in the
previous section is to point out some of the difficulties of having an adequate
detailed theory of these matters, certainly an adequate detailed theory of the
linguistic meaning or the sentence meaning. Even if I were willing to grant the
feasibility of such a theory, I would not grant the use of it that Biro has
made. For the purposes of this discussion printed text may be accepted as
well-defined, theoryindependent data. (There are even issues to be raised about
the printed page, but ones that I will set aside in the present context. I have
in mind the psychological difference between perception of printed letters,
words, phrases, or sentences, and that of related but different nonlinguistic
marks on paper.) But no such data assumptions can be made about spoken speech.
Still another point of attack on Biro's positivistic line about data concerns
the data of stress and prosody and their role in fixing the meaning of an
utterance. Stress and prosody are critical to the interpretation of the
intentions of speakers, but the data on stress and prosody are fleeting and
hard to catch on the fly_ Hypotheses about speakers' intentions are needed even
in the most humdrum interpret atins of what a given prosodic contour or a given
point of stress has contributed to the meaning of the utterance spoken. The
prosodic contour and the points of stress of an utterance are linguistic data,
but they do not have the independent physical description Biro vainly hopes
for. Let me put my point still another way. I do not deny for a second that conventions
and traditions of speech play a role in fixing the meaning of a particular
utterance on a particular occasion. It is not a matter of interpretmg afresh,
as if the universe had just begun, a particular utterance in terms of
particular intentions at that time and place without dependence upon past prior
mtentions and the traditions of spoken speech that have evolved in the
community of which the speaker and listener are a part. It is rather that
hypotheses about intentions are operating continually and centrally in the
interpretation of what is said. Loose, live speech depends upon such active
'on-line' interpretation of intention to make sense of what has been said. If
there were some absolutely agreed-upon concept of firm and definite linguistlc meaning
that Biro and others could appeal to, then it might be harder to make the case
I am arguing for. But I have already argued in the discussion of congruence of
meaning that this is precisely what is not the case. The absence of any
definite and satisfactory theory of linguistic meaning argues also for movmg
back to the more concrete and psychologically richer concept of utterer's
meaning. This is the place to begin the theory of meaning, and this Itself
rests to a very large extent on the concept of intention
-ism: used by Grice
derogatorily. In his ascent to the City of the Eternal Truth, he meets twelve
–isms, which he orders alphabetically. These are: Empiricism. Extensionalism.
Functionalism. MaterialismMechanism. Naturalism. Nominalism. Phenomenalism.
Positivism. Physicalism. Reductionism. Scepticism. Grice’s implicatum is that
each is a form of, er, minimalism, as opposed to maximalism. He also seems to
implicate that, while embracing one of those –isms is a reductionist vice,
embracing their opposites is a Christian virtue – He explicitly refers to the
name of Bunyan’s protagonist, “Christian” – “in a much more publicized journey,
I grant.” So let’s see how we can correlate each vicious heathen ism with the
Griceian Christian virtuous ism. Empiricism. “Surely not all is experience. My
bones are not.” Opposite: Rationalism. Extensionalism. Surely the empty set
cannot end up being the fullest! Opposite Intensionalism. Functionalism. What
is the function of love? We have to extend functionalism to cover one’s concern
for the other – And also there’s otiosity. Opposite: Mentalism. Materialism –
My bones are ‘hyle,’ but my eternal soul isn’t. Opposite Spiritualism. Mechanism – Surely there is finality in
nature, and God designed it. Opposite Vitalism. Naturalism – Surely Aristotle
meant something by ‘ta meta ta physica,’ There is a transnatural realm.
Opposite: Transnaturalism. Nominalism.
Occam was good, except with his ‘sermo mentalis.’ Opposite: Realism.
Phenomenalism – Austin and Grice soon realised that Berlin was wrong. Opposite
‘thing’-language-ism. Positivism – And then there’s not. Opposite: Negativism. Physicalism – Surely my soul is not a brain
state. Opposite: Transnaturalism, since Physicalismm and Naturalism mean the
same thing, ony in Greek, the other in Latin. Reductionism – Julie is wrong when she thinks
I’m a reductionist. Opposite: Reductivism. Scepticism: Surely there’s common sense.
Opposite: Common-Sensism. Refs: H. P. Grice, “Prejudices and predilections;
which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice,” The Grice Papers, BANC.
iota – iota operator
used by Grice. Peano uses iota as short for “isos,” Grecian for ‘Same”. Peano
defines “ix” as “the class of whatever is the same as x”. Peano then looked for
a symbol for the inverse for this. He first uses a negated iota, and then an
inverted iota, so that inverted iota x reads “the sole [unique] member of x”
“ι” read as “the” -- s the inverted iota or
description operator and is used in expressions for definite descriptions, such
as “(ιx)ϕx(ιx)ϕx,” which is read: the x such that ϕxϕx). [(ιx)ϕx(ιx)ϕx] -- a
definite description in brackets. This is a scope indicator for definite descriptions.
The topic of ‘description’ is crucial for Grice, and he regrets Russell focused
on the definite rather than the indefinite descriptor. As a matter of fact,
while Grice follows the custom of referring to the “Russellian expansion” of
iota, he knows it’s ultimately the “Peanoian” expansion. Indeed, Peano uses the
non-inverted iota “i” for the unit class. For the ONLY or UNIQUE member of this
class, i. e. the definite article “the,” Peano uses the inverted iota (cf.
*THE* Twelve Apostles). (On occasion Peano uses the denied iota for that). Peano’s approach to ‘the’ evolve in at least
three stages towards a greater precision in the treatment of the description,
both definite and indefinite. Peano introducesin 1897 the fundamental definition of the unit class
as the class such that ALL of its members are IDENTICAL. In Peanoian symbols, ix
= ye (y = x). Peano approaches the UNIQUE OR ONLY member of such a class, by
way of an indirect definition: “x = ia • = • a = ix.” Regarding the analysis of
the definite article “the,” Peano makes the crucial point that every ‘proposition’
or ‘sentence’ containing “the” (“The apostles were twelve”) can be offered a
reductive AND REDUCTIONIST analysis, first, to. the for,? ia E b, and, second, to
the inclusion of the class in the class (a b), which already supposes the
elimination of “i.” Peano notes he can avoid an identity whose first member
contains “I” (1897:215). One difference between Peano’s and Russell's treatment
of classes in the context of the theory of description is that, while, for
Peano, a description combines a class abstract with the inverse of the unit
class operator, Russell restricts the free use of a class abstract due the risk
of paradox generation. For Peano, it is necessary that there EXIST the class
(‘apostle’), and he uses for this the symbol ‘I,’ which indicates that the
class is not vacuous, void, or empty, and that it have a unique member, the set
of twelve apostles. If either of these two conditions – existence and
uniqueness -- are not met, the symbol is meaningless, or pointless. Peano offers
various instances for handling the symbol of the inverted iota, and the way in
which -- starting from that ‘indirect’ or implicit definition, it can be
eliminated altogether. One example is of particular interest, as it states a
link between the reductionist analysis of the inverted iota and the problem of what
Peano calls ‘doubtful’ existence (rather than vacuous, void, or empty). Peano
starts by defining the superlative ‘THE greatEST number of a class of real
numbers’ as ‘THE number n such that there is no number of this class being
greater than n.’ Peano warns that one should not infer from this definition the
‘existence’ of the aforementioned greatEST number. Grice does not quite
consider this in the ‘definite description’ section of “Vacuous name” but gives
a similar example: “The climber on hands and knees of Mt. Everest does not
exist. He was invented by the journalists.” And in other cases where there is a
NON-IDENTIFICATORY use of ‘the’, which Grice symbolises as ‘the,’ rather than
‘THE’: “The butler certainly made a mess with our hats and coats – whoever he
is --.” As it happens Strawson mistook the haberdasher to be the butler. So
that Strawson is MIS-IDENTIFYING the denotatum as being ‘the butler’ when it is
‘the haberdasher.’ The butler doesn’t really exist. Smith dressed the
haberdasher as a butler and made him act as one just to impress. Similarly, as
per Russell’s ‘Prince George soon found out that ‘the author of Waverley’ did
not exist,” (variant of his example). Similarly, Peano proves that we can speak
legitimately of “THE GREATEST real number” even if we have doubts it ‘exists.
He just tweaks the original definition to obtain a different expression where
“I” is dropped out. For Peano, then, the reductionist analysis of the definite
article “the” is feasible and indeed advisable for a case of ‘doubtful’ existence.
Grice does not consider ‘doubtful’ but he may. “The climber on hands and knees
of Mt Everest may, but then again may not, attend the party the Merseyside
Geographical Society is giving in his honour. He will attend if he exists; he
will not attend if he doesn’t.” Initially, Peano thinks “I” need not be
equivalent to, in the sense of systematically replaced by, the two clauses
(indeed three) in the expansion which are supposed to give the import of ‘the,’
viz. existence and uniqueness (subdivided in ‘at least’ and ‘at most’). His
reductionism proves later to be absolute. He starts from the definition in terms
of the unit class. He goes on to add a series of "possible"
definitions -- allowing for alternative logical orders. One of this alternative
definitions is stipulated to be a strict equivalence, about which he had
previously been sceptical. Peano asserts that the only unque individual belongs
to a unit. Peano does not put it in so
many words that this expression is meaningless. In the French translation, what
he said is Gallic: “Nous ne donnons pas de signification a ce symbole si la
classe a est nulle, ou si elle contient plusieurs individus.” “We don’t give
signification to this symbol IF the class is void, or if the class contains
more than one individual.” – where we can see that he used ‘iota’ to represent
‘individus,’ from Latin ‘individuum,’ translating Greek ‘a-tomos.’ So it is not
meant to stand for Greek ‘idion,’ as in ‘idiosyncratic.’ But why did he choose
the iota, which is a Grecian letter. Idion is in the air (if not ‘idiot.’).
Thus, one may take the equivalence in practice, given that if the three
conditions in the expansion are met, the symbol cannot be used at all. There
are other ways of providing a reductionist analysis of the same symbols
according to Peano, e. g., laE b. = : a = tx. :Jx • Xc b class (a) such that it
belongs to another class (b) is equal to the EXISTENCE of exactly one (at least
one and at most one) idiosyncratic individual or element such that this
idiosyncratic individual is a member of that class (b), i. e. "the only or
unique (the one member) member of a belongs to b" is to be held equivalent
to ‘There is at least one x such that, first, the unit class a is equal to the
class constituted by x, and, second, x belongs to b.’ Or, ‘The class of x such
that a is the class constituted by x, and that x belongs to b, is not an empty
class, and that it have a unique member.” This is exactly Russell's tri-partite
expansion referred to Russell (‘on whom Grice heaped all the praise,’ to echo Quine).
Grice was not interested in history, only in rebutting Strawson. Of course,
Peano provides his conceptualisations in terms of ‘class’ rather than, as
Russell, Sluga [or ‘Shuga,’ as Cole reprints him] and Grice do, in terms of the
‘propositional function,’ i. e. Peano
reduces ‘the’ in terms of a property or a predicate, which defins a class.
