IMPLICATVRA, in 18 volumes -- vol. XI

nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu: a principal tenet of empiricism. A weak interpretation of the principle maintains that all concepts are acquired from sensory experience; no concepts are innate or a priori. A stronger interpretation adds that all propositional knowledge is derived from sense experience. The weak interpretation was held by Aquinas and Locke, who thought nevertheless that we can know some propositions to be true in virtue of the relations between the concepts involved. The stronger interpretation was endorsed by J. S. Mill, who argued that even the truths of mathematics are inductively based on experience, as Grice tutored R. Wollheim for his PPE at Oxford: “How did you find that out?” “Multiplication.” “That proves Mill wrong.”

Nihil ex nihilo fit – Grice: “an intuitive metaphysical principle first enunciated by Parmenides, often held equivalent to the proposition that nothing arises without a cause. Creation ex nihilo is God’s production of the world without any natural or material cause, but involves a supernatural cause, and so it would not violate the principle.

noetic – the opposite of the favourite Griceian sub-disipline in philosophy, aesthetics -- from Grecian noetikos, from noetos, ‘perceiving’, of or relating to apprehension by the intellect. In a strict sense the term refers to nonsensuous data given to the cognitive faculty, which discloses their intelligible meaning as distinguished from their sensible apprehension. We hear a sentence spoken, but it becomes intelligible for us only when the sounds function as a foundation for noetic apprehension. For Plato, the objects of such apprehension noetá are the Forms eide with respect to which the sensible phenomena are only occasions of manifestation: the Forms in themselves transcend the sensible and have their being in a realm apart. For empiricist thinkers, e.g., Locke, there is strictly speaking no distinct noetic aspect, since “ideas” are only faint sense impressions. In a looser sense, however, one may speak of ideas as independent of reference to particular sense impressions, i.e. independent of their origin, and then an idea can be taken to signify a class of objects. Husserl uses the term to describe the intentionality or dyadic character of consciousness in general, i.e. including both eidetic or categorial and perceptual knowing. He speaks of the correlation of noesis or intending and noema or the intended object of awareness. The categorial or eidetic is the perceptual object as intellectually cognized; it is not a realm apart, but rather what is disclosed or made present “constituted” Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu noetic 617    617 when the mode of appearance of the perceptual object is intended by a categorial noesis. 

non-Euclidean geometry: -- H. P. Grice, “Non-Euclidean implicatura of space” – “Non-Euclidean geometrical implicatura – None-euclidean geometry refers to any axiomatized version of geometry in which Euclides’s parallel axiom is rejected, after so many unsuccessful attempts to prove it. As in so many branches of mathematics, Gauss had thought out much of the matter first, but he kept most of his ideas to himself. As a result, credit is given to Bolyai and Lobachevsky. Instead of assuming that just one line passes through a point in a plane parallel to a non-coincident co-planar line, Bolyai and Loachevsky offer a geometry in which a line admits more than one parallel, and the sum of the “angles” between the “sides” of a “triangle” lies below 180°. Then Riemann conceived of a geometry in which lines always meet so no parallels, and the sum of the “angles” exceeds 180°. In this connection Riemann distinguishes between the unboundedness of space as a property of its extent, and the special case of the infinite measure over which distance might be taken which is dependent upon the curvature of that space. Pursuing the published insight of Gauss, that the curvature of a surface could be defined in terms only of properties dependent solely on the surface itself and later called “intrinsic”, Riemann also defines the metric on a surface in a very general and intrinsic way, in terms of the differential arc length. Thereby he clarified the ideas of “distance” that his non-Euclidean precursors had introduced drawing on trigonometric and hyperbolic functions; arc length was now understood geodesically as the shortest “distance” between two “points” on a surface, and was specified independent of any assumptions of a geometry within which the surface was embedded. Further properties, such as that pertaining to the “volume” of a three-“dimensional” solid, were also studied. The two main types of non-Euclidean geometry, and its Euclidean parent, may be summarized as follows: Reaction to these geometries was slow to develop, but their impact gradually emerged. As mathematics, their legitimacy was doubted; but Beltrami produced a model of a Bolyai-type two-dimensional space inside a planar circle. The importance of this model was to show that the consistency of this geometry depended upon that of the Euclidean version, thereby dispelling the fear that it was an inconsistent flash of the imagination. During the last thirty years of the nineteenth century a variety of variant geometries were proposed, and the relationships between them were studied, together with consequences for projective geometry. On the empirical side, these geometries, and especially Riemann’s approach, affected the understanding of the relationship between geometry and space; in particular, it posed the question whether space is curved or not the later being the Euclidean answer. The geometries thus played a role in the emergence and articulation of relativity theory, especially the differential geometry and tensorial calculus within which its mathematical properties could be expressed. Philosophically the new geometries stressed the hypothetical nature of axiomatizing, in contrast to the customary view of mathematical theories as true in some usually unclear sense. This feature led to the name ‘meta-geometry’ for them. It was intended as an ironical proposal of opponents to be in line with the hypothetical character of meta-physics (and meta-ethics) in philosophy. They also helped to encourage conventionalist philosophy of science with Poincaré, e.g., and put fresh light on the age-old question of the impossibility of a priori knowledge. 

non-monotonic logic: a logic that fails to be monotonic, i.e., in proof-theoretic terms, fails to meet the condition that for all statements u1, . . . un, if f,y, if ‘u1, . . . un Yf’, for any y, ‘u1 , . . . un, y Y f’. Equivalently, let Γ represent a collection of statements, u1 . . . un, and say that in a monotonic system, such as system G (after Grice), if ‘Γ Y f’, for any y, ‘Γ, y Y f’ and similarly in other cases. A non-monotonic system is any system with the following property: For some Γ, f, and y, ‘ΓNML f’ but ‘Γ, y K!NML f’. This is a weak non-monotonic system G-w-n-m. In a strong non-monotonic system – G-s-n-m, we might have, again for some Γ, f, y, where Γ is consistent and Γ 8 f is consistent: ‘Γ, y YNML > f’. A primary motivation for Grice for a non-monotonic system or defeasible reasoning, which is so evident in conversational reasoning, is to produce a representation for default (ceteris paribus) reasoning or defeasible reasoning. Grice’s interest in defeasible (or ceteris paribus) reasoning – for conversational implicatura -- readily spreads to epistemology, logic, and meta-ethics. The exigencies of this or that practical affair requires leaping to conclusions, going beyond available evidence, making assumptions. In doing so, Grice often errs and must leap back from his conclusion, undo his assumption, revise his belief. In Grice’s standard example, “Tweety is a bird and all birds fly, except penguins and ostriches. Does Tweety fly?” If pressed, Grice needs to form a belief about this matter. Upon discovering that Tweety is a penguin, Grice may have to re-tract his conclusion. Any representation of defeasible (or ceteris paribus) reasoning must capture the non-monotonicity of this reasoning. A non-monotonic system G-s-n-m is an attempt to do this by adding this or that rule of inference that does not preserve monotonicity. Although a practical affair may require Grice to reason “defeasibly” – an adverb Grice borrowed from Hart -- the best way to achieve non-monotonicity may not be to add this or that non-monotonic rule of inference to System G. What one gives up in such system may well not be worth the cost: loss of the deduction theorem and of a coherent notion of consistency. Therefore, Grice’s challenge for a non-monotonic system and for defeasible reasoning, generally is to develop a rigorous way to re-present the structure of non-monotonic reasoning without losing or abandoning this or that historically hard-won propertiy of a monotonic system. Refs.: G. P. Baker, “Meaning and defeasibility,” in festschrift for H. L. A. Hart; R. Hall, “Excluders;” H. P. Grice, “Ceteris paribus and defeasibility.”

Nonviolence: H. P. Grice joined the Royal Navy in 1941 – and served till 1945, earning the degree of captain. He was involved in the North-Atlantic theatre and later at the Admiralty. Non-violence is the renunciation of violence in personal, social, or international affairs. It often includes a commitment called active nonviolence or nonviolent direct action actively to oppose violence and usually evil or injustice as well by nonviolent means. Nonviolence may renounce physical violence alone or both physical and psychological violence. It may represent a purely personal commitment or be intended to be normative for others as well. When unconditional  absolute    619 norm normative relativism 620 nonviolence  it renounces violence in all actual and hypothetical circumstances. When conditional  conditional nonviolence  it concedes the justifiability of violence in hypothetical circumstances but denies it in practice. Held on moral grounds principled nonviolence, the commitment belongs to an ethics of conduct or an ethics of virtue. If the former, it will likely be expressed as a moral rule or principle e.g., One ought always to act nonviolently to guide action. If the latter, it will urge cultivating the traits and dispositions of a nonviolent character which presumably then will be expressed in nonviolent action. As a principle, nonviolence may be considered either basic or derivative. Either way, its justification will be either utilitarian or deontological. Held on non-moral grounds pragmatic nonviolence, nonviolence is a means to specific social, political, economic, or other ends, themselves held on non-moral grounds. Its justification lies in its effectiveness for these limited purposes rather than as a way of life or a guide to conduct in general. An alternative source of power, it may then be used in the service of evil as well as good. Nonviolent social action, whether of a principled or pragmatic sort, may include noncooperation, mass demonstrations, marches, strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience  techniques explored extensively in the writings of Gene Sharp. Undertaken in defense of an entire nation or state, nonviolence provides an alternative to war. It seeks to deny an invading or occupying force the capacity to attain its objectives by withholding the cooperation of the populace needed for effective rule and by nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience. It may also be used against oppressive domestic rule or on behalf of social justice. Gandhi’s campaign against British rule in India, Scandinavian resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s actions on behalf of civil rights in the United States are illustrative. Nonviolence has origins in Far Eastern thought, particularly Taoism and Jainism. It has strands in the Jewish Talmud, and many find it implied by the New Testament’s Sermon on the Mount. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “My Royal Navy days: memoirs of a captain.”

normal form: a formula equivalent to a given logical formula, but having special properties. The main varieties follow. Conjunctive normal form. If D1 . . . Dn are disjunctions of sentential variables or their negations, such as p 7 -q 7 r, then a formula F is in conjunctive normal form provided F % D1 & D2 & . . & Dn. The following are in conjunctive normal form: -p 7 q; p 7 q 7 r & -p 7 -q 7 -r & -q 7 r. Every formula of sentential logic has an equivalent conjunctive normal form; this fact can be used to prove the completeness of sentential logic. Disjunctive normal form. If C1 . . . Cn are conjunctions of sentential variables or their negations, such as p & -q & -r, then a formula F is in disjunctive normal form provided F % C1 7 C27 . . Cn. The following are thus in disjunctive normal form: p & -q 7 -p & q; p & q & -r 7 -p & -q & -r. Every formula of sentential logic has an equivalent disjunctive normal form. Prenex normal form. A formula of predicate logic is in prenex normal form if 1 all quantifiers occur at the beginning of the formula, 2 the scope of the quantifiers extends to the end of the formula, and 3 what follows the quantifiers contains at least one occurrence of every variable that appears in the set of quantifiers. Thus, DxDyFx / Gy and xDyzFxy 7 Gyz / Dxyz are in prenex normal form. The formula may contain free variables; thus, Dxy Fxyz / Gwyx is also in prenex normal form. The following, however, are not in prenex normal form: xDy Fx / Gx; xy Fxy / Gxy. Every formula of predicate logic has an equivalent formula in prenex normal form. Skolem normal form. A formula F in predicate logic is in Skolem normal form provided 1 F is in prenex normal form, 2 every existential quantifier precedes any universal quantifier, 3 F contains at least one existential quantifier, and 4 F contains no free variables. Thus, DxDy zFxy / Gyz and DxDyDzwFxy 7 Fyz 7 Fzw are in Skolem normal form; however, Dx y Fxyz and x y Fxy 7 Gyx are not. Any formula has an equivalent Skolem normal form; this has implications for the completeness of predicate logic. 

notum:  Grice was slightly obsessed with “know,” Latin ‘notum – nosco’ -- nosco , nōvi, nōtum, 3 (old form, GNOSCO, GNOVI, GNOTVM, acc. to Prisc. p. 569 P.; I.inf. pass. GNOSCIER, S. C. de Bacch.; cf. GNOTV, cognitu, Paul. ex Fest. p. 96 Müll.: GNOT (contr. for gnovit) οἶδεν, ἐπιγινώσκει; GNOTV, γνῶσιν, διάγνωσιν, Gloss. Labb.—Contr. forms in class. Lat. are nosti, noram, norim. nosse; nomus for novimus: nomus ambo Ulixem, Enn. ap. Diom. p. 382 P., or Trag. v. 199 Vahl.), v. a. for gnosco, from the root gno; Gr. γιγνώσκω, to begin to know, to get a knowledge of, become acquainted with, come to know a thing (syn.: scio, calleo). I. Lit. 1. (α). Tempp. praes.: “cum igitur, nosce te, dicit, hoc dicit, nosce animum tuum,” Cic. Tusc. 1, 22, 52: Me. Sauream non novi. Li. At nosce sane, Plaut. As. 2, 4, 58; cf.: Ch. Nosce signum. Ni. Novi, id. Bacch. 4, 6, 19; id. Poen. 4, 2, 71: “(Juppiter) nos per gentes alium alia disparat, Hominum qui facta, mores, pietatem et fidem noscamus,” id. Rud. prol. 12; id. Stich. 1, 1, 4: “id esse verum, cuivis facile est noscere,” Ter. Ad. 5, 4, 8: “ut noscere possis quidque,” Lucr. 1, 190; 2, 832; 3, 124; 418; 588; Cic. Rep. 1, 41, 64: deus ille, quem mente noscimus, id. N. D. 1, 14, 37.—Pass.: “EAM (tabulam) FIGIER IOVBEATIS, VBEI FACILVMED GNOSCIER POTISIT, S. C. de Bacch.: forma in tenebris nosci non quita est, Ter Hec. 4, 1, 57 sq.: omnes philosophiae partes tum facile noscuntur, cum, etc.,” Cic. N. D. 1, 4, 9: philosophiae praecepta noscenda, id. Fragm. ap. Lact. 3, 14: “nullique videnda, Voce tamen noscar,” Ov. M. 14, 153: “nec noscitur ulli,” by any one, id. Tr. 1, 5, 29: “noscere provinciam, nosci exercitui,” by the army, Tac. Agr. 5.— (β). Temppperf., to have become acquainted with, to have learned, to know: “si me novisti minus,” Plaut. Aul. 4, 10, 47: “Cylindrus ego sum, non nosti nomen meum?” id. Men. 2, 2, 20: “novi rem omnem,” Ter. And. 4, 4, 50: “qui non leges, non instituta ... non jura noritis,” Cic. Pis. 13, 30: “plerique neque in rebus humanis quidquam bonum norunt, nisi, etc.,” id. Lael. 21, 79: “quam (virtutem) tu ne de facie quidem nosti,” id. Pis. 32, 81; id. Fin. 2, 22, 71: “si ego hos bene novi,” if I know them well, id. Rosc. Am. 20 fin.: si Caesarem bene novi, Balb. ap. Cic. Att. 9, 7, B, 2: “Lepidum pulchre noram,” Cic. Fam. 10, 23, 1: “si tuos digitos novi,” id. Att. 5, 21, 13: “res gestas de libris novisse,” to have learned from books, Lact. 5, 19, 15: “nosse Graece, etc. (late Lat. for scire),” Aug. Serm. 45, 5; 167, 40 al.: “ut ibi esses, ubi nec Pelopidarum—nosti cetera,” Cic. Fam. 7, 28, 2; Plin. Ep. 3, 9, 11.— 2. To examine, consider: “ad res suas noscendas,” Liv. 10, 20: “imaginem,” Plaut. Ps. 4, 2, 29.—So esp., to take cognizance of as a judge: “quae olim a praetoribus noscebantur,” Tac. A. 12, 60.— II. Transf., in the tempp. praes. A. In gen., to know, recognize (rare; perh. not in Cic.): hau nosco tuom, I know your (character, etc.), i. e. I know you no longer, Plaut. Trin. 2, 4, 44: “nosce imaginem,” id. Ps. 4, 2, 29; id. Bacch. 4, 6, 19: “potesne ex his ut proprium quid noscere?” Hor. S. 2, 7, 89; Tac. H. 1, 90.— B. In partic., to acknowledge, allow, admit of a reason or an excuse (in Cic.): “numquam amatoris meretricem oportet causam noscere, Quin, etc.,” Plaut. Truc. 2, 1, 18: “illam partem excusationis ... nec nosco, nec probo,” Cic. Fam. 4, 4, 1; cf.: “quod te excusas: ego vero et tuas causas nosco, et, etc.,” id. Att. 11, 7, 4: “atque vereor, ne istam causam nemo noscat,” id. Leg. 1, 4, 11.— III. Transf. in tempp. perf. A. To be acquainted with, i. e. to practise, possess: “alia vitia non nosse,” Sen. Q. N. 4 praef. § 9.— B. In mal. part., to know (in paronomasia), Plaut. Most. 4, 2, 13; id. Pers. 1, 3, 51.— IV. (Eccl. Lat.) Of religious knowledge: “non noverant Dominum,” Vulg. Judic. 2, 12; ib. 2 Thess. 1, 8: “Jesum novi, Paulum scio,” I acknowledge, ib. Act. 19, 15.—Hence, nōtus , a, um, P. a., known. A. Lit.: “nisi rem tam notam esse omnibus et tam manifestam videres,” Cic. Verr. 2, 3, 58, 134: “ejusmodi res ita notas, ita testatas, ita manifestas proferam,” id. ib. 2, 2, 34, § “85: fingi haec putatis, quae patent, quae nota sunt omnibus, quae tenentur?” id. Mil. 28, 76: “noti atque insignes latrones,” id. Phil. 11, 5, 10: “habere omnes philosophiae notos et tractatos locos,” id. Or. 33, 118: “facere aliquid alicui notum,” id. Fam. 5, 12, 7: “tua nobilitas hominibus litteratis est notior, populo obscurior,” id. Mur. 7, 16: “nullus fuit civis Romanus paulo notior, quin, etc.,” Caes. B. C. 2, 19: “vita P. Sullae vobis populoque Romano notissima,” Cic. Sull. 26, 72: “nulli nota domus sua,” Juv. 1, 7.— (β). With gen. (poet.): “notus in fratres animi paterni,” Hor. C. 2, 2, 6: noti operum Telchines. Stat. Th. 2, 274: “notusque fugarum, Vertit terga,” Sil. 17, 148.— (γ). With subj.-clause: “notum est, cur, etc.,” Juv. 2, 58.— (δ). With inf. (poet.): “Delius, Trojanos notus semper minuisse labores,” Sil. 12, 331.— 2. In partic. a. Subst.: nōti , acquaintances, friends: “de dignitate M. Caelius notis ac majoribus natu ... respondet,” Cic. Cael. 2, 3: “hi suos notos hospitesque quaerebant,” Caes. B. C. 1, 74, 5; Hor. S. 1, 1, 85; Verg. Cir. 259.— b. In a bad sense, notorious: “notissimi latronum duces,” Cic. Fam. 10, 14, 1: “integrae Temptator Orion Dianae,” Hor. C. 3, 4, 70; Ov. M. 1, 198: “Clodia, mulier non solum nobilis sed etiam nota,” Cic. Cael. 13, 31; cf. Cic. Verr. 1, 6, 15: “moechorum notissimus,” Juv. 6, 42.— B. Transf., act., knowing, that knows: novi, notis praedicas, to those that know, Plaut. Ps. 4, 2, 39.Chisholm: r. m. influential  philosopher whose publications spanned the field, including ethics and the history of philosophy. He is mainly known as an epistemologist, metaphysician, and philosopher of mind. In early opposition to powerful forms of reductionism, such as phenomenalism, extensionalism, and physicalism, Chisholm developed an original philosophy of his own. Educated at Brown and Harvard Ph.D., 2, he spent nearly his entire career at Brown. He is known chiefly for the following contributions. a Together with his teacher and later his colleague at Brown, C. J. Ducasse, he developed and long defended an adverbial account of sensory experience, set against the sense-datum act-object account then dominant. b Based on deeply probing analysis of the free will problematic, he defended a libertarian position, again in opposition to the compatibilism long orthodox in analytic circles. His libertarianism had, moreover, an unusual account of agency, based on distinguishing transeunt event causation from immanent agent causation. c In opposition to the celebrated linguistic turn of linguistic philosophy, he defended the primacy of intentionality, a defense made famous not only through important papers, but also through his extensive and eventually published correspondence with Wilfrid Sellars. d Quick to recognize the importance and distinctiveness of the de se, he welcomed it as a basis for much de re thought. e His realist ontology is developed through an intentional concept of “entailment,” used to define key concepts of his system, and to provide criteria of identity for occupants of fundamental categories. f In epistemology, he famously defended forms of foundationalism and internalism, and offered a delicately argued dissolution of the ancient problem of the criterion. The principles of Chisholm’s epistemology and metaphysics are not laid down antecedently as hard-and-fast axioms. Lacking any inviolable antecedent privilege, they must pass muster in the light of their consequences and by comparison with whatever else we may find plausible. In this regard he sharply contrasts with such epistemologists as Popper, with the skepticism of justification attendant on his deductivism, and Quine, whose stranded naturalism drives so much of his radical epistemology and metaphysics. By contrast, Chisholm has no antecedently set epistemic or metaphysical principles. His philosophical views develop rather dialectically, with sensitivity to whatever considerations, examples, or counterexamples reflection may reveal as relevant. This makes for a demanding complexity of elaboration, relieved, however, by a powerful drive for ontological and conceptual economy.  notum per se Latin, ‘known through itself’, self-evident. This term corresponds roughly to the term ‘analytic’. In Thomistic theology, there are two ways for a thing to be self-evident, secundum se in itself and quoad nos to us. The proposition that God exists is self-evident in itself, because God’s existence is identical with his essence; but it is not self-evident to us humans, because humans are not directly acquainted with God’s essence.Aquinas’s Summa theologiae I, q.2,a.1,c. For Grice, by uttering “Smith knows that p,” the emisor explicitly conveys, via semantic truth-conditional entailment, that (1) p; (2) Smith believes that p; (3) if (1), (2); and conversationally implicates, in a defeasible pragmatic way, explainable by his adherence to the principle of conversational co-operation, that Smith is guaranteeing that p.”Refs.: H. P. Grice, “The monosemy of ‘know’,” H. P. Grice, “The implicatura of ‘know;’” H. P. Grice, “’I know’ and ‘I guarantee’;” H. P. Grice, “Austin’s performatory fallacy on ‘know’ and ‘guarantee.’”