Peano reads the membership symbol as "is,” which opens a new can of worms
for Grice: “izzing” – and flies out of the fly bottle. Peano is well aware of the
importance of his device to eliminate the definite article “the” to more
‘primitive’ terms. That is why Peano qualifies his definition as an "expriment
la P[proposition] 1 a E b sous une autre forme, OU ne figure plus le signe i;
puisque toute P contenant le signe i a est REDUCTIBLE ala forme ia E b, OU best
une CIs, on pourra ELIMINER le signe i dans toute P.” The once received view that
the symbol "i" is for Peano undefinable and primitive has now been
corrected. Before making more explicit
the parallelism with Whitehead’s and Russell's and Grice’s theory of
description (vide Quine, “Reply to H. P. Grice”) we may consider a few
potential problems. First, while it is true that the symbol ‘i’ has been given
a ‘reductionist analysis’, in the definiens we still see the symbol of the unit
class, which would refer somehow to the idea that is symbolized by ''ix’. Is
this a sign of circularity, and evidence that the descriptor has not been
eliminated? For Peano, there are at least two ways of defining a symbol of the unit
class without using ‘iota’ – straight, inverted, or negated. One way is
directly replacing ix by its value: y 3(y = x). We have: la E b • =: 3x 3{a =y
3(y =x) • X E b}, which expresses the
same idea in a way where a reference to iota has disappeared. We can read now
"the only member of a belongs to b" as "there is at least one x
such that (i) the unit class a is equal to all the y such that y =x, and (ii) x
belongs to b" (or "the class of x such that they constitute the class
of y, and that they constitute the class a, and that in addition they belong to
the class b, is not an empty class"). The complete elimination underlies
the mentioned definition. Peano is just not interested in making the point
explicit. A second way is subtler. By pointing out that, in the
"hypothesis" preceding the quoted definition, it is clearly stated
that the class "a" is defined as the unit class in terms of the
existence and identity of all of their members (i.e. uniqueness): a E Cis. 3a:
x, yEa. X = y: bE CIs • : This is why "a" is equal to the expression
''tx'' (in the second member). One may still object that since "a"
can be read as "the unit class", Peano does not quite provide a
‘reductionist’ analysis as it is shown through the occurrence of these words in
some of the readings proposed above. However, the hypothesis preceding the
definition only states that the meaning of the symbols which are used in the
second member is to be. Thus, "a" is stated as "an existing unit
class", which has to be understood in the following way: 'a' stands for a
non-empty class that all of its members are identical. We can thus can "a",
wherever it occurs, by its meaning, given that this interpretation works as
only a purely ‘nominal’ definition, i.e. a convenient abbreviation. However,
the actual substitution would lead us to rather complicated prolixic expressions
that would infringe Grice’s desideratum of conversational clarity. Peano's
usual way of working can be odd. Starting from this idea, we can interpret the
definition as stating that "ia Eb" is an abbreviation of the
definiens and dispensing with the conditions stating existence and uniqueness
in the hypothesis, which have been incorporated to their new place. The
hypothesis contains only the statement
of "a" and" b" as being classes, and the definition amounts
to: a, bECls.::J :. ME b. =:3XE([{3aE[w, zEa. ::Jw•z' w= z]} ={ye (y= x)}] • XE
b). Peano’s way is characterized as the constant search for SHORTER, briefer,
and more conveniente expressions – which is Grice’s solution to Strawson’s
misconception – there is a principle of conversational tailoring. It is quite
understandable that Peano prefers to avoid long expansions. The important thing
is not the intuitive and superficial similarity between the symbols
"ia" and ''ix'', caused simply by the appearance of the Greek letter iota
in both cases, or the intuitive meaning of
"the unit class.” What is key are the conditions under which these
expressions have been introduced in Peano’s system, which are completely clear
and quite explicit in the first definition. It may still be objected that
Peano’s elimination of ‘the’ is a failure in that it derives from Peano's confusion
between class membership and class inclusion -- a singleton class would be its
sole member – but these are not clearly distinct notions. It follows that (iii)
"a" is both a class and, according to the interpretation of the
definition, an individual (iv), as is shown by joining the hypothesis preceding
the definition and the definition itself. The objection derives from the received
view on Peano, according to which his logic is, compared to Whitehead’s and
Russell’s, not strict or formal enough, but also contains some important confusions
here and there. And certainly Russell
would be more than happy to correct a minor point. Russell always thinks of
Peano and his school as being strangely free of confusions or mistakes. It may
be said that Peano indeed ‘confuses’ membership with inclusion (cf. Grice ‘not
confused, but mistaken’) given that it was he himself who, predating Frege, introduces
the distinction with the symbol "e.” If the objection amounts to Peano admitting
that the symbol for membership holds between class A and class B, it is true
that this is the case when Peano uses it to indicate the meaning of some
symbols, but only through the reading of "is,” which could be" 'a and
b being classes, "the only member of a belongs to b,” to be the same as
"there is at least one x such that (i) 'there is at least one a such that
for ,': and z belonging to a,. w = z' is equal to y such that y =. x' , and
(ii) x belongs to b ,where both the iota and the unit class are eliminated in
the definiens. There is a similar apparent vicious circularity in Frege's definition
of number. "k e K" as "k is a class"; see also the hypothesis
from above for another example). This by
no means involves confusion, and is shown by the fact that Peano soon adds four
definite properties distinguishing precisely both class inclusion and class
membership,, which has Russell himself preserving the useful and convenient
reading. "ia" does not stand
for the singleton class. Peano states pretty clearly that" 1" (T) makes sense only when applied to this or that
individual, and ''t'' as applied to this or that class, no matter what symbols
is used for these notions. Thus, ''ta'', like "tx" have to be read as
"the class constituted by ...", and" la" as "the only
member of a". Thus, although Peano never uses "ix" (because he
is thinking in terms of this or that class), had he done so its meaning, of
course, would have been exactly the same as "la", with no confusion
at all. "a" stands for a class because it is so stated in the
hypothesis, although it can represent an individual when preceded by the
descriptor, and together with it, i.e. when both constitute a new symbol as a. Peano's
habit is better understood by interpreting what he is saying it in terms of a
propositional function, and then by seeing" la" as being somewhat
similar to x, no matter what reasons of convenience led him to prefer symbols
generally used for classes ("a" instead of"x"). There is
little doubt that this makes the world of a difference for Russell and Sluga (or
Shuga) but not Strawson or Grice, or Quine (“I’m sad all the praise was heaped
by Grice on Russell, not Peano”). For Peano the inverted iota is the symbol for
an operator on a class, it leads us to a different ‘concept’ when it flanks a
term, and this is precisely the point Shuga (or Sluga) makes to Grice –
‘Presupposition and conversational implicature” – the reference to Shuga was
omitted in the reprint in Way of Words). In contrast, for Russell, the iota
operator is only a part of what Whitehead and Russell call an ‘incomplete’
symbol. In fact, Grice borrows the complete-incomplete distinction from
Whitehead and Russell. For Peano, the descriptor can obviously be given a
reductionist eliminationist analysis only in conjunction with the rest of the
‘complete’ symbol, "ia e b.’ Whitehead’s and Russell’s point, again, seems
drawn from Peano. And there is no problem when we join the original hypothesis
with the definition, “a eCis. 3a: x, yea. -::Jx,y. x =y: be CIs • :. . la e b.
=: 3x 3(a =tx. x e b). If it falls within the scope of the quantifier in the
hypothesis, “a” is a variable which occurs both free and bound in the formula –
And it has to be a variable, since qua constant, no quantifier is needed. It is
not clear what Peano’s position would have been. Admittedly, Peano – living
always in a rush in Paris -- does not always display the highest standards of Oxonian
clarity between the several uses of, say, "existence" involved in his
various uses of this or that quantifier. In principle, there would be no problem
when a variable appears both bound and free in the same expression. And this is
so because the variable appears bound in one occurrence and free in another.
And one cannot see how this could affect the main claim. The point Grice is
making here (which he owes to ‘Shuga’) is to recognise the fundamental
similarities in the reductionist analysis of “the” in Peano and Russell. It is
true that Russell objects to an ‘implicit’ or indirect definition under a
hypothesis. He would thus have rejected the Peanoian reductionist analysis of
“the.” However, Whitehead and Russell rejects an ‘implicit’ definition under a
hypothesis in the specific context of the “unrestricted’ variable of “Principia.”
Indeed, Russell had been using, before Whitehead’s warning, this type of
‘implicit’ definition under a hypothesis for a long period the minute he
mastered Peano's system. It is because Russell interprets a definition under a
hypothesis as Peano does, i.e. merely as a device for fixing the denotatum of
this or that symbol in an interpreted formula. When one reads after some symbolic
definition, things like "'x' being ... " or" 'y' being ...
", this counts as a definition under a hypothesis, if only because the
denotatum of the symbol has to be determined. Even if Peano's reductionist
analysis of “the” fails because it within the framework of a merely conditional
definition, the implicature of his original insight (“the” is not primitive)
surely influences Whitehead and Russell. Peano is the first who introduces the
the distinction between a free (or ‘real’) and a bound (or ‘apparent’)
variable, and, predating, Frege -- existential and universal quantification,
with an attempt at a substitutional theory based the concept of a
‘proposition,’ without relying on the concepts of ‘class’ or ‘propositional
function.’ It may be argued that Peano could hardly may have thought that he eliminated
“the.” Peano continues to use “the” and his whole system depends on it. Here, a
Griceian practica reason can easily explain Peano’s retaining “the” in a system
in cases where the symbol is merely the abbreviation of something that is in
principle totally eliminable.In the same vein, Whitehead and Russell do
continue to use “the” after the tripartite expansion. Peano, like Whitehead and
Russell after him, undoubtedly thinks, and rightly, too, that the descriptor IS
eliminable.If he does not flourish this elimination with by full atomistic philosophic
paraphernalia which makes Russell's theory of description one of the most
important logical successes of Cambridge philosopher – that was admired even at
Oxford, if by Grice if not by Strawson, that is another thing. Peano somewhat understated
the importance of his reductionist analysis, but then again, his goal is very
different from Whitehead’s and Russell's logicism. And different goals for
different strokes. In any case, the reductionist analysis of “the” is worked
out by Peano with essentially the same symbolic resources that Whitehead
and Russell employ. In a pretty clear
fashion, coming from him, Peano states two of the three conditions -- existence
and uniqueness – subdivided into ‘at least and at most --, as being what it is
explicitly conveyed by “the.” That is why in a negation of a vacuous
description, being true, the existence claim, within the scope of the negation,
is an annullable implicature, while in an affirmation, the existence claim is
an entailment rendering the affirmation that predicates a feature of a vacuous definite
description is FALSE. Peano has enough symbolic techniques for dispensing with
‘the’, including those required for constructing a definition in use. If he once
rather cursorily noted that for Peano, “i” (‘the’) is primitive and indefinable,
Quine later recognised Peano’s achievement, and he was “happy to get straight
on Peano” on descriptions, having checked all the relevant references and I
fully realising that he was wrong when he previously stated that the iota
descriptor was for Peano primitive and indefinable. Peano deserves all the
credit for the reductionist analysis that has been heaped on Whitehead and Russell,
except perhaps for Whitehead’s and Russell’s elaboration on the philosophical
lesson of a ‘contextual’ definition.For Peano, “the” cannot be defined in
isolation; only in the context of the class (a) from which it is the UNIQUE member
(la), and also in the context of the (b) from which that class is a member, at
least to the extent that the class a is included in the class b. This carries no
conflation of membership and inclusion. It is just a reasonable reading of "
1a Eb". "Ta" is just meaningless if the conditions of existence and
uniqueness (at least and at most) are not fulfilled. Surely it may be argued
that Peano’s reductionist analysis of “the” is not exactly the same as
Whitehead’s and Russell's. Still, in his own version, it surely influenced
Whitehead and Russell. In his "On Fundamentals,” Russell includes a
definition in terms analogous to Peano's, and with almost the same symbols. The
alleged improvement of Whitehead’s and Russell’s definition is in clarity. The
concept of a ‘propositional function’ is indeed preferable to that of class
membership. Other than that, the symbolic expression of the the three-prong
expansive conditions -- existence and uniqueness (at least and at most) -- is preserved.
Russell develops Peano’s claim to the effect that “ia” cannot be defined alone,
but always in the context of a class, which Russell translates as ‘the context
of a propositional function.’ His version in "On Denoting” is well known.
In an earlier letter to Jourdain, dated,
Jan. 3, 1906 we read: “'JI( lX) (x) • =•(:3b) : x. =x. X = b: 'JIb.” (They
never corresponded about the things Strawson corresponded with Grice –
cricket). As G. Landini has pointed out, there is even an earlier occurrence of
this definition in Russell’s "On Substitution" with only very slight
symbolic differences. We can see the heritage from Peano in a clear way if we
compare the definition with the version for classes in the letter to Jourdain:
'JI(t'u) • = : (:3b) : xEU. =x. X = b: 'JIb. Russell can hardly be accused of
plagiarizing Peano; yet all the ideas and the formal devices which are
important for the reductionist analysis of “the” were developed by in Peano,
complete with conceptual and symbolic resources, and which Russell acknowledged
that he studied in detail before formulating his own theory in “On denoting.”
Regarding Meinong’s ontological jungle, for Russell, the principle of
‘subsistence disappears as a consequence of the reductionist analysis of “the,”
which is an outcome of Russell’s semantic monism. Russell's later attitude to
Meinong as his main enemy is a comfortable recourse (Griffin I977a). As for Bocher, Russell himself admits some
influence from his nominalism. Bacher describes mathematical objects as
"mere symbols" and advises
Russell to follow this line of work in a letter, two months before Russell's
key idea. The 'class as one' is merely a symbol or name which we choose at
pleasure.” It is important to mention MacColl who he speaks of "symbolic
universes", with things like a ‘round square.’MacColl also speaks of
"symbolic ‘existence’". Indeed, Russell publishes “On denoting” as a
direct response to MacColl. Refs.: P. Benacerraf and H. Putnam, “Philosophy of Mathematics,
2nd ed.Cambridge.; M. Bocher, 1904a. "The Fundamental Conceptions and
Methods of Mathematics", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society; M.
A. E. Dummett, The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy; Duckworth), G. Frege,
G., Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Breslau: Koebner), tr. J. L. Austin, The Foundations of Arithmetic,
Blackwell, Partial English trans. (§§55-91, 106-1O7) by M. S. Mahoney in
Benacerraf and Putnam; "Uber Sinn und Bedeutung". Trans. as "On
Sense and Reference" in Frege 1952a, pp. 56-78. --, I892b. "Uber
Begriff und Gegenstand". Trans. as "On Concept and Object" in
Frege I952a, pp. 42-55. --, I893a. Grungesetze der Arithmetik, Vol. I Gena:
Pohle). Partial English trans. by M. Furth, The Basic Laws ofArithmetic
(Berkeley: U. California P., 1964). --, I906a. "Uber die Grundlagen der
Geometrie", Jahresbericht der deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung, 15 (1906):
293-309, 377-403, 423-30. English trans. by Eike-Henner WKluge as "On the
Foundations of Geometry", in On the Foundations of Geometry and Formal
Theories of Arithmetic (New Haven and London, Yale U. P., 1971). --, I952a.
Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, tr. by P. T.
Geach and M. Black (Oxford: Blackwell). Grattan-Guinness, L, I977a. Dear
Russell-Dear Jourdain (London: Duckworth). Griffin, N., I977a. "Russell's
'Horrible Travesty' of Meinong", Russell, nos. 25- 28: 39-51. E. D.
Klemke, ed., I970a. Essays on Bertrand Russell (Urbana: U. Illinois P.).
Largeault, ]., I97oa. Logique et philosophie chez Frege (Paris: Nauwelaerts).
MacColl, H., I905a. "Symbolic Reasoning". Repr. in Russell I973a, pp.
308-16. Mosterfn, ]., I968a. "Teoria de las descripciones"
(unpublished PH.D. thesis, U. of Barcelona). Peano, G., as. Opere Scelte, ed.
U. Cassina, 3 vols. (Roma: Cremonese, 1957- 59)· --, I897a. "Studii di
logica matematica". Repr. in 05,2: 201-17. --, I897b. "Logique
mathematique". Repr. in 05,2: 218-81. --, I898a. "Analisi della
teoria dei vettori". Repr. in 05,3: 187-2°7. --, I90oa. "Formules de
logique mathematique". Repr. in 05,2: 304-61. W. V. O. Quine, 1966a.
"Russell's Ontological Development", Journal of Philosophy, 63:
657-67. Repr. in R. Schoenman, ed., Bertrand Russell: Philosopher of the
Century (London: Allen and Unwin,1967). Resnik, M., I965a. "Frege's Theory
of Incomplete Entities", Philosophy of Science, 32: 329-41. E. A.
Rodriguez-Consuegra, 1987a. "Russell's Logicist Definitions of Numbers
1899-1913: Chronology and Significance", History and Philosophy of Logic,
8:141- 69. --, I988a. "Elementos logicistas en la obra de Peano y su
escuela", Mathesis, 4: 221-99· --, I989a. "Russell's Theory ofTypes,
1901-1910: Its Complex Origins in the Unpublished Manuscripts", History
and Philosophy ofLogic, 10: 131-64. --, I990a. "The Origins of Russell's
Theory of Descriptions according to the Unpublished Manuscripts", Russell,
n.s. 9: 99-132. --, I99Ia. The Mathematical Philosophy of BertrandRussell:
Origins and Development (Basel, Boston and Berlin: Birkhauser). --, I992a.
"A New Angle on Russell's 'Inextricable Tangle' over Meaning and
Denotation", Russell, n.s. 12 (1992): 197-207. Russell, B., I903a.
"On the Meaning and Denotation ofPhrases", Papers 4: 283- 96. --,
I905a. "The Existential Import of Propositions", Mind, 14: 398-401.
Repr. in I973a, pp. 98-103. --, I905b. "On Fundamentals", Papers 4:
359....,.413. --, I905c. "On Denoting", Mind, 14: 479-93. Repr. in
LK, pp. 41-56; Papers 4: 415-27. --, I905d "On Substitution".
Unpublished ms. (McMaster U., RAl 220.010940b). --, I906a. "On the
Substitutional Theory of Classes and Relations". In I973a, PP· 165-89· --,
I908a. "Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory ofTypes", American
Journal of Mathematics, 30: 222-62. Repr. in LK, pp. 59-102. --, I973a. Essays
in Analysis, ed. D. Lackey (London: Allen & Unwin). Skosnik, 1972a.
"Russell's Unpublished Writings on Truth and Denoting", Russell, no.
7: 12-13. P. F. Strawson, 1950a. "On Referring". Repr. in Klemke
I970a, pp. 147-72. Tichy, P., I988a. The Foundations of Frege's Logic (Berlin:
de Gruyter). J. Walker, A Study o fFrege (Blackwell).
izzing: Athenian and Oxonian
dialectic.As Grice puts it, "Socrates, like us, was really trying to solve
linguistic puzzles."This is especially true in the longer dialogues of
Plato — the 'Republic' and the Laws'— where we learn quite a lot about
Socrates' method and philosophy, filtered, of course, through his devoted
pupil's mind.Some of the Pre-Socratics, who provide Plato and his master with
many of their problems, were in difficulties about how one thing could be two
things at once — say, a white horse. How could you say 'This is a horse
and this is white' without saying 'This one thing is two things'? Socrates
and Plato together solved this puzzle by saying that what was meant by
saying 'The horse is white' is that the horse partakes of the
eternal, and perfect, Form horseness, which was invisible but really more
horselike than any worldly Dobbin; and ditto about the Form whiteness: it was
whiter than any earthly white. The theory of Form covers our whole world
of ships and shoes and humpty-dumptys, which, taken all in all, are shadows —
approximations of those invisible, perfect Forms. Using the sharp tools in
our new linguistic chest, we can whittle Plato down to size and say that he
invented his metaphysical world of Forms to solve the problem of different
kinds of 'is'es -- what Grice calls the 'izz' proper and the 'izz' improper
('strictly, a 'hazz').You see how Grice, an Oxford counterpart of Plato, uses a
very simple grammatical tool in solving problems like this. Instead of
conjuring up an imaginary edifice of Forms, he simply says there are two
different types of 'is'es — one of predication and one of identity -- 'the izz'
and the 'hazz not.' The first, the 'izz' (which is really a 'hazz' -- it
is a 'hizz' for Socrates being 'rational') asserts a quality: this is
white.' The second 'hazz' points to the object named: 'This is a horse.' By
this simple grammatical analysis we clear away the rubble of what were Plato's
Forms. That's why an Oxford philosopher loves Aristotle -- and his
Athenian dialectic -- (Plato worked in suburbia, The Academy) -- who often,
when defining a thing — for example, 'virtue' — asked himself, 'Does the
definition square with the ordinary views (ta legomena) of men?' But while
Grice does have this or that antecedent, he is surely an innovator in
concentrating MOST (if not all) of his attention on what he calls 'the conversational
implicature.'Grice has little patience with past philosophers.Why bother
listening to men whose problems arose from bad grammar? (He excludes Ariskant
here). At present, we are mostly preoccupied with language and
grammar. Grice would never dream of telling his tutee what he ought to do,
the kind of life he ought to lead.That was no longer an aim of philosophy, he
explained, but even though philosophy has changed in its aims and methods,
people have not, and that was the reason for the complaining tutees -- the few
of them -- , for the bitter attacks of Times' correspondents, and even,
perhaps, for his turning his back on philosophy. Grice came to feel that
Oxford philosophy was a minor revolutionary movement — at least when it is seen
through the eyes of past philosophers. I asked him about the fathers of
the revolution. Again he was evasive. Strictly speaking, the minor
revolution is fatherless, except that Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and
Vitters — all of them, as it happened, Cambridge University figures — "are
responsible for the present state of things at Oxford." under
‘conjunctum,’ we see that there is an alternative vocabulary, of ‘copulatum.’
But Grice prefers to narrow the use of ‘copula’ to izzing’ and ‘hazzing.’ Oddly,
Grice sees izzing as a ‘predicate,’ and symbolises it as Ixy. While he prefers
‘x izzes y,’ he also uses ‘x izz y.’ Under izzing comes Grice’s discussion of
essential predicate, essence, and substance qua predicabilia (secondary
substance). As opposed to ‘hazzing,’ which covers all the ‘ta sumbebeka,’ or
‘accidentia.’
kennyism: Cited by Grice in his British Academy lecture – Grice was
pleased that Kenny translated Vitters’s “Philosophical Grammar” – “He turned it
into more of a philosophical thing than I would have thought one could!”
labours:
the twelve labours of Grice. They are twelve. The first is Extensionalism. The
second is Nominalism. The third is Positivism. The fourth is Naturalism. The
fifth is Mechanism. The sixth is Phenomenalism. The seventh is Reductionism.
The eighth is physicalism. The ninth is materialism. The tenth is Empiricism.
The eleventh is Scepticism, and the twelfth is functionalism. “As I thread my way unsteadily along the tortuous mountain
path which is supposed to lead, in the long distance, to the City of Eternal
Truth, I find myself beset by a multitude of demons and perilous places,
bearing names like Extensionalism, Nominalism, Positivism, Naturalism,
Mechanism, Phenomenalism, Reductionism, Physicalism, Materialism, Empiricism,
Scepticism, and Functionalism; menaces which are, indeed, almost as numerous as
those encountered by a traveller called Christian on another well-publicized
journey.”“The items named in this catalogue are obviously, in many cases, not
to be identified with one another; and it is perfectly possible to maintain a
friendly attitude towards some of them while viewing others with hostility.” “There are many persons, for example, who view Naturalism
with favour while firmly rejecting Nominalism.”“And it is not easy to see how
anyone could couple support for Phenomenalism with support for
Physicalism.”“After a more tolerant (permissive) middle age, I have come to
entertain strong opposition to all of them, perhaps partly as a result of the
strong connection between a number of them and the philosophical technologies
which used to appeal to me a good deal more than they do now.“But how would I
justify the hardening of my heart?” “The
first question is, perhaps, what gives the list of items a unity, so that I can
think of myself as entertaining one twelve-fold antipathy, rather than twelve
discrete antipathies.”
“To this question my answer is that
all the items are forms of what I shall call Minimalism, a propensity which
seeks to keep to a minimum (which may in some cases be zero) the scope
allocated to some advertised philosophical commodity, such as abstract
entities, knowledge, absolute value, and so forth.”“In weighing the case for
and the case against a trend of so high a degree of generality as Minimalism,
kinds of consideration may legitimately enter which would be out of place were
the issue more specific in character; in particular, appeal may be made to
aesthetic considerations.”“In favour of Minimalism, for example, we might hear
an appeal, echoing Quine, to the beauty of ‘desert landscapes.’”“But such an
appeal I would regard as inappropriate.”“We are not being asked by a Minimalist
to give our vote to a special, and no doubt very fine, type of landscape.”“We
are being asked to express our preference for an ordinary sort of landscape at
a recognizably lean time; to rosebushes and cherry-trees in mid-winter, rather
than in spring or summer.”“To change the image somewhat, what bothers me about
whatI am being offered is not that it is bare, but that it has been
systematically and relentlessly undressed.”“I am also adversely influenced by a
different kind of unattractive feature which some, or perhaps even all of these
betes noires seem to possess.”“Many of them are guilty of restrictive practices
which, perhaps, ought to invite the attention of a Philosophical Trade
Commission.”“They limit in advance the range and resources of philosophical
explanation.”“They limit its range by limiting the kinds of phenomena whose
presence calls for explanation.”“Some prima-facie candidates are watered down,
others are washed away.”“And they limit its resources by forbidding the use of
initially tempting apparatus, such as the concepts expressed by psychological,
or more generally intensional, verbs.”“My own instincts operate in a reverse
direction from this.”“I am inclined to look first at how useful such and such
explanatory ideas might prove to be if admitted, and to waive or postpone
enquiry into their certificates of legitimacy.”“I am conscious that all I have
so far said against Minimalsim has been very general in character, and also
perhaps a little tinged with rhetoric.”“This is not surprising in view of the
generality of the topic.”“But all the same I should like to try to make some
provision for those in search of harder tack.”“I can hardly, in the present
context, attempt to provide fully elaborated arguments against all, or even
against any one, of the diverse items which fall under my label
'Minimalism.’”“The best I can do is to try to give a preliminary sketch of what
I would regard as the case against just one of the possible forms of
minimalism, choosing one which I should regard it as particularly important to
be in a position to reject.”“My selection is Extensionalism, a position imbued
with the spirit of Nominalism, and dear both to those who feel that 'Because it
is red' is no more informative as an answer to the question 'Why is a
pillar-box called ‘red’?' than would be 'Because he is Grice' as an answer to
the question 'Why is that distinguished-looking person called "Grice"?',
and also to those who are particularly impressed by the power of
Set-theory.”“The picture which, I suspect, is liable to go along with
Extensionalism is that of the world of particulars as a domain stocked with
innumerable tiny pellets, internally indistinguishable from one another,
butdistinguished by the groups within which they fall, by the 'clubs' to which
they belong; and since the clubs are distinguished only by their memberships,
there can only be one club to which nothing belongs.”“As one might have
predicted from the outset, this leads to trouble when it comes to the
accommodation of explanation within such a system.”“Explanation of the actual
presence of a particular feature in a particular subject depends crucially on
the possibility of saying what would be the consequence of the presence of such
and such features in that subject, regardless of whether the features in
question even do appear in that subject, or indeed in any subject.”“On the face
of it, if one adopts an extensionalist view-point, the presence of a feature in
some particular will have to be re-expressed in terms of that particular's
membership of a certain set.”“But if we proceed along those lines, since there
is only one empty set, the potential consequences of the possession of in fact
unexemplified features would be invariably the same, no matter how different in
meaning the expressions used to specify such features would ordinarily be
judged to be.”“This is certainly not a conclusion which one would care to
accept.”“I can think of two ways of trying to avoid its acceptance, both of
which seem to me to suffer from serious drawbacks.”
linguistic botany: Ryle preferred to call himself a ‘geographer,’ or
cartographer – cf. Grice on conceptual latitude and conceptual longitude. But
then there are plants. Pretentious Austin, mocking continental philosophy
called this ‘linguistic phenomenology,’ meaning literally, the ‘language
phenomena’ out there. Feeling Byzanthine. Possibly the only occasion when Grice
engaged in systematic botany. Like Hare, he would just rather ramble around. It
was said of Hare that he was ‘of a different world.’ In the West Country, he
would go with his mother to identify wild flowers, and they identied “more than
a hundred.” Austin is not clear about ‘botanising.’ Grice helps. Grice was a
meta-linguistic botanist. His point was to criticise ordinary-language
philosophers criticising philosophers. Say: Plato and Ayer say that episteme is
a kind of doxa. The contemporary, if dated, ordinary-language philosopher detects
a nuance, and embarks risking collision with the conversational facts or data:
rushes ahead to exploit the nuance without clarifying it, with wrong dicta
like: What I known to be the case I dont believe to be the case. Surely, a
cancellable implicatum generated by the rational principle of conversational
helpfulness is all there is to the nuance. Grice knew that unlike the
ordinary-language philosopher, he was not providing a taxonomy or description,
but a theoretical explanation. To not all philosophers analysis fits them to a
T. It did to Grice. It did not even fit Strawson. Grice had a natural talent
for analysis. He could not see philosophy as other than conceptual analysis.
“No more, no less.” Obviously, there is an evaluative side to the claim that
the province of philosophy is to be identified with conceptual analysis. Listen
to a theoretical physicist, and hell keep talking about concepts, and even
analysing them! The man in the street may not! So Grice finds himself fighting
with at least three enemies: the man in the street (and trying to reconcile
with him: What I do is to help you), the
scientists (My conceptual analysis is meta-conceptual), and synthetic
philosophers who disagree with Grice that analysis plays a key role in
philosophical methodology. Grice sees this as an update to his post-war Oxford
philosophy. But we have to remember that back when he read that paper, post-war
Oxford philosophy, was just around the corner and very fashionable. By the time
he composed the piece on conceptual analysis as overlapping with the province
of philosophy, he was aware that, in The New World, anaytic had become, thanks
to Quine, a bit of an abusive term, and that Grices natural talent for
linguistic botanising (at which post-war Oxford philosophy excelled) was not
something he could trust to encounter outside Oxford, and his Play Group! Since
his Negation and Personal identity Grice is concerned with reductive analysis.
How many angels can dance on a needles point? A needless point? This is Grices
update to his Post-war Oxford philosophy. More generally concerned with the
province of philosophy in general and conceptual analysis beyond ordinary
language. It can become pretty technical. Note the Roman overtone of province.
Grice is implicating that the other province is perhaps science, even folk
science, and the claims and ta legomena of the man in the street. He also likes
to play with the idea that a conceptual enquiry need not be philosophical.
Witness the very opening to Logic and conversation, Prolegomena. Surely not all
inquiries need be philosophical. In fact, a claim to infame of Grice at the
Play Group is having once raised the infamous, most subtle, question: what is
it that makes a conceptual enquiry philosophically interesting or important? As
a result, Austin and his kindergarten spend three weeks analysing the distinct
inappropriate implicata of adverbial collocations of intensifiers like highly
depressed, versus very depressed, or very red, but not highly red, to no avail.
Actually the logical form of very is pretty complicated, and Grice seems to
minimise the point. Grices moralising implicature, by retelling the story, is
that he has since realised (as he hoped Austin knew) that there is no way he or
any philosopher can dictate to any other philosopher, or himself, what is it
that makes a conceptual enquiry philosophically interesting or important.
Whether it is fun is all that matters. Refs.: The main references are
meta-philosophical, i. e. Grice talking about linguistic botany, rather than
practicing it. “Reply to Richards,” and the references under “Oxonianism” below
are helpful. For actual practice, under ‘rationality.’ There is a specific
essay on linguistic botanising, too. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
lit. hum. (philos.): While Grice would take tutees under different curricula, he
preferred Lit. Hum. So how much philosophy did this include. Plato, Aristotle,
Locke, Kant, and Mill. And that was mainly it. We are referring to the
‘philosophy’ component. Ayer used to say that he would rather have been a
judge. But at Oxford of that generation, having a Lit. Hum. perfectly qualified
you as a philosopher. And people like Ayer, who would rather be a juddge, end
up being a philosopher after going through the Lit. Hum. Grice himself comes as
a “Midlands scholarship boy” straight from Clifton on a classics scholarship,
and being from the Midlands, straight to Corpus. The fact that he got on so
well with Hardie helped. The fact that his interim at Merton worked was good.