non-conventional. Unfortunately, Grice never came up with a word or sobriquet for the non-conventional, and kept using the ‘non-conventional.’ Similarly, he never came up with a positive way to refer to the non-natural, and non-natural it remained. Luckily, we can take it as a joke. Convention figures TWICE in Grice’s scheme. For his reductive analysis of communication, he surely can avoid convention by relying on a self-referring anti-sneaky clause. But when it comes to the ‘taxonomy’ of the ‘shades’ of implication, he wants the emissor to implicate that p WITHOUT relying on a convention. If the emissor RELIES on a convention, there are problems for his analysis. Why? First, at the explicit level, it can be assumed that conventions will feature (Smith’s dog is ‘by convention’ called ‘Fido”). At the level of the implied, there are two ways where convention matters in a wrong way. “My neighbour’s three-year-old is an adult” FLOUTS a convention – or meaning postulate. And it corresponds to the entailment. But finally, there is a third realm of the conventional. For particles like “therefore,” or ‘but.’ “But” Grice does not care much about, but ‘therefore’ he does. He wants to say that ‘therefore’ is mainly emphatic.The emissor implies a passage from premise to conclusion. And that implication relies on a convention YET it is not part of the entailment. So basically, it is an otiose addition. Why would rational conversationalists rely on them? The rationale for this is that Grice wants to provide a GENERAL theory of communication that will defeat Austin’s convention-tied ritualistic view of language. So Grice needs his crucial philosophical refutations NOT to rely on convention. What relies on convention cannot be cancellable. What doesn’t can. I an item relies on convention it has not really redeemed from that part of the communicative act that can not be explained rationally by argument. There is no way to calculate a conventional item. It is just a given. And Grice is interested in providing a rationale. His whole campaign relates to this idea that Austin has rushed, having detected a nuance in a linguistic phenomenon, to explain it away, without having explored in detail what kind of nuance it is. For Grice it is NOT a conventional nuance – it’s a sous-entendu of conversation (as Mill has it), an unnecessary implication (as Russell has it). Why did Grice chose ‘convention’? The influence of Lewis seems minor, because he touches on the topic in “Causal Theory,” before Lewis. The word ‘convention’ does NOT occur in “Causal Theory,” though. But there are phrasings to that effect. Notably, let us consider his commentary in the reprint, when he omits the excursus. He says that he presents FOUR cases: a particularized conversational (‘beautiful handwriting’), a generalised conversational (“in the kitchen or in the bedroom”), a ‘conventional implicaturum’ (“She was poor but she was honest”) and a presupposition (“You have not ceased to eat iron”). So the obvious target for exploration is the third, where Grice has the rubric ‘convention,’ as per ‘conventional.’ So his expansion on the ‘but’ example (what Frege has as ‘colouring’ of “aber”) is interesting to revise. “plied is that Smith has been bcating his wifc. (2) " She was poor but she was honcst ", whele what is implied is (vcry roughly) that there is some contrast between poverty and honesty, or between her poverty and her honesty. The first 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. This might be disputed, but it is at lcast arguable that it is so, and its being arguable might be enough to distinguish-this type of case from others. I shall however for convenience assume that the common view mentioned is correct. This consideration clearly distinguishes (1) from (2); 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; it 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 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). There are at least four candidates, not necessarily mutually exclusive. Supposing someone to have uttered one or other of my sample sentences, we may ask whether the vehicle of implication would be (a) what the speaker said (or asserted), or (b) the speaker (" did he imply that . . . .':) or (c) the words the speaker used, or (d) his saying that (or again his saying that in that way); or possibly some plurality of these items. As regards (a) I think (1) and (2) differ; I think it would be correct to say in the case of (l) that what he speaker said (or asserted) implied that Smith had been beating this wife, and incorrect to say in the case of (2) that what te said (or asserted) implied that there was a contrast between e.g., honesty and poverty. A test on which I would rely is the following : if accepting that the implication holds involves one in r27 128 H. P. GRICE accepting an hypothetical' if p then q ' where 'p ' represents the original statement and ' q' represents what is implied, then what the speaker said (or asserted) is a vehicle of implication, otherwise not. To apply this rule to the given examples, if I accepted the implication alleged to hold in the case of (1), I should feel compelled to accept the hypothetical " If Smith has left off beating his wife, then he has been beating her "; whereas if I accepted the alleged implication in the case of (2), I should not feel compelled to accept the hypothetical " If she was poor but honest, then there is some contrast between poverty and honesty, or between her poverty and her honesty." The other candidates can be dealt with more cursorily; I should be inclined to say with regard to both (l) and (2) that the speaker could be said to have implied whatever it is that is irnplied; that in the case of (2) it seems fairly clear that the speaker's words could be said to imply a contrast, whereas it is much less clear whether in the case of (1) the speaker's words could be said to imply that Smith had been beating his wife; and that in neither case would it be evidently appropriate to speak of his saying that, or of his saying that in that way, as implying what is implied. The third idea with which I wish to assail my two examples is really a twin idea, that of the detachability or cancellability of the implication. (These terms will be explained.) Consider example (1): one cannot fi.nd a form of words which could be used to state or assert just what the sentence " Smith has left off beating his wife " might be used to assert such that when it is used the implication that Smith has been beating his wife is just absent. Any way of asserting what is asserted in (1) involves the irnplication in question. I shall express this fact by saying that in the case of (l) the implication is not detqchable from what is asserted (or simpliciter, is not detachable). Furthermore, one cannot take a 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 implication without annulling the assertion. One cannot intelligibly say " Smith has left off beating his wife but I do not mean to imply that he has been beating her." I shall express this fact by saying that in the case of (1) the implication is not cancellable (without THE CAUSAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION r29 cancelling the assertion). If we turn to (2) we find, I think, that there is quite a strong case for saying that here the implication ls detachable. Thcrc sccms quitc a good case for maintaining that if, instead of sayirrg " She is poor but shc is honcst " I were to say " She is poor and slre 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. But the question whether, in tl-re case of (2), thc inrplication is cancellable, is slightly more cornplex. Thcrc is a sonse in which we may say that it is non-cancellable; if sorncone were to say " She is poor but she is honest, though of course I do not mean to imply that there is any contrast between poverty and honesty ", this would seem a puzzling and eccentric thing to have said; but though we should wish to quarrel with the speaker, I do not think we should go so far as to say that his utterance was unintelligible; we should suppose that he had adopted a most peculiar way of conveying the the news that she was poor and honesl. The fourth and last test that I wish to impose on my exarnples is to ask whether we would be inclined to regard the fact that the appropriate implication is present as being a matter of the meaning of some particular word or phrase occurring in the sentences in question. I am aware that this may not be always a very clear or easy question to answer; nevertheless Iwill risk the assertion that we would be fairly happy to say that, as regards (2), the factthat the implication obtains is a matter of the meaning of the word ' but '; whereas so far as (l) is concerned we should have at least some inclination to say that the presence of the implication was a matter of the 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.” Since the actual wording ‘convention’ does not occur it may do to revise how he words ‘convention’ in Essay 2 of WoW. So here is the way he words it in Essay II.“In some cases the CONVENTIONAL meaning of the WORDS used will DETERMINE what is impliccated, besides helping to determine what is said.” Where ‘determine’ is the key word. It’s not “REASON,” conversational reason that determines it. “If I say (smugly), ‘He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave,’ I have certainly COMMITTED myself, by virtue of the meaning of my words, to its being the case that his being brave is a consequence of (follows from) his being an Englishman. But, while I have said that [or explicitly conveyed THAT] he is an Englishman, and [I also have] said that [or explicitly conveyed that] he is brave, I do not want to say [if I may play with what people conventionally understand by ‘convention’] that I have said [or explicitly conveyed] (in the favoured sense) that [or explicitly conveyed that] it follows from his being an Englishman that he is brave, though I have certainly INDICATED, and so implicated, that this is so.” The rationale as to why the label is ‘convention’ comes next. “I do not want to say that my utterance of this sentence would be, strictly speaking, FALSE should the consequence in question fail to hold. So some implicaturums are conventional, unlike the one with which I introduce this discussion of implicaturum.”Grice’s observation or suggestion then or advise then, in terms of nomenclature. His utterance WOULD be FALSE if the MEANING of ‘therefore’ were carried as an ENTAILMENT (rather than emphatic truth-value irrelevant rhetorical emphasis). He expands on this in The John Lecture, where Jill is challenged. “What do you mean, “Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave”?” What is being challenged is the validity of the consequence. ‘Therefore’ is vague enough NOT to specify what type of consequence is meant. So, should someone challenge the consequence, Jill would still be regarded by Grice as having uttered a TRUE utterance. The metabolism here is complex since it involves assignment of ‘meaning’ to this or that expression (in this case ‘therefore’). In Essay VI he is perhaps more systematic.The wider programme just mentioned arises out of a distinction which, for purposes which I need not here specify, I wish to make within the total signification of a remark: a distinction between what the speaker has said (in a certain favoured, and maybe in some degree artificial, sense of 'said'), and what he has 'implicated' (e.g. implied, indicated, suggested, etc.), taking into account the fact that what he has implicated may be either conventionally implicated (implicated by virtue of the meaning of some word or phrase which he has used) or non-conventionally implicated (in which case the specification of the implicaturum falls [TOTALLY] outside [AND INDEPENDENTLY, i. e. as NOT DETERMINED BY] the specification of the conventional meaning of the words used [Think ‘beautiful handwriting,’ think ‘In the kitchen or in the bedroom’). He is clearest in Essay 6 – where he adds ‘=p’ in the symbolization.UTTERER'S MEANING, SENTENCE-MEANING, AND WORD-MEANINGMy present aim is to throw light on the connection between (a) a notion of ‘meaning’ which I want to regard as basic, viz. that notion which is involved in saying of someone that ‘by’ (when) doing SUCH-AND-SUCH he means THAT SO-AND-SO (in what I have called a non-natural use of 'means'), and (b) the notions of meaning involved in saying First, that a given sentence means 'so-and-so' Second, that a given word or phrase means 'so-and-so'. What I have to say on these topics should be looked upon as an attempt to provide a sketch of what might, I hope, prove to be a viable theory, rather than as an attempt to provide any part of a finally acceptable theory. The account which I shall otTer of the (for me) basic notion of meaning is one which I shall not  seek now to defend.I should like its approximate correctness to be assumed, so that attention may be focused on its utility, if correct, in the explication of other and (I hope) derivative notions of meaning. This enterprise forms part of a wider programme which I shall in a moment delineate, though its later stages lie beyond the limits which I have set for this paper. The wider programme just mentioned arises out of a distinction which, for purposes which I need not here specify, I wish to make within the total signification of a remark: a distinction between what the speaker has said (in a certain favoured, and maybe in some degree artificial, sense of 'said'), and what he has 'implicated' (e.g. implied, indicated, suggested, etc.), taking into account the fact that what he has implicated may be either conventionally implicated (implicated by virtue of the meaning of some word or phrase which he has used) or non-conventionally implicated (in which case the specification of the implicaturum falls [TOTALLY] outside [AND INDEPENDENTLY, i. e. as NOT DETERMINED BY] the specification of the conventional meaning of the words used [Think ‘beautiful handwriting,’ think ‘In the kitchen or in the bedroom’). The programme is directed towards an explication of the favoured SENSE of 'say' and a clarification of its relation to the notion of conventional meaning. The stages of the programme are as folIows: First, To distinguish between locutions of the form 'U (utterer) meant that .. .' (locutions which specify what rnight be called 'occasion-meaning') and locutions of the From Foundalions oJ Language. 4 (1968), pp. 1-18. Reprinted by permission of the author and the editor of Foundations oJ Language. I I hope that material in this paper, revised and re·arranged, will form part of a book to be published by the Harvard University Press.  form 'X (utterance-type) means H ••• "'. In locutions of the first type, meaning is specified without the use of quotation-marks, whereas in locutions of the second type the meaning of a sentence, word or phrase is specified with the aid of quotation marks. This difference is semantically important. Second, To attempt to provide a definiens for statements of occasion-meaning; more precisely, to provide a definiens for 'By (when) uttering x, U meant that *p'. Some explanatory comments are needed here. First, I use the term 'utter' (together with 'utterance') in an artificially wide sense, to cover any case of doing x or producing x by the performance of which U meant that so-and-so. The performance in question need not be a linguistic or even a conventionalized performance. A specificatory replacement of the dummy 'x' will in some cases be a characterization of a deed, in others a characterization of a product (e.g. asound). (b) '*' is a dummy mood-indicator, distinct from specific mood-indicators like 'I-' (indicative or assertive) or '!' (imperative). More precisely, one may think of the schema 'Jones meant that *p' as yielding a full English sentence after two transformation al steps: (i) replace '*' by a specific mood-indicator and replace 'p' by an indicative sentence. One might thus get to 'Jones meant that I- Smith will go home' or to 'Jones meant that! Smith will go horne'. (ii) replace the sequence following the word 'that' by an appropriate clause in indirect speech (in accordance with rules specified in a linguistic theory). One might thus get to 'Jones meant that Srnith will go horne' 'Jones meant that Srnith is to go horne'. Third, To attempt to elucidate the notion of the conventional meaning of an utterance-type; more precisely, to explicate sentences which make claims of the form 'X (utterance-type) means "*''', or, in case X is a non-scntcntial utterancctype, claims of the form 'X means H ••• "', where the location is completed by a nonsentential expression. Again, some explanatory comments are required. First, It will be convenient to recognize that what I shall call statements of timeless meaning (statements of the type 'X means " ... "', in which the ~pecification of meaning involves quotation-marks) may be subdivided into (i) statements of timeless 'idiolect-meaning', e.g. 'For U (in U's idiolect) X means " ... '" and (ü) statements of timeless 'Ianguage meaning', e.g. 'In L (language) X means " ... "'. It will be convenient to handle these separately, and in the order just given. (b) The truth of a statement to the effect that X means ' .. .' is of course not incompatible with the truth of a further statement to the effect that X me ans '--", when the two lacunae are quite differently completed. An utterance-type rriay have more than one conventional meaning, and any definiens which we offer must allow fOT this fact. 'X means " ... '" should be understood as 'One of the meanings of X is " ... " '. (IV) In view of the possibility of multiplicity in the timeless meaning of an utterance-type, we shall need to notice, and to provide an explication of, what I shall call the applied timeless meaning of an utterance-type. That is to say, we need a definiens for the schema 'X (utterance-type) meant here " ... "', a schema the specifications of which announce the correct reading of X for a given occasion of utterance. Comments. (a) We must be careful to distinguish the applied timeless meaning of X (type) with respecf to a particular token x (belonging to X) from the occasionmeaning of U's utterance of x. The following are not equivalent: (i) 'When U uttered it, the sentence "Palmer gave Nickiaus quite a beating" meant "Palmer vanquished Nickiaus with some ease" [rather than, say, "Palmer administered vigorous corporal punishment to NickIaus."]' (ii) 'When U uttered the sentence "Palmer gave NickIaus quite a beating" U meant that Palmer vanquished NickIaus with some ease.' U might have been speaking ironically, in which case he would very likely have meant that NickIaus vanquished Palmer with some ease. In that case (ii) would c1early be false; but nevertheless (i) would still have been true. Second, There is some temptation to take the view that the conjunction of One, 'By uttering X, U meant that *p' and (Two, 'When uttered by U, X meant "*p'" provides a definiens for 'In uttering X, U said [OR EXPLICITLY CONVEYED] that *p'. Indeed, ifwe give consideration only to utterance-types for which there are available adequate statements of time1ess meaning taking the exemplary form 'X meant "*p'" (or, in the case of applied time1ess meaning, the form 'X meant here "*p" '), it may even be possible to uphold the thesis that such a coincidence of occasion-meaning and applied time1ess meaning is a necessary and sufficient condition for saying that *p. But a litde refiection should convince us of the need to recognize the existence of statements of timeless meaning which instantiate forms other than the cited exemplary form. There are, I think, at least some sentences whose ‘timeless’ meaning is not adequately specifiable by a statement of the exemplary form. Consider the sentence 'Bill is a philosopher and he is, therefore, brave' (S ,). Or Jill: “Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave.”It would be appropriate, I think, to make a partial specification of the timeless meaning of S, by saying 'Part of one meaning of S, is "Bill is occupationally engaged in philosophical studies" '. One might, indeed, give a full specifu::ation of timeless meaning for S, by saying 'One meaning of S, inc1udes "Bill is occupationally engaged in philosophie al studies" and "Bill is courageous" and "[The fact] That Bill is courageous follows from his being occupationally engaged in philosophical studies", and that is all that is included'.  We might re-express this as 'One meaning of S, comprises "Bill is occupationally engaged (etc)", "Bill is courageous",  and "That Bill is eourageous follows (ete .)".'] It will be preferable to speeify the timeless meaning of S I in this way than to do so as folIows: 'One meaning of S I is "Bill is occupationally engaged (etc.) and Bill is courageous and that Bill is eourageous follows (ete.)" '; for this latter formulation at least suggests that SI is synonymous with the conjunctive sentence quoted in the formulation, whieh does not seem to be the case. Since it is true that another meaning of SI inc1udes 'Bill is addicted to general reftections about life' (vice 'Bill is occupationally engaged (etc.)'), one could have occasion to say (truly), with respect to a given utterance by U of SI' 'The meaning of SI HERE comprised "Bill is oecupationally engaged (ete.)", "Bill is eourageous", and "That Bill is courageous follows (ete.)"', or to say 'The meaning of S I HERE included "That Bill is courageous follows (etc.)" '. It could also be true that when U uttered SI he meant (part of what he meant was) that that Bill is eourageous follows (ete.). Now I do not wish to allow that, in my favoured sense of'say', one who utters SI will have said [OR EXPLICITLY CONVEYED ] that Bill's being courageous follows from his being a philosopher, though he may weil have said that Bill is a philosopher and that Bill is courageous. I would wish to maintain that the SEMANTIC FUNCTION of the 'therefore' is to enable a speaker to indicate, though not to say [or explicitly convey], that a certain consequenee holds. Mutatis mutandis, I would adopt the same position with regard to words like 'but' and 'moreover'. In the case of ‘but’ – contrast.In the case of ‘moreover,’ or ‘furthermore,’ the speaker is not explicitly conveying that he is adding; he is implicitly conveying that he is adding, and using the emphatic, colloquial, rhetorical, device. Much favoured by rhetoricians. To start a sentence with “Furthermore” is very common. To start a sentence, or subsentence with, “I say that in addition to the previous, the following also holds, viz.”My primary reason for opting for this partieular sense of'say' is that I expect it to be of greater theoretical utility than some OTHER sense of'say' [such as one held, say, by L. J. Cohen at Oxford] would be. So I shall be committed to the view that applied timeless meaning and occasion=meaning may coincide, that is to say, it may be true both First, that when U uttered X the meaning of X inc1uded '*p' and Second,  that part of what U meant when he uttered X was that *p, and yet be false that U has said, among other things, that *p. “I would like to use the expression 'conventionally meant that' in such a way that the fulfilment of the two conditions just mentioned, while insufficient for the truth of 'U said that *p' will be suffieient (and neeessary) for the truth of 'U conventionally meant that *p'.”The above is important because Grice is for the first time allowing the adverb ‘conventionally’ to apply not as he does in Essay I to ‘implicate’ but to ‘mean’ in general – which would INCLUDE what is EXPLICITLY CONVEYED. This will not be as central as he thinks he is here, because his exploration will be on the handwave which surely cannot be specified in terms of that the emissor CONVENTIONALLY MEANS.(V) This distinction between what is said [or explicity conveyed] and what is conventionally meant [or communicated, or conveyed simpliciter] creates the task of specifying the conditions in which what U conventionally means by an utterance is also part of what U said [or explicitly conveyed].I have hopes of being able to discharge this task by proceeding along the following lines.First, To specify conditions which will be satisfied only by a limited range of speech-acts, the members of which will thereby be stamped as specially central or fundamental. “Adding, contrasting, and reasoning” will not. Second, To stipulate that in uttering X [utterance type], U will have said [or explicitly conveyed] that *p, if both First, U has 1stFLOOR-ed that *p, where 1stFloor-ing is a CENTRAL speech-act [not adding, contrasting, or reasoning], and Second, X [the utterance type] embodies some CONVENTIONAL device [such as the mode of the copula] the meaning of which is such that its presence in X [the utterance type] indicates that its utterer is FIRST-FLOOR -ing that *p. Third, To define, for each member Y of the range of central speech-aets, 'U has Y -ed that *p' in terms of occasion-meaning (meaning that ... ) or in terms of some important elements) involved in the already provided definition of occasion-meaning. (VI) The fulfilment of the task just outlined will need to be supplemented by an account of this or that ELEMENT in the CONVENTIONAL MEANING of an utterance (such as one featuring ‘therefore,’ ‘but,’ or ‘moreover’) which is NOT part of what has been said [or explicitly conveyed].This account, at least for an important sub-class of such elements, might take the following shape: First, this or that problematic element is linked with this or that speech-act which is exhibited as posterior to, and such that their performance is dependent upon, some member or disjunction of members of the central, first-floor range; e. g. the meaning of 'moreover' would be linked with the speech-act of adding, the performance of which would require the performance of one or other of the central speech-acts. – [and the meaning of ‘but’ with contrasting, and the meaning of ‘therefore’ with reasoning, or inferring].Second, If SECOND-FLOOR-ing is such a non-central speech-act [such as inferring/reasoning, contrasting, or adding], the dependence of SECOND-FLOOR-ing that *p upon the performance of some central FIRST-FLOOR speech-act [such as stating or ordering] would have to be shown to be of a nature which justifies a RELUCTANCE to treat SECOND-FLOOR-ing (e. g. inferring, contrasting, adding) that *p as a case not merely of saying that *p, but also of saying that = p, or of saying that = *p (where' = p', or ' = *p', is a representation of one or more sentential forms specifically associated with SECOND-FLOOR-ing). Z Third, The notion of SECOND-FLOOR-ing (inferring, contrasting, adding) that *p (where Z-ing is non-central) would be explicated in terms of the nation of meaning that (or in terms of some important elements) in the definition of that notion). When Grice learned that that brilliant Harvardite, D. K. Lewis, was writing a dissertation under Quine on ‘convention’ he almost fainted! When he noticed that Lewis was relying rightly on Schelling and mainly restricting the ‘conventionality’ to the ‘arbitrariness,’ which Grice regarded as synonym with ‘freedom’ (Willkuere, liber arbitrium), he recovered. For Lewis, a two-off predicament occurs when you REPEAT. Grice is not interested. When you repeat, you may rely on some ‘arbitrariness.’ This is usually the EMISSOR’s auctoritas. As when Humptyy Dumpty was brought to Davidson’s attention. “Impenetrability!” “I don’t know what that means.” “Well put, Alice, if that is your name, as you said it was. What I mean by ‘impenetrability’ is that we rather change the topic, plus it’s tea time, and I feel like having some eggs.” Grice refers to this as the ‘idion.’ He reminisces when he was in the bath and designed a full new highway code (“Nobody has yet used it – but the pleasure was in the semiotic design.”). A second reminiscence pertains to his writing a full grammar of “Deutero-Esperanto.” “I loved it – because I had all the power a master needs! I decide what it’s proper!” In the field of the implicatura, Grice uses ‘convention’ casually, mainly to contrast it with HIS field, the non-conventional. One should not attach importance to this. On occasion Grice used Frege’s “Farbung,” just to confuse. The sad story is that Strawson was never convinced by the non-conventional. Being a conventionalist at heart (vide his “Intention and convention in speech acts,”) and revering Austin, Strawson opposes Grice’s idea of the ‘non-conventional.’ Note that in Grice’s general schema for the communicatum, the ‘conventional’ is just ONE MODE OF CORRELATION between the signum and the signatum, or the communicatum and the intentum. The ‘conventional’ can be explained, unlike Lewis, in mere terms of the validatum. Strawson and Wiggins “Cogito; ergo, sum”: What is explicitly conveyed is: “cogito”  and “sum”. The conjunction “cogito” and “sum” is not made an ‘invalidatum’ if the implicated consequence relation, emotionally expressed by an ‘alas’-like sort of ejaculation, ‘ergo,’ fails to hold. Strawson and Wiggins give other examples. For some reason, Latin ‘ergo’ becomes the more structured, “therefore,” which is a composite of ‘there’ and ‘fore.’ Then there’s the very Hun, “so,” (as in “so so”). Then there’s the “Sie schoene aber poor,” discussed by Frege --“but,” – and Strawson and Wiggins add a few more that had Grice elaborating on first-floor versus second-floor. Descartes is on the first floor. He states “cogito” and he states “sum.” Then he goes to the second floor, and the screams, “ergo,” or ‘dunc!’” The examples Strawson and Wiggins give are: “although” (which looks like a subordinating dyadic connector but not deemed essential by Gazdar’s 16 ones). Then they give an expression Grice quite explored, “because,” or “for”as Grice prefers (‘since it improves on Stevenson), the ejaculation “alas,” and in its ‘misusage,’ “hopefully.” This is an adverbial that Grice loved: “Probably, it will rains,” “Desirably, there is icecream.” There is a confusing side to this too. “intentions are to be recognized, in the normal case, by virtue of a knowledge of the conventional use of the sentence (indeed my account of "non-conventional implicaturum" depends on this idea).” So here we may disregard the ‘bandaged leg case’ and the idea that there is implicaturum in art, etc. If we take the sobriquet ‘non-conventional’ seriously, one may be led to suggest that the ‘non-conventional’ DEPENDS on the conventional. One distinctive feature – the fifth – of the conversational implicaturum is that it is partly generated as partly depending on the ‘conventional’ “use.” So this is tricky. Grice’s anti-conventionalism -- conventionalism, the philosophical doctrine that logical truth and mathematical truth are created by our choices, not dictated or imposed on us by the world. The doctrine is a more specific version of the linguistic theory of logical and mathematical truth, according to which the statements of logic and mathematics are true because of the way people use language. Of course, any statement owes its truth to some extent to facts about linguistic usage. For example, ‘Snow is white’ is true in English because of the facts that 1 ‘snow’ denotes snow, 2 ‘is white’ is true of white things, and 3 snow is white. What the linguistic theory asserts is that statements of logic and mathematics owe their truth entirely to the way people use language. Extralinguistic facts such as 3 are not relevant to the truth of such statements. Which aspects of linguistic usage produce logical truth and mathematical truth? The conventionalist answer is: certain linguistic conventions. These conventions are said to include rules of inference, axioms, and definitions. The idea that geometrical truth is truth we create by adopting certain conventions received support by the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries. Prior to this discovery, Euclidean geometry had been seen as a paradigm of a priori knowledge. The further discovery that these alternative systems are consistent made Euclidean geometry seem rejectable without violating rationality. Whether we adopt the Euclidean system or a non-Euclidean system seems to be a matter of our choice based on such pragmatic considerations as simplicity and convenience. Moving to number theory, conventionalism received a prima facie setback by the discovery that arithmetic is incomplete if consistent. For let S be an undecidable sentence, i.e., a sentence for which there is neither proof nor disproof. Suppose S is true. In what conventions does its truth consist? Not axioms, rules of inference, and definitions. For if its truth consisted in these items it would be provable. Suppose S is not true. Then its negation must be true. In what conventions does its truth consist? Again, no answer. It appears that if S is true or its negation is true and if neither S nor its negation is provable, then not all arithmetic truth is truth by convention. A response the conventionalist could give is that neither S nor its negation is true if S is undecidable. That is, the conventionalist could claim that arithmetic has truth-value gaps. As to logic, all truths of classical logic are provable and, unlike the case of number theory and geometry, axioms are dispensable. Rules of inference suffice. As with geometry, there are alternatives to classical logic. The intuitionist, e.g., does not accept the rule ‘From not-not-A infer A’. Even detachment  ’From A, if A then B, infer B’  is rejected in some multivalued systems of logic. These facts support the conventionalist doctrine that adopting any set of rules of inference is a matter of our choice based on pragmatic considerations. But the anti-conventionalist might respond consider a simple logical truth such as ‘If Tom is tall, then Tom is tall’. Granted that this is provable by rules of inference from the empty set of premises, why does it follow that its truth is not imposed on us by extralinguistic facts about Tom? If Tom is tall the sentence is true because its consequent is true. If Tom is not tall the sentence is true because its antecedent is false. In either case the sentence owes its truth to facts about Tom.  -- convention T, a criterion of material adequacy of proposed truth definitions discovered, formally articulated, adopted, and so named by Tarski in connection with his 9 definition of the concept of truth in a formalized language. Convention T is one of the most important of several independent proposals Tarski made concerning philosophically sound and logically precise treatment of the concept of truth. Various of these proposals have been criticized, but convention T has remained virtually unchallenged and is regarded almost as an axiom of analytic philosophy. To say that a proposed definition of an established concept is materially adequate is to say that it is “neither too broad nor too narrow,” i.e., that the concept it characterizes is coextensive with the established concept. Since, as Tarski emphasized, for many formalized languages there are no criteria of truth, it would seem that there can be no general criterion of material adequacy of truth definitions. But Tarski brilliantly finessed this obstacle by discovering a specification that is fulfilled by the established correspondence concept of truth and that has the further property that any two concepts fulfilling it are necessarily coextensive. Basically, convention T requires that to be materially adequate a proposed truth definition must imply all of the infinitely many relevant Tarskian biconditionals; e.g., the sentence ‘Some perfect number is odd’ is true if and only if some perfect number is odd. Loosely speaking, a Tarskian biconditional for English is a sentence obtained from the form ‘The sentence ——— is true if and only if ——’ by filling the right blank with a sentence and filling the left blank with a name of the sentence. Tarski called these biconditionals “equivalences of the form T” and referred to the form as a “scheme.” Later writers also refer to the form as “schema T.” 

nonsense: Grice: “One has to be very careful. For Grice, “You’re the cream in my coffee” involves a category mistake, it’s nonsense, and neither true nor false. For me, it involves categorial falsity; therefore, it is analytically false, and therefore, meaningful, in its poor own ways!” – “”You’re the cream in my coffee” compares with a not that well known ditty by Freddie Ayer, and the Ambassadors, “Saturday is in bed – but Garfield isn’t.”” – “ “Saturday is in bed” involves categorial falsity but surely only Freddie would use it metaphorically – not all categorial falsities pass the Richards test --. Grice: “ “It is not the case that you’re the cream in my coffee” is a truism” – But cf. “You haven’t been cleaning the Aegean stables – because you’ve just said you spent the summer in Hull, and the stables are in Greece.” Cf. “Grice: “ ‘You’re the cream in my coffee’ is literally, a piece of nonsense – it involves a categorial falsity.” “Sentences involving categorial falsity nonsense are the specialty of Ryle, our current Waynflete!” -- Sense-nonsense -- demarcation, the line separating empirical science from mathematics and logic, from metaphysics, and from pseudoscience. Science traditionally was supposed to rely on induction, the formal disciplines including metaphysics on deduction. In the verifiability criterion, the logical positivists identified the demarcation of empirical science from metaphysics with the demarcation of the cognitively meaningful from the meaningless, classifying metaphysics as gibberish, and logic and mathematics, more charitably, as without sense. Noting that, because induction is invalid, the theories of empirical science are unverifiable, Popper proposed falsifiability as their distinguishing characteristic, and remarked that some metaphysical doctrines, such as atomism, are obviously meaningful. It is now recognized that science is suffused with metaphysical ideas, and Popper’s criterion is therefore perhaps a rather rough criterion of demarcation of the empirical from the nonempirical rather than of the scientific from the non-scientific. It repudiates the unnecessary task of demarcating the cognitively meaningful from the cognitively meaningless.  There are cases in which a denial has to be interpreted as the denial of an implicature. “She is not the cream in my. Grice: "There may be an occasion when the denial of a metaphor -- any absurd utterance when taken literally, e. g., 'You're the cream in my coffee' -- may be interpreted *not* as, strictly, denying that you're *literally* the cream in my coffee, but, in a jocular, transferred -- and strictly illogical -- way, as the denying the implicaturum, or metaphorical interpretant, viz.'It is not the case that that you're the salt in my stew,". Grice was interested in how ‘absurdum’ became ‘nonsense’ -- absurdum, adj. ab, mis-, and Sanscr. svan = “sonare;” cf. susurrus, and σῦριγξ, = a pipe; cf. also absonus.” Lewis and Short render ‘absurdum’’ as ‘out of tune, hence giving a disagreeable sound, harsh, rough.’ I. Lit.: “vox absona et absurda,” Cic. de Or. 3, 11, 41; so of the croaking of frogs: absurdoque sono fontes et stagna cietis, Poët. ap. Cic. Div. 1, 9, 15.— II. Fig., -- Short and Lewis this ‘absurd’ transferred usage: ‘absurd,’ which is not helpful -- “of persons and things, irrational, incongruous, absurd, silly, senseless, stupid.” They give a few quotes: “ratio inepta atque absurda,” – The reason is inept and absurd” Ter. Ad. 3, 3, 22: “hoc pravum, ineptum, absurdum atque alienum a vitā meā videtur,” id. ib. 5, 8, 21: “carmen cum ceteris rebus absurdum tum vero in illo,” Cic. Mur. 26: “illud quam incredibile, quam absurdum!” “How incredible! How absurd!” -- id. Sull. 20: “absurda res est caveri,” id. Balb. 37: bene dicere haud absurdum est, is not inglorious, per litotem for, is praiseworthy, glorious, Sall. C. 3 Kritz.—Homo absurdus, a man who is fit or good for nothing: “sin plane abhorrebit et erit absurdus,” Cic. de Or. 2, 20, 85: “absurdus ingenio,” Tac. H. 3, 62; cf.: “sermo comis, nec absurdum ingenium,” id. A. 13, 45.—Comp., Cic. Phil. 8, 41; id. N. D. 1, 16; id. Fin. 2, 13.—Sup., Cic. Att. 7, 13.—Adv.: absurdē . 1. Lit., discordantly: “canere,” Cic. Tusc. 2, 4, 12.— 2. Fig., irrationally, absurdly, Plaut. Ep. 3, 1, 6; Cic. Rep. 2, 15; id. Div. 2, 58, 219 al.—Comp., Cic. Phil. 8, 1, 4.—Sup., Aug. Trin. 4 fin. Cf. Tertullian, “Credo quia absurdum est.” – an answer to “Quam incredible, quam absurdum!” -- Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Ryle and categorial nonsense;” “The absurdity of ‘You’re the cream in my coffee.’”

NOTUM -- divided line, one of three analogies with the sun and cave offered in Plato’s Republic VI, 509d 511e as a partial explanation of the Good. Socrates divides a line into two unequal segments: the longer represents the intelligible world and the shorter the sensible world. Then each of the segments is divided in the same proportion. Socrates associates four mental states with the four resulting segments beginning with the shortest: eikasia, illusion or the apprehension of images; pistis, belief in ordinary physical objects; dianoia, the sort of hypothetical reasondispositional belief divided line 239   239 ing engaged in by mathematicians; and noesis, rational ascent to the first principle of the Good by means of dialectic. Grice read Austin’s essay on this with interest. Refs.: J. L. Austin, “Plato’s Cave,” in Philosophical Papers.

noûs: Grice uses ‘nous’ and ‘noetic’ when he is feeling very Grecian. Grecian term for mind or the faculty of reason. Noûs is the highest type of thinking, the kind a god would do. Sometimes called the faculty of intellectual intuition, it is at work when someone understands definitions, concepts, and anything else that is grasped all at once. Noûs stands in contrast with another intellectual faculty, dianoia. When we work through the steps of an argument, we exercise dianoia; to be certain the conclusion is true without argument  to just “see” it, as, perhaps, a god might  is to exercise noûs. Just which objects could be apprehended by noûs was controversial.

novalis: pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, philosopher of early G. Romanticism. His starting point was Fichte’s reflective type of transcendental philosophy; he attempted to complement Fichte’s focus on philosophical speculation by including other forms of intellectual experience such as faith, love, poetry, and religion, and exhibit their equally autonomous status of existence. Of special importance in this regard is his analysis of the imagination in contrast to reason, of the poetic power in distinction from the reasonable faculties. Novalis insists on a complementary interaction between these two spheres, on a union of philosophy and poetry. Another important aspect of his speculation concerns the relation between the inner and the outer world, subject and object, the human being and nature. Novalis attempted to reveal the correspondence, even unity between these two realms and to present the world as a “universal trope” or a “symbolic image” of the human mind and vice versa. He expressed his philosophical thought mostly in fragments. 

nowell-smithianism. “The Nowell is redundant,” Grice would say. P. H. Nowell-Smith adopted the “Nowell” after his father’s first name. In “Ethics,” he elaborates on what he calls ‘contextual implication.’ The essay was widely read, and has a freshness that other ‘meta-ethicist’ at Oxford seldom display. His ‘contextual implication’ compares of course to Grice’s ‘conversational implicaturum.’ Indeed, by using ‘conversational implicaturum,’ Grice is following an Oxonian tradition started with C. K. Grant and his ‘pragmatic implication,’ and P. H. Nowell-Smith and his ‘contextual implication.’ At Oxford, they were obsessed with these types of ‘implicatura,’ because it was the type of thing that a less subtle philosopher would ignore. Grice’s cancellability priority for his type of implicatura hardly applies to Nowell-Smith. Nowell-Smith never displays the ‘rationalist’ bent that Grice wants to endow to his principle of conversational co-operation. Nowell-Smith, rather, calls his ‘principles’ “rules of conversational etiquette.” If you revise the literature, you will see that things like “avoid ambiguity,” “don’t play unnecessary with words,” are listed indeed in what is called a ‘conversational manual,’ of ‘conversational etiquette,’ that is. In his rationalist bent, Grice narrows down the use of ‘conversational’ to apply to ‘conversational maxim,’ which is only a UNIVERSALISABLE one, towards the overarching goal of rational co-operation. In this regard, many of the rules of ‘conversational etiquette’ (Grice even mentions ‘moral rules,’ and a rule like ‘be polite’) to fall outside the principle of conversational helpfulness, and thus, not exactly generating a ‘conversational implicaturum.’ While Grice gives room to allow such non-conversational non-conventional implicatura to be ‘calculable,’ that is, ‘rationalizable, by ‘argument,’ he never showed any interest in giving one example – for the simple reason that none of those ‘maxims’ generated the type of ‘mistake’ on the part of this or that philosopher, as he was interested in rectifying.

nozick: Grice’s tutee at St. John’s – philosopher. Nozick quotes Grice profusely. And Grice – Grice: “That is, Nozick quotes Grice and Grice – that is, H. P. Grice, and G. R. Grice!” – Nozick quotes Grice in connection with ‘re-distributive punishmet’, which is a ‘communicative act’ alla Grice, “the Griceian message being sent via the recognition of the intention. Harvard , best known for his essay, “Anarchy, State, and Utopia,” which defends the libertarian position that only a minimal state limited to protecting rights is just. Nozick argues that a minimal state, but not a more extensive state, could arise without violating rights. Drawing on Kant’s dictum that people may not be used as mere means, Nozick says that people’s rights are inviolable, no matter how useful violations might be to the state. Nozick criticizes principles of re-distributive justice on which theorists base defenses of extensive states, such as the principle of utility, and Rawls’s principle that goods should be distributed in favour of the least well-off. Enforcing these principles requires eliminating the cumulative effect of a free exchange, which violates permanent, bequeathable property rights. Nozick’s own entitlement theory says that a distribution of holdings is just (or fair) if people under that distribution are entitled to what they hold. An entitlement, in turn, would be clarified using this or that principle of justice in acquisition, transfer, and rectification. Nozick’s other oeuvre include Philosophical Explanations 1, The Examined Life 9, The Nature of Rationality 3, and Socratic Puzzles. These are contributions to rational choice theory, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and ethics. Philosophical Explanations features two especially important contributions. The first is Nozick’s reliabilist, causal view that a belief that constitutes knowledge must track the truth. My belief that say the cat sat on the mat (or that Fido is shaggy) tracks the truth only if I would not believe this if the cat did not sit on the mat (or that Fido is not shaggy), and I would believe this if the cat sat on the mat, or Fido is shaggy. The tracking account positions Nozick to reject the principle that people know all of the things they believe via deductions from things they know, and to reject versions of scepticism based on this principle of closure. The second is Nozick’s closest continuer theory of identity, according to which Grice’s identity at a later time can depend on facts about other existing things, for it depends on what continues Grice  closely enough to be Grice and what  continues Grice more closely than any other existing thing. Nozick’s essay “Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice” is another important contribution. It is the first discussion of Newcomb’s problem, a problem in decision theory, and presents many positions prominent in subsequent debate. 