The fact that the thing at Rossall did NOT work was good. The fact that he
becamse a fellow at St. John’s OBVIOUSLY helped. The fact that he had Strawson
as a tutee ALSO helped helped. H. P. Grice, Literae Humaniores (Philosophy),
Oxon.
locke.
Grice cites Locke in “Personal identity,” and many more places. He has a
premium for Locke. Acceptance, acceptance and
certeris paribus condition, acceptance and modals, j-acceptance, moral
acceptance, prudential acceptance, v-acceptance, ackrill,
Aristotle, Austin, botvinnik ,
categorical imperative, chicken soul, immortality of,
Davidson, descriptivism, descriptivism and
ends, aequi-vocality thesis, final cause, frege, happiness, happiness and H-desirables, happiness and I-desirables,
happiness as a system of ends, happiness as an end, hardie, hypothetical imperative , hypothetical imperative -- see technical imperatives,
isaacson, incontinence,
inferential principles, judging, judging and acceptance, Kant, logical theory, meaning,
meaning and speech procedures, sentence meaning, what a speaker means, modes, modes
and moods, moods, modes and embedding of mode-markers , judicative operator, volitive operator, mood operators,
moods morality, myro, nagel, necessity, necessity and provability, necessity and relativized
and absolute modalities, principle of total evidence, principles of inference, principles
of inference, reasons, and necessity, provability, radical, rationality : as faculty
manifested in reasoning, flat and variable, proto-rationality, rational being, and value as value-paradigmatic concept,
rationality operator, reasonable, reasoning, reasoning and defeasibility,
reasoning defined, rasoning and explanation, reasoning -- first account of,
reasoning and good reasoning, reasoning, special status of, reasoning the hard
way of, reasoning and incomplete reasoning, reasoning and indeterminacy of,
reasoning and intention, reasoning and misreasoning, reasoning, practical,
reasoning, probabilistic, reasoning as purposive activity, reasoning, the quick
way of , reasoning -- too good to be reasoning,
reasons, reasons altheic, reasons: division into practical and alethic,
reasons: explanatory, reasons justificatory, reasons:
justificatory-explanatory, reasoning and modals, reasoning and necessity,
personal, practical and non-practical (alethic) reasons compared, systematizing
hypothesis: types of, Russell, satisfactoriness, technical imperatives, value,
value paradigmatic concepts, Wright, willing and acceptance, Vitters. Index acceptance 71-2 , 80-7 and certeris
paribus condition 77 and modals 91-2 J-acceptance 51 moral 61 , 63 , 87
prudential 97-111 V-acceptance 51 Ackrill, J. L. 119-20 Aristotle 4-5 , 19 ,
24-5 , 31 , 32 , 43 , 98-9 , 112-15 , 120 , 125 Austin, J. L. 99 Botvinnik 11 ,
12 , 18 Categorical Imperative 4 , 70 chicken soul, immortality of 11-12
Davidson, Donald 45-8 , 68 descriptivism 92 ends 100-10 Equivocality thesis
x-xv , 58 , 62 , 66 , 70 , 71 , 80 , 90 final cause 43-4 , 66 , 111 Frege,
Gottlob 50 happiness 97-134 and H-desirables 114-18 , 120 and I-desirables
114-18 , 120 , 122 , 128 as a system of ends 131-4 as an end 97 , 113-15 ,
119-20 , 123-8 Hardie, W. F. R. 119 hypothetical imperative 97 , see technical
imperatives Isaacson, Dan 30n. incontinence 25 , 47 inferential principles 35
judging 51 , see acceptance Kant 4 , 21 , 25 , 31 , 43 , 44-5 , 70 , 77-8 ,
86-7 , 90-8 logical theory 61 meaning ix-x and speech procedures 57-8 sentence
meaning 68-9 what a speaker means 57-8 , 68 modes 68 , see moods moods
xxii-xxiii , 50-6 , 59 , 69 , 71-2 embedding of mode-markers 87-9 judicative
operator 50 , 72-3 , 90 volative operator 50 , 73 , 90 mood operators , see
moods morality 63 , 98 Myro, George 40 Nagel, Thomas 64n. necessity xii-xiii ,
xvii-xxiii , 45 , 58-9 and provability 59 , 60-2 and relativized and absolute
modalities 56-66 principle of total evidence 47 , 80-7 principles of inference
5 , 7 , 9 , 22-3 , 26 , 35 see also reasons, and necessity provability 59 , 60-2 radical 50-3 , 58-9 ,
72 , 88 rationality : as faculty manifested in reasoning 5 flat and variable
28-36 proto-rationality 33 rational being 4 , 25 , 28-30 and value as
value-paradigmatic concept 35 rationality operator xiv-xv , 50-1 reasonable
23-5 reasoning 4-28 and defeasibility 47 , 79 , 92 defined 13-14 , 87-8 and
explanation xxix-xxxv , 8 first account of 5-6 , 13-14 , 26-8 good reasoning 6
, 14-16 , 26-7 special status of 35 the hard way of 17 end p.135 incomplete
reasoning 8-14 indeterminacy of 12-13 and intention 7 , 16 , 18-25 , 35-6 ,
48-9 misreasoning 6-8 , 26 practical 46-50 probabilistic 46-50 as purposive
activity 16-19 , 27-8 , 35 the quick way of 17 too good to be reasoning 14-18
reasons 37-66 altheic 44-5 , 49 division into practical and alethic 44 , 68
explanatory 37-9 justificatory 39-40 , 67-8 justificatory-explanatory 40-1 , 67
and modals 45 and necessity 44-5 personal 67 practical and non-practical
(alethic) reasons compared xiixiii , 44-50 , 65 , 68 , 73-80 systematizing
hypothesis 41-4 types of 37-44 Russell, Bertrand 50 satisfactoriness 60 , 87-9
, 95 technical imperatives 70 , 78 , 90 , 93-6 , 97 value 20 , 35 , 83 , 87-8
value paradigmatic concepts 35-6 von Wright 44 willing 50 , see acceptance
Wittengenstein, Ludwig 50
materia et forma. If anything characterizes
‘analytic’ philosophy, then it is presumably the emphasis placed on analysis. But
as history shows, there is a wide range of conceptions of analysis, so such a
characterization says nothing that would distinguish analytic philosophy from
much of what has either preceded or developed alongside it. Given that the
decompositional conception is usually offered as the main conception, it might
be thought that it is this that characterizes analytic philosophy, even Oxonian
'informalists' like Strawson.But this conception was prevalent in the early
modern period, shared by both the British Empiricists and Leibniz, for
example. Given that Kant denied the importance of de-compositional
analysis, however, it might be suggested that what characterizes analytic
philosophy is the value it places on such analysis. This might be true of
G. E. Moore's early work, and of one strand within analytic philosophy; but it
is not generally true. What characterizes analytic philosophy as it was
founded by Frege and Russell is the role played by logical analysis, which
depended on the development of modern logic. Although other and subsequent
forms of analysis, such as 'linguistic' analysis, were less wedded to systems
of FORMAL logic, the central insight motivating logical analysis
remained. Pappus's account of method in ancient Greek geometry
suggests that the regressive conception of analysis was dominant at the time —
however much other conceptions may also have been implicitly involved.In the
early modern period, the decompositional conception became widespread.What
characterizes analytic philosophy—or at least that central strand that
originates in the work of Frege and Russell—is the recognition of what was
called earlier the transformative or interpretive dimension of analysis.Any
analysis presupposes a particular framework of interpretation, and work is done
in interpreting what we are seeking to analyze as part of the process of
regression and decomposition. This may involve transforming it in some
way, in order for the resources of a given theory or conceptual framework to be
brought to bear. Euclidean geometry provides a good illustration of
this. But it is even more obvious in the case of analytic geometry, where
the geometrical problem is first ‘translated’ into the language of algebra and
arithmetic in order to solve it more easily.What Descartes and Fermat did for
analytic geometry, Frege and Russell did for analytic PHILOSOPHY. Analytic
philosophy is ‘analytic’ much more in the way that analytic geometry (as
Fermat's and Descartes's) is ‘analytic’ than in the crude decompositional sense
that Kant understood it. The interpretive dimension of philosophical
analysis can also be seen as anticipated in medieval scholasticism and it is
remarkable just how much of modern concerns with propositions, meaning,
reference, and so on, can be found in the medieval
literature. Interpretive analysis is also illustrated in the nineteenth
century by Bentham's conception of paraphrasis, which he characterized
as "that sort of exposition which may be afforded by transmuting into
a proposition, having for its subject some real entity, a proposition which has
not for its subject any other than a fictitious entity." Bentham, a
palaeo-Griceian, applies the idea in ‘analyzing away’ talk of ‘obligations’,
and the anticipation that we can see here of Russell's theory of descriptions
has been noted by, among others, Wisdom and Quine in ‘Five Milestones of
Empiricism.'vide: Wisdom on Bentham as palaeo-Griceian.What was crucial in
analytic philosophy, however, was the development of quantificational theory,
which provided a far more powerful interpretive system than anything that had
hitherto been available. In the case of Frege and Russell, the system into
which statements were ‘translated’ was predicate calculus, and the divergence
that was thereby opened up between the 'matter' and the logical 'form' meant
that the process of 'translation' (or logical construction or deconstruction)
itself became an issue of philosophical concern. This induced greater
self-consciousness about our use of language and its potential to mislead us (the
infamous implicatures, which are neither matter nor form -- they are IMPLICATED
matter, and the philosopher may want to arrive at some IMPLICATED form -- as
'the'), and inevitably raised semantic, epistemological and metaphysical
questions about the relationships between language, logic, thought and reality
which have been at the core of analytic philosophy ever since. Both
Frege and Russell (after the latter's initial flirtation with then fashionable
Hegelian Oxonian idealism -- "We were all Hegelians then") were
concerned to show, against Kant, that arithmetic (or number theory, from Greek
'arithmos,' number -- if not geometry) is a system of analytic and not
synthetic truths, as Kant misthought. In the Grundlagen, Frege offers a
revised conception of analyticity, which arguably endorses and generalizes
Kant's logical as opposed to phenomenological criterion, i.e., (ANL) rather
than (ANO) (see the supplementary section on Kant): (AN) A
truth is analytic if its proof depends only on general logical laws and
definitions. The question of whether arithmetical truths are analytic then
comes down to the question of whether they can be derived purely
logically. This was the failure of Ramsey's logicist project.Here we
already have ‘transformation’, at the theoretical level — involving a
reinterpretation of the concept of analyticity.To demonstrate this, Frege
realized that he needed to develop logical theory in order to 'FORMALISE' a
mathematical statements, which typically involve multiple generality or multiple
quantification -- alla "The altogether nice girl loves the
one-at-at-a-time sailor" (e.g., ‘Every natural number has a
successor’, i.e. ‘For every natural number x there is another natural number y
that is the successor of x’). This development, by extending the use of
function-argument analysis in mathematics to logic and providing a notation for
quantification, is essentially the achievement of his Begriffsschrift,
where he not only created the first system of predicate calculus but also, using
it, succeeded in giving a logical analysis of mathematical induction (see Frege
FR, 47-78). In Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, Frege goes on to
provide a logical analysis of number statements (as in "Mary had two
little lambs; therefore she has one little lamb" -- "Mary has a
little lamb" -- "Mary has at least one lamb and at most one
lamb").
Frege's central idea is
that a number statement contains an assertion about a 'concept.'A statement
such as Jupiter has four moons.is to be understood NOT as *predicating* of
*Jupiter* the property of having four moons, but as predicating of the
'concept' "moon of Jupiter" the second-level property " ... has
at least and at most four instances," which can be logically
defined. The significance of this construal can be brought out by
considering negative existential statements (which are equivalent to number
statements involving "0"). Take the following negative
existential statement: Unicorns do not exist. Or Grice's"Pegasus
does not exist.""A flying horse does not exist."If we attempt to
analyze this decompositionally, taking the 'matter' to leads us to the 'form,'
which as philosophers, is all we care for, we find ourselves asking what these
unicorns or this flying horse called Pegasus are that have the property of
non-existence!Martin, to provoke Quine, called his cat 'Pegasus.'For Quine, x
is Pegasus if x Pegasus-ises (Quine, to abbreviate, speaks of 'pegasise,' which
is "a solicism, at Oxford."We may then be forced to posit the
Meinongian subsistence — as opposed to existence — of a unicorn -- cf. Warnock
on 'Tigers exist' in "Metaphysics in Logic" -- just as Meinong (in
his ontological jungle, as Grice calls it) and Russell did ('the author of
Waverley does not exist -- he was invented by the literary society"), in
order for there to be something that is the subject of our statement.
On the Fregean account,
however, to deny that something exists is to say that the corresponding concept
has no instance -- it is not possible to apply 'substitutional quantification.'
(This leads to the paradox of extensionalism, as Grice notes, in that all void
predicates refer to the empty set). There is no need to posit any
mysterious object, unless like Locke, we proceed empirically with complex ideas
(that of a unicorn, or flying horse) as simple ideas (horse, winged). The
Fregean analysis of (0a) consists in rephrasing it into (0b), which can then be
readily FORMALISED as(0b) The concept unicorn is not instantiated. (0c) ~(∃x) Fx. Similarly, to say that God
exists is to say that the concept God is (uniquely) instantiated, i.e., to deny
that the concept has 0 instances (or 2 or more instances). This is
actually Russell's example ("What does it mean that (Ex)God?")But cf.
Pears and Thomson, two collaborators with Grice in the reprint of an old
Aristotelian symposium, "Is existence a predicate?"On this view,
existence is no longer seen as a (first-level) predicate, but instead,
existential statements are analyzed in terms of the (second-level) predicate is
instantiated, represented by means of the existential quantifier. As Frege
notes, this offers a neat diagnosis of what is wrong with the ontological
argument, at least in its traditional form (GL, §53). All the problems
that arise if we try to apply decompositional analysis (at least straight off)
simply drop away, although an account is still needed, of course, of concepts
and quantifiers. The possibilities that this strategy of
‘translating’ 'MATTER' into 'FORM' opens up are enormous.We are no longer
forced to treat the 'MATTER' of a statement as a guide to 'FORM', and are
provided with a means of representing that form. This is the value of
logical analysis.It allows us to ‘analyze away’ problematic linguistic MATERIAL
or matter-expressions and explain what it is going on at the level of the FORM,
not the MATTERGrice calls this 'hylemorphism,' granting "it is confusing
in that we are talking 'eidos,' not 'morphe'." This strategy was employed,
most famously, in Russell's theory of descriptions (on 'the' and 'some') which
was a major motivation behind the ideas of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.SeeGrice,
"Definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular"Although
subsequent philosophers were to question the assumption that there could ever
be a definitive logical analysis of a given statement, the idea that this or
that 'material' expression may be systematically misleading has
remained. To illustrate this, consider the following examples from
Ryle's essay ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’:
(Ua) Unpunctuality is reprehensible.Or from Grice's and Strawson's
seminar on Aristotle's Categories:Smith's disinteresteness and altruism are in
the other room.Banbury is an egoism. Egoism is reprehensible Banbury is
malevolent. Malevolence is rephrensible. Banbury is an altruism. Altruism and
cooperativeness are commendable. In terms of second-order predicate calculus. If
Banbury is altruist, Banbury is commendable. (Ta) Banbury hates (the
thought of) going to hospital. Ray Noble loves the very thought of
you. In each case, we might be tempted to make unnecessary 'reification,' or
subjectification, as Grice prefers (mocking 'nominalisation' -- a category
shift) taking ‘unpunctuality’ and ‘the thought of going to hospital’ as
referring to a thing, or more specifically a 'prote ousia,' or spatio-temporal
continuant. It is because of this that Ryle describes such expressions as
‘systematically misleading’. As Ryle later told Grice, "I would have
used 'implicaturally misleading,' but you hadn't yet coined the thing!" (Ua)
and (Ta) must therefore be rephrased: (Ub) Whoever is unpunctual
deserves that other people should reprove him for being unpunctual. Although
Grice might say that it is one harmless thing to reprove 'interestedness' and
another thing to recommend BANBURY himself, not his disinterestedness. (Tb)
Jones feels distressed when he thinks of what he will undergo IF he goes to
hospital. Or in more behaviouristic terms:
The dog salivates when
he salivates that he will be given food.(Ryle avoided 'thinking' like the
rats). In this or that FORM of the MATTER, there is no overt talk at all
of ‘unpunctuality’ or ‘thoughts’, and hence nothing to tempt us to posit the
existence of any corresponding entities. The problems that otherwise arise
have thus been ‘analyzed away’. At the time that he wrote
‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’, Ryle too, assumed that every statement
has a form -- even Sraffa's gesture has a form -- that was to be exhibited
correctly.But when he gave up this assumption (and call himself and Strawson
'informalist') he did not give up the motivating idea of conceptual analysis—to
show what is wrong with misleading expressions. In The Concept of Mind
Ryle sought to explain what he called the ‘category-mistake’ involved in talk
of the mind as a kind of ‘Ghost in the Machine’.
"I was so
fascinated with this idea that when they offered me the editorship of
"Mind," on our first board meeting I proposed we changed the name of
the publication to "Ghost." They objected, with a smile."Ryle's
aim is to “'rectify' the conceptual geography or botany of the knowledge which
we already possess," an idea that was to lead to the articulation of
connective rather than 'reductive,' alla Grice, if not reductionist, alla
Churchland, conceptions of analysis, the emphasis being placed on elucidating
the relationships BETWEEN this or that concepts without assuming that there is
a privileged set of intrinsically basic or prior concepts (v. Oxford Linguistic
Philosophy). For Grice, surely 'intend' is prior to 'mean,' and
'utterer' is prior to 'expression'. Yet he is no reductionist. In
"Negation," introspection and incompatibility are prior to 'not.'In
"Personal identity," memory is prior to 'self.'Etc. Vide, Grice,
"Conceptual analysis and the defensible province of philosophy."Ryle
says, "You might say that if it's knowledge it cannot be rectified, but
this is Oxford! Everything is rectifiable!" What these varieties of
conceptual analysis suggest, then, is that what characterizes analysis in
analytic philosophy is something far richer than the mere ‘de-composition’ of a
concept into its ‘constituents’. Although reductive is surely a
necessity.The alternative is to take the concept as a 'theoretical' thing
introduced by Ramseyfied description in this law of this theory.For things
which are a matter of intuition, like all the concepts Grice has philosophical
intuitions for, you cannot apply the theory-theory model. You need the
'reductive analysis.' And the analysis NEEDS to be 'reductive' if it's to be
analysis at all! But this is not to say that the decompositional conception of
analysis plays no role at all. It can be found in Moore, for example.It
might also be seen as reflected in the approach to the analysis of concepts
that seeks to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for their correct
employment, as in Grice's infamous account of 'mean' for which he lists
Urmson and Strawson as challenging the sufficiency, and himself as challenging
the necessity! Conceptual analysis in this way goes back to the Socrates
of Plato's early dialogues -- and Grice thought himself an English Socrates --
and Oxonian dialectic as Athenian dialectic-- "Even if I never saw him
bothering people with boring philosophical puzzles."But it arguably
reached its heyday with Grice.The definition of ‘knowledge’ as ‘justified true
belief’ is perhaps the second most infamous example; and this definition was
criticised in Gettier's classic essay -- and again by Grice in the section on
the causal theory of 'know' in WoW -- Way of Words.The specification of
necessary and sufficient conditions may no longer be seen as the primary aim of
conceptual analysis, especially in the case of philosophical concepts such as
‘knowledge’, which are fiercely contested.But consideration of such conditions
remains a useful tool in the analytic philosopher's toolbag, along with the
implicature, what Grice called his "new shining tool" "even if
it comes with a new shining skid!"The
use of ‘logical form,’ as Grice and Strawson note, tends to be otiose. They
sometimes just use ‘form.’ It’s different from the ‘syntactic matter’ of the
expression. Matter is strictly what Ammonius uses to translate ‘hyle’ as
applied to this case. When Aristotle in Anal. Pr. Uses variable letters that’s
the forma or eidos; when he doesn’t (and retreats to ‘homo’, etc.) he is into ‘hyle,’
or ‘materia.’ What other form is there? Grammatical? Surface versus deep
structure? God knows. It’s not even clear with Witters! Grice at least has a
theory. You draw a skull to communicate there is danger. So you are concerned
with the logical form of “there is danger.” An exploration on logical form can
start and SHOULD INCLUDE what Grice calls the ‘one-off predicament,” of an open
GAIIB.” To use Carruthers’s example and Blackburn: You draw an arrow to have
your followers choose one way on the fork of the road. The logical form is that
of the communicatum. The emissor means that his follower should follow the left
path. What is the logical form of this? It may be said that “p” has a simplex
logical form, the A is B – predicate calculus, or ‘predicative’ calculus, as
Starwson more traditionally puts it! Then there is molecular complex logical
form with ‘negation,’ ‘and’, ‘or’, and ‘if.’. you can’t put it in symbols, it’s
not worth saying. Oh, no, if you can put it in symbols, it’s not worth saying.
Grice loved the adage, “quod per litteras demonstrare volumus, universaliter
demonstramus.”
low-subjective contraster: in WoW: 140, Grice distinguishes between a subjective
contraster (such as “The pillar box seems red,” “I see that the pillar box is
red,” “I believe that the pillar box is red” and “I know that the pillar box is
red”) and an objective contraster (“The pillar box is red.”) Within these
subjective contraster, Grice proposes a sub-division between nonfactive
(“low-subjective”) and (“high-subjective”). Low-subjective contrasters are “The
pillar box seems red” and “I believe that the pillar box is red,” which do NOT
entail the corresponding objective contraster. The high-subjective contraster,
being factive or transparent, does. The entailment in the case of the
high-subjective contraster is explained via truth-coniditions: “A sees that the
pillar box is red” and “A knows that the pillar box is red” are analysed ‘iff’
the respective low-subjective contraster obtains (“The pillar box seems red,”
and “A believes that the pillar box is red”), the corresponding objective
contraster also obtains (“The pillar box is red”), and a third condition
specifying the objective contraster being the CAUSE of the low-subjective
contraster. Grice repeats his account of suprasegmental. Whereas in “Further
notes about logic and conversation,” he had focused on the accent on the
high-subjective contraster (“I KNOW”), he now focuses his attention on the
accent on the low subjective contraster. “I BELIEVE that the pillar box is
red.” It is the accented version that gives rise to the implicatum, generated
by the utterer’s intention that the addressee’s will perceive some restraint or
guardedness on the part of the utterer of ‘going all the way’ to utter a claim to ‘seeing’ or ‘knowing’, the high-subjective
contraster, but stopping short at the low-subjective contraster.
martian
conversational implicatum: “Oh, all
the difference in the world!” Grice converses with a
Martian. About Martian x-s that the pillar box is red. (upper x-ing
organ) Martian y-s that the pillar box is red. (lower y-ing organ). Grice: Is
x-ing that the pillar box is red LIKE y-ing that the pillar-box is red?
Martian: Oh, no; there's all the difference in the world! Analogy x smells
sweet. x tastes sweet. Martian x-s the the pillar box is red-x. Martian y-s
that the pillar box is red-y. Martian x-s the pillar box is medium red. Martian
y-s the pillar box is light red.
maximum: Grice uses ‘maximum’ variously. “Maximally effective
exchange of information.” Maximum is used in decision theory and in value
theory. Cfr. Kasher on maximin. “Maximally effective exchange of information”
(WOW: 28) is the exact phrase Grice uses, allowing it should be generalised. He
repeats the idea in “Epilogue.” Things did not change.
Mechanism.
A monster. But on p. 286 of WoW he speaks of mechanism, and psychological
mechanism. Or rather of this or that psychological mechanism to be BENEFICIAL
for a mouse that wants to eat a piece of cheese. He uses it twice, and it’s the
OPERATION of the mechanism which is beneficial. So a psychophysical
correspondence is desirable for the psychological mechanism to operate in a way
that is beneficial for the sentient creature. Later in that essay he now
applies ‘mechanism’ to communication, and he speak of a ‘communication
mechanism’ being beneficial. In particular he is having in mind Davidson’s
transcendental argument for the truth of the transmitted beliefs. “If all our
transfers involved mistaken beliefs, it is not clear that the communication
mechanism would be beneficial for the institution of ‘shared experience.’”
mentatum: Grice prefers psi-transmission. He knows that ‘mentatum’
sounds too much like ‘mind,’ and the mind is part of the ‘rational soul,’ not
even encompassing the rational pratical soul. If perhaps Grice was unhappy
about the artificial flavour to saying that a word is a sign, Grice surely
should have checked with all the Grecian-Roman cognates of mean, as in his
favourite memorative-memorable distinction, and the many Grecian realisations,
or with Old Roman mentire and mentare. Lewis and Short have
“mentĭor,” f. mentire, L and S note, is prob. from root men-, whence mens and
memini, q. v. The original meaning, they say, is to invent, hence, but
alla Umberto Eco with sign, mentire comes to mean in later use what Grice (if
not the Grecians) holds is the opposite of mean. Short and Lewis render mentire
as to lie, cheat, deceive, etc., to pretend, to declare falsely: mentior nisi
or si mentior, a form of asseveration, I am a liar, if, etc.: But also,
animistically (modest mentalism?) of things, as endowed with a mind. L and S go
on: to deceive, impose upon, to deceive ones self, mistake, to lie or speak
falsely about, to assert falsely, make a false promise about; to feign,
counterfeit, imitate a shape, nature, etc.: to devise a falsehood, to
assume falsely, to promise falsely, to invent, feign, of a poetical
fiction: “ita mentitur (sc. Homerus), Trop., of inanim. grammatical
Subjects, as in Semel fac illud, mentitur tua quod subinde tussis, Do what your
cough keeps falsely promising, i. e. die, Mart. 5, 39, 6. Do what your cough
means! =imp. die!; hence, mentĭens, a fallacy, sophism: quomodo
mentientem, quem ψευδόμενον vocant, dissolvas;” mentītus, imitated,
counterfeit, feigned (poet.): “mentita tela;” For “mentior,” indeed, there is a
Griceian implicatum involving rational control. The rendition of mentire as to
lie stems from a figurative shift from to be mindful, or inventive, to
have second thoughts" to "to lie, conjure up". But Grice would
also have a look at cognate “memini,” since this is also cognate with “mind,”
“mens,” and covers subtler instances of mean, as in Latinate, “mention,” as in
Grices “use-mention” distinction. mĕmĭni, cognate with "mean" and
German "meinen," to think = Grecian ὑπομένειν, await (cf. Schiffer,
"remnants of meaning," if I think, I hesitate, and therefore re-main,
cf. Grecian μεν- in μένω, Μέντωρ; μαν- in μαίνομαι, μάντις; μνᾶ- in μιμνήσκω,
etc.; cf.: maneo, or manere, as in remain. The idea, as Schiffer well
knows or means, being that if you think, you hesitate, and therefore, wait and
remain], moneo, reminiscor [cf. reminiscence], mens, Minerva, etc. which L and
S render as “to remember, recollect, to think of, be mindful of a
thing; not to have forgotten a person or thing, to bear in
mind (syn.: reminiscor, recordor).” Surely with a relative clause, and to
make mention of, to mention a thing, either in speaking or writing (rare
but class.). Hence. mĕmĭnens, mindful And then Grice would have a look at
moneo, as in adMONish, also cognate is “mŏnĕo,” monere, causative from the root
"men;" whence memini, q. v., mens (mind), mentio (mention); lit. to
cause to think, to re-mind, put in mind of, bring to ones recollection; to
admonish, advise, warn, instruct, teach (syn.: hortor, suadeo, doceo). L
and S are Griceian if not Grecian when they note that ‘monere’ can be used
"without the accessory notion [implicatum or entanglement, that is] of
reminding or admonishing, in gen., to teach, instruct, tell, inform, point
out; also, to announce, predict, foretell, even if also to
punish, chastise (only in
Tacitus): “puerili verbere moneri.” And surely, since he loved to re-minisced,
Grice would have allowed to just earlier on just minisced. Short and Lewis
indeed have rĕmĭniscor, which, as they point out, features the root men; whence
mens, memini; and which they compare to comminiscere, v. comminiscor, to recall
to mind, recollect, remember (syn. recordor), often used by the Old
Romans with with Grices beloved that-clause, for sure. For what is
the good of reminiscing or comminiscing, if you cannot reminisce that Austin
always reminded Grice that skipping the dictionary was his big mistake! If
Grice uses mention, cognate with mean, he loved commenting Aristotle. And
commentare is, again, cognate with mean. As opposed to the development of the
root in Grecian, or English, in Roman the root for mens is quite represented in
many Latinate cognates. But a Roman, if not a Grecian, would perhaps be puzzled
by a Grice claiming, by intuition, to retrieve the necessary and sufficient
conditions for the use of this or that expression. When the Roman is told that
the Griceian did it for fun, he understands, and joins in the fun! Indeed,
hardly a natural kind in the architecture of the world, but one that fascinated
Grice and the Grecian philosophers before him! Communication.
merton: merton holds a portrait of H. P. Grice. And the
association is closer. Grice was sometime Hammondsworth Scholar at Merton. It
was at Merton he got the acquaintance with S. Watson, later historian at St.