Numenius: Grecian Platonist philosopher of neoPythagorean tendencies. Very little is known of his life, but his philosophical importance is considerable. His system of three levels of spiritual reality  a primal god the Good, the Father, who is almost supra-intellectual; a secondary, creator god the demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus; and a world soul  largely anticipates that of Plotinus in the next century, though he was more strongly dualist than Plotinus in his attitude to the physical world and matter. He was much interested in religion. His most important work, fragments of which are preserved by Eusebius, is a dialogue On the Good, but he also wrote a polemic work On the Divergence of the Academics from Plato, which shows him to be a lively controversialist. J

O: particularis abdicativa. See Grice, “Circling the Square of Opposition.”

Oakeshott, M.: H. P. Grice, “Oakeshott’s conversational implicaturum,” English philosopher and political theorist trained at Cambridge and in G.y. He taught first at Cambridge and Oxford; from 1 he was professor of political science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His works include Experience and Its Modes 3, Rationalism in Politics 2, On Human Conduct 5, and On History 3. Oakeshott’s misleading general reputation, based on Rationalism in Politics, is as a conservative political thinker. Experience and Its Modes is a systematic work in the tradition of Hegel. Human experience is exclusively of a world of ideas intelligible insofar as it is coherent. This world divides into modes historical, scientific, practical, and poetic experience, each being partly coherent and categorially distinct from all others. Philosophy is the never entirely successful attempt to articulate the coherence of the world of ideas and the place of modally specific experience within that whole. His later works examine the postulates of historical and practical experience, particularly those of religion, morality, and politics. All conduct in the practical mode postulates freedom and is an “exhibition of intelligence” by agents who appropriate inherited languages and ideas to the generic activity of self-enactment. Some conduct pursues specific purposes and occurs in “enterprise associations” identified by goals shared among those who participate in them. The most estimable forms of conduct, exemplified by “conversation,” have no such purpose and occur in “civil societies” under the purely “adverbial” considerations of morality and law. “Rationalists” illicitly use philosophy to dictate to practical experience and subordinate human conduct to some master purpose. Oakeshott’s distinctive achievement is to have melded holistic idealism with a morality and politics radical in their affirmation of individuality. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “The Oxbridge conversation,” H. P. Grice, “The ancient stone walls of Oxford.”

objectivum – Grice: “Kant thought he was being witty when he speaks of the Copernican revolution – While I prefer ‘subjectification’ for what he meant, Strawson likes ‘category shift.’ At Oxford, we never took good care of Number One!” --  Grice reads Meinong on objectivity and finds it funny! Meinong distinguishes four classes of objects: ‘Objekt,’ simpliciter, which can be real (like horses) or ideal (like the concepts of difference, identity, etc.) and “Objectiv,” e.g. the affirmation of the being (Sein) or non-being (Nichtsein), of a being-such (Sosein), or a being-with (Mitsein) - parallel to existential, categorical and hypothetical judgements. An “Objectiv” is close to what contemporary philosophers call states of affairs (where these may be actual—may obtain—or not). The third class is the dignitative, e.g. the true, the good, the beautiful. Finally, there is the desiderative, e.g. duties, ends, etc. To these four classes of objects correspond four classes of psychological acts:  (re)presentation (das Vorstellen), for objects thought (das Denken), for the objectives feeling (das Fühlen), for dignitatives desire (das Begehren), for the desideratives. Grice starts with subjectivity. Objectivity can be constructed as non-relativised subjectivity. Grice discusses of Inventing right and wrong by Mackie. In the proceedings, Grice quotes the artless sexism of Austin in talking about the trouser words in Sense and Sensibilia. Grice tackles all the distinctions Mackie had played with: objective/Subjectsive, absolute/relative, categorical/hypothetical or suppositional. Grice quotes directly from Hare: Think of one world into whose fabric values are objectively built; and think of another in which those values have been annihilated. And remember that in both worlds the people in them go on being concerned about the same things—there is no difference in the Subjectsive value. Now I ask, what is the difference between the states of affairs in these two worlds? Can any answer be given except, none whatever? Grice uses the Latinate objective (from objectum). Cf. Hare on what he thinks the oxymoronic sub-jective value. Grice considered more seriously than Barnes did the systematics behind Nicolai Hartmanns stratification of values. Refs.: the most explicit allusion is a specific essay on “objectivity” in The H. P. Grice Papers. Most of the topic is covered in “Conception,” Essay 1. BANC.

objectivum. Here the contrast is what what is subjective, or subjectivum. Notably value. For Hartmann and Grice, a value is rational, objective and absolute, and categorical (not relative).

objectum. For Grice the subjectum is prior. While ‘subject’ and ‘predicate’ are basic Aristotelian categories, the idea of the direct object or indirect object seems to have little philosophical relevance. (but cf. “What is the meaning of ‘of’? Genitivus subjectivus versus enitivus objectivus. The usage that is more widespread is a misnomer for ‘thing’. When an empiricist like Grice speaks of an ‘obble’ or an ‘object,’ he means a thing. That is because, since Hume there’s no such thing as a ‘subject’ qua self. And if there is no subject, there is no object. No Copernican revolution for empiricists.

the obiectum-quo/obiectum quod distinction: obiectum quo: Griceian for “the object by which an object is known.” Grice: “A sort of meta-object, if you press me.” -- It should be understood in contrast with “obiectum quod,” -- the object that is known. E. g. when Grice’s son knows WHAT ‘a shaggy thing’ is, the shaggy thing is the obiectum quod and Grice’s son’s concept of the shaggy thing is the obiectum quo. The concept (‘shaggy’) is thus instrumental to knowing a shaggy thing, but the concept ‘shaggy’ is not itself what is known. A human needs a concept in order to have knowledge, because a human’s knowledge is receptive, in contrast with God’s which is productive. God creates what he knows. Human knowledge is mediated; divine knowledge is immediate. J. C. Wilson famously believed that the distinction between obiectum quod and obiectum quo exposes the crucial mistake of Bradley’s neo-Hegelian idealism – “that is destroying the little that’s left of philosophy at Oxford.” According to an idealist such as Bradley, the object of knowledge, i.e., what Bradley knows, is an idea. In contrast, the Scholastics maintain that an idealist such as Bradley conflate the object of knowledge with the *means* (the obiectum quo) by which human knowledge is made possible. Humans must be connected to the object of knowledge by something obiectum quo, but what connects them is not that to which they are connected – “autem natura est terminus ut quo, 3° Obiectum ut qu9 l esi illud ipsum, ad quod potentia, vel scientia spectat.Obiectiim ;t quo est propria raiio , propter qnam potentia, vel scientia circa aliquid versatur. Vel obiectum quod cst illud , quod in scientia demonstratur.0biectum quo consistit in mediis, quibus probantur conclusiones in eadem scientia *, 4* l't quod significat subiecium , cui proprie convenit aliquod attributurn , vel quaedam denominatio: ut quo indicat rationem , propter quam subiectum cst, vel denominatur tale ; e. g., hic terminus albus , si accipiatur sit quod, significal parietem, vel aliud, quod dicitur album; sin autem ut quo denotat ipsam albitudinem. Hoc sensu terminus acceptus ut, quod dicitur etiam usurpari in recto , ut quo, in obliquo *. 5° Denique: Species, per quam fit cognitio alicuius rei, est obiectum, quo illa cognoscitur; res antem a specie repraesentata est obiectum quod : « Species visibilis, ait s. Thomas, non se habet, ut quod videtur, sed ut quo videtur *». Et alibi : « Species intelligibiles, quibus intellectus possibilis fit in actu, non sunt obiectum intelleclus, non enim se habent ad intellectum, sicut quod intelligitur, sed sicut quo intelligit * ». Sane, species non est terminus, in quem cognitio fertur , sed dumlaxat principium, ex quo facultas cognitrix determinatur ad I .*, q. n,l;un r m ab ipsa specie repraesentatam, Quarc , etsi auima cognoseat res pcr species, tamen illas in seipsis cognoscit : « ('ognoscere res per earum similitudines im cognoscente existentes, est cognoscere eas in seipsis * ». Et B. Albcrtus M. • Sensus [*r hoc, quod species est sensibilium, sensibilia imin-diato arripit.” Refs.: H. P. Grice: The obiectum-quo/obiectum quod distinction: and what to do with it.

objective rightness. In meta-ethics, an action is objectively right for a person to perform on some occasion if the agent’s performing it on that occasion really is right, whether or not the agent, or anyone else, believes it is. An action is subjectively right for a person to perform on some occasion if the agent believes, or perhaps justifiably believes, of that action that it is objectively right. For example, according to a version of utilitarianism, an action is objectively right provided the action is optimific in the sense that the consequences that would result from its per624 O    624 formance are at least as good as those that would result from any alternative action the agent could instead perform. Were this theory correct, then an action would be an objectively right action for an agent to perform on some occasion if and only if that action is in fact optimific. An action can be both objectively and subjectively right or neither. But an action can also be subjectively right, but fail to be objectively right, as where the action fails to be optimific again assuming that a utilitarian theory is correct, yet the agent believes the action is objectively right. And an action can be objectively right but not subjectively right, where, despite the objective rightness of the action, the agent has no beliefs about its rightness or believes falsely that it is not objectively right. This distinction is important in our moral assessments of agents and their actions. In cases where we judge a person’s action to be objectively wrong, we often mitigate our judgment of the agent when we judge that the action was, for the agent, subjectively right. This same objectivesubjective distinction applies to other ethical categories such as wrongness and obligatoriness, and some philosophers extend it to items other than actions, e.g., emotions. 

obligatum -- Deontology -- duty, what a person is obligated or required to do. Duties can be moral, legal, parental, occupational, etc., depending on their foundations or grounds. Because a duty can have several different grounds, it can be, say, both moral and legal, though it need not be of more than one type. Natural duties are moral duties people have simply in virtue of being persons, i.e., simply in virtue of their nature. There is a prima facie duty to do something if and only if there is an appropriate basis for doing that thing. For instance, a prima facie moral duty will be one for which there is a moral basis, i.e., some moral grounds. This conDutch book duty 248   248 trasts with an all-things-considered duty, which is a duty one has if the appropriate grounds that support it outweigh any that count against it. Negative duties are duties not to do certain things, such as to kill or harm, while positive duties are duties to act in certain ways, such as to relieve suffering or bring aid. While the question of precisely how to draw the distinction between negative and positive duties is disputed, it is generally thought that the violation of a negative duty involves an agent’s causing some state of affairs that is the basis of the action’s wrongness e.g., harm, death, or the breaking of a trust, whereas the violation of a positive duty involves an agent’s allowing those states of affairs to occur or be brought about. Imperfect duties are, in Kant’s words, “duties which allow leeway in the interest of inclination,” i.e., that permit one to choose among several possible ways of fulfilling them. Perfect duties do not allow that leeway. Thus, the duty to help those in need is an imperfect duty since it can be fulfilled by helping the sick, the starving, the oppressed, etc., and if one chooses to help, say, the sick, one can choose which of the sick to help. However, the duty to keep one’s promises and the duty not to harm others are perfect duties since they do not allow one to choose which promises to keep or which people not to harm. Most positive duties are imperfect; most negative ones, perfect. obligationes, the study of inferentially inescapable, yet logically odd arguments, used by late medieval logicians in analyzing inferential reasoning. In Topics VIII.3 Aristotle describes a respondent’s task in a philosophical argument as providing answers so that, if they must defend the impossible, the impossibility lies in the nature of the position, and not in its logical defense. In Prior Analytics I.13 Aristotle argues that nothing impossible follows from the possible. Burley, whose logic exemplifies early fourteenth-century obligationes literature, described the resulting logical exercise as a contest between interlocutor and respondent. The interlocutor must force the respondent into maintaining contradictory statements in defending a position, and the respondent must avoid this while avoiding maintaining the impossible, which can be either a position logically incompatible with the position defended or something impossible in itself. Especially interesting to Scholastic logicians were the paradoxes of disputation inherent in such disputes. Assuming that a respondent has successfully defended his position, the interlocutor may be able to propose a commonplace position that the respondent can neither accept nor reject, given the truth of the first, successfully defended position. Roger Swineshead introduced a controversial innovation to obligationes reasoning, later rejected by Paul of Venice. In the traditional style of obligation, a premise was relevant to the argument only if it followed from or was inconsistent with either a the proposition defended or b all the premises consequent to the former and prior to the premise in question. By admitting any premise that was either consequent to or inconsistent with the proposition defended alone, without regard to intermediate premises, Swineshead eliminated concern with the order of sentences proposed by the interlocutor, making the respondent’s task harder. 

casus obliquum -- oblique context. As explained by Frege in “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” 2, a linguistic context is oblique ungerade if and only if an expression e.g., proper name, dependent clause, or sentence in that context does not express its direct customary sense. For Frege, the sense of an expression is the mode of presentation of its nominatum, if any. Thus in direct speech, the direct customary sense of an expression designates its direct customary nominatum. For example, the context of the proper name ‘Kepler’ in 1 Kepler died in misery. is non-oblique i.e., direct since the proper name expresses its direct customary sense, say, the sense of ‘the man who discovered the elliptical planetary orbits’, thereby designating its direct customary nominatum, Kepler himself. Moreover, the entire sentence expresses its direct sense, namely, the proposition that Kepler died in misery, thereby designating its direct nominatum, a truth-value, namely, the true. By contrast, in indirect speech an expression neither expresses its direct sense nor, therefore, designates its direct nominatum. One such sort of oblique context is direct quotation, as in 2 ‘Kepler’ has six letters. The word appearing within the quotation marks neither expresses its direct customary sense nor, therefore, designates its direct customary nominatum, Kepler. Rather, it designates a word, a proper name. Another sort of oblique context is engendered by the verbs of propositional attitude. Thus, the context of the proper name ‘Kepler’ in 3 Frege believed Kepler died in misery. is oblique, since the proper name expresses its indirect sense, say, the sense of the words ‘the man widely known as Kepler’, thereby designating its indirect nominatum, namely, the sense of ‘the man who discovered the elliptical planetary orbits’. Note that the indirect nominatum of ‘Kepler’ in 3 is the same as the direct sense of ‘Kepler’ in 1. Thus, while ‘Kepler’ in 1 designates the man Kepler, ‘Kepler’ in 3 designates the direct customary sense of the word ‘Kepler’ in 1. Similarly, in 3 the context of the dependent clause ‘Kepler died in misery’ is oblique since the dependent clause expresses its indirect sense, namely, the sense of the words ‘the proposition that Kepler died in misery’, thereby designating its indirect nominatum, namely, the proposition that Kepler died in misery. Note that the indirect nominatum of ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 3 is the same as the direct sense of ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 1. Thus, while ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 1 designates a truthvalue, ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 3 designates a proposition, the direct customary sense of the words ‘Kepler died in misery’ in 1. 

obversum: a sort of immediate inference that allows a transformation of affirmative categorical A-propositions and I-propositions into the corresponding negative E-propositions and O-propositions, and of E- and O-propositions into the corresponding A- and I-propositions, keeping in each case the order of the subject and predicate terms, but changing the original predicate into its complement, i.e., into a negated term. E. g. ‘Every man is mortal’  ’No man is non-mortal’; ‘Some students are happy’  ‘Some students are not non-happy’; ‘No dogs are jealous’  ‘All dogs are non-jealous’; and ‘Some bankers are not rich’  ‘Some bankers are not non-rich’.  .

occasionalism: a theory of causation held by a number of important seventeenth-century Cartesian philosophers, including Johannes Clauberg, Géraud de Cordemoy, Arnold Geulincx, Louis de la Forge, and Nicolas Malebranche. In its most extreme version, occasionalism is the doctrine that all finite created entities are devoid of causal efficacy, and that God is the only true causal agent. Bodies do not cause effects in other bodies nor in minds; and minds do not cause effects in bodies nor even within themselves. God is directly, immediately, and solely responsible for bringing about all phenomena. When a needle pricks the skin, the physical event is merely an occasion for God to cause the relevant mental state pain; a volition in the soul to raise an arm or to think of something is only an occasion for God to cause the arm to rise or the ideas to be present to the mind; and the impact of one billiard ball upon another is an occasion for God to move the second ball. In all three contexts  mindbody, bodybody, and mind alone  God’s ubiquitous causal activity proceeds in accordance with certain general laws, and except for miracles he acts only when the requisite material or psychic conditions obtain. Less thoroughgoing forms of occasionalism limit divine causation e.g., to mindbody or bodybody alone. Far from being an ad hoc solution to a Cartesian mindbody problem, as it is often considered, occasionalism is argued for from general philosophical considerations regarding the nature of causal relations considerations that later appear, modified, in Hume, from an analysis of the Cartesian concept of matoblique intention occasionalism 626    626 ter and of the necessary impotence of finite substance, and, perhaps most importantly, from theological premises about the essential ontological relation between an omnipotent God and the created world that he sustains in existence. Occasionalism can also be regarded as a way of providing a metaphysical foundation for explanations in mechanistic natural philosophy. Occasionalists are arguing that motion must ultimately be grounded in something higher than the passive, inert extension of Cartesian bodies emptied of the substantial forms of the Scholastics; it needs a causal ground in an active power. But if a body consists in extension alone, motive force cannot be an inherent property of bodies. Occasionalists thus identify force with the will of God. In this way, they are simply drawing out the implications of Descartes’s own metaphysics of matter and motion. Refs: H. P. Grice, “What’s the case – and occasionalism.”

modified occam’s razorr: see H. P. Grice, “Modified Occam’s Razor” -- known as the More than Subtle Doctor, English Scholastic philosopher known equally as the father of nominalism and for his role in the Franciscan dispute with Pope John XXII over poverty. Born at Occam in Surrey, he entered the Franciscan order at an early age and studied at Oxford, attaining the rank of a B. A., i. e. a “baccalarius formatus.” His brilliant but controversial career is cut short when Lutterell, chancellor of Oxford, presented the pope with a list of 56 allegedly heretical theses extracted from Occam (Grice: “One was, ‘Senses are not be multipled beyond necessity.’). The papal commission studies them for two years and find 51 open to censure – “while five are ‘o-kay.’”-- , but none was formally condemned. While in Avignon, Occam researches previous papal concessions to the Franciscans regarding collective poverty, eventually concluding that John XXII contradicted his predecessors and hence was ‘no pope,’ or “no true pope.” After committing these charges to writing, Occam flees with Cesena, then minister general of the order, first to Pisa and ultimately to Munich, where he composes many treatises about church-state relations. Although departures from his eminent predecessors have combined with ecclesiastical difficulties to make Occam unjustly notorious, his thought remains, by current lights, philosophically conservative – or as he would expand, “irreverent, dissenting, rationalist conservative.” On most metaphysical issues, Occam fancies himself the true interpreter of Aristotle. Rejecting the doctrine that the universalse is a real thing other than a name (‘flatus vocis’) or a concept as “the worst error of philosophy,” Occam dismisses not only Platonism, but also “modern realist” doctrines according to which a nature enjoys a double mode of existence and is universal in the intellect but numerically multiplied in this or that particulare. Occam argues that everything real is individual and particular. Universality is a property pertaining only to the expression, sign, or name and that by virtue of its signification (semantic) relation. Because Occam understands a ‘primary’ name to be ‘psychological’, and thus a ‘naturally’ significant concept, his own theory of the universale is best classified as a form of conceptualism. Occam rejects atomism, and defends Aristotelian hylomorphism in physics and metaphysics, complete with its distinction between substantial form and accidental form. Yet, Occam opposes the reifying tendency of the “moderns” unnamed contemporary opponents, who posited a distinct kind of ‘res’ for each of Aristotle’s ten categories. Occam agues that from a purely philosophical point of view  it is indefensible to posit anything besides this or that particular substance and this or that particular quality. Occam follows the Franciscan school in recognizing a plurality of substantial forms in living things in humans, the forms of corporeity, sensory soul, and intellectual soul. Occam diverges from Duns Scotus in asserting a real, not a formal, distinction among them. Aristotle had reached behind regular correlations in nature to posit substance-things and accident-things as primitive explanatory entities that essentially are or give rise to powers virtus that produce the regularities. Similarly, Occam distinguishes efficient causality properly speaking from sine qua non causality, depending on whether the correlation between A’s and B’s is produced by the power of A or by the will of another, and explicitly denies the existence of any sine qua non causation in nature. Further, Ocam insists, in Aristotelian fashion, that created substance- and accident-natures are essentially the causal powers they are in and of themselves and hence independently of their relations to anything else; so that not even God can make heat naturally a coolant. Yet, if God cannot change, He shares with created things the ability to obstruct such “Aristotelian” productive powers and prevent their normal operation. Ockham’s nominalistic conceptualism about universals does not keep him from endorsing the uniformity of nature principle, because he holds that individual natures are powers and hence that co-specific things are maximally similar powers. Likewise, he is conventional in appealing to several other a priori causal principles: “Everything that is in motion is moved by something,” “Being cannot come from non-being,” “Whatever is produced by something is really conserved by something as long as it exists.” Occam even recognizes a kind of necessary connection between created causes and effects  e.g., while God could act alone to produce any created effect, a particular created effect could not have had another created cause of the same species instead. Ockham’s main innovation on the topic of causality is his attack on Duns Scotus’s distinction between “essential” and “accidental” orders and contrary contention that every genuine efficient cause is an immediate cause of its effects. Ockham is an Aristotelian reliabilist in epistemology, taking for granted as he does that human cognitive faculties the senses and intellect work always or for the most part. Occam infers that since we have certain knowledge both of material things and of our own mental acts, there must be some distinctive species of acts of awareness intuitive cognitions that are the power to produce such evident judgments. Ockham is matter-of-fact both about the disruption of human cognitive functions by created obstacles as in sensory illusion and about divine power to intervene in many ways. Such facts carry no skeptical consequences for Ockham, because he defines certainty in terms of freedom from actual doubt and error, not from the logical, metaphysical, or natural possibility of error. In action theory, Ockham defends the liberty of indifference or contingency for all rational beings, created or divine. Ockham shares Duns Scotus’s understanding of the will as a self-determining power for opposites, but not his distaste for causal models. Thus, Ockham allows that 1 unfree acts of will may be necessitated, either by the agent’s own nature, by its other acts, or by an external cause; and that 2 the efficient causes of free acts may include the agent’s intellectual and sensory cognitions as well as the will itself. While recognizing innate motivational tendencies in the human agent  e.g., the inclination to seek sensory pleasure and avoid pain, the affectio commodi tendency to seek its own advantage, and the affectio iustitiae inclination to love things for their own intrinsic worth  he denies that these limit the will’s scope. Thus, Ockham goes beyond Duns Scotus in assigning the will the power, with respect to any option, to will for it velle, to will against it nolle, or not to act at all. In particular, Ockham concludes that the will can will against nolle the good, whether ignorantly or perversely  by hating God or by willing against its own happiness, the good-in-general, the enjoyment of a clear vision of God, or its own ultimate end. The will can also will velle evils  the opposite of what right reason dictates, unjust deeds qua unjust, dishonest, and contrary to right reason, and evil under the aspect of evil. Ockham enforces the traditional division of moral science into non-positive morality or ethics, which directs acts apart from any precept of a superior authority and draws its principles from reason and experience; and positive morality, which deals with laws that oblige us to pursue or avoid things, not because they are good or evil in themselves, but because some legitimate superior commands them. The notion that Ockham sponsors an unmodified divine command theory of ethics rests on conflation and confusion. Rather, in the area of non-positive morality, Ockham advances what we might label a “modified right reason theory,” which begins with the Aristotelian ideal of rational self-government, according to which morally virtuous action involves the agent’s free coordination of choice with right reason. He then observes that suitably informed right reason would dictate that God, as the infinite good, ought to be loved above all and for his own sake, and that such love ought to be expressed by the effort to please him in every way among other things, by obeying all his commands. Thus, if right reason is the primary norm in ethics, divine commands are a secondary, derivative norm. Once again, Ockham is utterly unconcerned about the logical possibility opened by divine liberty of indifference, that these twin norms might conflict say, if God commanded us to act contrary to right reason; for him, their de facto congruence suffices for the moral life. In the area of soteriological merit and demerit a branch of positive morality, things are the other way around: divine will is the primary norm; yet because God includes following the dictates of right reason among the criteria for divine acceptance thereby giving the moral life eternal significance, right reason becomes a secondary and derivative norm there. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Why I love Occam,” H. P. Grice, “Comments on Occam’s ‘Summa Totius Logicae,’” H. P. Grice, “Occam on ‘significare.’” And then there’s Occam’s razor. H. P. Grice, “Modified Occam’s Razor.” Also called the principle of parsimony, a methodological principle commending a bias toward simplicity in the construction of theories. The parameters whose simplicity is singled out for attention have varied considerably, from kinds of entities to the number of presupposed axioms to the nature of the curve drawn between data points. Found already in Aristotle, the tag “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity” became associated with William Ockham although he never states that version, and even if non-contradiction rather than parsimony is his favorite weapon in metaphysical disputes, perhaps because it characterized the spirit of his philosophical conclusions. Opponents, who thought parsimony was being carried too far, formulated an “anti-razor”: where fewer entities do not suffice, posit more! 

olivi: philosopher whose views on the theory and practice of Franciscan poverty led to a long series of investigations of his orthodoxy. Olivi’s preference for humility, as well as the suspicion with which he was regarded, prevented his becoming a master of theology at Paris. After 1285, he was effectively vindicated and permitted to teach at Florence and Montpellier. But after his death, probably in part because his remains were venerated and his views were championed by the Franciscan Spirituals, his orthodoxy was again examined. The Council of Vienne 131112 condemned three unrelated tenets associated with Olivi. Finally, in 1326, Pope John XXII condemned a series of statements based on Olivi’s Apocalypse commentary. Olivi thought of himself chiefly as a theologian, writing copious biblical commentaries; his philosophy of history was influenced by Joachim of Fiore. His views on poverty inspired the leader of the Franciscan Observant reform movement, St. Bernardino of Siena. Apart from his views on poverty, Olivi is best known for his philosophical independence from Aristotle, whom he condemned as a materialist. Contrary to Aristotle’s theory of projectile motion, Olivi advocated a theory of impetus. He undermined orthodox views on Aristotelian categories. His attack on the category of relation was thought to have dangerous implications in Trinitarian theology. Ockham’s theory of quantity is in part a defense of views presented by Olivi. Olivi was critical of Augustinian as well as Aristotelian views; he abandoned the theories of seminal reason and divine illumination. He also argued against positing impressed sensible and intelligible species, claiming that only the soul, not perceptual objects, played an active role in perception. Bold as his philosophical views were, he presented them tentatively. A voluntarist, he emphasized the importance of will. He claimed that an act of understanding was not possible in the absence of an act of will. He provided an important experiential argument for the freedom of the will. His treatises on contracts revealed a sophisticated understanding of economics. His treatise on evangelical poverty includes the first defense of a theory of papal infallibility.

omega: the last letter of the Grecian alphabet w. Following Canto,, it is used in lowercase as a proper name for the first infinite ordinal number, which is the ordinal of the natural ordering of the set of finite ordinals. By extension it is also used as a proper name for the set of finite ordinals itself or even for the set of natural numbers. Following Gödel 678, it is used as a prefix in names of various logical properties of sets of sentences, most notably omega-completeness and omega-consistency. Omega-completeness, in the original sense due to Tarski, is a syntactical property of sets of sentences in a formal arithmetic language involving a symbol ‘0’ for the number zero and a symbol ‘s’ for the so-called successor function, resulting in each natural number being named by an expression, called a numeral, in the following series: ‘0’, ‘s0’, ‘ss0’, and so on. For example, five is denoted by ‘sssss0’. A set of sentences is said to be omegacomplete if it deductively yields every universal sentence all of whose singular instances it yields. In this framework, as usual, every universal sentence, ‘for every n, n has P’ yields each and every one of its singular instances, ‘0 has P’, ‘s0 has P’, ‘ss0 has P’, etc. However, as had been known by logicians at least since the Middle Ages, the converse is not true, i.e., it is not in general the case that a universal sentence is deducible from the set of its singular instances. Thus one should not expect to find omega-completeness except in exceptional sets. The set of all true sentences of arithmetic is such an exceptional set; the reason is the semantic fact that every universal sentence whether or not in arithmetic is materially equivalent to the set of all its singular instances. A set of sentences that is not omega-complete is said to be omega-incomplete. The existence of omega-incomplete sets of sentences is a phenomenon at the core of the 1 Gödel incompleteness result, which shows that every “effective” axiom set for arithmetic is omega-incomplete and thus has as theorems all singular instances of a universal sentence that is not one of its theorems. Although this is a remarkable fact, the existence of omega-incomplete sets per se is far from remarkable, as suggested above. In fact, the empty set and equivalently the set of all tautologies are omega-incomplete because each yields all singular instances of the non-tautological formal sentence, here called FS, that expresses the proposition that every number is either zero or a successor. Omega-consistency belongs to a set that does not yield the negation of any universal sentence all of whose singular instances it yields. A set that is not omega-consistent is said to be omega-inconsistent. Omega-inconsistency of course implies consistency in the ordinary sense; but it is easy to find consistent sets that are not omega-consistent, e.g., the set whose only member is the negation of the formal sentence FS mentioned above. Corresponding to the syntactical properties just mentioned there are analogous semantic properties whose definitions are obtained by substituting ‘semantically implies’ for ‘deductively yields’. The Grecian letter omega and its English name have many other uses in modern logic. Carnap introduced a non-effective, non-logical rule, called the omega rule, for “inferring” a universal sentence from its singular instances; adding the omega rule to a standard axiomatization of arithmetic produces a complete but non-effective axiomatization. An omega-valued logic is a many-valued logic whose set of truth-values is or is the same size as the set of natural numbers. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “I know that there are infinitely many stars.”

one-at-a-time-sailor. He is loved by the altogether nice girl. Or grasshopper: Grice’s one-at-a-time grasshopper. His rational reconstruction of ‘some’ and ‘all.’ “A simple proposal for the treatment of the two quantifiers, rendered otiosely in English by “all” and “some (at least one),” – “the” is definable in terms of “all” -- would call for the assignment to a predicate such as that of ‘being a grasshopper,” symbolized by “G,” besides its normal or standard EXtension, two special things (or ‘object,’ if one must use Quine’s misnomer), associated with quantifiers, an 'altogether' ‘substitute’, thing or object and a 'one-at-a-time' non-substitute thing or object.”“To the predicate 'grasshopper' is assigned not only an individual, viz. a grasshopper, but also what I call  ‘The All-Together Grass-Hopper,’ or species-1and ‘The One-At-A-Time Grass-Hopper,’ or species-2. “I now stipulate that an 'altogether' item satisfies such a predicate as “being a grasshopper,” or G, just in case every normal or standard item associated with “the all-to-gether” grasshopper satisfies the predicate in question. Analogously, a 'one-at-a-time' item satisfies a predicate just in case “SOME (AT LEAST ONE)” of the associated standard items satisfies that predicate.”“So ‘The All-To-Gether Grass-Hopper izzes green just in case every individual grasshopper is green.The one-at-a-time grasshopper izzes green just in case some (at least one) individual grasshopper izzes green.”“We can take this pair of statements about these two special grasshoppers as providing us with representations of (respectively) the statements, ‘Every grass-hopper is green,’ and ‘Some (at least one) grasshopper is green.’“The apparatus which Grice sketched is plainly not, as it stands, adequate to provide a comprehensive treatment of quantification.”“It will not, e. g. cope with well-known problems of multiple quantification,” as in “Every Al-Together Nice Grass-Hopper Loves A Sailing Grass-Hopper.”“It will not deliver for us distinct representations of the two notorious (alleged) readings of ‘Every nice girl loves a sailor,” in one of which (supposedly) the universal quantifier is dominant with respect to scope, and in the other of which the existential quantifier is dominant.”The ambiguity was made ambiguous by Marie Lloyd. For every time she said “a sailor,” she pointed at herself – thereby disimplicating the default implicaturum that the universal quantifier be dominant. “To cope with Marie Lloyd’s problem it might be sufficient to explore, for semantic purposes, the device of exportation, and to distinguish between, 'There exists a sailor such that every nice girl loves him', which attributes a certain property to the one-at-a-time sailor, and (ii) 'Every nice girl is such that she loves some sailor', which attributes a certain (and different) property to the altogether nice girl.Note that, as one makes this move, that though exportation, when applied to statements about individual objects, seems not to affect truth-value, whatever else may be its semantic function, when it is applied to sentences about special objects it may, and sometimes will, affect truth-value.”“But however effective this particular shift may be, it is by no means clear that there are not further demands to be met which would overtax the strength of the envisaged apparatus.It is not, for example, clear whether it could be made adequate to deal with indefinitely long strings of 'mixed' quantifiers.”“The proposal might also run into objections of a more conceptual character from those who would regard the special objects which it invokes as metaphysically disreputable – for where would an ‘altogether sailor” sail?, or an one-at-a-time grasshopper hop?“Should an alternative proposal be reached or desired, one (or, indeed, more than one) is available.”“One may be regarded as a replacement for, an extension of, or a reinterpretation of the scheme just outlined, in accordance with whatever view is finally taken of the potency and respectability of the ideas embodied in that scheme.” “This proposal treats a propositional complexum as a sequence, indeed as ordered pairs containing a subject-item and a predicate-item.It thus offers a subject-predicate account of quantification (as opposed to what?, you may wonder). However, it will not allow an individual, i. e. a sailor, or a nice girl, to appear as COMPONENTS in a propositional complexum.The sailor and the nice girl will always be reduced, ‘extensionally,’ or ‘extended,’ if you wish, as a set or an attribute.“According to the class-theoretic version, we associate with the subject-expression of a canonically formulated sentence a class of (at least) a second order. If the subject expression is a singular name, like “Grice,” its ontological correlatum will be the singleton of the singleton of the entity which bears the name Grice, or Pop-Eye.” “The treatment of a singular terms which are not names – e. g. ‘the sailor’ -- will be parallel, but is here omitted. It involves the iota operator, about which Russell would say that Frege knew a iota. If the subject-expression is an indefinite quantificational phrase, like 'some (at least one) sailor’ ‘or some (at least one) grasshopper', its ontological correlatum will be the set of all singletons whose sole member is a member belonging to the extension of the predicate to which the indefinite modifier “some (at least one)” is attached.So the ontological correlatum of the phrase ‘some (at least one) sailor’ or 'some (at least one) grasshopper' will be the class of all singletons whose sole member is an individuum (sailor, grasshopper). If the subject expression is a universal quantificational phrase, like ‘every nice girl’ its ontological correlatum will be the singleton whose sole member is the class which forms the extension of the predicate to which the universal modifier (‘every’) is attached.Thus,  the correlate of the phrase 'every nice girl' will be the singleton of the class of nice girls.The song was actually NOT written by a nice girl – but by a bad boy.A predicate of a canonically formulated sentence is correlated with the classes which form its extension.As for the predication-relation, i. e., the relation which has to obtain between subject-element and predicate-element in a propositional complex for that complex to be factive, a propositional complexum is factive or value-satisfactory just in case its subject-element contains as a member at least one item which is a sub-class of the predicate-element.”If the ontological correlatum of 'a sailor,’ or, again, of 'every nice girl') contains as a member at least one subset of the ontological correlata of the dyadic predicate ' … loves … ' (viz. the class of love), the propositional complexum directly associated with the sentence ‘A sailor loves every nice girl’ is factive, as is its converse“Grice devotes a good deal of energy to the ‘one-at-a-time-sailor,’ and the ‘altogether nice girl’ and he convinced himself that it offered a powerful instrument which, with or without adjustment, is capable of handling not only indefinitely long sequences of ‘mixed’ quantificational phrases, but also some other less obviously tractable problems, such as the ‘ground’ for this being so: what it there about a sailor – well, you know what sailors are. When the man o' war or merchant ship comes sailing into port/The jolly tar with joy, will sing out, Land Ahoy!/With his pockets full of money and a parrot in a cage/He smiles at all the pretty girls upon the landing stage/All the nice girls love a sailor/All the nice girls love a tar/For there's something about a sailor/(Well you know what sailors are!)/Bright and breezy, free and easy,/He's the ladies' pride and joy!/He falls in love with Kate and Jane, then he's off to sea again,/Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!/He will spend his money freely, and he's generous to his pals,/While Jack has got a sou, there's half of it for you,/And it's just the same in love and war, he goes through with a smile,/And you can trust a sailor, he's a white man (meaning: honest man) all the while!“Before moving on, however, I might perhaps draw attention to three features of the proposal.”“First, employing a strategy which might be thought of as Leibnizian, it treats a subject-element (even a lowly tar) as being of an order HIGHER than, rather than an order LOWER than, the predicate element.”“Second, an individual name, such as Grice, is in effect treated like a universal quantificational phrase, thus recalling the practice of old-style traditionalism.“Third, and most importantly, the account which is offered is, initially, an account of propositional complexes, not of propositions; as I envisage them, propositions will be regarded as families of propositional complexes.”“Now the propositional complexum directly associated with the sentence “Every nice girl loves a sailor” (WoW: 34) will be both logically equivalent to and numerically distinct from the propositional complex directly associated with ‘It is not the case that no nice girl loves no sailor.’ Indeed for any given propositional complex there will be indefinitely many propositional complexes which are both equipolent to yet numerically distinct from the original complexum. Strawson used to play with this. The question of how tight or how relaxed are to be the family ties which determine the IDENTITY of propositio 1 with propositio 2  remains to be decided. Such conditions will vary according to context or purpose. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Every nice girl loves a sailor: the implicatura.”

occam : a picturesque village in Surrey. His most notable resident is William. When William left Occam, he was often asked, “Where are you from?” In the vernacular, he would make an effort to aspirate the ‘h’ Ock-Home.’ His French friends were unable to aspirate, and he ended up accepting that perhaps he WAS from “Occam.” Vide Modified Occam’s Razor.

occamism -- Occamism: d’Ailly, P.: Ockhamist philosopher, prelate, and writer. Educated at the Collège de Navarre, he was promoted to doctor in the Sorbonne in 1380, appointed chancellor of Paris  in 1389, consecrated bishop in 1395, and made a cardinal in 1411. He was influenced by John of Mirecourt’s nominalism. He taught Gerson. At the Council of Constance 141418, which condemned Huss’s teachings, d’Ailly upheld the superiority of the council over the pope conciliarism. The relation of astrology to history and theology figures among his primary interests. His 1414 Tractatus de Concordia astronomicae predicted the 1789  Revolution. He composed a De anima, a commentary on Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and another on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. His early logical work, Concepts and Insolubles c.1472, was particularly influential. In epistemology, d’Ailly contradistinguished “natural light” indubitable knowledge from reason relative knowledge, and emphasized thereafter the uncertainty of experimental knowledge and the mere probability of the classical “proofs” of God’s existence. His doctrine of God differentiates God’s absolute power potentia absoluta from God’s ordained power on earth potentia ordinata. His theology anticipated fideism Deum esse sola fide tenetur, his ethics the spirit of Protestantism, and his sacramentology Lutheranism.

occasion: Grice struggled with the lingo and he not necessarily arrived at the right choice. Occasion he uses in the strange phrase “occasion-meaning” (sic). Surely not ‘occasional meaning.’ What is an occasion? Surely it’s a context. But Grice would rather be seen dead than using a linguistic turn of phrase like Firth’s context-of-utterance! So there you have the occasion-meaning. Basically, it’s the PARTICULARISED implicaturum. On occasion o, E communicates that p. Grice allows that there is occasion-token and occasion-type.

one-off communicatum. The condition for an action to be taken in a specific way in cases where the audience must recognize the utterer’s intention (a ‘one-off predicament’). The recognition of the C-intention does not have to occur ‘once we have habits of taking utterances one way or another.’

Blackburn: From one-off AIIBp to one-off GAIIB. Surely we have to generalise the B into the PSI. Plus, 'action' is too strong, and should be replaced by 'emitting'This yields From EIIψp GEIIψp. According to this assumption, an emissor who is not assuming his addressee shares any system of communication is in the original situation that S. W. Blackburn, of Pembroke, dubbs “the one-off predicament, and one can provide a scenario where the Griciean conditions, as they are meant to hold, do hold, and emissor E communicates that p i. e. C1, C2, and C3, are fulfilled, be accomplished in the "one-off predicament" (in which no linguistic or other conventional ...The Gricean mechanism with its complex communicative intentions has a clear point in what Blackburn calls “a one-off predicament” - a . Simon Blackburn's "one-off predicament" of communicating without a shared language illustrates how Grice's theory can be applied to iconic signals such as the ...Blackburn's "one-off predicament" of communicating without a shared language illustrates how Grice's theory can be applied to iconic signals such as the drawing of a skull to wam of danger. See his Spreading the Word. III. 112.Thus S may draw a pic- "one-off predicament"). ... Clarendon, 1976); and Simon Blackburn, Spreading the Word (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) ...by Blackburn in “Spreading the word.” Since Grice’s main motivation is to progress from one-off to philosophers’s mistakes, he does not explore the situation. He gets close to it in “Meaning Revisited,” when proposing a ‘rational reconstruction,’ FROM a one-off to a non-iconic system of communication, where you can see his emphasis and motivation is in the last stage of the progress. Since he is having the ‘end result,’ sometimes he is not careful in the description of the ‘one-off,’ or dismissive of it. But as Blackburn notes, it is crucial that Grice provides the ‘rudiments’ for a ‘meaning-nominalism,’ where an emissor can communicate that p in a one-off scenario. This is all Grice needs to challenge those accounts based on ‘convention,’ or the idea of a ‘system’ of communication. There is possibly an implicaturum to the effect that if something is a device is not a one-off, but that is easily cancellable. “He used a one-off device, and it worked.”

one-piece-repertoire: of hops and rye, and he told me that in twenty-two years neither the personnel of the three-piece band nor its one-piece repertoire had undergone a change.

one-many problem: also called one-and-many problem, the question whether all things are one or many. According to both Plato and Aristotle this was the central question for pre-Socratic philosophers. Those who answered “one,” the monists, ascribed to all things a single nature such as water, air, or oneness itself. They appear not to have been troubled by the notion that numerically many things would have this one nature. The pluralists, on the other hand, distinguished many principles or many types of principles, though they also maintained the unity of each principle. Some monists understood the unity of all things as a denial of motion, and some pluralists advanced their view as a way of refuting this denial. To judge from our sources, early Grecian metaphysics revolved around the problem of the one and the many. In the modern period the dispute between monists and pluralists centered on the question whether mind and matter constitute one or two substances and, if one, what its nature is. 

one over many, a universal; especially, a Platonic Form. According to Plato, if there are, e.g., many large things, there must be some one largeness itself in respect of which they are large; this “one over many” hen epi pollon is an intelligible entity, a Form, in contrast with the sensible many. Plato himself recognizes difficulties explaining how the one character can be present to the many and why the one and the many do not together constitute still another many e.g., Parmenides 131a133b. Aristotle’s sustained critique of Plato’s Forms Metaphysics A 9, Z 1315 includes these and other problems, and it is he, more than Plato, who regularly uses ‘one over many’ to refer to Platonic Forms. 

ontogenesis. Grice taught his children “not to tell lies” – “as my father and my mother taught me.” One of his favourite paintings was “When did you last see your father?” “I saw him in my dreams,” – “Not a lie, you see.” it is interesting that Grice was always enquiring his childrens playmates: Can a sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed! One found a developmental account of the princile of conversational helpfulness boring, or as he said, "dull." Refs.: There is an essay on the semantics of children’s language, BANC.

ontological marxism:  As opposed to ‘ontological laisssez-faire’ Note the use of ‘ontological’ in ‘ontological’ Marxism. Is not metaphysical Marxism, so Grice knows what he is talking about. Many times when he uses ‘metaphysics,’ he means ‘ontological.’ Ontological for Grice is at least liberal. He is hardly enamoured of some of the motivations which prompt the advocacy of psycho-physical identity. He has in mind a concern to exclude an entity such as as a ‘soul,’ an event of the soul, or a property of the soul. His taste is for keeping open house for all sorts of conditions of entities, just so long as when the entity comes in it helps with the housework, i. e., provided that Grice see the entity work, and provided that it is not detected in illicit logical behaviour, which need not involve some degree of indeterminacy, The entity works? Ergo, the entity exists. And, if it comes on the recommendation of some transcendental argument the entity may even qualify as an entium realissimum. To exclude an honest working entitiy is metaphysical snobbery, a reluctance to be seen in the company of any but the best. A category, a universalium plays a role in Grice’s meta-ethics. A principles or laws of psychology may be self-justifying, principles connected with the evaluation of ends. If these same principles play a role in determining what we count as entia realissima, metaphysics, and an abstractum would be grounded in part in considerations about value (a not unpleasant project). This ontological Marxism is latter day. In “Some remarks,” he expresses his disregard for what he calls a “Wittgensteinian” limitation in expecting behavioural manifestation of an ascription about a soul. Yet in “Method” he quotes almost verbatim from Witters, “No psychological postulation without the behaviour the postulation is meant to explain.” It was possibly D. K. Lewis who made him change his mind. Grice was obsessed with Aristotle on ‘being,’ and interpreted Aristotle as holding a thesis of unified semantic ‘multiplicity.’ This is in agreement with the ontological Marxism, in more than one ways. By accepting a denotatum for a praedicatum like ‘desideratum,’ Grice is allowing the a desideratum may be the subject of discourse. It is an ‘entity’ in this fashion. Marxism and laissez-faire both exaggerate the role of the economy. Society needs a safety net to soften the rough edges of free enterprise. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Ontological Marxism and ontological laissez-faire.” Engels – studied by Grice for his “Ontological Marxism” -- F, G. socialist and economist who, with Marx, was the founder of what later was called Marxism. Whether there are significant differences between Marx and Engels is a question much in dispute among scholars of Marxism. Certainly there are differences in emphasis, but there was also a division of labor between them. Engels, and not Marx, presented a Marxist account of natural science and integrated Darwinian elements in Marxian theory. But they also coauthored major works, including The Holy Family, The G. Ideology 1845, and The Communist Manifesto 1848. Engels thought of himself as the junior partner in their lifelong collaboration. That judgment is correct, but Engels’s work is both significant and more accessible than Marx’s. He gave popular articulations of their common views in such books as Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and AntiDühring 1878. His work, more than Marx’s, was taken by the Second International and many subsequent Marxist militants to be definitive of Marxism. Only much later with some Western Marxist theoreticians did his influence decline. Engels’s first major work, The Condition of the Working Class in England 1845, vividly depicted workers’ lives, misery, and systematic exploitation. But he also saw the working class as a new force created by the industrial revolution, and he developed an account of how this new force would lead to the revolutionary transformation of society, including collective ownership and control of the means of production and a rational ordering of social life; all this would supersede the waste and disparity of human conditions that he took to be inescapable under capitalism. The G. Ideology, jointly authored with Marx, first articulated what was later called historical materialism, a conception central to Marxist theory. It is the view that the economic structure of society is the foundation of society; as the productive forces develop, the economic structure changes and with that political, legal, moral, religious, and philosophical ideas change accordingly. Until the consolidation of socialism, societies are divided into antagonistic classes, a person’s class being determined by her relationship to the means of production. The dominant ideas of a society will be strongly conditioned by the economic structure of the society and serve the class interests of the dominant class. The social consciousness the ruling ideology will be that which answers to the interests of the dominant class. From the 1850s on, Engels took an increasing interest in connecting historical materialism with developments in natural science. This work took definitive form in his Anti-Dühring, the first general account of Marxism, and in his posthumously published Dialectics of Nature. AntiDühring also contains his most extensive discussion of morality. It was in these works that Engels articulated the dialectical method and a systematic communist worldview that sought to establish that there were not only social laws expressing empirical regularities in society but also universal laws of nature and thought. These dialectical laws, Engels believed, reveal that both nature and society are in a continuous process of evolutionary though conflict-laden development. Engels should not be considered primarily, if at all, a speculative philosopher. Like Marx, he was critical of and ironical about speculative philosophy and was a central figure in the socialist movement. While always concerned that his account be warrantedly assertible, Engels sought to make it not only true, but also a finely tuned instrument of working-class emancipation which would lead to a world without classes. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Ontological Marxism.”

ontological commitment: the object or objects common to the ontology fulfilling some regimented theory a term fashioned by Quine. The ontology of a regimented theory consists in the objects the theory assumes there to be. In order to show that a theory assumes a given object, or objects of a given class, we must show that the theory would be true only if that object existed, or if that class is not empty. This can be shown in two different but equivalent ways: if the notation of the theory contains the existential quantifier ‘Ex’ of first-order predicate logic, then the theory is shown to assume a given object, or objects of a given class, provided that object is required among the values of the bound variables, or additionally is required among the values of the domain of a given predicate, in order for the theory to be true. Thus, if the theory entails the sentence ‘Exx is a dog’, then the values over which the bound variable ‘x’ ranges must include at least one dog, in order for the theory to be true. Alternatively, if the notation of the theory contains for each predicate a complementary predicate, then the theory assumes a given object, or objects of a given class, provided some predicate is required to be true of that object, in order for the theory to be true. Thus, if the theory contains the predicate ‘is a dog’, then the extension of ‘is a dog’ cannot be empty, if the theory is to be true. However, it is possible for different, even mutually exclusive, ontologies to fulfill a theory equally well. Thus, an ontology containing collies to the exclusion of spaniels and one containing spaniels to the exclusion of collies might each fulfill a theory that entails ‘Ex x is a dog’. It follows that some of the objects a theory assumes in its ontology may not be among those to which the theory is ontologically committed. A theory is ontologically committed to a given object only if that object is common to all of the ontologies fulfilling the theory. And the theory is ontologically committed to objects of a given class provided that class is not empty according to each of the ontologies fulfilling the theory. 

casus obliquum – casus rectum (orthe ptosis) vs. ‘casus obliquus – plagiai ptoseis – genike, dotike, aitiatike.   “ptosis” is not attested in Grecian before Plato. A noun of action based on the radical of πίπτω, to fall, ptôsis means literally a fall: the fall of a die Plato, Republic, X.604c, or of lightning Aristotle, Meteorology, 339a Alongside this basic value and derived metaphorical values: decadence, death, and so forth, in Aristotle the word receives a linguistic specification that was to have great influence: retained even in modern Grecian ptôsê πτώση, its Roman Tr.  casus allowed it to designate grammatical case in most modern European languages. In fact, however, when it first appears in Aristotle, the term does not initially designate the noun’s case inflection. In the De Int. chaps. 2 and 3, it qualifies the modifications, both semantic and formal casual variation of the verb and those of the noun: he was well, he will be well, in relation to he is well; about Philo, to Philo, in relation to Philo. As a modification of the noun—that is, in Aristotle, of its basic form, the nominative—the case ptôsis differs from the noun insofar as, associated with is, was, or will be, it does not permit the formation of a true or false statement. As a modification of the verb, describing the grammatical tense, it is distinguished from the verb that oversignifies the present: the case of the verb oversignifies the time that surrounds the present. From this we must conclude that to the meaning of a given verb e.g., walk the case of the verb adds the meaning prossêmainei πϱοσσημαίνει of its temporal modality he will walk. Thus the primacy of the present over the past and the future is affirmed, since the present of the verb has no case. But the Aristotelian case is a still broader, vaguer, and more elastic notion: presented as part of expression in chapter 20 of the Poetics, it qualifies variation in number and modality. It further qualifies the modifications of the noun, depending on the gender ch.21 of the Poetics; Top.   as well as adverbs derived from a substantive or an adjective, like justly, which is derived from just. The notion of case is thus essential for the characterization of paronyms. Aristotle did not yet have specialized names for the different cases of nominal inflection. When he needs to designate them, he does so in a conventional manner, usually by resorting to the inflected form of a pronoun— τούτου, of this, for the genitive, τούτῳ, to this, for the dative, and so on — and sometimes to that of a substantive or adjective. In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle insists on distinguishing between the terms ὅϱοι that ought always to be stated in the nominative ϰλῆσεις, e.g. man, good, contraries, but the premisses ought to be understood with reference to the cases of each term—either the dative, e.g. ‘equal to this’ toutôi, dative, or the genitive, e.g. ‘double of this’ toutou, genitive, or the accusative, e.g. ‘that which strikes or v.s this’ τούτο, accusative, or the nominative, e.g. ‘man is an animal’ οὗτος, nominative, or in whatever other way the word falls πίπτει in the premiss Anal. Post., I.36, 48b, 4 In the latter expression, we may find the origin of the metaphor of the fall—which remains controversial. Some commentators relate the distinction between what is direct and what is oblique as pertains to grammatical cases, which may be direct orthê ptôsis or oblique plagiai ptôseis, but also to the grand metaphoric and conceptual register that stands on this distinction to falling in the game of jacks, it being possible that the jack could fall either on a stable side and stand there—the direct case—or on three unstable sides— the oblique cases. In an unpublished dissertation on the principles of Stoic grammar, Hans Erich Müller proposes to relate the Stoic theory of cases to the theory of causality, by trying to associate the different cases with the different types of causality. They would thus correspond in the utterance to the different causal postures of the body in the physical field. For the Stoics, predication is a matter not of identifying an essence ousia οὖσια and its attributes in conformity with the Aristotelian categories, but of reproducing in the utterance the causal relations of action and passion that bodies entertain among themselves. It was in fact with the Stoics that cases were reduced to noun cases—in Dionysius Thrax TG, 13, the verb is a word without cases lexis aptôton, and although egklisis means mode, it sometimes means inflection, and then it covers the variations of the verb, both temporal and modal. If Diogenes Laertius VII.192 is to be believed, Chrysippus wrote a work On the Five Cases. It must have included, as Diogenes VII.65 tells us, a distinction between the direct case orthê ptôsis—the case which, constructed with a predicate, gives rise to a proposition axiôma, VII.64—and oblique cases plagiai ptseis, which now are given names, in this order: genitive genikê, dative dôtikê, and accusative aitiatikê. A classification of predicates is reported by Porphyry, cited in Ammonius Commentaire du De Int. d’Aristote, 44, 19f.. Ammonius 42, 30f. reports a polemic between Aristotle and the Peripatetics, on the one hand, and the Stoics and grammarians associated with them, on the other. For the former, the nominative is not a case, it is the noun itself from which the cases are declined; for the latter, the nominative is a full-fledged case: it is the direct case, and if it is a case, that is because it falls from the concept, and if it is direct, that is because it falls directly, just as the stylus can, after falling, remain stable and straight. Although ptôsis is part of the definition of the predicate—the predicate is what allows, when associated with a direct case, the composition of a proposition—and figures in the part of dialectic devoted to signifieds, it is neither defined nor determined as a constituent of the utterance alongside the predicate. In Stoicism, ptôsis v.ms to signify more than grammatical case alone. Secondary in relation to the predicate that it completes, it is a philosophical concept that refers to the manner in which the Stoics v.m to have criticized the Aristotelian notion of substrate hupokeimenon ὑποϰειμένον as well as the distinction between substance and accidents. Ptôsis is the way in which the body or bodies that our representation phantasia φαντασία presents to us in a determined manner appear in the utterance, issuing not directly from perception, but indirectly, through the mediation of the concept that makes it possible to name it/them in the form of an appellative a generic concept, man, horse or a name a singular concept, Socrates. Cases thus represent the diverse ways in which the concept of the body falls in the utterance though Stoic nominalism does not admit the existence of this concept—just as here there is no Aristotelian category outside the different enumerated categorial rubrics, there is no body outside a case position. However, caring little for these subtleties, the scholiasts of Technê v.m to confirm this idea in their own context when they describe the ptôsis as the fall of the incorporeal and the generic into the specific ἔϰ τοῦ γενιϰοῦ εἰς τὸ εἰδιϰόν. In the work of the grammarians, case is reduced to the grammatical case, that is, to the morphological variation of nouns, pronouns, articles, and participles, which, among the parts of speech, accordingly constitute the subclass of casuels, a parts of speech subject to case-based inflection πτωτιϰά. The canonical list of cases places the vocative klêtikê ϰλητιϰή last, after the direct eutheia εὐθεῖα case and the three oblique cases, in their Stoic order: genitive, dative, accusative. This order of the oblique cases gives rise, in some commentators eager to rationalize Scholia to the Technê, 549, 22, to a speculation inspired by localism: the case of the PARONYM 743 place from which one comes in Grecian , the genitive is supposed naturally to precede that of the place where one is the dative, which itself naturally precedes that of the place where one is going the accusative. Apollonius’s reflection on syntax is more insightful; in his Syntax III.15888 he presents, in this order, the accusative, the genitive, and the dative as expressing three degrees of verbal transitivity: conceived as the distribution of activity and passivity between the prime actant A in the direct case and the second actant B in one of the three oblique cases in the process expressed by a biactantial verb, the transitivity of the accusative corresponds to the division A all active—B all passive A strikes B; the transitivity of the genitive corresponds to the division A primarily active/passive to a small degree—B primarily passive/active to a small degree A listens to B; and the transitivity of the dative, to the division A and B equally active-passive A fights with The direct case, at the head of the list, owes its prmacy to the fact that it is the case of nomination: names are given in the direct case. The verbs of existence and nomination are constructed solely with the direct case, without the function of the attribute being thematized as such. Although Chrysippus wrote about five cases, the fifth case, the vocative, v.ms to have escaped the division into direct and oblique cases. Literally appelative prosêgorikon πϱοσηγοϱιϰόν, it could refer not only to utterances of address but also more generally to utterances of nomination. In the grammarians, the vocative occupies a marginal place; whereas every sentence necessarily includes a noun and a verb, the vocative constitutes a complete sentence by itself. Frédérique Ildefonse REFS.: Aristotle. Analytica priorTr.  J. Jenkinson. In the Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, ed.  and Tr.  W. D. Ross, E. M. Edghill, J. Jenkinson, G.R.G. Mure, and Wallace Pickford. Oxford: Oxford , 192 . Poetics. Ed.  and Tr.  Stephen Halliwell. Cambridge: Harvard  / Loeb Classical Library, . Delamarre, Alexandre. La notion de ptōsis chez Aristote et les Stoïciens. In Concepts et Catégories dans la pensée antique, ed.  by Pierre Aubenque, 3214 : Vrin, . Deleuze, Gilles. Logique du sens. : Minuit, . Tr.  Mark Lester with Charles Stivale: The Logic of Sense. Ed.  by Constantin V. Boundas. : Columbia , . Dionysius Thrax. Technē grammatikē. Book I, vol. 1 of Grammatici Graeci, ed.  by Gustav Uhlig. Leipzig: Teubner, 188 Eng. Tr.  T.  D. son: The Grammar. St. Louis, 187 Fr.  Tr.  J. Lallot: La grammaire de Denys le Thrace. 2nd rev. and expanded ed. : CNRS Éditions, . Frede, Michael. The Origins of Traditional Grammar. In Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology, and Phil.  of Science, ed.  by E. H. Butts and J. Hintikka, 517 Dordrecht, Neth.: Reiderl, . Reprinted, in M. Frede, Essays in Ancient Phil. , 3385 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, . . The Stoic Notion of a Grammatical Case. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of 39 : 132 Hadot, Pierre. La notion de ‘cas’ dans la logique stoïcienne. Pp. 10912 in Actes du XIIIe Congrès des sociétés de philosophie en langue française. Geneva: Baconnière, . Hiersche, Rolf. Entstehung und Entwicklung des Terminus πτῶσις, ‘Fall.’ Sitzungsberichte der deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin: Klasse für Sprachen, Literatur und Kunst 3 1955: 51 Ildefonse, Frédérique. La naissance de la grammaire dans l’Antiquité grecque. : Vrin, . Imbert, Claude. Phénoménologies et langues formularies. : Presses Universitaires de France, . Pinborg, Jan. Classical Antiquity: Greece. In Current Trends in Linguistics, ed.  by Th. Sebeok. Vol. 13 in Historiography of Linguistics series. The Hague and : Mouton, .-- oratio obliqua: The idea of ‘oratio’ is central. Grice’s sentence. It expresses ‘a thought,’ a ‘that’-clause. Oratio recta is central, too. Grice’s example is “The dog is shaggy.” The use of ‘oratio’ here Grice disliked. One can see a squarrel grabbing a nut, Toby judges that a nut is to eat. So we would have a ‘that’-clause, and in a way, an ‘oratio obliqua,’ which is what the UTTERER (not the squarrel) would produce as ‘oratio recta,’ ‘A nut is to eat,’ should the circumstance obtains. At some points he allows things like “Snow is white” means that snow is white. Something at the Oxford Philosohical Society he would not. Grice is vague in this. If the verb is a ‘verbum dicendi,’ ‘oratio obliqua’ is literal. If it’s a verbum sentiendi or percipiendi, volendi, credendi, or cognoscenti, the connection is looser. Grice was especially concerned that buletic verbs usually do not take a that-clause (but cf. James: I will that the distant table sides over the floor toward me. It does not!). Also that seems takes a that-clause in ways that might not please Maucalay. Grice had explored that-clauses with Staal. He was concerned about the viability of an initially appealing etymological approach by Davidson to the that-clause in terms of demonstration. Grice had presupposed the logic of that-clauses from a much earlier stage, Those spots mean that he has measles.The f. contains a copy of Davidsons essay, On saying that, the that-clause, the that-clause, with Staal . Davidson quotes from Murray et al. The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford. Cf. Onions, An Advanced English Syntax, and remarks that first learned that that in such contexts evolved from an explicit demonstrative from Hintikkas Knowledge and Belief. Hintikka remarks that a similar development has taken place in German Davidson owes the reference to the O.E.D. to Stiezel. Indeed Davidson was fascinated by the fact that his conceptual inquiry repeated phylogeny. It should come as no surprise that a that-clause utterance evolves through about the stages our ruminations have just carried us. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of that in a that-clause is generally held to have arisen out of the demonstrative pronoun pointing to the clause which it introduces. The sequence goes as follows. He once lived here: we all know that; that, now this, we all know: he once lived here; we all know that, or this: he once lived here; we all know that he once lived here. As Hintikka notes, some pedants trying to display their knowledge of German, use a comma before that: We all know, that he once lived here, to stand for an earlier :: We all know: that he once lived here. Just like the English translation that, dass can be omitted in a sentence. Er glaubt, dass die Erde eine Scheibe sei. He believes that the Earth is a disc. Er glaubt, die Erde sei eine Scheibe. He believes the Earth is a disc. The that-clause is brought to the fore by Davidson, who, consulting the OED, reminds philosophers that the English that is very cognate with the German idiom. More specifically, that is a demonstrative, even if the syntax, in English, hides this fact in ways which German syntax doesnt. Grice needs to rely on that-clauses for his analysis of mean, intend, and notably will. He finds that Prichards genial discovery was the license to use willing as pre-facing a that-clause. This allows Grice to deals with willing as applied to a third person. I will that he wills that he wins the chess match. Philosophers who disregard this third-person use may indulge in introspection and Subjectsivism when they shouldnt! Grice said that Prichard had to be given great credit for seeing that the accurate specification of willing should be willing that and not willing to. Analogously, following Prichard on willing, Grice does not stipulate that the radix for an intentional (utterer-oriented or exhibitive-autophoric-buletic) incorporate a reference to the utterer (be in the first person), nor that the radix for an imperative (addressee-oriented or hetero-phoric protreptic buletic) or desiderative in general, incorporate a reference of the addressee (be in the second person). They shall not pass is a legitimate intentional as is the ‘you shall not get away with it,’either involves Prichards wills that, rather than wills to). And the sergeant is to muster the men at dawn (uttered by a captain to a lieutenant) is a perfectly good imperative, again involving Prichards wills that, rather than wills to. Refs.: The allusions are scattered, but there are specific essays, one on the ‘that’-clause, and also discussions on Davidson on saying that. There is a reference to ‘oratio obliqua’ and Prichard in “Uncertainty,” BANC.