John’s. Merton is the see of the Sub-Faculty of Philosophy. What does that
mean? It means that the Lit. Hum. covers more than philosophy. Grice was Lit.
Hum. (Phil.), which means that his focus was on this ‘sub-faculty.’ The faculty
itself is for Lit. Hum. in general, and it is not held anywhere specifically.
Grice loved Ryle’s games with this:: “Oxford is a universale, with St. John’s
being a particulare which can become your sense-datum.’
meta-ethics. “philosophia moralis” was te traditional label – until
Nowell-Smith. Hare is professor of moral philosophy, not meta-ethics. Strictly,
‘philosophia practica’ as opposed to ‘philosophia speculativa’. Philosophia speculativa is distinguished
from philosophia
practica; the former is further differentiated into physica,
mathematica, and theologia; the latter into moralis, oeconomica and
politica. Surely the philosophical mode does not change
when he goes into ethics or other disciplines. Philosophy is ENTIRE. Ethics
relates to metaphysics, but this does not mean that the philosopher is a
moralist. In this respect, unlike, say Philippa Foot, Grice remains a
meta-ethicist. Grice is ‘meta-ethically’ an futilitarian, since he provides a
utilitarian backing of Kantian rationalism, within his empiricist, naturalist,
temperament. For Grice it is complicated, since there is an ethical or
practical side even to an eschatological argument. Grice’s views on ethics are
Oxonian. At Oxford, meta-ethics is a generational thing: there’s Grice, and the
palaeo-Gricieans, and the post-Gricieans. There’s Hampshire, and Hare, and Nowell-Smith,
and Warnock. P. H. Nowell Smith felt overwhelmed by Grice’s cleverness and they
would hardly engage in meta-ethical questions. But Nowell Smith felt that Grice
was ‘too clever.’ Grice objected Hare’s use of descriptivism and Strawsons use
of definite descriptor. Grice preferred to say “the the.”. “Surely Hare is
wrong when sticking with his anti-descriptivist diatribe. Even his dictum is
descriptive!” Grice was amused that it all started with Abbott BEFORE 1879,
since Abbott’s first attempt was entitled, “Kant’s theory of ethics, or
practical philosophy” (1873). ”! Grices explorations on morals are language
based. With a substantial knowledge of the classical languages (that are so
good at verb systems and modes like the optative, that English lacks), Grice
explores modals like should, (Hampshire) ought to (Hare) and, must
(Grice ‒ necessity). Grice is well aware of Hares reflections on the neustic
qualifications on the phrastic. The imperative has usually been one source for
the philosophers concern with the language of morals. Grice attempts to
balance this with a similar exploration on good, now regarded as the
value-paradeigmatic notion par excellence. We cannot understand, to echo
Strawson, the concept of a person unless we understand the concept of a good
person, i.e. the philosopher’s conception of a good person. Morals
is very Oxonian. There were in Grices time only three chairs of philosophy at
Oxford: the three W: the Waynflete chair of metaphysical philosophy, the
Wykeham chair of logic (not philosophy, really), and the White chair of moral
philosophy. Later, the Wilde chair of philosophical psychology was
created. Grice was familiar with Austin’s cavalier attitude to morals as
Whites professor of moral philosophy, succeeding Kneale. When Hare
succeeds Austin, Grice knows that it is time to play with the neustic
implicatum! Grices approach to morals is very meta-ethical and starts with
a fastidious (to use Blackburns characterisation, not mine!) exploration of
modes related to propositional phrases involving should, ought to, and
must. For Hampshire, should is the moral word par excellence. For
Hare, it is ought. For Grice, it is only must that preserves that sort of
necessity that, as a Kantian rationalist, he is looking for. However, Grice
hastens to add that whatever hell say about the buletic, practical or boulomaic
must must also apply to the doxastic must, as in What goes up must come down.
That he did not hesitate to use necessity operators is clear from his axiomatic
treatment, undertaken with Code, on Aristotelian categories of izzing and
hazzing. To understand Grices view on ethics, we should return to the idea
of creature construction in more detail. Suppose we are
genitors-demigods-designing living creatures, creatures Grice calls Ps. To
design a type of P is to specify a diagram and table for that type plus
evaluative procedures, if any. The design is implemented in animal stuff-flesh
and bones typically. Let us focus on one type of P-a very sophisticated type
that Grice, borrowing from Locke, calls very intelligent rational Ps. Let me be
a little more explicit, and a great deal more speculative, about the possible
relation to ethics of my programme for philosophical psychology. I shall
suppose that the genitorial programme has been realized to the point at which
we have designed a class of Ps which, nearly following Locke, I might call very
intelligent rational Ps. These Ps will be capable of putting themselves in the
genitorial position, of asking how, if they were constructing themselves with a
view to their own survival, they would execute this task; and, if we have done
our work aright, their answer will be the same as ours . We might, indeed,
envisage the contents of a highly general practical manual, which these Ps
would be in a position to compile. The contents of the initial manual would
have various kinds of generality which are connected with familiar discussions
of universalizability. The Ps have, so far, been endowed only with the
characteristics which belong to the genitorial justified psychological theory;
so the manual will have to be formulated in terms of that theory, together with
the concepts involved in the very general description of livingconditions which
have been used to set up that theory; the manual will therefore have conceptual
generality. There will be no way of singling out a special subclass of
addressees, so the injunctions of the manual will have to be addressed,
indifferently, to any very intelligent rational P, and will thus have
generality of form. And since the manual can be thought of as being composed by
each of the so far indistinguishable Ps, no P would include in the manual
injunctions prescribing a certain line of conduct in circumstances to which he
was not likely to be Subjects; nor indeed could he do so even if he would. So
the circumstances for which conduct is prescribed could be presumed to be such
as to be satisfied, from time to time, by any addressee; the manual, then, will
have generality of application. Such a manual might, perhaps, without
ineptitude be called an immanuel; and the very intelligent rational Ps, each of
whom both composes it and from time to time heeds it, might indeed be ourselves
(in our better moments, of course). Refs.: Most of Grice’s theorizing on ethics
counts as ‘meta-ethic,’ especially in connection with R. M. Hare, but also with
less prescriptivist Oxonian philosophers such as Nowell-Smith, with his
bestseller for Penguin, Austin, Warnock, and Hampshire. Keywords then are
‘ethic,’ and ‘moral.’ There are many essays on both Kantotle, i.e. on Aristotle
and Kant. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.
metaphysical
deduction: cf. the transcendental club. or argument. transcendental argument Metaphysics, epistemology An argument that
starts from some accepted experience or fact to prove that there must be
something which is beyond experience but which is a necessary condition for
making the accepted experience or fact possible. The goal of a transcendental
argument is to establish the transcendental
dialectic truth of this precondition. If there is something X of which Y is a
necessary condition, then Y must be true. This form of argument became
prominent in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where he argued that the existence
of some fundamental a priori concepts, namely the categories, and of space and
time as pure forms of sensibility, are necessary to make experience possible.
In contemporary philosophy, transcendental arguments are widely proposed as a
way of refuting skepticism. Wittgenstein used this form of argument to reject
the possibility of a private language that only the speaker could understand.
Peter Strawson employs a transcendental argument to prove the
perception-independent existence of material particulars and to reject a
skeptical attitude toward the existence of other minds. There is disagreement
about the kind of necessity involved in transcendental arguments, and Barry
Stroud has raised important questions about the possibility of transcendental
arguments succeeding. “A transcendental argument attempts to prove q by proving
it is part of any correct explanation of p, by proving it a precondition of p’s
possibility.” Nozick Philosophical Explanations transcendental deduction
Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics For Kant, the argument to prove
that certain a priori concepts are legitimately, universally, necessarily, and
exclusively applicable to objects of experience. Kant employed this form of
argument to establish the legitimacy of space and time as the forms of
intuition, of the claims of the moral law in the Critique of Practical Reason,
and of the claims of the aesthetic judgment of taste in the Critique of
Judgement. However, the most influential example of this form of argument
appeared in the Critique of Pure Reason as the transcendental deduction of the
categories. The metaphysical deduction set out the origin and character of the
categories, and the task of the transcendental deduction was to demonstrate
that these a priori concepts do apply to objects of experience and hence to
prove the objective validity of the categories. The strategy of the proof is to
show that objects can be thought of only by means of the categories. In
sensibility, objects are subject to the forms of space and time. In
understanding, experienced objects must
stand under the conditions of the transcendental unity of apperception. Because
these conditions require the determination of objects by the pure concepts of
the understanding, there can be no experience that is not subject to the
categories. The categories, therefore, are justified in their application to
appearances as conditions of the possibility of experience. In the second
edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Kant extensively rewrote the
transcendental deduction, although he held that the result remained the same.
The first version emphasized the subjective unity of consciousness, while the
second version stressed the objective character of the unity, and it is
therefore possible to distinguish between a subjective and objective deduction.
The second version was meant to clarify the argument, but remained extremely
difficult to interpret and assess. The presence of the two versions of this
fundamental argument makes interpretation even more demanding. Generally
speaking, European philosophers prefer the subjective version, while
Anglo-American philosophers prefer the objective version. The transcendental
deduction of the categories was a revolutionary development in modern
philosophy. It was the main device by which Kant sought to overcome the errors
and limitations of both rationalism and empiricism and propelled philosophy
into a new phase. “The explanation of the manner in which concepts can thus
relate a priori to objects I entitle their transcendental deduction.” Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason.
metaphysical wisdom: J. London-born philosopher, cited by H. P. Grice in his
third programme lecture on Metaphysics. “Wisdom used to say that metaphysics is
nonsense, but INTERESTING nonsense.” Some more “contemporary” accounts of
“metaphysics” sound, on the face of it at least, very different from either of
these. Consider, for example, from the
OTHER place, John Wisdom's description of a metaphysical, shall we say,
‘statement’ – I prefer ‘utterance’ or pronouncement! Wisdom says that a metaphysical, shall we
say, ‘proposition’ is, characteristically, a sort of illuminating falsehood, a
pointed paradox, which uses what Wisdom calls ‘ordinary language’ in a
disturbing, baffling, and even shocking way, but not otiosely, but in order to
make your tutee aware of a hidden difference or a hidden resemblance between
this thing and that thing – a difference and a resemblance hidden by our
ordinary ways of “talking.” The
metaphysician renders what is clear, obscure.
And the metaphysician MUST retort to some EXTRA-ordinary language, as
Wisdom calls it! Of course, to be fair
to Wisdom and the OTHER place, Wisdom does not claim this to be a complete
characterisation, nor perhaps a literally correct one. Since Wisdom loves a figure of speech and a
figure of thought! Perhaps what Wisdom
claims should *itself* be seen as an illuminating paradox, a meta-meta-physical
one! In any case, its relation to
Aristotle's, or, closer to us, F. H. Bradley's, account of the matter is not
obvious, is it? But perhaps a relation
CAN be established. Certainly not every
metaphysical statement is a paradox serving to call attention to an usually
unnoticed difference or resemblance.
For many a metaphysical statement is so obscure (or unperspicuous, as I
prefer) that it takes long training, usually at Oxford, before the
metaphysician’s meaning can be grasped.
A paradox, such as Socrates’s, must operate with this or that familiar
concept. For the essence of a paradox is
that it administers a shock, and you cannot shock your tutee when he is
standing on such unfamiliar ground that he has no particular expectations. Nevertheless there IS a connection between
“metaphysics” and Wisdom's kind of paradox.
He is not speaking otiosely!
Suppose we consider the paradox:
i. Everyone is really always alone.
Considered by itself, it is no more than an epigram -- rather a flat
one - about the human condition. The implicatum, via hyperbole, is “I am
being witty.” The pronouncement (i) might be said, at least, to minimise the
difference between “being BY oneself” and “being WITH other people,”
Heidegger’s “Mit-Sein.” But now consider
the pronouncement (i), not simply by itself, but surrounded and supported by a
certain kind of “metaphysical” argument: by a “metaphysical” argument to the
effect that what passes for “knowledge” of the other's mental or psychological
process is, at best, an unverifiable conjecture, since the mind (or soul) and
the body are totally distinct things, and the working of the mind (or soul, as
Aristotle would prefer, ‘psyche’) is always withdrawn behind the screen of its
bodily manifestations, as Witters would have it. (Not in vain Wisdom calls
himself or hisself a disciple of Witters!)
When this solitude-affirming paradox, (i) is seen in the context of a
general theory about the soul and the body and the possibilities and limits of
so-called “knowledge” (as in “Knowledge of other minds,” to use Wisdom’s
fashionable sobriquet), when it is seen as embodying such a “metaphysical”
theory, indeed the paradox BECOMES clearly a “metaphysical” statement. But the fact that the statement or
proposition is most clearly seen as “metaphysical” in such a setting does not
mean that there is no “metaphysics” at all in it when it is deprived of the
setting. (Cf. my “The general theory of context.”). An utterance like (ii) Everyone is alone. invites us to change, for a moment at least
and in one respect, our ordinary way of looking at and talking about things,
and hints (or the metaphysician implicates rather) that the changed view the
tutee gets is the truer, the profounder, view.
Cf. Cook Wilson, “What we know we know,” as delighting this air marshal.
minimal transformationalism. Grice was proud that his system PIROTESE ‘allowed for the
most minimal transformations.” transformational
grammar Philosophy of language The most powerful of the three kinds of grammar
distinguished by Chomsky. The other two are finite-state grammar and
phrasestructure grammar. Transformational grammar is a replacement for
phrase-structure grammar that (1) analyzes only the constituents in the
structure of a sentence; (2) provides a set of phrase-structure rules that
generate abstract phrase-structure representations; (and 3) holds that the
simplest sentences are produced according to these rules. Transformational
grammar provides a further set of transformational rules to show that all
complex sentences are formed from simple elements. These rules manipulate
elements and otherwise rearrange structures to give the surface structures of
sentences. Whereas phrase-structure rules only change one symbol to another in
a sentence, transformational rules show that items of a given grammatical form
can be transformed into items of a different grammatical form. For example,
they can show the transformation of negative sentences into positive ones,
question sentences into affirmative ones and passive sentences into active
ones. Transformational grammar is presented as an improvement over other forms
of grammar and provides a model to account for the ability of a speaker to
generate new sentences on the basis of limited data. “The central idea of
transformational grammar is determined by repeated application of certain
formal operations called ‘grammatical transformations’ to objects of a more
elementary sort.” Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
misfire. Used by Grice in Meaning Revisited. Cf. Austin.