open formula: also called open sentence, a sentence with a free occurrence of a variable. A closed sentence, sometimes called a ‘statement,’ has no free occurrences of variables. In a language whose only variable-binding operators are quantifiers, an occurrence of a variable in a formula is bound provided that occurrence either is within the scope of a quantifier employing that variable or is the occurrence in that quantifier. An occurrence of a variable in a formula is free provided it is not bound. The formula ‘xy  O’ is open because both ‘x’ and ‘y’ occur as free variables. In ‘For some real number y, xy  O’, no occurrence of ‘y’ is free; but the occurrence of ‘x’ is free, so the formula is open. The sentence ‘For every real number x, for some real number y, xy  O’ is closed, since none of the variables occur free. Semantically, an open formula such as ‘xy  0’ is neither true nor false but rather true of or false of each assignment of values to its free-occurring variables. For example, ‘xy  0’ is true of each assignment of two positive or two negative real numbers to ‘x’ and to ‘y’ and it is false of each assignment of 0 to either and false at each assignment of a positive real to one of the variables and a negative to the other. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Implicatura of free-variable utterances.”

porosität: porosity -- open texture, the possibility of vagueness. Waismann “Verifiability,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, introduced the metaphor, claiming that open texture is a universal property of empirical terms. Waismann claims that an inexhaustible source of vagueness remains even after measures are taken to make an expression precise. His grounds were, first, that there are an indefinite number of possibilities for which it is indeterminate whether the expression applies i.e., for which the expression is vague. There is, e.g., no definite answer whether a catlike creature that repeatedly vanishes into thin air, then reappears, is a cat. Waismann’s explanation is that when we define an empirical term, we frame criteria of its applicability only for foreseeable circumstances. Not all possible situations in which we may use the term, however, can be foreseen. Thus, in unanticipated circumstances, real or merely possible, a term’s criteria of applicability may yield no definite answer to whether it applies. Second, even for terms such as ‘gold’, for which there are several precise criteria of application specific gravity, X-ray spectrograph, solubility in aqua regia, applying different criteria can yield divergent verdicts, the result being vagueness. Waismann uses the concept of open texture to explain why experiential statements are not conclusively verifiable, and why phenomenalist attempts to translate material object statements fail.  Waismanns Konzept der offenen Struktur oder Porosität, hat in der ... πόρος , ὁ, (πείρω, περάω) A.means of passing a river, ford, ferry, Θρύον Ἀλφειοῖο π. Thryum the ford of the Alphëus, Il.2.592, h.Ap.423, cf. h.Merc.398; “πόρον ἷξον Ξάνθου” Il.14.433; “Ἀξίου π.” A.Pers.493; ἀπικνέεται ἐς τὸν π.τῆς διαβάσιος to the place of the passage, Hdt.8.115; “π. διαβὰς Ἅλυος” A.Pers.864(lyr.); “τοῦ κατ᾽ Ὠρωπὸν π. μηδὲν πραττέσθω” IG12.40.22. 2. narrow part of the sea, strait, “διαβὰς πόρον Ὠκεανοῖο” Hes.Th.292; “παρ᾽ Ὠκεανοῦ . . ἄσβεστον π.” A.Pr.532 (lyr.); π. Ἕλλης (Dor. Ἕλλας), = Ἑλλήσποντος, Pi.Fr.189, A.Pers. 875(lyr.), Ar.V.308(lyr.); Ἰόνιος π. the Ionian Sea which is the passage-way from Greece to Italy, Pi.N.4.53; “πέλαγος αἰγαίου πόρου” E.Hel.130; Εὔξεινος, ἄξενος π. (cf. “πόντος” 11), Id.Andr.1262, IT253; διάραντες τὸν π., i.e. the sea between Sicily and Africa, Plb.1.37.1; ἐν πόρῳ in the passage-way (of ships), in the fair-way, Hdt.7.183, Th. 1.120, 6.48; “ἐν π. τῆς ναυμαχίης” Hdt.8.76; “ἕως τοῦ π. τοῦ κατὰ τὸν ὅρμον τὸν Ἀφροδιτοπολίτην” PHib.1.38.5(iii B.C.). 3. periphr., πόροι ἁλός the paths of the sea, i.e. the sea, Od.12.259; “Αἰγαίου πόντοιο πλατὺς π.” D.P.131; “ἐνάλιοι π.” A.Pers.453; π.ἁλίρροθοι ib.367, S.Aj.412(lyr.); freq. of rivers, π. Ἀλφεοῦ, Σκαμάνδρου, i.e. the Alphëus, Scamander, etc., Pi.O.1.92, A.Ch.366(lyr.), etc.; “ῥυτοὶ π.” Id.Eu.452, cf.293; Πλούτωνος π. the river Pluto, Id.Pr.806: metaph., βίου π. the stream of life, Pi.I.8(7).15; “π. ὕμνων” Emp.35.1. 4. artificial passage over a river, bridge, Hdt.4.136,140, 7.10.“γ́;” aqueduct, IG7.93(Megara, V A.D., restd.), Epigr.Gr.1073.4 (Samos). 5. generally, pathway, way, A.Ag. 910, S.Ph.705(lyr.), etc.; track of a wild beast, X.Cyr.1.6.40; αἰθέρα θ᾽ ἁγνὸν πόρον οἰωνῶν their pathway, A.Pr.284(anap.); ἐν τῷ π.εἶναι to be in the way, Sammelb.7356.11(ii A.D.): metaph., “πραπίδων πόροι” A.Supp.94(lyr.). 6. passage through a porous substance, opening, Epicur.Ep.1pp.10,18 U.; esp. passage through the skin, οἱ πόροι the pores or passages by which the ἀπορροαί passed, acc. to Empedocles, “πόρους λέγετε εἰς οὓς καὶ δι᾽ ὧν αἱ ἀπορροαὶ πορεύονται” Pl.Men.76c, cf. Epicur. Fr.250, Metrod. Fr.7,Ti.Locr.100e; “νοητοὶ π.” S.E.P.2.140; opp. ὄγκοι, Gal. 10.268; so of sponges, Arist. HA548b31; of plants, Id.Pr. 905b8, Thphr.CP1.2.4, HP1.10.5. b. of other ducts or openings of the body, π. πρῶτος, of the womb, Hp. ap. Poll.2.222; πόροι σπερματικοί, θορικοὶ π., Arist.GA716b17, 720b13; π. “ὑστερικοί” the ovaries. Id.HA570a5, al.; τροφῆς π., of the oesophagus, Id.PA650a15, al.; of the rectum, Id.GA719b29; of the urinal duct, ib.773a21; of the arteries and veins, Id.HA510a14, etc. c. passages leading from the organs of sensation to the brain, “ψυχὴ παρεσπαρμένη τοῖς π.” Pl.Ax.366a; “οἱ π. τοῦ ὄμματος” Arist.Sens.438b14, cf. HA495a11, PA 656b17; ὤτων, μυκτήρων, Id.GA775a2, cf. 744a2; of the optic nerves, Heroph. ap. Gal.7.89. II. c. gen. rei, way or means of achieving, accomplishing, discovering, etc., “οὐκ ἐδύνατο π. οὐδένα τούτου ἀνευρεῖν” Hdt.2.2; “οὐδεὶς π. ἐφαίνετο τῆς ἁλώσιος” Id.3.156; “τῶν ἀδοκήτων π. ηὗρε θεός” E.Med.1418 (anap.); π. ὁδοῦ a means of performing the journey, Ar.Pax124; “π. ζητήματος” Pl.Tht.191a; but also π. κακῶν a means of escaping evils, a way out of them, E.Alc.213 (lyr.): c. inf., “πόρος νοῆσαι” Emp.4.12; “π. εὐθαρσεῖν” And.2.16; “π. τις μηχανή τε . . ἀντιτείσασθαι” E.Med.260: with Preps., “π. ἀμφί τινος” A.Supp.806 codd. (lyr.); περί τινος dub. in Ar.Ec.653; “πόροι πρὸς τὸ πολεμεῖν” X. An.2.5.20. 2. abs., providing, means of providing, opp. ἀπορία, Pl. Men.78d sq.; contrivance, device, “οἵας τέχνας τε καὶ π. ἐμησάμην” A.Pr. 477; δεινὸς γὰρ εὑρεῖν κἀξ ἀμηχάνων πόρον ib.59, cf. Ar.Eq.759; “μέγας π.” A.Pr.111; “τίνα π. εὕρω πόθεν;” E.IA356 (troch.). 3. π. χρημάτων a way of raising money, financial provision, X.Ath.3.2, HG1.6.12, D.1.19, IG7.4263.2 (Oropus, iii B.C.), etc.; “ὁ π. τῶν χρ.” D.4.29, IG12(5).1001.1 (Ios, iv B.C.); without χρημάτων, SIG284.23 (Erythrae, iv B.C.), etc.; “μηχανᾶσθαι προσόδου π.” X.Cyr.1.6.10, cf. PTeb.75.6 (ii B.C.): in pl., 'ways and means', resources, revenue, “πόροι χρημάτων” D. 18.309: abs., “πόρους πορίζειν” Hyp.Eux.37, cf. X.Cyr.1.6.9 (sg.), Arist. Rh.1359b23; πόροι ἢ περὶ προσόδων, title of work by X.: sg., source of revenue, endowment, OGI544.24 (Ancyra, ii A.D.), 509.12,14 (Aphrodisias, ii A.D.), etc. b. assessable income or property, taxable estate, freq. in Pap., as BGU1189.11 (i A.D.), etc.; liability, PHamb.23.29 (vi A.D.), etc. III. journey, voyage, “μακρᾶς κελεύθου π.” A. Th. 546; “παρόρνιθας π. τιθέντες” Id.Eu.770, cf. E.IT116, etc.; ἐν τῷ π. πλοῖον ἀνατρέψαι on its passage, Aeschin.3.158. IV. Π personified as father of Ἔρως, Pl.Smp.203b.

operationalism: a program in philosophy of science that aims to interpret scientific concepts via experimental procedures and observational outcomes. P. W. Bridgman introduced the terminology when he required that theoretical concepts be identified with the operations used to measure them. Logical positivism’s criteria of cognitive significance incorporated the notion: Bridgman’s operationalism was assimilated to the positivistic requirement that theoretical terms T be explicitly defined via logically equivalent to directly observable conditions O. Explicit definitions failed to accommodate alternative measurement procedures for the same concept, and so were replaced by reduction sentences that partially defined individual concepts in observational terms via sentences such as ‘Under observable circumstances C, x is T if and only if O’. Later this was weakened to allow ensembles of theoretical concepts to be partially defined via interpretative systems specifying collective observable effects of the concepts rather than effects peculiar to single concepts. These cognitive significance notions were incorporated into various behaviorisms, although the term ‘operational definition’ is rarely used by scientists in Bridgman’s or the explicit definition senses: intervening variables are theoretical concepts defined via reduction sentences and hypothetical constructs are definable by interpretative systems but not reduction sentences. In scientific contexts observable terms often are called dependent or independent variables. When, as in science, the concepts in theoretical assertions are only partially defined, observational consequences do not exhaust their content, and so observational data underdetermines the truth of such assertions in the sense that more than one theoretical assertion will be compatible with maximal observational data. 

operator: a one-place sentential connective; i.e., an expression that may be prefixed to an open or closed sentence to produce, respectively, a new open or closed sentence. Thus ‘it is not the case that’ is a truth-functional operator. The most thoroughly investigated operators are the intensional ones; an intensional operator O, when prefixed to an open or closed sentence E, produces an open or closed sentence OE, whose extension is determined not by the extension of E but by some other property of E, which varies with the choice of O. For example, the extension of a closed sentence is its truth-value A, but if the modal operator ‘it is necessary that’ is prefixed to A, the extension of the result depends on whether A’s extension belongs to it necessarily or contingently. This property of A is usually modeled by assigning to A a subset X of a domain of possible worlds W. If X % W then ‘it is necessary that A’ is true, but if X is a proper subset of W, it is false. Another example involves the epistemic operator ‘it is plausible that’. Since a true sentence may be either plausible or implausible, the truth-value of ‘it is plausible that A’ is not fixed by the truth-value of A, but rather by the body of evidence that supports A relative to a thinker in a given context. This may also be modeled in a possible worlds framework, by operant conditioning operator 632    632 stipulating, for each world, which worlds, if any, are plausible relative to it. The topic of intensional operators is controversial, and it is even disputable whether standard examples really are operators at the correct level of logical form. For instance, it can be argued that ‘it is necessary that’, upon analysis, turns out to be a universal quantifier over possible worlds, or a predicate of expressions. On the former view, instead of ‘it is necessary that A’ we should write ‘for every possible world w, Aw’, and, on the latter, ‘A is necessarily true’. 

operator theory of adverbs, a theory that treats adverbs and other predicate modifiers as predicate-forming operators on predicates. The theory expands the syntax of first-order logic by adding operators of various degrees, and makes corresponding additions to the semantics. Romane Clark, Terence Parsons, and Richard Montague with Hans Kamp developed the theory independently in the early 0s. For example: ‘John runs quickly through the kitchen’ contains a simple one-place predicate, ‘runs’ applied to John; a zero-place operator, ‘quickly’, and a one-place operator, ‘through ’ with ‘the kitchen’ filling its place. The logical form of the sentence becomes [O1 1a [O2 0 [Pb]]], which can be read: [through the kitchen [quickly [runs John]]]. Semantically ‘quickly’ will be associated with an operation that takes us from the extension of ‘runs’ to a subset of that extension. ‘John runs quickly’ will imply ‘John runs’. ‘Through the kitchen’ and other operators are handled similarly. The wide variety of predicate modifiers complicates the inferential conditions and semantics of the operators. ‘John is finally done’ implies ‘John is done’. ‘John is nearly done’ implies ‘John is not done’. Clark tries to distinguish various types of predicate modifiers and provides a different semantic analysis for operators of different sorts. The theory can easily characterize syntactic aspects of predicate modifier iteration. In addition, after being modified the original predicates remain as predicates, and maintain their original degree. Further, there is no need to force John’s running into subject position as might be the case if we try to make ‘quickly’ an ordinary predicate.

optimum. If (a) S accepts at t an alethic acceptability-conditional C 1 , the antecedent of which favours, to degree d, the consequent of C 1 , (b) S accepts at t the antecedent of C 1 , end p.81 (c) after due search by S for such a (further) conditional, there is no conditional C 2 such that (1) S accepts at t C 2 and its antecedent, (2) and the antecedent of C 2 is an extension of the antecedent of C 1 , (3) and the consequent of C 2 is a rival (incompatible with) of the consequent of C 1 , (4) and the antecedent of C 2 favours the consequent of C 2 more than it favours the consequent of C 1 : then S may judge (accept) at t that the consequent of C 1 is acceptable to degree d. For convenience, we might abbreviate the complex clause (C) in the antecedent of the above rule as 'C 1 is optimal for S at t'; with that abbreviation, the rule will run: "If S accepts at t an alethic acceptability-conditional C 1 , the antecedent of which favours its consequent to degree d, and S accepts at t the antecedent of C 1 , and C 1 is optimal for S at C 1 , then S may accept (judge) at t that the consequent of C 1 is acceptable to degree d." Before moving to the practical dimension, I have some observations to make.See validum. For Grice, the validum can attain different shapes or guises. One is the optimum. He uses it for “Emissor E communicates thata p” which ends up denotating an ‘ideal,’ that can only be deemed, titularily, to be present ‘de facto.’ The idea is that of the infinite, or rather self-reference regressive closure. Vide Blackburn on “open GAIIB.” Grice uses ‘optimality’ as one guise of value. Obviously, it is, as Short and Lewis have it, the superlative of ‘bonum,’ so one has to be careful. Optimum is used in value theory and decision theory, too.  Cf. Maximum, and minimax. In terms of the principle of least conversational effort, the optimal move is the least costly. To utter, “The pillar box seems red” when you can utter, “The pillar box IS red” is to go into the trouble when you shouldn’t. So this maximin regulates the conversational exchange. The utterer is meant to be optimally efficient, and the addressee is intended to recognise that.

order: the level of a system as determined by the type of entity over which the free variables of that logic range. Entities of the lowest type, usually called type O, are known as individuals, and entities of higher type are constructed from entities of lower type. For example, type 1 entities are i functions from individuals or n-tuples of individuals to individuals, and ii n-place relations on individuals. First-order logic is that logic whose variables range over individuals, and a model for first-order logic includes a domain of individuals. The other logics are known as higher-order logics, and the first of these is second-order logic, in which there are variables that range over type 1 entities. In a model for second-order logic, the first-order domain determines the second-order domain. For every sentence to have a definite truth-value, only totally defined functions are allowed in the range of second-order function variables, so these variables range over the collection of total functions from n-tuples of individuals to individuals, for every value of n. The second-order predicate variables range over all subsets of n-tuples of individuals. Thus if D is the domain of individuals of a model, the type 1 entities are the union of the two sets {X: Dn: X 0 Dn$D}, {X: Dn: X 0 Dn}. Quantifiers may bind second-order variables and are subject to introduction and elimination rules. Thus whereas in first-order logic one may infer ‘Someone is wise, ‘DxWx’, from ‘Socrates is wise’, ‘Ws’, in second-order logic one may also infer ‘there is something that Socrates is’, ‘DXXs’. The step from first- to second-order logic iterates: in general, type n entities are the domain of n ! 1thorder variables in n ! 1th order logic, and the whole hierarchy is known as the theory of types.

ordering: an arrangement of the elements of a set so that some of them come before others. If X is a set, it is useful to identify an ordering R of X with a subset R of X$X, the set of all ordered pairs with members in X. If ‹ x,y  1 R then x comes before y in the ordering of X by R, and if ‹ x,y  2 R and ‹ y,x  2 R, then x and y are incomparable. Orders on X are therefore relations on X, since a relation on a set X is any subset of X $ X. Some minimal conditions a relation must meet to be an ordering are i reflexivity: ExRxx; ii antisymmetry: ExEyRxy & Ryx / x % y; and iii transitivity: ExEyEzRxy & Ryz / Rxz. A relation meeting these three conditions is known as a partial order also less commonly called a semi-order, and if reflexivity is replaced by irreflexivity, Ex-Rxx, as a strict partial order. Other orders are strengthenings of these. Thus a tree-ordering of X is a partial order with a distinguished root element a, i.e. ExRax, and that satisfies the backward linearity condition that from any element there is a unique path back to a: ExEyEzRyx & Rzx / Ryz 7 Rzy. A total order on X is a partial order satisfying the connectedness requirement: ExEyRxy 7 Ryx. Total orderings are sometimes known as strict linear orderings, contrasting with weak linear orderings, in which the requirement of antisymmetry is dropped. The natural number line in its usual order is a strict linear order; a weak linear ordering of a set X is a strict linear order of levels on which various members of X may be found, while adding antisymmetry means that each level contains only one member. Two other important orders are dense partial or total orders, in which, between any two elements, there is a third; and well-orders. A set X is said to be well-ordered by R if R is total and every non-empty subset of Y of X has an R-least member: EY 0 X[Y & / / Dz 1 YEw 1 YRzw]. Well-ordering rules out infinite descending sequences, while a strict well-ordering, which is irreflexive rather than reflexive, rules out loops. The best-known example is the membership relation of axiomatic set theory, in which there are no loops such as x 1 y 1 x or x 1 x, and no infinite descending chains . . . x2 1 x1 1 x0. 

order type omega: in mathematics, the order type of the infinite set of natural numbers. The last letter of the Grecian alphabet, w, is used to denote this order type; w is thus the first infinite ordinal number. It can be defined as the set of all finite ordinal numbers ordered by magnitude; that is, w % {0,1,2,3 . . . }. A set has order type w provided it is denumerably infinite, has a first element but not a last element, has for each element a unique successor, and has just one element with no immediate predecessor. The set of even numbers ordered by magnitude, {2,4,6,8 . . . }, is of order type w. The set of natural numbers listing first all even numbers and then all odd numbers, {2,4,6,8 . . .; 1,3,5,7 . . . }, is not of order type w, since it has two elements, 1 and 2, with no immediate predecessor. The set of negative integers ordered by magnitude, { . . . 3,2,1}, is also not of order type w, since it has no first element. V.K. ordinal logic, any means of associating effectively and uniformly a logic in the sense of a formal axiomatic system Sa with each constructive ordinal notation a. This notion and term for it was introduced by Alan Turing in his paper “Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals” 9. Turing’s aim was to try to overcome the incompleteness of formal systems discovered by Gödel in 1, by means of the transfinitely iterated, successive adjunction of unprovable but correct principles. For example, according to Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem, for each effectively presented formal system S containing a modicum of elementary number theory, if S is consistent then S does not prove the purely universal arithmetical proposition Cons expressing the consistency of S via the Gödelnumbering of symbolic expressions, even though Cons is correct. However, it may be that the result S’ of adjoining Cons to S is inconsistent. This will not happen if every purely existential statement provable in S is correct; call this condition E-C. Then if S satisfies E-C, so also does S; % S ! Cons ; now S; is still incomplete by Gödel’s theorem, though it is more complete than S. Clearly the passage from S to S; can be iterated any finite number of times, beginning with any S0 satisfying E-C, to form S1 % S; 0, S2 % S; 1, etc. But this procedure can also be extended into the transfinite, by taking Sw to be the union of the systems Sn for n % 0,1, 2 . . . and then Sw!1 % S;w, Sw!2 % S;w!1, etc.; condition EC is preserved throughout. To see how far this and other effective extension procedures of any effectively presented system S to another S; can be iterated into the transfinite, one needs the notion of the set O of constructive ordinal notations, due to Alonzo Church and Stephen C. Kleene in 6. O is a set ordering ordinal logic 634    634 of natural numbers, and each a in O denotes an ordinal a, written as KaK. There is in O a notation for 0, and with each a in O is associated a notation sca in O with KscaK % KaK ! 1; finally, if f is a number of an effective function {f} such that for each n, {f}n % an is in O and KanK < Kan!1K, then we have a notation øf in O with KøfK % limnKanK. For quite general effective extension procedures of S to S; and for any given S0, one can associate with each a in O a formal system Sa satisfying Ssca % S;a and Søf % the union of the S{f}n for n % 0,1, 2. . . . However, as there might be many notations for each constructive ordinal, this ordinal logic need not be invariant, in the sense that one need not have: if KaK % KbK then Sa and Sb have the same consequences. Turing proved that an ordinal logic cannot be both complete for true purely universal statements and invariant. Using an extension procedure by certain proof-theoretic reflection principles, he constructed an ordinal logic that is complete for true purely universal statements, hence not invariant. The history of this and later work on ordinal logics is traced by the undersigned in “Turing in the Land of Oz,” in The Universal Turing Machine: A Half Century Survey, edited by Rolf Herken.

‘ordinary’-language philosophy: vide, H. P. Grice, “Post-War Oxford Philosophy,” a loosely structured philosophical movement holding that the significance of concepts, including those central to traditional philosophy  e.g., the concepts of truth and knowledge  is fixed by linguistic practice. Philosophers, then, must be attuned to the actual uses of words associated with these concepts. The movement enjoyed considerable prominence chiefly among English-speaking philosophers between the mid-0s and the early 0s. It was initially inspired by the work of Vitters, and later by John Wisdom, Gilbert Ryle, Norman Malcolm, J. L. Austin and H. P. Grice, though its roots go back at least to Moore and arguably to Socrates. ‘Ordinary’-language philosophers do not mean to suggest that, to discover what truth is, we are to poll our fellow speakers or consult dictionaries (“Naess philosopher is not” – Grice). Rather, we are to ask how the word ‘truth’ functions in everyday, nonphilosophical settings. A philosopher whose theory of truth is at odds with ordinary usage has simply misidentified the concept. Philosophical error, ironically, was thought by Vitters to arise from our “bewitchment” by language. When engaging in philosophy, we may easily be misled by superficial linguistic similarities. We suppose minds to be special sorts of entity, for instance, in part because of grammatical parallels between ‘mind’ and ‘body’. When we fail to discover any entity that might plausibly count as a mind, we conclude that minds must be nonphysical entities. The cure requires that we remind ourselves how ‘mind’ and its cognates are actually used by ordinary speakers. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Post-war Oxford philosophy,” “Conceptual analysis and the province of philosophy.”

organic: having parts that are organized and interrelated in a way that is the same as, or analogous to, the way in which the parts of a living animal or other biological organism are organized and interrelated. Thus, an organic unity or organic whole is a whole that is organic in the above sense. These terms are primarily used of entities that are not literally organisms but are supposedly analogous to them. Among the applications of the concept of an organic unity are: to works of art, to the state e.g., by Hegel, and to the universe as a whole e.g., in absolute idealism. The principal element in the concept is perhaps the notion of an entity whose parts cannot be understood except by reference to their contribution to the whole entity. Thus to describe something as an organic unity is typically to imply that its properties cannot be given a reductive explanation in terms of those of its parts; rather, at least some of the properties of the parts must themselves be explained by reference to the properties of the whole. Hence it usually involves a form of holism. Other features sometimes attributed to organic unities include a mutual dependence between the existence of the parts and that of the whole and the need for a teleological explanation of properties of the parts in terms of some end or purpose associated with the whole. To what extent these characteristics belong to genuine biological organisms is disputed. 

organicism, a theory that applies the notion of an organic unity, especially to things that are not literally organisms. G. E. Moore, in Principia Ethica, proposed a principle of organic unities, concerning intrinsic value: the intrinsic value of a whole need not be equivalent to the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. Moore applies the principle in arguing that there is no systematic relation between the intrinsic value of an element of a complex whole and the difference that the presence of that element makes to the value of the whole. E.g., he holds that although a situation in which someone experiences pleasure in the contemplation of a beautiful object has far greater intrinsic goodness than a situation in which the person contemplates the same object without feeling pleasure, this does not mean that the pleasure itself has much intrinsic value.

organism, a carbon-based living thing or substance, e.g., a paramecium, a tree, or an ant. Alternatively, ‘organism’ can mean a hypothetical living thing of another natural kind, e.g., a silicon-based living thing. Defining conditions of a carbon-based living thing, x, are as follows. 1 x has a layer made of m-molecules, i.e., carbonbased macromolecules of repeated units that have a high capacity for selective reactions with other similar molecules. x can absorb and excrete through this layer. 2 x can metabolize m-molecules. 3 x can synthesize m-molecular parts of x by means of activities of a proper part of x that is a nuclear molecule, i.e., an m-molecule that can copy itself. 4 x can exercise the foregoing capacities in such a way that the corresponding activities are causally interrelated as follows: x’s absorption and excretion causally contribute to x’s metabolism; these processes jointly causally contribute to x’s synthesizing; and x’s synthesizing causally contributes to x’s absorption, excretion, and metabolism. 5 x belongs to a natural kind of compound physical substance that can have a member, y, such that: y has a proper part, z; z is a nuclear molecule; and y reproduces by means of z’s copying itself. 6 x is not possibly a proper part of something that satisfies 16. The last condition expresses the independence and autonomy of an organism. For example, a part of an organism, e.g., a heart cell, is not an organism. It also follows that a colony of organisms, e.g., a colony of ants, is not an organism. 

Origen: he became head of the catechetical school in Alexandria. Like his mentor, Clement of Alexandria, he was influenced by Middle Platonism. His principal works were Hexapla, On First Principles, and Contra Celsum. The Hexapla, little of which survives, consisted of six Hebrew and two Grecian versions of the Old Testament with Origen’s commentary. On First Principles sets forth the most systematic Christian theology of the early church, including some doctrines subsequently declared heretical, such as the subordination of the Son “a secondary god” and Spirit to the Father, preexisting human souls but not their transmigration, and a premundane fall from grace of each human soul. The most famous of his views was the notion of apocatastasis, universal salvation, the universal restoration of all creation to God in which evil is defeated and the devil and his minions repent of their sins. He interpreted hell as a temporary purgatory in which impure souls were purified and made ready for heaven. His notion of subordination of the Son of God to the Father was condemned by the church in 533. Origen’s Contra Celsum is the first sustained work in Christian apologetics. It defends Christianity before the pagan world. Origen was a leading exponent of the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures, holding that the text had three levels of meaning corresponding to the three parts of human nature: body, soul, and spirit. The first was the historical sense, sufficient for simple people; the second was the moral sense; and the third was the mystical sense, open only to the deepest souls.

orphism: a religious movement in ancient Greece that may have influenced Plato and some of the pre-Socratics. Neither the nature of the movement nor the scope of its influence is adequately understood: ancient sources and modern scholars tend to confuse Orphism with Pythagoreanism and with ancient mystery cults, especially the Bacchic or Dionysiac mysteries. “Orphic poems,” i.e., poems attributed to Orpheus a mythic figure, circulated as early as the mid-sixth century B.C. We have only indirect evidence of the early Orphic poems; but we do have a sizable body of fragments from poems composed in later antiquity. Central to both early and later versions is a theogonic-cosmogonic narrative that posits Night as the primal entity  ostensibly a revision of the account offered by Hesiod  and gives major emphasis to the birth, death through dismemberment, and rebirth of the god Dionysus. Plato gives us clear evidence of the existence in his time of itinerant religious teachers who, drawing on the “books of Orpheus,” performed and taught rituals of initiation and purification intended to procure divine favor either in this life or in an afterlife. The extreme skepticism of such scholars as Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and I. M. Linforth concerning the importance of early Orphism for Grecian religion and Grecian philosophy has been undermined by archaeological findings in recent decades: the Derveni papyrus, which is a fragment of a philosophical commentary on an Orphic theogony; and inscriptions with Orphic instructions for the dead, from funerary sites in southern Italy, mainland Greece, and the Crimea.

Ortega: philosopher, studied at Leipzig, Berlin, and Marburg. In 0 he was named professor of metaphysics at the  of Madrid and taught there until 6, when he was forced to leave because of his political involvement in and support for the  Republic. He returned to Spain in 5. Ortega was a prolific writer whose works fill nine thick volumes. Among his most influential books are Meditaciones del Quijote “Meditations on the Quixote,” 4, El tema de nuestro tiempo “The Modern Theme,” 3, La revolución de las masas “The Revolt of the Masses,” 2, La deshumanización del arte “The Dehumanization of Art,” 5, Historia como sistema “History as a System,” 1, and the posthumously published El hombre y la gente “Man and People,” 7 and La idea de principio en Leibniz“The Idea of Principle in Leibniz,” 8. His influence in Spain and Latin America was enormous, in part because of his brilliant style of writing and lecturing. He avoided jargon and rejected systematization; most of his works were first written as articles for newspapers and magazines. In 3 he founded the Revista de Occidente, a cultural magazine that helped spread his ideas and introduced G. thought into Spain and Latin America. Ortega ventured into nearly every branch of philosophy, but the kernel of his views is his metaphysics of vital reason rasón vital and his perspectival epistemology. For Ortega, reality is identified with “my life”; something is real only insofar as it is rooted and appears in “my life.” “My life” is further unpacked as “myself” and “my circumstances” “yo soy yo y mi circumstancia“. The self is not an entity separate from what surrounds it; there is a dynamic interaction and interdependence of self and things. These and the self together constitute reality. Because every life is the result of an interaction between self and circumstances, every self has a unique perspective. Truth, then, is perspectival, depending on the unique point of view from which it is determined, and no perspective is false except one that claims exclusivity. This doctrine is known as Ortega’s perspectivism.

ostensum: In his analysis of the two basic procedures, one involving the subjectum, and another the praedicatum, Grice would play with the utterer OSTENDING that p. This relates to his semiotic approach to communication, and avoiding to the maximum any reference to a linguistic rule or capacity or faculty as different from generic rationality. In WoW:134 Grice explores what he calls ‘ostensive correlation.’ He is exploring communication scenarios where the Utterer is OSTENDING that p, or in predicate terms, that the A is B. He is not so much concerned with the B, but with the fact that “B” is predicated of a particular denotatum of “the A,” and by what criteria. He is having in mind his uncle’s dog, Fido, who is shaggy, i.e. fairy coated. So he is showing to Strawson that that dog over there is the one that belongs to his uncle, and that, as Strawson can see, is a shaggy dog, by which Grice means hairy coated. That’s the type of ‘ostensive correlation’ Grice is having in mind. In an attempted ostensive correlation of the predicate B (‘shaggy’) with the feature or property of being hairy coated, as per a standard act of communication in which Grice, uttering, “Fido is shaggy’ will have Strawson believe that Uncle Grice’s dog is hairy coated – (1) U will perform a number of acts in each of which he ostends a thing  (a1, a2, a3, etc.). (2) Simultaneously with each ostension, he utters a token of the predicate “shaggy.” (3) It is his intention TO OSTEND, and to be recognised as ostending, only things which are either, in his view, plainly hairy-coated, or are, in his view, plainly NOT hairy-coated. (4) In a model sequence these intentions are fulfilled. Grice grants that this does not finely distinguish between ‘being hairy-coated’ from ‘being such that the UTTERER believes to be unmistakenly hairy coated.’ But such is a problem of any explicit correlation, which are usually taken for granted – and deemed ‘implicit’ in standard acts of communication. In primo actu non indiget volunta* diiectivo , sed sola_» objecti ostensio ... non potest errar* ciica finem in universali ostensum , potest tamen secundum eos 

merton: Oxford Calculators, a group of philosophers who flourished at Oxford. The name derives from the “Liber calculationum.”. The author of this work, often called “Calculator” by later Continental authors, is Richard Swineshead. The “Liber calculationum” discussed a number of issues related to the quantification or measurement of local motion, alteration, and augmentation for a fuller description – v. Murdoch and Sylla, “Swineshead” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography. The “Liber calculationum” has been studied mainly by historians of science and grouped together with a number of other works discussing natural philosophical topics by such authors as Bradwardine, Heytesbury, and Dumbleton. In earlier histories many of the authors now referred to as Oxford Calculators are referred to as “The Merton School,” since many of them were fellows of Merton . But since some authors whose oeuvre appears to fit into the same intellectual tradition e.g., Kilvington, whose “Sophismata” represents an earlier stage of the tradition later epitomized by Heytesbury’s Sophismata have no known connection with Merton , ‘Oxford Calculators’ would appear to be a more accurate appellation. The works of the Oxford Calculators or Mertonians – Grice: “I rather deem Kilvington a Mertonian than change the name of his school!” -- were produced in the context of education in the Oxford arts faculty – Sylla --  “The Oxford Calculators,” in Kretzmann, Kenny, and Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. At Oxford semantics is the centerpiece of the Lit. Hum. curriculum. After semantics, Oxford came to be known for its work in mathematics, astronomy, and natural philosophy. Students studying under the Oxford faculty of arts not only heard lectures on the seven liberal arts and on natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysics. They were also required to take part in disputations. Heytesbury’s “Regule solvendi sophismatum” explicitly and Swineshead’s “Liber calculationum” implicitly are written to prepare students for these disputations. The three influences most formative on the work of the Oxford Calculators were the tradition of commentaries on the works of Aristotle; the developments in semantics, particularly the theories of categorematic and syncategorematic terms and the theory of conseequentia, implicate, and supposition; and and the theory of ratios as developed in Bradwardine’s De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus. In addition to Swineshead, Heytesbury, Bradwardine, Dumbleton, and Kilvington, other authors and works related to the work of the Oxford Calculators are Burleigh, “De primo et ultimo instanti, Tractatus Primus De formis accidentalibus, Tractatus Secundus De intensione et remissione formarum; Swineshead, Descriptiones motuum; and Bode, “A est unum calidum.” These and other works had a considerable later influence on the Continent.  Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Sophismata in the Liber calculationum,” H. P. Grice, “My days at Merton.” – H. P. Grice, “Merton made me.” – H. P. Grice, “Merton and post-war Oxford philosophy.”

esse -- ousia: The abstractum behind Grice’s ‘izz’ --. Grecian term traditionally tr. as ‘substance,’ although the strict transliteration is ‘essentia,’ a feminine abstract noun out of the verb ‘esse.’ Formed from the participle for ‘being’, the term ousia refers to the character of being, beingness, as if this were itself an entity. Just as redness is the character that red things have, so ousia is the character that beings have. Thus, the ousia of something is the character that makes it be, its nature. But ousia also refers to an entity that possesses being in its own right; for consider a case where the ousia of something is just the thing itself. Such a thing possesses being by virtue of itself; because its being depends on nothing else, it is self-subsistent and has a higher degree of being than things whose being depends on something else. Such a thing would be an ousia. Just which entities meet the criteria for ousia is a question addressed by Aristotle. Something such as redness that exists only as an attribute would not have being in its own right. An individual person is an ousia, but Aristotle also argues that his form is more properly an ousia; and an unmoved mover is the highest type of ousia. The traditional rendering of the term into Latin as substantia and English as ‘substance’ is appropriate only in contexts like Aristotle’s Categories where an ousia “stands under” attributes. In his Metaphysics, where Aristotle argues that being a substrate does not characterize ousia, and in other Grecian writers, ‘substance’ is often not an apt translation. 

outweighed rationality – the grammar – rationality of the end, not just the means – extrinsic rationality – not intrinsic to the means.  -- The intrinsic-extrinsic – outweigh -- extrinsic desire, a desire of something for its conduciveness to something else that one desires. An extrinsic desire is distinguished from an intrinsic desire, a desire of items for their own sake, or as an end. Thus, an individual might desire financial security extrinsically, as a means to her happiness, and desire happiness intrinsically, as an end. Some desires are mixed: their objects are desired both for themselves and for their conduciveness to something else. Jacques may desire to jog, e.g., both for its own sake as an end and for the sake of his health. A desire is strictly intrinsic if and only if its object is desired for itself alone. A desire is strictly extrinsic if and only if its object is not desired, even partly, for its own sake. Desires for “good news”  e.g., a desire to hear that one’s child has survived a car accident  are sometimes classified as extrinsic desires, even if the information is desired only because of what it indicates and not for any instrumental value that it may have. Desires of each kind help to explain action. Owing partly to a mixed desire to entertain a friend, Martha might acquire a variety of extrinsic desires for actions conducive to that goal. Less happily, intrinsically desiring to be rid of his toothache, George might extrinsically desire to schedule a dental appointment. If all goes well for Martha and George, their desires will be satisfied, and that will be due in part to the effects of the desires upon their behavior. 

oxonian or oxford aristototelian, Cambridge Platonists: If Grice adored Aristotle, it was perhaps he hated the Cambridge platonists so! a group of seventeenth-century philosopher-theologians at the  of Cambridge, principally including Benjamin Whichcote 160983, often designated the father of the Cambridge Platonists; Henry More; Ralph Cudworth 161788; and John Smith 161652. Whichcote, Cudworth, and Smith received their  education in or were at some time fellows of Emmanuel , a stronghold of the Calvinism in which they were nurtured and against which they rebelled under mainly Erasmian, Arminian, and Neoplatonic influences. Other Cambridge men who shared their ideas and attitudes to varying degrees were Nathanael Culverwel 1618?51, Peter Sterry 161372, George Rust d.1670, John Worthington 161871, and Simon Patrick 1625 1707. As a generic label, ‘Cambridge Platonists’ is a handy umbrella term rather than a dependable signal of doctrinal unity or affiliation. The Cambridge Platonists were not a self-constituted group articled to an explicit manifesto; no two of them shared quite the same set of doctrines or values. Their Platonism was not exclusively the pristine teaching of Plato, but was formed rather from Platonic ideas supposedly prefigured in Hermes Trismegistus, in the Chaldean Oracles, and in Pythagoras, and which they found in Origen and other church fathers, in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus, and in the Florentine Neoplatonism of Ficino. They took contrasting and changing positions on the important belief originating in Florence with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola that Pythagoras and Plato derived their wisdom ultimately from Moses and the cabala. They were not equally committed to philosophical pursuits, nor were they equally versed in the new philosophies and scientific advances of the time. The Cambridge Platonists’ concerns were ultimately religious and theological rather than primarily philosophical. They philosophized as theologians, making eclectic use of philosophical doctrines whether Platonic or not for apologetic purposes. They wanted to defend “true religion,” namely, their latitudinarian vision of Anglican Christianity, against a variety of enemies: the Calvinist doctrine of predestination; sectarianism; religious enthusiasm; fanaticism; the “hide-bound, strait-laced spirit” of Interregnum Puritanism; the “narrow, persecuting spirit” that followed the Restoration; atheism; and the impieties incipient in certain trends in contemporary science and philosophy. Notable among the latter were the doctrines of the mechanical philosophers, especially the materialism and mechanical determinism of Hobbes and the mechanistic pretensions of the Cartesians. The existence of God, the existence, immortality, and dignity of the human soul, the existence of spirit activating the natural world, human free will, and the primacy of reason are among the principal teachings of the Cambridge Platonists. They emphasized the positive role of reason in all aspects of philosophy, religion, and ethics, insisting in particular that it is irrationality that endangers the Christian life. Human reason and understanding was “the Candle of the Lord” Whichcote’s phrase, perhaps their most cherished image. In Whichcote’s words, “To go against Reason, is to go against God . . . Reason is the Divine Governor of Man’s Life; it is the very Voice of God.” Accordingly, “there is no real clashing at all betwixt any genuine point of Christianity and what true Philosophy and right Reason does determine or allow” More. Reason directs us to the self-evidence of first principles, which “must be seen in their own light, and are perceived by an inward power of nature.” Yet in keeping with the Plotinian mystical tenor of their thought, they found within the human soul the “Divine Sagacity” More’s term, which is the prime cause of human reason and therefore superior to it. Denying the Calvinist doctrine that revelation is the only source of spiritual light, they taught that the “natural light” enables us to know God and interpret the Scriptures. Cambridge Platonism was uncompromisingly innatist. Human reason has inherited immutable intellectual, moral, and religious notions, “anticipations of the soul,” which negate the claims of empiricism. The Cambridge Platonists were skeptical with regard to certain kinds of knowledge, and recognized the role of skepticism as a critical instrument in epistemology. But they were dismissive of the idea that Pyrrhonism be taken seriously in the practical affairs of the philosopher at work, and especially of the Christian soul in its quest for divine knowledge and understanding. Truth is not compromised by our inability to devise apodictic demonstrations. Indeed Whichcote passed a moral censure on those who pretend “the doubtfulness and uncertainty of reason.” Innatism and the natural light of reason shaped the Cambridge Platonists’ moral philosophy. The unchangeable and eternal ideas of good and evil in the divine mind are the exemplars of ethical axioms or noemata that enable the human mind to make moral judgments. More argued for a “boniform faculty,” a faculty higher than reason by which the soul rejoices in reason’s judgment of the good. The most philosophically committed and systematic of the group were More, Cudworth, and Culverwel. Smith, perhaps the most intellectually gifted and certainly the most promising note his dates, defended Whichcote’s Christian teaching, insisting that theology is more “a Divine Life than a Divine Science.” More exclusively theological in their leanings were Whichcote, who wrote little of solid philosophical interest, Rust, who followed Cudworth’s moral philosophy, and Sterry. Only Patrick, More, and Cudworth all fellows of the Royal Society were sufficiently attracted to the new science especially the work of Descartes to discuss it in any detail or to turn it to philosophical and theological advantage. Though often described as a Platonist, Culverwel was really a neo-Aristotelian with Platonic embellishments and, like Sterry, a Calvinist. He denied innate ideas and supported the tabula rasa doctrine, commending “the Platonists . . . that they lookt upon the spirit of a man as the Candle of the Lord, though they were deceived in the time when ‘twas lighted.” The Cambridge Platonists were influential as latitudinarians, as advocates of rational theology, as severe critics of unbridled mechanism and materialism, and as the initiators, in England, of the intuitionist ethical tradition. In the England of Locke they are a striking counterinstance of innatism and non-empirical philosophy. 

camera obscura: cited by H. P. Grice and G. J. Warnock on “Seeing” – and the Causal Theory of Seeing – “visa” -- a darkened enclosure that focuses light from an external object by a pinpoint hole instead of a lens, creating an inverted, reversed image on the opposite wall. The adoption of the camera obscura as a model for the eye revolutionized the study of visual perception by rendering obsolete previous speculative philosophical theories, in particular the emanation theory, which explained perception as due to emanated copy-images of objects entering the eye, and theories that located the image of perception in the lens rather than the retina. By shifting the location of sensation to a projection on the retina, the camera obscura doctrine helped support the distinction of primary and secondary sense qualities, undermining the medieval realist view of perception and moving toward the idea that consciousness is radically split off from the world.

oxonian dialectic, or rather Mertonian dialectic – (“You need to go to Merton to do dialectic” – Grice).- dialectic: H. P. Grice, “Athenian dialectic and Oxonian dialectic,” an argumentative exchange involving contradiction or a technique or method connected with such exchanges. The word’s origin is the Grecian dialegein, ‘to argue’ or ‘converse’; in Aristotle and others, this often has the sense ‘argue for a conclusion’, ‘establish by argument’. By Plato’s time, if not earlier, it had acquired a technical sense: a form of argumentation through question and answer. The adjective dialektikos, ‘dialectical’, would mean ‘concerned with dialegein’ or of persons ‘skilled in dialegein’; the feminine dialektike is then ‘the art of dialegein’. Aristotle says that Zeno of Elea invented diagonalization dialectic 232   232 dialectic. He apparently had in mind Zeno’s paradoxical arguments against motion and multiplicity, which Aristotle saw as dialectical because they rested on premises his adversaries conceded and deduced contradictory consequences from them. A first definition of dialectical argument might then be: ‘argument conducted by question and answer, resting on an opponent’s concessions, and aiming at refuting the opponent by deriving contradictory consequences’. This roughly fits the style of argument Socrates is shown engaging in by Plato. So construed, dialectic is primarily an art of refutation. Plato, however, came to apply ‘dialectic’ to the method by which philosophers attain knowledge of Forms. His understanding of that method appears to vary from one dialogue to another and is difficult to interpret. In Republic VIVII, dialectic is a method that somehow establishes “non-hypothetical” conclusions; in the Sophist, it is a method of discovering definitions by successive divisions of genera into their species. Aristotle’s concept of dialectical argument comes closer to Socrates and Zeno: it proceeds by question and answer, normally aims at refutation, and cannot scientifically or philosophically establish anything. Aristotle differentiates dialectical arguments from demonstration apodeixis, or scientific arguments, on the basis of their premises: demonstrations must have “true and primary” premises, dialectical arguments premises that are “apparent,” “reputable,” or “accepted” these are alternative, and disputed, renderings of the term endoxos. However, dialectical arguments must be valid, unlike eristic or sophistical arguments. The Topics, which Aristotle says is the first art of dialectic, is organized as a handbook for dialectical debates; Book VIII clearly presupposes a ruledirected, formalized style of disputation presumably practiced in the Academy. This use of ‘dialectic’ reappears in the early Middle Ages in Europe, though as Aristotle’s works became better known after the twelfth century dialectic was increasingly associated with the formalized disputations practiced in the universities recalling once again the formalized practice presupposed by Aristotle’s Topics. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant declared that the ancient meaning of ‘dialectic’ was ‘the logic of illusion’ and proposed a “Transcendental Dialectic” that analyzed the “antinomies” deductions of contradictory conclusions to which pure reason is inevitably led when it extends beyond its proper sphere. This concept was further developed by Fichte and Schelling into a traidic notion of thesis, opposing antithesis, and resultant synthesis. Hegel transformed the notion of contradiction from a logical to a metaphysical one, making dialectic into a theory not simply of arguments but of historical processes within the development of “spirit”; Marx transformed this still further by replacing ‘spirit’ with ‘matter’. 

oxonian Epicureanism, -- Walter Pater, “Marius, The Epicurean” -- one of the three leading movements constituting Hellenistic philosophy. It was founded by Epicurus 341271 B.C., together with his close colleagues Metrodorus c.331 278, Hermarchus Epicurus’s successor as head of the Athenian school, and Polyaenus d. 278. He set up Epicurean communities at Mytilene, Lampsacus, and finally Athens 306 B.C., where his school the Garden became synonymous with Epicureanism. These groups set out to live the ideal Epicurean life, detached from political society without actively opposing it, and devoting themselves to philosophical discussion and the cult of friendship. Their correspondence was anthologized and studied as a model of the philosophical life by later Epicureans, for whom the writings of Epicurus and his three cofounders, known collectively as “the Men,” held a virtually biblical status. Epicurus wrote voluminously, but all that survives are three brief epitomes the Letter to Herodotus on physics, the Letter to Pythocles on astronomy, etc., and the Letter to Menoeceus on ethics, a group of maxims, and papyrus fragments of his magnum opus On Nature. Otherwise, we are almost entirely dependent on secondary citations, doxography, and the writings of his later followers. The Epicurean physical theory is atomistic, developed out of the fifth-century system of Democritus. Per se existents are divided into bodies and space, each of them infinite in quantity. Space is, or includes, absolute void, without which motion would be impossible, while body is constituted out of physically indivisible particles, “atoms.” Atoms are themselves further analyzable as sets of absolute “minima,” the ultimate quanta of magnitude, posited by Epicurus to circumvent the paradoxes that Zeno of Elea had derived from the hypothesis of infinite divisibility. Atoms themselves have only the primary properties of shape, size, and weight. All secondary properties, e.g. color, are generated out of atomic compounds; given their dependent status, they cannot be added to the list of per se existents, but it does not follow, as the skeptical tradition in atomism had held, that they are not real either. Atoms are in constant rapid motion, epapoge Epicureanism 269   269 at equal speed since in the pure void there is nothing to slow them down. Stability emerges as an overall property of compounds, which large groups of atoms form by settling into regular patterns of complex motion, governed by the three motive principles of weight, collisions, and a minimal random movement, the “swerve,” which initiates new patterns of motion and blocks the danger of determinism. Our world itself, like the countless other worlds, is such a compound, accidentally generated and of finite duration. There is no divine mind behind it, or behind the evolution of life and society: the gods are to be viewed as ideal beings, models of the Epicurean good life, and therefore blissfully detached from our affairs. Canonic, the Epicurean theory of knowledge, rests on the principle that “all sensations are true.” Denial of empirical cognition is argued to amount to skepticism, which is in turn rejected as a self-refuting position. Sensations are representationally not propositionally true. In the paradigm case of sight, thin films of atoms Grecian eidola, Latin simulacra constantly flood off bodies, and our eyes mechanically report those that reach them, neither embroidering nor interpreting. Inference from these guaranteed photographic, as it were data to the nature of external objects themselves involves judgment, and there alone error can occur. Sensations thus constitute one of the three “criteria of truth,” along with feelings, a criterion of values and introspective information, and prolepseis, or naturally acquired generic conceptions. On the basis of sense evidence, we are entitled to infer the nature of microscopic or remote phenomena. Celestial phenomena, e.g., cannot be regarded as divinely engineered which would conflict with the prolepsis of the gods as tranquil, and experience supplies plenty of models that would account for them naturalistically. Such grounds amount to consistency with directly observed phenomena, and are called ouk antimarturesis “lack of counterevidence”. Paradoxically, when several alternative explanations of the same phenomenon pass this test, all must be accepted: although only one of them can be true for each token phenomenon, the others, given their intrinsic possibility and the spatial and temporal infinity of the universe, must be true for tokens of the same type elsewhere. Fortunately, when it comes to the basic tenets of physics, it is held that only one theory passes this test of consistency with phenomena. Epicurean ethics is hedonistic. Pleasure is our innate natural goal, to which all other values, including virtue, are subordinated. Pain is the only evil, and there is no intermediate state. Philosophy’s task is to show how pleasure can be maximized, as follows: Bodily pleasure becomes more secure if we adopt a simple way of life that satisfies only our natural and necessary desires, with the support of like-minded friends. Bodily pain, when inevitable, can be outweighed by mental pleasure, which exceeds it because it can range over past, present, and future. The highest pleasure, whether of soul or body, is a satisfied state, “katastematic pleasure.” The pleasures of stimulation “kinetic pleasures”, including those resulting from luxuries, can vary this state, but have no incremental value: striving to accumulate them does not increase overall pleasure, but does increase our vulnerability to fortune. Our primary aim should instead be to minimize pain. This is achieved for the body through a simple way of life, and for the soul through the study of physics, which achieves the ultimate katastematic pleasure, ”freedom from disturbance” ataraxia, by eliminating the two main sources of human anguish, the fears of the gods and of death. It teaches us a that cosmic phenomena do not convey divine threats, b that death is mere disintegration of the soul, with hell an illusion. To fear our own future non-existence is as irrational as to regret the non-existence we enjoyed before we were born. Physics also teaches us how to evade determinism, which would turn moral agents into mindless fatalists: the swerve doctrine secures indeterminism, as does the logical doctrine that future-tensed propositions may be neither true nor false. The Epicureans were the first explicit defenders of free will, although we lack the details of their positive explanation of it. Finally, although Epicurean groups sought to opt out of public life, they took a keen and respectful interest in civic justice, which they analyzed not as an absolute value, but as a contract between humans to refrain from harmful activity on grounds of utility, perpetually subject to revision in the light of changing circumstances. Epicureanism enjoyed widespread popularity, but unlike its great rival Stoicism it never entered the intellectual bloodstream of the ancient world. Its stances were dismissed by many as philistine, especially its rejection of all cultural activities not geared to the Epicurean good life. It was also increasingly viewed as atheistic, and its ascetic hedonism was misrepresented as crude sensualism hence the modern use of ‘epicure’. The school nevertheless continued to flourish down to and well beyond the end of the Hellenistic age. In the first century B.C. its exponents Epicureanism Epicureanism 270   270 included Philodemus, whose fragmentarily surviving treatise On Signs attests to sophisticated debates on induction between Stoics and Epicureans, and Lucretius, the Roman author of the great Epicurean didactic poem On the Nature of Things. In the second century A.D. another Epicurean, Diogenes of Oenoanda, had his philosophical writings engraved on stone in a public colonnade, and passages have survived. Thereafter Epicureanism’s prominence declined. Serious interest in it was revived by Renaissance humanists, and its atomism was an important influence on early modern physics, especially through Gassendi. 