“When the utterance is a misfire, the procedure which we purport to invoke is
disallowed or is botched: and our act (marrying, etc.) is void or without
effect, etc. We speak of our act as a purported act, or perhaps an attempt, or
we use such an expression as ‘went through a form of marriaage’ by contrast
with ‘married.’ If somebody issues a performative utterance, and the
utterance is classed as a misfire because the procedure invoked is not
accepted , it is presumably persons other than the speaker who do not
accept it (at least if the speaker is speaking seriously ). What would be
an ex- ample ? Consider ‘I divorce you*, said to a wife by her
husband in a Christian country, and both being Chris- tians rather than
Mohammedans. In this case it might be said, ‘nevertheless he has not
(successfully) divorced her: we admit only some other verbal or
non-verbal pro- cedure’; or even possibly ‘we (we) do not admit any
procedure at all for effecting divorce — marriage is indis- soluble’.
This may be carried so far that we reject what may be called a whole code
of procedure, e.g. the code of honour involving duelling: for example, a
challenge may be issued by ‘my seconds will call on you’, which is
equivalent to ‘ I challenge you’, and we merely shrug it off The general
position is exploited in the unhappy story of Don Quixote. Of
course, it will be evident that it is comparatively simple if we never
admit any ‘such’ procedure at all — that is, any procedure at all for
doing that sort of thing, or that procedure anyway for doing that
particular thing. But equally possible are the cases where we do
sometimes — in certain circumstances or at certain hands — accept
n n^A/'Q/1n U UlUVlfU u plUVWUiV/, ULIL
UW 111 T\llt 1 n nrttT at* amaiitvwifnnaati at* af
ULIL 111 ttllj UL1U/1 L/llCUllli3Lail\/^ KJL CIL other
hands. And here we may often be in doubt (as in 28
Horn to do things with Words the naming example
above) whether an infelicity should be brought into our present class A.
i or rather into A. 2 (or even B. i or B. 2). For example, at a party,
you say, when picking sides, ‘I pick George’: George grunts ‘I’m
not playing.’ Has George been picked? Un- doubtedly, the situation is an
unhappy one. Well, we may say, you have not picked George, whether
because there is no convention that you can pick people who aren’t
playing or because George in the circumstances is an inappropriate object
for the procedure of picking. Or on a desert island you may say to me ‘Go
and pick up wood’; and I may say 4 1 don’t take orders from you’ or
‘you’re not entitled to give me orders’ — I do not take orders from you
when you try to ‘assert your authority’ (which I might fall in with but
may not) on a desert island, as opposed to the case when you are the
captain on a ship and therefore genuinely have authority.
missum: If Grice uses psi-transmission, he also
uses transmission, and mission, transmissum, and missum. Grice was out on a
mission. Grice uses ‘emissor,’ but then there’s the ‘missor.’ This is in key
with modern communication theory as instituted by Shannon. The ‘missor’ ‘sends’
a ‘message’ to a recipient – or missee. But be careful, he may miss it. In any
case, it shows that e-missor is a compound of ‘ex-‘ plus ‘missor,’ so that
makes sense. It transliterates Grice’s ut-terer (which literally means
‘out-erer’). And then there’s the prolatum, from proferre, which has the professor,
as professing that p, that is. As someone said, if H. P. Girce were to present
a talk to the Oxford Philosophical Society he would possibly call it
“Messaging.” c. 1300, "a communication
transmitted via a messenger, a notice sent through some agency," from Old
French message "message,
news, tidings, embassy" (11c.), from Medieval Latin missaticum, from Latin missus "a sending away,
sending, dispatching; a throwing, hurling," noun use of past participle
of mittere "to
release, let go; send, throw" (see mission). The Latin word is glossed in Old English by ærende. Specific religious sense of
"divinely inspired communication via a prophet" (1540s) led to
transferred sense of "the broad meaning (of something)," which is
attested by 1828. To get the message "understand" is by 1960.
Mode
of correlation: a technical jargon. Grice is not sure whether ‘mode’ ‘of’ and
‘correlation’ are the appropriate terms. Grice speaks of an associative mode of
correlation – vide associatum. He also speaks of a conventional mode of
correlation (or is it mode of conventional correlation) – vide
non-conventional, and he speaks of an iconic mode of correlation, vide
non-iconic. Indeed he speaks once of ‘conventional correlation’ TO THE
ASSOCIATED specific response. So the
mode is rather otiose. In the context when he uses ‘conventional correlation’
TO THE ASSOCIATED specific response, he uses ‘way’ rather than mode – Grice
wants ‘conventional correlation’ TO THE ASSOCIATED specific RESPONSE to be just
one way, or mode. There’s ASSOCIATIVE correlation, and iconic correlation, and
‘etc.’ Strictly, as he puts it, this or that correlation is this or that
provision of a way in which the expressum is correlated to a specific response.
When symbolizing he uses the informal “correlated in way c with response r’ –
having said that ‘c’ stands for ‘mode of correlation.’ But ‘mode sounds too
pretentious, hence his retreat to the more flowing ‘way.’
modus: Grice was an expert on mode. There is one mode too many.
If Grice found ‘senses’ obsolete (“Sense are not to be multiplied beyond
necessity”), he was always ready to welcome a new mode – e. g. the quessertive
--. or mode. ἔγκλισις , enclisis, mood of a verb, D.H.Comp.6, D.T.638.7, A.D. Synt.248.14,
etc.Many times, under ‘mode,’ Grice describes what others call ‘aspect.’ Surely
‘tense’ did not affect him much, except when it concerned “=”. But when it came
to modes, he included ‘aspect,’ so there’s the optative, the imperative, the
indicative, the informational, and then the future intentional and the future
indicative, and the subjunctive, and the way they interact with the praesens,
praeteritum and futurum, and wih the axis of what Aristotle called ‘teleios’
and ‘ateleios,’ indefinite and definite, or ‘perfectum, and ‘imperfectum, ‘but
better ‘definitum’ and ‘indefinitum.’ Grice
uses psi-asrisk, to be read asterisk-sub-psi. He is not concerned with
specficics. All the specifics the philosopher can take or rather ‘assume’ as
‘given.’ The category of mode translates ‘tropos,’ modus. Kant wrongly assumed
it was Modalitat, which irritated Grice so much that he echoed Kant as saying
‘manner’! Grice is a modista. He sometimes uses ‘modus,’ after Abbott. The
earliest record is of course “Meaning.” After elucidating what he calls
‘informative cases,’ he moves to ‘imperative’ ones. Grice agreed with Thomas
Urquhart that English needed a few more moods! Grice’s seven modes.Thirteenthly,
In lieu of six moods which other languages have at most, this one injoyeth
seven in its conjugable words. Ayer had said that non-indicative utterances
are hardly significant. Grice had been freely using the very English not
Latinate ‘mood’ until Moravcsik, of all people, corrects him: What you
mean ain’t a mood. I shall call it mode just to please you, J. M. E. The
sergeant is to muster the men at dawn is a perfect imperative. They shall not
pass is a perfect intentional. A version of this essay was presented in a
conference whose proceedings were published, except for Grices essay, due to
technical complications, viz. his idiosyncratic use of idiosyncratic
symbology! By mode Grice means indicative or imperative. Following
Davidson, Grice attaches probability to the indicative, via the doxastic, and
desirability to the indicative, via the buletic-boulomaic. He also
allows for mixed utterances. Probability is qualified with a suboperator
indicating a degree d; ditto for desirability, degree d. In some of the drafts,
Grice kept using mode until Moravsik suggested to him that mode was a better
choice, seeing that Grices modality had little to do with what other authors
were referring to as mood. Probability, desirability, and modality, modality, desirability,
and probability; modality, probability, desirability. He would use mode
operator. Modality is the more correct term, for things like should, ought,
and must, in that order. One sense. The doxastic modals are correlated to
probability. The buletic or boulomaic modals are correlated to
desirability. There is probability to a degree d. But there is also
desirability to a degree d. They both combine in Grices attempt to
show how Kants categorical imperative reduces to the hypothetical or
suppositional. Kant uses modality in a way that Grice disfavours, preferring
modus. Grice is aware of the use by Kant of modality qua category in the reduction
by Kant to four of the original ten categories in Aristotle). The Jeffrey-style
entitled Probability, desirability, and mode operators finds Grice at his
formal-dress best. It predates the Kant lectures and it got into so much detail
that Grice had to leave it at that. So abstract it hurts. Going further than
Davidson, Grice argues that structures expressing probability and desirability
are not merely analogous. They can both be replaced by more complex structures
containing a common element. Generalising over attitudes using the symbol ψ,
which he had used before, repr. WoW:v, Grice proposes G ψ that p. Further,
Grice uses i as a dummy for sub-divisions of psychological attitudes. Grice
uses Op supra i sub α, read: operation supra i sub alpha, as Grice was fastidious
enough to provide reading versions for these, and where α is a dummy taking the
place of either A or B, i. e. Davidsons prima facie or desirably, and probably.
In all this, Grice keeps using the primitive !, where a more detailed symbolism
would have it correspond exactly to Freges composite turnstile (horizontal
stroke of thought and vertical stroke of assertoric force, Urteilstrich) that
Grice of course also uses, and for which it is proposed, then: !─p. There are
generalising movements here but also merely specificatory ones. α is not
generalised. α is a dummy to serve as a blanket for this or that
specifications. On the other hand, ψ is indeed generalised. As for i, is it
generalising or specificatory? i is a dummy for specifications, so it is not really
generalising. But Grice generalises over specifications. Grice wants to find
buletic, boulomaic or volitive as he prefers when he does not prefer the Greek
root for both his protreptic and exhibitive versions (operator supra
exhibitive, autophoric, and operator supra protreptic, or hetero-phoric). Note
that Grice (WoW:110) uses the asterisk * as a dummy for either assertoric,
i.e., Freges turnstile, and non-assertoric, the !─ the imperative turnstile, if
you wish. The operators A are not mode operators; they are such that they
represent some degree (d) or measure of acceptability or justification. Grice
prefers acceptability because it connects with accepting that which is a
psychological, souly attitude, if a general one. Thus, Grice wants to have It
is desirable that p and It is believable that p as understood, each, by
the concatenation of three elements. The first element is the A-type operator.
The second element is the protreptic-type operator. The third element is the
phrastic, root, content, or proposition itself. It is desirable that p and It
is believable that p share the utterer-oriented-type operator and the
neustic or proposition. They only differ at the protreptic-type operator
(buletic/volitive/boulomaic or judicative/doxastic). Grice uses + for
concatenation, but it is best to use ^, just to echo who knows who. Grice
speaks in that mimeo (which he delivers in Texas, and is known as Grices
Performadillo talk ‒ Armadillo + Performative) of various things. Grice speaks,
transparently enough, of acceptance: V-acceptance and J-acceptance. V not for
Victory but for volitional, and J for judicative. The fact that both end with
-acceptance would accept you to believe that both are forms of acceptance.
Grice irritatingly uses 1 to mean the doxastic, and 2 to mean the bulematic. At
Princeton in Method, he defines the doxastic in terms of the buletic and cares
to do otherwise, i. e. define the buletic in terms of the doxastic. So whenever
he wrote buletic read doxastic, and vice versa. One may omits this arithmetic
when reporting on Grices use. Grice uses two further numerals, though: 3 and 4.
These, one may decipher – one finds oneself as an archeologist in Tutankamons
burial ground, as this or that relexive attitude. Thus, 3, i. e. ψ3, where
we need the general operator ψ, not just specificatory dummy, but the idea that
we accept something simpliciter. ψ3 stands for the attitude of buletically
accepting an or utterance: doxastically accepting that p or doxastically
accepting that ~p. Why we should be concerned with ~p is something to
consider. G wants to decide whether to believe p or not. I find that very
Griceian. Suppose I am told that there is a volcano in Iceland. Why would I not
want to believe it? It seems that one may want to decide whether to believe p
or not when p involves a tacit appeal to value. But, as Grice notes, even when
it does not involve value, Grice still needs trust and volition to reign
supreme. On the other hand, theres 4, as attached to an attitude, ψ4. This
stands for an attitude of buletically accepting an or utterance: buletically
accepting that p, or G buletically accepting that ~p, i. e. G wants to decide
whether to will, now that p or not. This indeed is crucial, since, for Grice,
morality, as with Kantotle, does cash in desire, the buletic. Grice smokes. He
wills to smoke. But does he will to will to smoke? Possibly yes. Does he will
to will to will to smoke? Regardless of what Grice wills, one may claim this
holds for a serious imperatives (not Thou shalt not reek, but Thou shalt not
kill, say) or for any p if you must (because if you know that p causes cancer
(p stands for a proposition involving cigarette) you should know you are
killing yourself. But then time also kills, so what gives? So I would submit
that, for Kant, the categoric imperative is one which allows for an indefinite
chain, not of chain-smokers, but of good-willers. If, for some p, we find that
at some stage, the P does not will that he wills that he wills that he wills
that, p can not be universalisable. This is proposed in an essay referred to in
The Philosophers Index but Marlboro Cigarettes took no notice. One may go on to
note Grices obsession on make believe. If I say, I utter expression e because
the utterer wants his addressee to believe that the utterer believes that p,
there is utterer and addresse, i. e. there are two people here ‒ or
any soul-endowed creature ‒ for Grices squarrel means things to Grice. It
even implicates. It miaows to me while I was in bed. He utters miaow. He means
that he is hungry, he means (via implicatum) that he wants a nut (as provided
by me). On another occasion he miaowes explicating, The door is closed, and implicating
Open it, idiot. On the other hand, an Andy-Capps cartoon read: When budgies get
sarcastic Wild-life programmes are repeating One may note that one can
want some other person to hold an attitude. Grice uses U or G1 for utterer and
A or G2 for addressee. These are merely roles. The important formalism is
indeed G1 and G2. G1 is a Griceish utterer-person; G2 is the other person, G1s
addressee. Grice dislikes a menage a trois, apparently, for he seldom
symbolises a third party, G3. So, G ψ-3-A that p is 1 just in case G ψ2(G ψ1
that p) or G ψ1 that ~p is 1. And here the utterers addressee, G2 features: G1
ψ³ protreptically that p is 1 just in case G buletically accepts ψ² (G
buletically accepts ψ² (G doxastically accepts ψ1 that p, or G doxastically
accepts ψ1 that ~p))) is 1. Grice seems to be happy with having reached four
sets of operators, corresponding to four sets of propositional attitudes, and
for which Grice provides the paraphrases. The first set is the doxastic proper.