oxonianism: Grice was “university lecturer in philosophy” and “tutorial fellow in philosophy” – that’s why he always saw philosophy, like virtue, as entire. He would never accept a post like “professor of moral philosophy” or “professor of logic,” or “professor of metaphysical philosophy,” or “reader in natural theology,” or “reader in mental philosophy.” So he felt a responsibility towards ‘philosophy undepartmentilised’ and he succeded in never disgressing from this gentlemanly attitude to philosophy as a totum, and not a technically specified field of ‘expertise.’ See playgroup. The playgroup was Oxonian. There are aspects of Grice’s philosophy which are Oxonian but not playgroup-related, and had to do with his personal inclinations. The fact that it was Hardie who was his tutor and instilled on him a love for Aristotle. Grice’s rapport with H. A. Prichard. Grice would often socialize with members of Ryle’s group, such as O. P. Wood, J. D. Mabbott, and W. C. Kneale. And of course, he had a knowleddge of the history of Oxford philosophy, quoting from J. C. Wilson, G. F. Stout, H. H. Price, Bosanquet, Bradley. He even had his Oxonian ‘enemies,’ Dummett, Anscombe. And he would quote from independents, like A. J. P. Kenny. But if he had to quote someone first, it was a member of his beloved playgroup: Austin, Strawson, Warnock, Urmson, Hare, Hart, Hampshire. Grice cannot possibly claim to talk about post-war Oxford philosophy, but his own! Cf. Oxfords post-war philosophy.  What were Grices first impressions when arriving at Oxford. He was going to learn. Only the poor learn at Oxford was an adage he treasured, since he wasnt one! Let us start with an alphabetical listing of Grices play Group companions: Austin, Butler, Flew, Gardiner, Grice, Hare, Hampshire, Hart, Nowell-Smith, Parkinson, Paul, Pears, Quinton, Sibley, Strawson, Thomson, Urmson, and Warnock.  Grices main Oxonian association is St. Johns, Oxford. By Oxford Philosophy, Grice notably refers to Austins Play Group, of which he was a member. But Grice had Oxford associations pre-war, and after the demise of Austin. But back to the Play Group, this, to some, infamous, playgroup, met on Saturday mornings at different venues at Oxford, including Grices own St. John’s ‒ apparently, Austins favourite venue. Austin regarded himself and his kindergarten as linguistic or language botanists. The idea was to list various ordinary uses of this or that philosophical notion. Austin: They say philosophy is about language; well, then, let’s botanise! Grices involvement with Oxford philosophy of course predated his associations with Austins play group. He always said he was fortunate of having been a tutee to Hardie at Corpus. Corpus, Oxford. Grice would occasionally refer to the emblematic pelican, so prominently displayed at Corpus. Grice had an interim association with the venue one associates most directly with philosophy, Merton ‒: Grice, Merton, Oxford. While Grice loved to drop Oxonian Namess, notably his rivals, such as Dummett or Anscombe, he knew when not to. His Post-war Oxford philosophy, as opposed to more specific items in The Grice Collection, remains general in tone, and intended as a defense of the ordinary-language approach to philosophy. Surprisingly, or perhaps not (for those who knew Grice), he takes a pretty idiosyncratic characterisation of conceptual analysis. Grices philosophical problems emerge with Grices idiosyncratic use of this or that expression. Conceptual analysis is meant to solve his problems, not others, repr. in WOW . Grice finds it important to reprint this since he had updated thoughts on the matter, which he displays in his Conceptual analysis and the province of philosophy. The topic represents one of the strands he identifies behind the unity of his philosophy. By post-war Oxford philosophy, Grice meant the period he was interested in. While he had been at Corpus, Merton, and St. Johns in the pre-war days, for some reason, he felt that he had made history in the post-war period. The historical reason Grice gives is understandable enough. In the pre-war days, Grice was the good student and the new fellow of St. Johns ‒ the other one was Mabbott. But he had not been able to engage in philosophical discussion much, other than with other tutees of Hardie. After the war, Grice indeed joins Austins more popular, less secretive Saturday mornings. Indeed, for Grice, post-war means all philosophy after the war (and not just say, the forties!) since he never abandoned the methods he developed under Austin, which were pretty congenial to the ones he had himself displayed in the pre-war days, in essays like Negation and Personal identity. Grice is a bit of an expert on Oxonian philosophy. He sees himself as a member of the school of analytic philosophy, rather than the abused term ordinary-language philosophy. This is evident by the fact that he contributed to such polemic  ‒ but typically Oxonian  ‒ volumes such as Butler, Analytic Philosophy, published by Blackwell (of all publishers). Grice led a very social life at Oxford, and held frequent philosophical discussions with the Play group philosophers (alphabetically listed above), and many others, such as Wood.  Post-war Oxford philosophy, miscellaneous, Oxford philosophy, in WOW, II, Semantics and Met. , Essay. By Oxford philosophy, Grice means his own. Grice went back to the topic of philosophy and ordinary language, as one of his essays is precisely entitled, Philosophy and ordinary language, philosophy and ordinary language, : ordinary-language philosophy, linguistic botanising. Grice is not really interested in ordinary language as a philologist might. He spoke ordinary language, he thought. The point had been brought to the fore by Austin. If they think philosophy is a play on words, well then, lets play the game. Grices interest is methodological. Malcolm had been claiming that ordinary language is incorrigible. While Grice agreed that language can be clever, he knew that Aristotle was possibly right when he explored ta legomena in terms of the many and the selected wise, philosophy and ordinary language, philosophy and ordinary language, : philosophy, ordinary language. At the time of writing, ordinary-language philosophy had become, even within Oxford, a bit of a term of abuse. Grice tries to defend Austins approach to it, while suggesting ideas that Austin somewhat ignored, like what an utterer implies by the use of an ordinary-language expression, rather than what the expression itself does. Grice is concerned, contra Austin, in explanation (or explanatory adequacy), not taxonomy (or descriptive adequacy). Grice disregards Austins piecemeal approach to ordinary language, as Grice searches for the big picture of it all. Grice never used ordinary language seriously. The phrase was used, as he explains, by those who HATED ordinary-language philosophy. Theres no such thing as ordinary language. Surely you cannot fairly describe the idiosyncratic linguistic habits of an Old Cliftonian as even remotely ordinary. Extra-ordinary more likely! As far as the philosophy bit goes, this is what Bergmann jocularly described as the linguistic turn. But as Grice notes, the linguistic turn involves both the ideal language and the ordinary language. Grice defends the choice by Austin of the ordinary seeing that it was what he had to hand! While Grice seems to be in agreement with the tone of his Wellesley talk, his idioms there in. Youre crying for the moon! Philosophy need not be grand! These seem to contrast with his more grandiose approach to philosophy. His struggle was to defend the minutiæ of linguistic botanising, that had occupied most of his professional life, with a grander view of the discipline. He blamed Oxford for that. Never in the history of philosophy had philosophers shown such an attachment to ordinary language as they did in post-war Oxford, Grice liked to say.  Having learned Grecian and Latin at Clifton, Grice saw in Oxford a way to go back to English! He never felt the need to explore Continental modern languages like German or French. Aristotle was of course cited in Greek, but Descartes is almost not cited, and Kant is cited in the translation available to Oxonians then. Grice is totally right that never has philosophy experienced such a fascination with ordinary use except at Oxford. The ruthless and unswerving association of philosophy with ordinary language has been peculiar to the Oxford scene. While many found this attachment to ordinary usage insidious, as Warnock put it, it fit me and Grice to a T, implicating you need a sort of innate disposition towards it! Strawson perhaps never had it! And thats why Grices arguments contra Strawson rest on further minutiæ whose detection by Grice never ceased to amaze his tutee! In this way, Grice felt he WAS Austins heir! While Grice is associated with, in chronological order, Corpus, Merton, and St. Johns, it is only St. Johns that counts for the Griceian! For it is at St. Johns he was a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy! And we love him as a philosopher. Refs.: The obvious keyword is “Oxford.” His essay in WoW on post-war Oxford philosophy is general – the material in the H. P. Grice papers is more anecdotic. Also “Reply to Richards,” and references above under ‘linguistic botany’ and ‘play group,’ in BANC.

pacifism: Grice fought in the second world war with the Royal Navy and earned the rank of captain. 1 opposition to war, usually on moral or religious grounds, but sometimes on the practical ground pragmatic pacifism that it is wasteful and ineffective; 2 opposition to all killing and violence; 3 opposition only to war of a specified kind e.g., nuclear pacifism. Not to be confused with passivism, pacifism usually involves actively promoting peace, understood to imply cooperation and justice among peoples and not merely absence of war. But some usually religious pacifists accept military service so long as they do not carry weapons. Many pacifists subscribe to nonviolence. But some consider violence and/or killing permissible, say, in personal self-defense, law enforcement, abortion, or euthanasia. Absolute pacifism rejects war in all circumstances, hypothetical and actual. Conditional pacifism concedes war’s permissibility in some hypothetical circumstances but maintains its wrongness in practice. If at least some hypothetical wars have better consequences than their alternative, absolute pacifism will almost inevitably be deontological in character, holding war intrinsically wrong or unexceptionably prohibited by moral principle or divine commandment. Conditional pacifism may be held on either deontological or utilitarian teleological or sometimes consequentialist grounds. If deontological, it may hold war at most prima facie wrong intrinsically but nonetheless virtually always impermissible in practice because of the absence of counterbalancing right-making features. If utilitarian, it will hold war wrong, not intrinsically, but solely because of its consequences. It may say either that every particular war has worse consequences than its avoidance act utilitarianism or that general acceptance of or following or compliance with a rule prohibiting war will have best consequences even if occasional particular wars have best consequences rule utilitarianism.

paine, T.: philosopher, revolutionary defender of democracy and human rights, and champion of popular radicalism in three countries. Born in Thetford, England, he emigrated to the  colonies in 1774; he later moved to France, where he was made a  citizen in 1792. In 1802 he returned to the United States, where he was rebuffed by the public because of his support for the  Revolution. Paine was the bestknown polemicist for the  Revolution. In many incendiary pamphlets, he called for a new, more democratic republicanism. His direct style and uncompromising egalitarianism had wide popular appeal. In Common Sense 1776 Paine asserted that commoners were the equal of the landed aristocracy, thus helping to spur colonial resentments sufficiently to support independence from Britain. The sole basis of political legitimacy is universal, active consent; taxation without representation is unjust; and people have the right to resist when the contract between governor and governed is broken. He defended the  Revolution in The Rights of Man 179, arguing against concentrating power in any one individual and against a property qualification for suffrage. Since natural law and right reason as conformity to nature are accessible to all rational persons, sovereignty resides in human beings and is not bestowed by membership in class or nation. Opposed to the extremist Jacobins, he helped write, with Condorcet, a constitution to secure the Revolution. The Age of Reason 1794, Paine’s most misunderstood work, sought to secure the social cohesion necessary to a well-ordered society by grounding it in belief in a divinity. But in supporting deism and attacking established religion as a tool of enslavement, he alienated the very laboring classes he sought to enlighten. A lifelong adversary of slavery and supporter of universal male suffrage, Paine argued for redistributing property in Agrarian Justice 1797. 

palæo-Griceian: Within the Oxford group, Grice was the first, and it’s difficult to find a precursor. It’s obviously Grice was not motivated to create or design his manoeuvre to oppose a view by Ryle – who cared about Ryle in the playgroup? None – It is obviously more clear that Grice cared a hoot about Vitters, Benjamin, and Malcolm. So that leaves us with the philosophers Grice personally knew. And we are sure he was more interested in criticizing Austin than his own tutee Strawson. So ths leaves us with Austin. Grice’s manoeuvre was intended for Austin – but he waited for Austin’s demise to present it. Even though the sources were publications that were out there before Austin died (“Other minds,” “A plea for excuses”). So Grice is saying that Austin is wrong, as he is. In order of seniority, the next was Hart (who Grice mocked about ‘carefully’ in Prolegomena. Then came more or less same-generational Hare (who was not too friendly with Grice) and ‘to say ‘x is good’ is to recommend x’ (a ‘performatory fallacy’) and Strawson with ‘true’ and, say, ‘if.’ So, back to the palaeo-Griceian, surely nobody was in a position to feel a motivation to criticise Austin, Hart, Hare, and Strawson! When philosophers mention this or that palaeo-Griceian philosopher, surely the motivation was different. And a philosophical manoevre COMES with a motivation. If we identify some previous (even Oxonian) philosopher who was into the thing Grice is, it would not have Austin, Hart, Hare or Strawson as ‘opponents.’ And of course it’s worse with post-Griceians. Because, as Grice says, there was no othe time than post-war Oxford philosophy where “my manoeuvre would have make sense.’ If it does, as it may, post-Grice, it’s “as derivative” of “the type of thing we were doing back in the day. And it’s no fun anymore.” “Neo-Griceian” is possibly a misnomer. As Grice notes, “usually you add ‘neo-’ to sell; that’s why, jokingly, I call Strawson a neo-traditionalist; as if he were a bit of a neo-con, another oxymoron, as he was!’That is H. P. Grice was the first member of the play group to come up with a system of ‘pragmatic rules.’ Or perhaps he wasn’t. In any case, palaeo-Griceian refers to any attempt by someone who is an Oxonian English philosopher who suggested something like H. P. Grice later did! There are palaeo-Griceian suggestions in Bradley – “Logic” --, Bosanquet, J. C. Wilson (“Statement and inference”) and a few others. Within those who interacted with Grice to provoke him into the ‘pragmatic rule’ account were two members of the play group. One was not English, but a Scot: G. A. Paul. Paul had been to ‘the other place,’ and was at Oxford trying to spread Witters’s doctrine. The bafflement one gets from “I certainly don’t wish to cast any doubt on the matter, but that pillar box seems red to me; and the reason why it is does, it’s because it is red, and its redness causes in my sense of vision the sense-datum that the thing is red.” Grice admits that he first came out with the idea when confronted with this example. Mainly Grice’s motivation is to hold that such a ‘statement’ (if statement, it is, -- vide Bar-Hillel) is true. The other member was English: P. F. Strawson. And Grice notes that it was Strawson’s Introduction to logical theory that motivated him to apply a technique which had proved successful in the area of the philosophy of perception to this idea by Strawson that Whitehead and Russell are ‘incorrect.’ Again, Grice’s treatment concerns holding a ‘statement’ to be ‘true.’ Besides these two primary cases, there are others. First, is the list of theses in “Causal Theory.” None of them are assigned to a particular philosopher, so the research may be conducted towards the identification of these. The theses are, besides the one he is himself dealing, the sense-datum ‘doubt or denial’ implicaturum: One, What is actual is not also possible. Two, What is known to be the case is not also believed to be the case. Three, Moore was guilty of misusing the lexeme ‘know.’ Four, To say that someone is responsible is to say that he is accountable for something condemnable. Six, A horse cannot look like a horse. Now, in “Prolegomena” he add further cases. Again, since this are palaeo-Griceian, it may be a matter of tracing the earliest occurrences. In “Prolegomena,” Grice divides the examples in Three Groups. The last is an easy one to identity: the ‘performatory’ approach: for which he gives the example by Strawson on ‘true,’ and mentions two other cases: a performatory use of ‘I know’ for I guarantee; and the performatory use of ‘good’ for ‘I approve’ (Ogden). The second group is easy to identify since it’s a central concern and it is exactly Strawson’s attack on Whitehead and Russell. But Grice is clear here. It is mainly with regard to ‘if’ that he wants to discuss Strawson, and for which he quotes him at large. Before talking about ‘if’, he mentions the co-ordinating connectives ‘and’ and ‘or’, without giving a source. So, here there is a lot to research about the thesis as held by other philosophers even at Oxford (where, however, ‘logic’ was never considered a part of philosophy proper). The first group is the most varied, and easier to generalise, because it refers to any ‘sub-expression’ held to occur in a full expression which is held to be ‘inappropriate.’ Those who judge the utterance to be inappropriate are sometimes named. Grice starts with Ryle and The Concept of Mind – palaeo-Griceian, in that it surely belongs to Grice’s previous generation. It concerns the use of the adverb ‘voluntary’ and Grice is careful to cite Ryle’s description of the case, using words like ‘incorrect,’ and that a ‘sense’ claimed by philosophers is an absurd one. Then there is a third member of the playgroup – other than G. A. Paul and P. F. Strawson – the Master Who Wobbles, J. L. Austin. Grice likes the way Austin offers himself as a good target – Austin was dead by then, and Grice would otherwise not have even tried – Austin uses variables: notably Mly, and a general thesis, ‘no modification without aberration.’ But basically, Grice agrees that it’s all about the ‘philosophy of action.’ So in describing an agent’s action, the addition of an adverb makes the whole thing inappropriate. This may relate to at least one example in “Causal” involving ‘responsible.’ While Grice there used the noun and adjective, surely it can be turned into an adverb. The fourth member of the playgroup comes next: H. L. A. Hart. Grice laughs at Hart’s idea that to add ‘carefully’ in the description of an action the utterer is committed to the idea that the agent THINKS the steps taken for the performance are reasonable. There is a thesis he mentions then which alla “Causal Theory,” gets uncredited – about ‘trying.’ But he does suggest Witters. And then there is his own ‘doubt or denial’ re: G. A. Paul, and another one in the field of the philosophy of perception that he had already mentioned vaguely in “Causal”: a horse cannot look like a horse. Here he quotes Witters in extenso, re: ‘seeing as.’ While Grice mentions ‘philosophy of action,’ there is at least one example involving ‘philosophical psychology’: B. S. Benjamin on C. D. Broad on the factiveness of ‘remember.’ When one thinks of all the applications that the ‘conversational model’ has endured, one realizes that unless your background is philosophical, you are bound not to realise the centrality of Grice’s thesis for philosophical methodology.

paley: English moral philosopher and theologian. He was born in Peterborough and educated at Cambridge, where he lectured in moral philosophy, divinity, and Grecian New Testament before assuming a series of posts in the C. of E., the last as archdeacon of Carlisle. The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy first introduced utilitarianism to a wide public. Moral obligation is created by a divine command “coupled” with the expectation of everlasting rewards or punishments. While God’s commands can be ascertained “from Scripture and the light of nature,” Paley emphasizes the latter. Since God wills human welfare, the rightness or wrongness of actions is determined by their “tendency to promote or diminish the general happiness.” Horae Pauline: Or the Truth of the Scripture History of St Paul Evinced appeared in 1790, A View of the Evidences of Christianity in 1794. The latter defends the authenticity of the Christian miracles against Hume. Natural Theology 1802 provides a design argument for God’s existence and a demonstration of his attributes. Nature exhibits abundant contrivances whose “several parts are framed and put together for a purpose.” These contrivances establish the existence of a powerful, wise, benevolent designer. They cannot show that its power and wisdom are unlimited, however, and “omnipotence” and “omniscience” are mere “superlatives.” Paley’s Principles and Evidences served as textbooks in England and America well into the nineteenth century. 

panpsychism, the doctrine that the physical world is pervasively psychical, sentient or conscious understood as equivalent. The idea, usually, is that it is articulated into certain ultimate units or particles, momentary or enduring, each with its own distinct charge of sentience or consciousness, and that some more complex physical units possess a sentience emergent from the interaction between the charges of sentience pertaining to their parts, sometimes down through a series of levels of articulation into sentient units. Animal consciousness is the overall sentience pertaining to some substantial part or aspect of the brain, while each neuron may have its own individual charge of sentience, as may each included atom and subatomic particle. Elsewhere the only sentient units may be at the atomic and subatomic level. Two differently motivated versions of the doctrine should be distinguished. The first implies no particular view about the nature of matter, and regards the sentience pertaining to each unit as an extra to its physical nature. Its point is to explain animal and human consciousness as emerging from the interaction and perhaps fusion of more pervasive sentient units. The better motivated, second version holds that the inner essence of matter is unknown. We know only structural facts about the physical or facts about its effects on sentience like our own. Panpsychists hypothesize that the otherwise unknown inner essence of matter consists in sentience or consciousness articulated into the units we identify externally as fundamental particles, or as a supervening character pertaining to complexes of such or complexes of complexes, etc. Panpsychists can thus uniquely combine the idealist claim that there can be no reality without consciousness with rejection of any subjectivist reduction of the physical world to human experience of it. Modern versions of panpsychism e.g. of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and Sprigge are only partly akin to hylozoism as it occurred in ancient thought. Note that neither version need claim that every physical object possesses consciousness; no one supposes that a team of conscious cricketers must itself be conscious. 

pantheism, the view that God is identical with everything. It may be seen as the result of two tendencies: an intense religious spirit and the belief that all reality is in some way united. Pantheism should be distinguished from panentheism, the view that God is in all things. Just as water might saturate a sponge and in that way be in the entire sponge, but not be identical with the sponge, God might be in everything without being identical with everything. Spinoza is the most distinguished pantheist in Western philosophy. He argued that since substance is completely self-sufficient, and only God is self-sufficient, God is the only substance. In other words, God is everything. Hegel is also sometimes considered a pantheist since he identifies God with the totality of being. Many people think that pantheism is tantamount to atheism, because they believe that theism requires that God transcend ordinary, sensible reality at least to some degree. It is not obvious that theism requires a transcendent or Panaetius pantheism 640    640 personal notion of God; and one might claim that the belief that it does is the result of an anthropomorphic view of God. In Eastern philosophy, especially the Vedic tradition of  philosophy, pantheism is part of a rejection of polytheism. The apparent multiplicity of reality is illusion. What is ultimately real or divine is Brahman. 

pantheismusstreit: a debate primarily between Jacobi and Mendelssohn, although it also included Lessing, Kant, and Goethe. The basic issue concerned what pantheism is and whether every pantheists is an atheist. In particular, it concerned whether Spinoza was a pantheist, and if so, whether he was an atheist; and how close Lessing’s thought was to Spinoza’s. The standard view, propounded by Bayle and Leibniz, was that Spinoza’s pantheism was a thin veil for his atheism. Lessing and Goethe did not accept this harsh interpretation of him. They believed that his pantheism avoided the alienating transcendence of the standard Judeo-Christian concept of God. It was debated whether Lessing was a Spinozist or some form of theistic pantheist. Lessing was critical of dogmatic religions and denied that there was any revelation given to all people for rational acceptance. He may have told Jacobi that he was a Spinozist; but he may also have been speaking ironically or hypothetically. 

paracelsus, pseudonym of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, philosopher. He pursued medical studies at various G. and Austrian universities, probably completing them at Ferrara. Thereafter he had little to do with the academic world, apart from a brief and stormy period as professor of medicine at Basle 152728. Instead, he worked first as a military surgeon and later as an itinerant physician in G.y, Austria, and Switzerland. His works were mainly in G. rather than Latin, and only a few were published during his lifetime. His importance for medical practice lay in his insistence on observation and experiment, and his use of chemical methods for preparing drugs. The success of Paracelsian medicine and chemistry in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was, however, largely due to the theoretical background he provided. He firmly rejected the classical medical inheritance, particularly Galen’s explanation of disease as an imbalance of humors; he drew on a combination of biblical sources, G. mysticism, alchemy, and Neoplatonic magic as found in Ficino to present a unified view of humankind and the universe. He saw man as a microcosm, reflecting the nature of the divine world through his immortal soul, the sidereal world through his astral body or vital principle, and the terrestrial world through his visible body. Knowledge requires union with the object, but because elements of all the worlds are found in man, he can acquire knowledge of the universe and of God, as partially revealed in nature. The physician needs knowledge of vital principles called astra in order to heal. Disease is caused by external agents that can affect the human vital principle as well as the visible body. Chemical methods are employed to isolate the appropriate vital principles in minerals and herbs, and these are used as antidotes. Paracelsus further held that matter contains three principles, sulfur, mercury, and salt. As a result, he thought it was possible to transform one metal into another by varying the proportions of the fundamental principles; and that such transformations could also be used in the production of drugs. 

para-consistency: cf. paralogism -- the property of a logic in which one cannot derive all statements from a contradiction. What is objectionable about contradictions, from the standpoint of classical logic, is not just that they are false but that they imply any statement whatsoever: one who accepts a contradiction is thereby committed to accepting everything. In paraconsistent logics, however, such as relevance logics, contradictions are isolated inferentially and thus rendered relatively harmless. The interest in such logics stems from the fact that people sometimes continue to work in inconsistent theories even after the inconsistency has been exposed, and do so without inferring everything. Whether this phenomenon can be explained satisfactorily by the classical logician or shows instead that the underlying logic of, e.g., science and mathematics is some non-classical paraconsistent logic, is disputed. Refs.: H. P. Grice: “Implicatura as para-semantic.”

para-philosophy – used by Austin, borrowed (but never returned) by Grice.

para-semantic -- before vowels, par-, word-forming element, originally in Greek-derived words, meaning "alongside, beyond; altered; contrary; irregular, abnormal," from Greek para- from para (prep.) "beside, near; issuing from; against, contrary to," from PIE *prea, from root *per- (1) "forward," hence "toward, near; against." Cognate with Old English for- "off, away." Mostly used in scientific and technical words; not usually regarded as a naturalized formative element in English.