It is what Grice has as doxastic,and which is, strictly, either indicative, of
the utterers doxastic, exhibitive state, as it were, or properly informative,
if addressed to the addressee A, which is different from U himself, for surely
one rarely informs oneself. The second is the buletic proper. What Grice dubs
volitive, but sometimes he prefers the Grecian root. This is again either self-
or utterer-addressed, or utterer-oriented, or auto-phoric, and it is
intentional, or it is other-addressed, or addressee-addressed, or addressee-
oriented, or hetero-phoric, and it is imperative, for surely one may not always
say to oneself, Dont smoke, idiot!. The third is the doxastic-interrogative, or
doxastic-erotetic. One may expand on ? here is minimal compared to the
vagaries of what I called the !─ (non-doxastic or buletic turnstile), and which
may be symbolised by ?─p, where ?─ stands for the erotetic turnstile. Geachs
and Althams erotetic somehow Grice ignores, as he more often uses the Latinate
interrogative. Lewis and Short have “interrŏgātĭo,” which they render as “a
questioning, inquiry, examination, interrogation;” “sententia per
interrogationem, Quint. 8, 5, 5; instare interrogation; testium; insidiosa; litteris
inclusæ; verbis obligatio fit ex interrogatione et responsione; as rhet. fig.,
Quint. 9, 2, 15; 9, 3, 98. B. A syllogism: recte genus hoc interrogationis
ignavum ac iners nominatum est, Cic. Fat. 13; Sen. Ep. 87 med. Surely more
people know what interrogative means what erotetic means, he would not say ‒
but he would. This attitude comes again in two varieties: self-addressed or
utterer-oriented, reflective (Should I go?) or again, addresee-addressed, or
addressee-oriented, imperative, as in Should you go?, with a strong hint that
the utterer is expecting is addressee to make up his mind in the proceeding,
not just inform the utterer. Last but not least, there is the fourth kind, the
buletic-cum-erotetic. Here again, there is one varietiy which is
reflective, autophoric, as Grice prefers, utterer-addressed, or utterer-oriented,
or inquisitive (for which Ill think of a Greek pantomime), or
addressee-addressed, or addressee-oriented. Grice regrets that Greek (and
Latin, of which he had less ‒ cfr. Shakespeare who had none) fares better in
this respect the Oxonian that would please Austen, if not Austin, or Maucalay,
and certainly not Urquhart -- his language has twelve parts of speech: each
declinable in eleven cases, four numbers, eleven genders (including god,
goddess, man, woman, animal, etc.); and conjugable in eleven tenses, seven
moods, and four voices.These vocal mannerisms will result in the production of
some pretty barbarous English sentences; but we must remember that what I shall
be trying to do, in uttering such sentences, will be to represent supposedly
underlying structure; if that is ones aim, one can hardly expect that ones
speech-forms will be such as to excite the approval of, let us say, Jane Austen
or Lord Macaulay. Cf. the quessertive, or quessertion, possibly iterable,
that Grice cherished. But then you cant have everything. Where would you put
it? Grice: The modal implicatum.
Grice sees two different, though connected questions about
mode. First, there is the obvious demand for a characterisation, or
partial characterisation, of this or that mode as it emerges in this or that
conversational move, which is plausible to regard as modes primary habitat)
both at the level of the explicatum or the implicatum, for surely an indicative
conversational move may be the vehicle of an imperatival implicatum. A second,
question is how, and to what extent, the representation of mode (Hares neustic)
which is suitable for application to this or that conversational move may be
legitimately exported into philosophical psychology, or rather, may be grounded
on questions of philosophical psychology, matters of this or that psychological
state, stance, or attitude (notably desire and belief, and their species). We
need to consider the second question, the philosophico- psychological question,
since, if the general rationality operator is to read as something like
acceptability, as in U accepts, or A accepts, the appearance of this or that
mode within its scope of accepting is proper only if it may properly occur
within the scope of a generic psychological verb I accept that . Lewis and
Short have “accepto,” “v. freq. a. accipio,” which Short and Lewis render as “to
take, receive, accept,” “argentum,” Plaut. Ps. 2, 2, 32; so Quint. 12, 7, 9;
Curt. 4, 6, 5; Dig. 34, 1, 9: “jugum,” to submit to, Sil. Ital. 7, 41. But in
Plin. 36, 25, 64, the correct read. is coeptavere; v. Sillig. a. h. l. The
easiest way Grice finds to expound his ideas on the first question is by
reference to a schematic table or diagram (Some have complained that I seldom
use a board, but I will today. Grice at this point reiterates his
temporary contempt for the use/mention distinction, which which Strawson
is obsessed. Perhaps Grices contempt is due to Strawsons obsession. Grices
exposition would make the hair stand on end in the soul of a person especially
sensitive in this area. And Im talking to you, Sir Peter! (He is on the
second row). But Grices guess is that the only historical philosophical
mistake properly attributable to use/mention confusion is Russells argument
against Frege in On denoting, and that there is virtually always an acceptable
way of eliminating disregard of the use-mention distinction in a particular
case, though the substitutes are usually lengthy, obscure, and
tedious. Grice makes three initial assumptions. He avails himself of
two species of acceptance, Namesly, volitive acceptance and judicative
acceptance, which he, on occasion, calls respectively willing that p and
willing that p. These are to be thought of as technical or
semi-technical, theoretical or semi-theoretical, though each is a state which
approximates to what we vulgarly call thinking that p and wanting that p,
especially in the way in which we can speak of a beast such as a little
squarrel as thinking or wanting something ‒ a nut, poor darling
little thing. Grice here treats each will and judge (and accept) as a
primitive. The proper interpretation would be determined by the role of
each in a folk-psychological theory (or sequence of folk-psychological
theories), of the type the Wilde reader in mental philosophy favours at Oxford,
designed to account for the behaviours of members of the animal kingdom, at
different levels of psychological complexity (some classes of creatures being
more complex than others, of course). As Grice suggests in Us meaning,
sentence-meaning, and word-meaning, at least at the point at which (Schema Of
Procedure-Specifiers For Mood-Operators) in ones syntactico-semantical
theory of Pirotese or Griceish, one is introducing this or that mode (and
possibly earlier), the proper form to use is a specifier for this or that
resultant procedure. Such a specifier is of the general form, For the
utterer U to utter x if C, where the blank is replaced by the appropriate
condition. Since in the preceding scheme x represents an utterance or
expression, and not a sentence or open sentence, there is no guarantee that
this or that actual sentence in Pirotese or Griceish contains a perspicuous and
unambiguous modal representation. A sentence may correspond to more than
one modal structure. The sentence is structurally ambiguous
(multiplex in meaning ‒ under the proviso that senses are not to be
multiplied beyond necessity) and will have more than one reading, or parsing,
as every schoolboy at Clifton knows when translating viva voce from Greek or
Latin, as the case might be. The general form of a procedure-specifier for a
modal operator involves a main clause and an antecedent clause, which follows
if. In the schematic representation of the main clause, U represents an
utterer, A his addressee, p the radix or neustic; and Opi represents that
operator whose number is i (1, 2, 3, or 4), e.g g., Op3A represents
Operator 3A, which, since ?⊢ appears in the Operator column for 3A)
would be ?A ⊢ p. This
reminds one of Grandys quessertions, for he did think they were iterable
(possibly)). The antecedent clause consists of a sequence whose elements
are a preamble, as it were, or preface, or prefix, a supplement to a
differential (which is present only in a B-type, or addressee-oriented case), a
differential, and a radix. The preamble, which is always present, is
invariant, and reads: The U U wills (that) A A judges (that) U (For surely meaning is a species of intending
is a species of willing that, alla Prichard, Whites professor,
Corpus). The supplement, if present, is also invariant. And the idea
behind its varying presence or absence is connected, in the first instance,
with the volitive mode. The difference between an ordinary expression of
intention ‒ such as I shall not fail, or They shall not
pass ‒ and an ordinary imperative (Like Be a little kinder to
him) is accommodated by treating each as a sub-mode of the volitive mode,
relates to willing that p) In the intentional case (I shall not fail), the
utterer U is concerned to reveal to his addressee A that he (the utterer U)
wills that p. In the imperative case (They shall not pass), the utterer U is
concerned to reveal to his addressee A that the utterer U wills that the
addresee A will that p. In each case, of course, it is to be
presumed that willing that p will have its standard outcome, viz., the
actualization, or realisation, or direction of fit, of the radix (from expression
to world, downwards). There is a corresponding distinction between two uses of
an indicative. The utterer U may be declaring or affirming that p, in
an exhibitive way, with the primary intention to get his addressee A to judge
that the utterer judges that p. Or the U is telling (in a protreptic way)
ones addressee that p, that is to say, hoping to get his addressee to
judge that p. In the case of an indicative, unlike that of a volitive, there is
no explicit pair of devices which would ordinarily be thought of as sub-mode
marker. The recognition of the sub-mode is implicated, and comes from
context, from the vocative use of the Names of the addressee, from the presence
of a speech-act verb, or from a sentence-adverbial phrase (like for your
information, so that you know, etc.). But Grice has already, in his
initial assumptions, allowed for such a situation. The
exhibitive-protreptic distinction or autophoric-heterophoric distinction, seems
to Grice to be also discernible in the interrogative mode (?). Each differentials
is associated with, and serve to distinguish, each of the two basic modes
(volitive or judicative) and, apart from one detail in the case of the
interrogative mode, is invariant between autophoric-exhibitive) and
heterophoric-protreptic sub-modes of any of the two basic modes. They are
merely unsupplemented or supplemented, the former for an exhibitive sub-mode
and the latter for a protreptic sub-mode. The radix needs (one hopes) no
further explanation, except that it might be useful to bear in mind that Grice
does not stipulated that the radix for an intentional (buletic exhibitive
utterer-based) incorporate a reference to the utterer, or be in the first
person, nor that the radix for an imperative (buletic protreptic
addressee-based) incorporate a reference of the addresee, and be in the second
person. They shall not pass is a legitimate intentional, as is You shall
not get away with it; and The sergeant is to muster the men at dawn, as uttered
said by the captain to the lieutenant) is a perfectly good
imperative. Grice gives in full the two specifiers derived from the
schema. U to utter to A autophoric-exhibitive ⊢ p if U wills that A judges that U judges
p. Again, U to utter to A ! heterophoric-protreptic p if U wills that A A
judges that U wills that A wills that p. Since, of the states denoted by
each differential, only willing that p and judging that p are strictly cases of
accepting that p, and Grices ultimate purpose of his introducing this
characterization of mode is to reach a general account of expressions which are
to be conjoined, according to his proposal, with an acceptability operator, the
first two numbered rows of the figure are (at most) what he has a direct use
for. But since it is of some importance to Grice that his treatment of
mode should be (and should be thought to be) on the right lines, he adds a
partial account of the interrogative mode. There are two varieties of
interrogatives, a yes/no interrogatives (e. g. Is his face clean? Is the king
of France bald? Is virtue a fire-shovel?) and x-interrogatives, on which Grice
qua philosopher was particularly interested, v. his The that and the why.
(Who killed Cock Robin?, Where has my beloved gone?, How did he fix
it?). The specifiers derivable from the schema provide only for yes/no interrogatives,
though the figure could be quite easily amended so as to yield a restricted but
very large class of x-interrogatives. Grice indicates how this could be
done. The distinction between a buletic and a doxastic interrogative
corresponds with the difference between a case in which the utterer U indicates
that he is, in one way or another, concerned to obtain information (Is he at
home?), and a case in which the utterer U indicates that he is concerned to
settle a problem about what he is to do ‒ Am I to leave the door open?, Shall I
go on reading? or, with an heterophoric Subjects, Is the prisoner to be
released? This difference is fairly well represented in grammar, and much
better represented in the grammars of some other languages. The
hetero-phoric-cum-protreptic/auto-phoric-cum- exhibitive difference may
not marked at all in this or that grammar, but it should be marked in Pirotese.
This or that sub-mode is, however, often quite easily detectable. There is
usually a recognizable difference between a case in which the utterer A says,
musingly or reflectively, Is he to be trusted? ‒ a case in which the
utterer might say that he is just wondering ‒ and a case in which he
utters a token of the same sentence as an enquiry. Similarly, one can usually
tell whether an utterer A who utters Shall I accept the invitation? is
just trying to make up his mind, or is trying to get advice or instruction from
his addressee. The employment of the variable α needs to be
explained. Grice borrows a little from an obscure branch of logic, once
(but maybe no longer) practised, called, Grice thinks, proto-thetic ‒ Why?
Because it deals with this or that first principle or axiom, or thesis), the
main rite in which is to quantify over, or through, this or that connective. α
is to have as its two substituents positively and negatively, which may modify
either will or judge, negatively willing or negatively judging that p is
judging or willing that ~p. The quantifier (∃1α) . . . has to be treated
substitutionally. If, for example, I ask someone whether John killed Cock
Robin (protreptic case), I do not want the addressee merely to will that I have
a particular logical quality in mind which I believe to apply. I want the
addressee to have one of the Qualities in mind which he wants me to believe to
apply. To meet this demand, supplementation must drag back the
quantifier. To extend the schema so as to provide specifiers for a single
x-interrogative (i. e., a question like What did the butler see? rather than a
question like Who went where with whom at 4 oclock yesterday afternoon?),
we need just a little extra apparatus. We need to be able to superscribe a
W in each interrogative operator e.g., together with the proviso that a radix
which follows a superscribed operator must be an open radix, which contains one
or more occurrences of just one free variable. And we need a chameleon
variable λ, to occur only in this or that quantifier. (∃λ).Fx is to be regarded as a way of
writing (∃x)Fx. (∃λ)Fy is a way of writing (∃y)Fy. To provide a specifier for a
x-superscribed operator, we simply delete the appearances of α in the specifier
for the corresponding un-superscribed operator, inserting instead the
quantifier (∃1λ) () at the
position previously occupied by (∃1α) (). E.g. the specifiers for Who
killed Cock Robin?, used as an enquiry, would be: U to utter to A killed Cock Robin if U wills A to judge U to
will that (∃1λ) (A should
will that U judges (x killed Cock Robin)); in which (∃1λ) takes on the shape (∃1x) since x is the free variable within
its scope. Grice compares his buletic-doxastic distinction to prohairesis/doxa
distinction by Aristotle in Ethica Nichomachea. Perhaps his simplest
formalisation is via subscripts: I will-b but will-d not. Refs.: The main
references are given above under ‘desirability.’ The most systematic treatment
is the excursus in “Aspects,” Clarendon. BANC.
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