paradigm-case argument: Grice tries to give the general form of this argument, as applied to Urmson, and Grice and Strawson. I wonder if Grice thought that STRAWSON’s appeal to resentment to prove freewill is paradigm case? The idiom was coined by Grice’s first tutee at St. John’s, G. N. A. Flew, and he applied it to ‘free will.’ Grice later used it to describe the philosophising by Urmson (in “Retrospetive”). he issue of analyticity is, as Locke puts it, the issue of whats trifle. That a triangle is trilateral Locke considers a trifling proposition, like Saffron is yellow. Lewes (who calls mathematical propositions analytic) describes the Kantian problem. The reductive analysis of meaning Grice offers depends on the analytic. Few Oxonian philosophers would follow Loar, D. Phil Oxon, under Warnock, in thinking of Grices conversational maxims as empirical inductive generalisations over functional states! Synthesis may do in the New World,but hardly in the Old! The locus classicus for the ordinary-language philosophical response to Quine in Two dogmas of empiricism. Grice and Strawson claim that is analytic does have an ordinary-language use, as attached two a type of behavioural conversational response. To an analytically false move (such as My neighbours three-year-old son is an adult) the addressee A is bound to utter, I dont understand you! You are not being figurative, are you? To a synthetically false move, on the other hand (such as My neighbours three-year-old understands Russells Theory of Types), the addressee A will jump with, Cant believe it! The topdogma of analyticity is for Grice very important to defend. Philosophy depends on it! He knows that to many his claim to fame is his In defence of a dogma, the topdogma of analyticity, no less. He eventually turns to a pragmatist justification of the distinction. This pragmatist justification is still in accordance with what he sees as the use of analytic in ordinary language. His infamous examples are as follows. My neighbours three-year old understands Russells Theory of Types. A: Hard to believe, but I will. My neighbours three-year old is an adult. Metaphorically? No. Then I dont understand you, and what youve just said is, in my scheme of things, analytically false. Ultimately, there are conversational criteria, based on this or that principle of conversational helfpulness. Grice is also circumstantially concerned with the synthetic a priori, and he would ask his childrens playmates: Can a sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed! The distinction is ultimately Kantian, but it had brought to the fore by the linguistic turn, Oxonian and other! In defence of a dogma, Two dogmas of empiricism, : the analytic-synthetic distinction. For Quine, there are two. Grice is mainly interested in the first one: that there is a distinction between the analytic and the synthetic. Grice considers Empiricism as a monster on his way to the Rationalist City of Eternal Truth. Grice came back time and again to explore the analytic-synthetic distinction. But his philosophy remained constant. His sympathy is for the practicality of it, its rationale. He sees it as involving formal calculi, rather than his own theory of conversation as rational co-operation which does not presuppose the analytic-synthetic distinction, even if it explains it! Grice would press the issue here: if one wants to prove that such a theory of conversation as rational co-operation has to be seen as philosophical, rather than some other way, some idea of analyticity may be needed to justify the philosophical enterprise. Cf. the synthetic a priori, that fascinated Grice most than anything Kantian else! Can a sweater be green and red all over? No stripes allowed. With In defence of a dogma, Grice and Strawson attack a New-World philosopher. Grice had previously collaborated with Strawson in an essay on Met.  (actually a three-part piece, with Pears as the third author). The example Grice chooses to refute attack by Quine of the top-dogma is the Aristotelian idea of the peritrope, as Aristotle refutes Antiphasis in Met.  (v. Ackrill, Burnyeat and Dancy). Grice explores chapter Γ 8 of Aristotles Met. .  In Γ 8, Aristotle presents two self-refutation arguments against two theses, and calls the asserter, Antiphasis, T1 = Everything is true, and T2 = Everything is false, Metaph. Γ 8, 1012b13–18. Each thesis is exposed to the stock objection that it eliminates itself. An utterer who explicitly conveys that everything is true also makes the thesis opposite to his own true, so that his own is not true (for the opposite thesis denies that his is true), and any utterer U who explicitly conveys that everything is false also belies himself.  Aristotle does not seem to be claiming that, if everything is true, it would also be true that it is false that everything is true and, that, therefore, Everything is true must be false: the final, crucial inference, from the premise if, p, ~p to the conclusion ~p is missing. But it is this extra inference that seems required to have a formal refutation of Antiphasiss T1 or T2 by consequentia mirabilis. The nature of the argument as a purely dialectical silencer of Antiphasis is confirmed by the case of T2, Everything is false. An utterer who explicitly conveys that everything is false unwittingly concedes, by self-application, that what he is saying must be false too. Again, the further and different conclusion Therefore; it is false that everything is false is missing. That proposal is thus self-defeating, self-contradictory (and comparable to Grices addressee using adult to apply to three-year old, without producing the creature), oxymoronic, and suicidal. This seems all that Aristotle is interested in establishing through the self-refutation stock objection. This is not to suggest that Aristotle did not believe that Everything is true or Everything is false is false, or that he excludes that he can prove its falsehood. Grice notes that this is not what Aristotle seems to be purporting to establish in 1012b13–18. This holds for a περιτροπή (peritrope) argument, but not for a περιγραφή (perigraphe) argument (συμβαίνει δὴ καὶ τὸ θρυλούμενον πᾶσι τοῖς τοιούτοις λόγοις, αὐτοὺς ἑαυτοὺς ἀναιρεῖν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ πάντα ἀληθῆ λέγων καὶ τὸν ἐναντίον αὑτοῦ λόγον ἀληθῆ ποιεῖ, ὥστε τὸν ἑαυτοῦ οὐκ ἀληθῆ (ὁ γὰρ ἐναντίος οὔ φησιν αὐτὸν ἀληθῆ), ὁ δὲ πάντα ψευδῆ καὶ αὐτὸς αὑτόν.) It may be emphasized that Aristotles argument does not contain an explicit application of consequentia mirabilis. Indeed, no extant self-refutation argument before Augustine, Grice is told by Mates, contains an explicit application of consequentia mirabilis. This observation is a good and important one, but Grice has doubts about the consequences one may draw from it. One may take the absence of an explicit application of consequentia mirabilis to be a sign of the purely dialectical nature of the self-refutation argument. This is questionable. The formulation of a self-refutation argument (as in Grices addressee, Sorry, I misused adult.) is often compressed and elliptical and involves this or that implicaturum. One usually assumes that this or that piece in a dialectical context has been omitted and should be supplied (or worked out, as Grice prefers) by the addressee. But in this or that case, it is equally possible to supply some other, non-dialectical piece of reasoning. In Aristotles arguments from Γ 8, e.g., the addressee may supply an inference to the effect that the thesis which has been shown to be self-refuting is not true. For if Aristotle takes the argument to establish that the thesis has its own contradictory version as a consequence, it must be obvious to Aristotle that the thesis is not true (since every consequence of a true thesis is true, and two contradictory theses cannot be simultaneously true). On the further assumption (that Grice makes explicit) that the principle of bivalence is applicable, Aristotle may even infer that the thesis is false. It is perfectly plausible to attribute such an inference to Aristotle and to supply it in his argument from Γ 8. On this account, there is no reason to think that the argument is of an intrinsically dialectical nature and cannot be adequately represented as a non-dialectical proof of the non-truth, or even falsity, of the thesis in question. It is indeed difficult to see signs of a dialectical exchange between two parties (of the type of which Grice and Strawson are champions) in Γ8, 1012b13–18. One piece of evidence is Aristotles reference to the person, the utterer, as Grice prefers who explicitly conveys or asserts (ὁ λέγων) that T1 or that T2. This reference by the Grecian philosopher to the Griceian utterer or asserter of the thesis that everything is true would be irrelevant if Aristotles aim is to prove something about T1s or T2s propositional content, independently of the act by the utterer of uttering its expression and thereby explicitly conveying it. However, it is not clear that this reference is essential to Aristotles argument. One may even doubt whether the Grecian philosopher is being that Griceian, and actually referring to the asserter of T1 or T2. The *implicit* (or implicated) grammatical Subjects of Aristotles ὁ λέγων (1012b15) might be λόγος, instead of the utterer qua asserter. λόγος is surely the implicit grammatical Subjects of ὁ λέγων shortly after ( 1012b21–22. 8). The passage may be taken to be concerned with λόγοι ‒ this or that statement, this or that thesis  ‒ but not with its asserter.  In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle states that no thesis (A three-year old is an adult) can necessarily imply its own contradictory (A three-year old is not an adult) (2.4, 57b13–14). One may appeal to this statement in order to argue for Aristotles claim that a self-refutation argument should NOT be analyzed as involving an implicit application of consequentia mirabilis. Thus, one should deny that Aristotles self-refutation argument establishes a necessary implication from the self-refuting thesis to its contradictory. However, this does not explain what other kind of consequence relation Aristotle takes the self-refutation argument to establish between the self-refuting thesis and its contradictory, although dialectical necessity has been suggested. Aristotles argument suffices to establish that Everything is false is either false or liar-paradoxical. If a thesis is liar-paradoxical (and Grice loved, and overused the expression), the assumption of its falsity leads to contradiction as well as the assumption of its truth. But Everything is false is only liar-paradoxical in the unlikely, for Aristotle perhaps impossible, event that everything distinct from this thesis is false. So, given the additional premise that there is at least one true item distinct from the thesis Everything is false, Aristotle can safely infer that the thesis is false. As for Aristotles ὁ γὰρ λέγων τὸν ἀληθῆ λόγον ἀληθῆ ἀληθής,, or eliding the γὰρ,  ὁ  λέγων τὸν ἀληθῆ λόγον ἀληθῆ ἀληθής, (ho legon ton alethe logon alethe alethes) may be rendered as either: The statement which states that the true statement is true is true, or, more alla Grice, as He who says (or explicitly conveys, or indicates) that the true thesis is true says something true. It may be argued that it is quite baffling (and figurative or analogical or metaphoric) in this context, to take ἀληθής to be predicated  of the Griceian utterer, a person (true standing for truth teller, trustworthy), to take it to mean that he says something true, rather than his statement stating something true, or his statement being true. But cf. L and S: ἀληθής [α^], Dor. ἀλαθής, [α^], Dor. ἀλαθής, ές, f. λήθω, of persons, truthful, honest (not in Hom., v. infr.), ἀ. νόος Pi. O.2.92; κατήγορος A. Th. 439; κριτής Th. 3.56; οἶνος ἀ. `in vino veritas, Pl. Smp. 217e; ὁ μέσος ἀ. τις Arist. EN 1108a20. Admittedly, this or that non-Griceian passage in which it is λόγος, and not the utterer, which is the implied grammatical Subjects of ὁ λέγων can be found in Metaph. Γ7, 1012a24–25; Δ6, 1016a33; Int. 14, 23a28–29; De motu an. 10, 703a4; Eth. Nic. 2.6, 1107a6–7. 9. So the topic is controversial. Indeed such a non-Griceian exegesis of the passage is given by Alexander of Aphrodisias (in Metaph. 340. 26–29):9, when Alexander observes that the statement, i.e. not the utterer, that says that everything is false (ὁ δὲ πάντα ψευδῆ εἶναι λέγων λόγος) negates itself, not himself, because if everything is false, this very statement, which, rather than, by which the utterer, says that everything is false, would be false, and how can an utterer be FALSE? So that the statement which, rather than the utterer who, negates it, saying that not everything is false, would be true, and surely an utterer cannot be true. Does Alexander misrepresent Aristotles argument by omitting every Griceian reference to the asserter or utterer qua rational personal agent, of the thesis? If the answer is negative, even if the occurrence of ὁ λέγων at 1012b15 refers to the asserter, or utterer, qua rational personal agent, this is merely an accidental feature of Aristotles argument that cannot be regarded as an indication of its dialectical nature. None of this is to deny that some self-refutation argument may be of an intrinsically dialectical nature; it is only to deny that every one is This is in line with Burnyeats view that a dialectical self-refutation, even if qualified, as Aristotle does, as ancient, is a subspecies of self-refutation, but does not exhaust it. Granted, a dialectical approach may provide a useful interpretive framework for many an ancient self-refutation argument. A statement like If proof does not exist, proof exists ‒ that occurs in an anti-sceptical self-refutation argument reported by Sextus Empiricus  ‒ may receive an attractive dialectical re-interpretation. It may be argued that such a statement should not be understood at the level of what is explicated, but should be regarded as an elliptical reminder of a complex dialectical argument which can be described as follows. Cf. If thou claimest that proof doth not exist, thou must present a proof of what thou assertest, in order to be credible, but thus thou thyself admitest that proof existeth. A similar point can be made for Aristotles famous argument in the Protrepticus that one must philosophise. A number of sources state that this argument relies on the implicaturum, If one must not philosophize, one must philosophize. It may be argued that this implicaturum is an elliptical reminder of a dialectical argument such as the following. If thy position is that thou must not philosophise, thou must reflect on this choice and argue in its support, but by doing so thou art already choosing to do philosophy, thereby admitting that thou must philosophise. The claim that every instance of an ancient self-refutation arguments is of an intrinsically dialectical nature is thus questionable, to put it mildly. V also 340.19–26, and A. Madigan, tcomm., Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotles Met.  4, Ithaca, N.Y., Burnyeat, Protagoras and Self-Refutation in Later Greek Philosophy,. Grices implicaturum is that Quine should have learned Greek before refuting Aristotle. But then *I* dont speak Greek! Strawson refuted. Refs.: The obvious keyword is ‘analytic,’ in The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC. : For one, Grice does not follow Aristotle, but Philo. the conditional If Alexander exists, Alexander talks or If Alexander exists, he has such-and-such an age is not true—not even if he is in fact of such-and-such an age when the proposition is said. (in APr 175.34–176.6)⁴³ ⁴³ … δείκνυσιν ὅτι μὴ οἷόν τε δυνατῷ τι ἀδύνατον ἀκολουθεῖν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀνάγκη ἀδύνατον εἶναι ᾧ τὸ ἀδύνατον ἀκολουθεῖ, ἐπὶ πάσης ἀναγκαίας ἀκολουθίας. ἔστι δὲ ἀναγκαία ἀκολουθία οὐχ ἡ πρόσκαιρος, ἀλλὰ ἐν ᾗ ἀεὶ τὸ ἑπόμενον ἕπεσθαι ἔστι τῷ τὸ εἰλημμένον ὡς ἡγούμενον εἶναι. οὐ γὰρ ἀληθὲς συνημμένον τὸ εἰ ᾿Αλέξανδρος ἔστιν, ᾿Αλέξανδρος διαλέγεται, ἢ εἰ ᾿Αλέξανδρος ἔστι, τοσῶνδε ἐτῶν ἐστι, καὶ εἰ εἴη ὅτε λέγεται ἡ πρότασις τοσούτων ἐτῶν. vide Barnes. ... έχη δε και επιφοράν το 5 αντικείμενον τώ ήγουμένω, τότε ο τοιούτος γίνεται δεύτερος αναπόδεικτος, ώς το ,,ει ημέρα έστι, φώς έστιν ουχί δέ γε φώς έστιν ουκ άρα ...εί ημέρα εστι , φως έστιν ... eine unrichtige ( μοχθηρόν ) bezeichnet 142 ) , und Zwar war es besonders Philo ... οίον , , εί ημέρα εστι , φως έστιν , ή άρχεται από ψεύδους και λήγει επί ψεύδος ... όπερ ήν λήγον . bei der Obwaltende Conditional - Nexus gar nicht in Betracht ...Philo: If it is day, I am talking. One of Grice’s favorite paradoxes, that display the usefulness of the implicaturum are the so-called ‘paradoxes of implication.’ Johnson, alas, uses ‘paradox’ in the singular. So there must be earlier accounts of this in the history of philosophy. Notably in the ancient commentators to Philo! (Greek “ei” and Roman “si”). Misleading but true – could do.” Note that Grice has an essay on the ‘paradoxes of entailment’. As Strawson notes, this is misleading. For Strawson these are not paradoxes. The things are INCORRECT. For Grice, the Philonian paradoxes are indeed paradoxical because each is a truth. Now, Strawson and Wiggins challenge this. For Grice, to utter “if p, q” implicates that the utterer is not in a position to utter anything stronger. He implicates that he has NON-TRUTH-FUNCTIONAL REASON or grounds to utter “if p, q.” For Strawson, THAT is precisely what the ‘consequentialist’ is holding. For Strawson, the utterer CONVENTIONALLY IMPLIES that the consequent or apodosis follows, in some way, from the antecedent or protasis. Not for Grice. For Grice, what the utterer explicitly conveys is that the conditions that obtain are those of the Philonian conditional. He implicitly conveys that there is n inferrability, and this is cancellable. If Strawson holds that it is a matter of a conventional implicaturum, the issue of cancellation becomes crucial. For Grice, to add that “But I don’t want to covey that there is any inferrability between the protasis and the apodosis” is NOT a contradiction. The utterer or emissor is NOT self-contradicting. And he isn’t! The first to use the term ‘paracox’ here is a genius. Possibly Philo. It was W. E. Johnson who first used the expression 'paradox of implication', explaining that a paradox of this sort arises when a logician proceeds step by step, using accepted principles, until a formula is reached which conflicts with common sense [Johnson, 1921, 39].The paradox of implication assumes many forms,  some of which are not easily recognised as involving  mere varieties of the same fundamental principle. But     COMPOUND PROPOSITIONS 47   I believe that they can all be resolved by the consideration that we cannot ivithotd qjialification apply a com-  posite and (in particular) an implicative proposition to  the further process of inference. Such application is  possible only when the composite has been reached  irrespectively of any assertion of the truth or falsity of  its components. In other words, it is a necessary con-  dition for further inference that the components of a  composite should really have been entertained hypo-  thetically when asserting that composite.   § 9. The theory of compound propositions leads to  a special development when in the conjunctives the  components are taken — not, as hitherto, assertorically —  but hypothetically as in the composites. The conjunc-  tives will now be naturally expressed by such words as  possible or compatible, while the composite forms which  respectively contradict the conjunctives will be expressed  by such words as necessary or impossible. If we select  the negative form for these conjunctives, we should write  as contradictory pairs :   Conjunctives {possible) Composites {fiecessary)     a. p does not imply q   1, p is not implied by q   c. p is not co-disjunct to q   d. p is not co-alternate to q     a, p implies q   b, p is implied by q   c, p is co-disjunct to q   d, p is co-alternate to q     Or Otherwise, using the term 'possible' throughout,  the four conjunctives will assume the form that the several  conjunctions — pq^pq, pq ^-nd pq — are respectively /^i*-  sidle. Here the word possible is equivalent to being  merely hypothetically entertained, so that the several  conjunctives are now qualified in the same way as are  the simple components themselves. Similarly the four CHAPTER HI   corresponding composites may be expressed negatively  by using the term 'impossible,' and will assume the  form that the ^^;yunctions pq^ pq, pq and pq are re-  spectively impossible, or (which means the same) that  the ^zVjunctions/^, ^^, pq Rnd pq are necessary. Now  just as 'possible* here means merely 'hypothetically  entertained/ so 'impossible' and 'necessary' mean re-  spectively 'assertorically denied' and 'assertorically  affirmed/   The above scheme leads to the consideration of the  determinate relations that could subsist of p to q when  these eight propositions (conjunctives and composites)  are combined in everypossibleway without contradiction.  Prima facie there are i6 such combinations obtained by  selecting a or ay b or 3, c or c, d or J for one of the four  constituent terms. Out of these i6 combinations, how-  ever, some will involve a conjunction of supplementaries  (see tables on pp. 37, 38), which would entail the as-  sertorical affirmation or denial of one of the components  / or q, and consequently would not exhibit a relation of  p to q. The combinations that, on this ground, must be  disallowed are the following nine :   cihcd, abed, abed, abed] abed, bacd, cabd, dabc\ abed.   The combinations that remain to be admitted are  therefore the followino- seven :   abld, cdab\ abed, bald, cdab^ dcab\ abed.   In fact, under the imposed restriction, since a or b  cannot be conjoined with c or d, it follows that we must  always conjoin a with c and d\ b with e and d\ c with  a and b\ ^with a and b. This being understood, the     COMPOUND PROPOSITIONS 49   seven permissible combinations that remain are properly  to be expressed in the more simple forms:   ab, cd\ ab, ba, cd, dc\ and abed   These will be represented (but re-arranged for purposes  of symmetry) in the following table giving all the  possible relations of any proposition/ to any proposition  q. The technical names which 1 propose to adopt for  the several relations are printed in the second column  of the table.   Table of possible relations of propositio7i p to proposition q.     1. {a,b)\ p implies and is implied by q   2. (a, b) : p implies but is not implied by q,   3. {b^d): p is implied by but does not imply q,   4. {djb^'c^d): p is neither implicans nor impli   cate nor co-disjunct nor co-alternate to g.   5. {dy c)\ /is co-alternate but not co-disjunct to $r,   6. {Cyd): /isco-disjunctbutnotco-alternateto$^.   7. {Cjd)'. p is co-disjunct and co-alternate to q,     p is co-implicant to q  p is super-implicant to q.  p is sub-implicant to q.   p is independent of q     p is sub-opponent to q  p is super-opponent to q,  p is co-opponent to q,   Here the symmetry indicated by the prefixes, co-,  super-, sub-, is brought out by reading downwards and  upwards to the middle line representing independence.  In this order the propositional forms range from the  supreme degree of consistency to the supreme degree  of opponency, as regards the relation of/ to ^. In tradi-  tional logic the seven forms of relation are known respec-  tively by the names equipollent, superaltern, subaltern,  independent, sub-contrary, contrary, contradictory. This  latter terminology, however, is properly used to express  the formal relations of implication and opposition,  whereas the terminology which I have adopted will apply  indifferently both for formal and for material relations. One of Grice’s claims to fame is his paradox, under ‘Yog and Zog.’ Another paradox that Grice examines at length is paradox by Moore. For Grice, unlike Nowell-Smith, an utterer who, by uttering The cat is on the mat explicitly conveys that the cat is on the mat does not thereby implicitly convey that he believes that the cat is on the mat. He, more crucially expresses that he believes that the cat is on the mat ‒ and this is not cancellable. He occasionally refers to Moores paradox in the buletic mode, Close the door even if thats not my desire. An imperative still expresses someones desire. The sergeant who orders his soldiers to muster at dawn because he is following the lieutenants order. Grices first encounter with paradox remains his studying Malcolms misleading exegesis of Moore. Refs.: The main sources given under ‘heterologicality,’ above. ‘Paradox’ is a good keyword in The H. P. Grice Papers, since he used ‘paradox’ to describe his puzzle about ‘if,’ but also Malcolm on Moore on the philosopher’s paradox, and paradoxes of material implication and paradoxes of entailment. Grice’s point is that a paradox is not something false. For Strawson it is. “The so-called paradoxes of ‘entailment’ and ‘material implication’ are a misnomer. They statements are not paradoxical, they are false.” Not for Grice! Cf. aporia. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

The Griceian paradigm -- paradigm: as used by physicist – Grice: “Kuhn ain’t a philosopher – his BA was in physics!” -- Kuhn in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” 2, a set of scientific and metaphysical beliefs that make up a theoretical framework within which scientific theories can be tested, evaluated, and if necessary revised. Kuhn’s principal thesis, in which the notion of a paradigm plays a central role, is structured around an argument against the logical empiricist view of scientific theory change. Empiricists viewed theory change as an ongoing smooth and cumulative process in which empirical facts, discovered through observation or experimentation, forced revisions in our theories and thus added to our ever-increasing knowledge of the world. It was claimed that, combined with this process of revision, there existed a process of intertheoretic reduction that enabled us to understand the macro in terms of the micro, and that ultimately aimed at a unity of science. Kuhn maintains that this view is incompatible with what actually happens in case after case in the history of science. Scientific change occurs by “revolutions” in which an older paradigm is overthrown and is replaced by a framework incompatible or even incommensurate with it. Thus the alleged empirical “facts,” which were adduced to support the older theory, become irrelevant to the new; the questions asked and answered in the new framework cut across those of the old; indeed the vocabularies of the two frameworks make up different languages, not easily intertranslatable. These episodes of revolution are separated by long periods of “normal science,” during which the theories of a given paradigm are honed, refined, and elaborated. These periods are sometimes referred to as periods of “puzzle solving,” because the changes are to be understood more as fiddling with the details of the theories to “save the phenomena” than as steps taking us closer to the truth. A number of philosophers have complained that Kuhn’s conception of a paradigm is too imprecise to do the work he intended for it. In fact, Kuhn, fifteen years later, admitted that at least two distinct ideas were exploited by the term: i the “shared elements [that] account for the relatively unproblematic character of professional communication and for the relative unanimity of professional judgment,” and ii “concrete problem solutions, accepted by the group [of scientists] as, in a quite usual sense, paradigmatic” Kuhn, “Second Thoughts on Paradigms,” 7. Kuhn offers the terms ‘disciplinary matrix’ and ‘exemplar’, respectively, for these two ideas. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Why Kuhn could never explain the ‘minor revolution’ in philosophy we had at Oxford!; H. P. Grice, “The Griceian paradigm – crisis – revolution – resolution: some implicatura from Kuhn (from Merton to St. John’s).”

paradigm-case argument: an argument designed by A. G. N. Flew, Grice’s first tutee at St. John’s – almost -- to yield an affirmative answer to the following general type of skeptically motivated question: Are A’s really B? E.g., Do material objects really exist? Are any of our actions really free? Does induction really provide reasonable grounds for one’s beliefs? The structure of the argument is simple: in situations that are “typical,” “exemplary,” or “paradigmatic,” standards for which are supplied by common sense, or ordinary language, part of what it is to be B essentially involves A. Hence it is absurd to doubt if A’s are ever B, or to doubt if in general A’s are B. More commonly, the argument is encountered in the linguistic mode: part of what it means for something to be B is that, in paradigm cases, it be an A. Hence the question whether A’s are ever B is meaningless. An example may be found in the application of the argument to the problem of induction. See Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory, 2. When one believes a generalization of the form ‘All F’s are G’ on the basis of good inductive evidence, i.e., evidence constituted by innumerable and varied instances of F all of which are G, one would thereby have good reasons for holding this belief. The argument for this claim is based on the content of the concepts of reasonableness and of strength of evidence. Thus according to Strawson, the following two propositions are analytic: 1 It is reasonable to have a degree of belief in a proposition that is proportional to the strength of the evidence in its favor. 2 The evidence for a generalization is strong in proportion as the number of instances, and the variety of circumstances in which they have been found, is great. Hence, Strawson concludes, “to ask whether it is reasonable to place reliance on inductive procedures is like asking whether it is reasonable to proportion the degree of one’s convictions to the strength of the evidence. Doing this is what ‘being reasonable’ means in such a context” p. 257. In such arguments the role played by the appeal to paradigm cases is crucial. In Strawson’s version, paradigm cases are constituted by “innumerable and varied instances.” Without such an appeal the argument would fail completely, for it is clear that not all uses of induction are reasonable. Even when this appeal is made clear though, the argument remains questionable, for it fails to confront adequately the force of the word ‘really’ in the skeptical challenges. paradigm case argument paradigm case argument. H. P. Grice, “Paradigm-case arguments in Urmson and other play group members,” H. P. Grice, “A. G. N. Flew and how I taught him the paradigm-case argument for free-will.”

H. P. Grice’s para-doxon -- παράδοξον,  Liddell and Scott render it as “contrary to expectation [doxa, belief], incredible, [unbelievable]” – πaradoxos λόγος they render, unhelpfully, as “a paradox,” Pl.R.472a; “πaradoxos τε καὶ ψεῦδος” – the paradoxical and the false -- Id.Plt.281a; “παράδοξα λέγειν” – to utter a paradox --  X.Cyr.7.2.16; “ἂν παράδοξον εἴπω” D.3.10; ἐκ τοῦ παραδόξου καὶ παραλόγου – Liddell and Scott render as “contrary to all expectation,” contrary to all belief and dicta! -- ἐκ τοῦ παρα-δόξου καὶ παρα-λόγου – cf. Kant’s paralogism -- -- --  Id.25.32, cf. Phld.Vit.p.23 J.; “πολλὰ ποικίλλει χρόνος πaradoxa καὶ θαυμαστά” Men.593; “πaradoxon μοι τὸ πρᾶγμα” Thphr.Char.1.6; “τὸ ἔνδοξον ἐκ τοῦ πaradoxon θηρώμενος” Plu.Pomp.14; παράδοξα Stoical paradoxes, Id.2.1060b sq.: Comp., Phld.Mus.p.72 K., Plot.4.9.2: Sup., LXX Wi.16.17. Adv. “-ξως” Aeschin.2.40, Plb.1.21.11, Dsc.4.83: Sup. “-ότατα” D.C.67.11; “-οτάτως” Gal.7.876. II. παράδοξος, title of distinguished athletes, musicians, and artists of all kinds, the Admirable, IG3.1442, 14.916, Arr.Epict.2.18.22, IGRom.4.468 (Pergam., iii A. D.), PHamb.21.3 (iv A. D.), Rev.Ét.Gr.42.434 (Delph.), etc. For Grice, ‘unbelievable’ as opposed to ‘unthinkable’ or ‘unintelligible’ is the paradigm-case response for a non-analytically false utterance. “Paradoxical, but true.”

para-doxon: a seemingly sound piece of reasoning based on seemingly true assumptions that leads to a contradiction or other obviously false conclusion. A paradox reveals that either the principles of reasoning or the assumptions on which it is based are faulty. It is said to be solved when the mistaken principles or assumptions are clearly identified and rejected. The philosophical interest in paradoxes arises from the fact that they sometimes reveal fundamentally mistaken assumptions or erroneous reasoning techniques. Two groups of paradoxes have received a great deal of attention in modern philosophy. Known as the semantic paradoxes and the logical or settheoretic paradoxes, they reveal serious difficulties in our intuitive understanding of the basic notions of semantics and set theory. Other well-known paradoxes include the barber paradox and the prediction or hangman or unexpected examination paradox. The barber paradox is mainly useful as an example of a paradox that is easily resolved. Suppose we are told that there is an Oxford barber who shaves all and only the Oxford men who do not shave themselves. Using this description, we can apparently derive the contradiction that this barber both shaves and does not shave himself. If he does not shave himself, then according to the description he must be one of the people he shaves; if he does shave himself, then according to the description he is one of the people he does not shave. This paradox can be resolved in two ways. First, the original claim that such a barber exists can simply be rejected: perhaps no one satisfies the alleged description. Second, the described barber may exist, but not fall into the class of Oxford men: a woman barber, e.g., could shave all and only the Oxford men who do not shave themselves. The prediction paradox takes a variety of forms. Suppose a teacher tells her students on Friday that the following week she will give a single quiz. But it will be a surprise: the students will not know the evening before that the quiz will take place the following day. They reason that she cannot give such a quiz. After all, she cannot wait until Friday to give it, since then they would know Thursday evening. That leaves Monday through Thursday as the only possible days for it. But then Thursday can be ruled out for the same reason: they would know on Wednesday evening. Wednesday, Tuesday, and Monday can be ruled out by similar reasoning. Convinced by this seemingly correct reasoning, the students do not study for the quiz. On Wednesday morning, they are taken by surprise when the teacher distributes it. It has been pointed out that the students’ reasoning has this peculiar feature: in order to rule out any of the days, they must assume that the quiz will be given and that it will be a surprise. But their alleged conclusion is that it cannot be given or else will not be a surprise, undermining that very assumption. Kaplan and Montague have argued in “A Paradox Regained,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 0 that at the core of this puzzle is what they call the knower paradox  a paradox that arises when intuitively plausible principles about knowledge and its relation to logical consequence are used in conjunction with knowledge claims whose content is, or entails, a denial of those very claims.  Paradoxa A philosophical treatise of Cicero setting forth six striking theorems of the Stoic system. It was composed in B.C. 46. Edited by Orelli (with the Tusculans) (Zürich, 1829); and by Möser (Göttingen, 1846).

The three modals: Grice: “We have, in all, then, three varieties of acceptability statement (each with alethic and practical sub-types), associated with the modals "It is fully acceptable that . . . " (non-defeasible), 'it is ceteris paribus acceptable that . . . ', and 'it is to such-and-such a degree acceptable that . . . ', both of the latter pair being subject to defeasibility. (I should re-emphasize that, on the practical side, I am so far concerned to represent only statements which are analogous with Kant's Technical Imperatives ('Rules of Skill').) I am now visited by a temptation, to which of course I shall yield, to link these varieties of acceptability statement with common modals; however, to preserve a façade of dignity I shall mark the modals I thus define with a star, to indicate that the modals so defined are only candidates for identification with the common modals spelled in the same way. I am tempted to introduce 'it must* be that' as a modal whose sense is that of 'It is fully acceptable that' and 'it ought* to be that' as a modal whose sense is that of 'It is ceteris paribus (other things being equal) acceptable that'; for degree-variant acceptability I can think of no appealing vernacular counterpart other than 'acceptable' itself. After such introduction, we could allow the starred modals to become idiomatically embedded in the sentences in which they occur; as in "A bishop must* get fed up with politicians", and in "To keep his job, a bishop ought* not to show his irritation with politicians". end p.78 But I now confess that I am tempted to plunge even further into conceptual debauchery than I have already; having just, at considerable pains, got what might turn out to be common modals into my structures, I am at once inclined to get them out again. For it seems to me that one might be able, without change of sense, to employ forms of sentence which eliminate reference to acceptability, and so do not need the starred modals. One might be able, to this end, to exploit "if-then" conditionals (NB 'if . . . then', not just 'if') together with suitable modifiers. One might, for example, be able to re-express "A bishop must* get fed up with politicians" as "If one is a bishop, then (unreservedly) one will get fed up with the politicians"; and "To keep his job, a bishop ought* not to show his irritation with politicians" as "If one is to keep one's job and if one is a bishop, then, other things being equal, one is not to show one's irritation with politicians". Of course, when it comes to applying detachment to corresponding singular conditionals, we may need to have some way of indicating the character of the generalization from which the detached singular non-conditional sentence has been derived; the devising of such indices should not be beyond the wit of man. So far as generalizations of these kinds are concerned, it seems to me that one needs to be able to mark five features: (1) conditionality; (2) generality; (3) type of generality (absolute, ceteris paribus, etc., thereby, ipso facto, discriminating with respect to defeasibility or indefeasibility); (4) mode; (5) (not so far mentioned) whether or not the generalization in question has or has not been derived from a simple enumeration of instances; because of their differences with respect to direction of fit, any such index will do real work in the case of alethic generalities, not in the case of practical generalities. So long as these features are marked, we have all we need for our purposes. Furthermore, they are all (in some legitimate and intelligible sense) formal features, and indeed features which might be regarded as, in some sense, 'contained in' or 'required by' the end p.79 concept of a rational being, since it would hardly be possible to engage in any kind of reasoning without being familiar with them. So, on the assumption that the starred modals are identifiable with their unstarred counterparts, we would seem to have reached the following positions. (1) We have represented practical and alethic generalizations, and their associated conditionals, and with them certain common modals such as 'must' and 'ought', under a single notion of acceptability (with specific variants). (2) We have decomposed acceptability itself into formal features. (3) We have removed mystery from the alleged logical fact that acceptable practical 'ought' statements have to be derivable from an underlying generalization. (4) Though these achievements (if such they be) might indeed not settle the 'univocality' questions, they can hardly be irrelevant to them. I suspect that, if we were to telephone the illustrious Kant at his Elysian country club in order to impart to him this latest titbit of philosophical gossip, we might get the reply, "Big deal! Isn't that what I've been telling you all along?"

paradoxes of omnipotence – Grice: “a favourite with the second Wilde.” – Grice means first Wilde, reader in philosophical psychology, second Wilde, reader in natural religion -- a series of paradoxes in philosophical theology that maintain that God could not be omnipotent because the concept is inconsistent, alleged to result from the intuitive idea that if God is omnipotent, then God must be able to do anything. 1 Can God perform logically contradictory tasks? If God can, then God should be able to make himself simultaneously omnipotent and not omnipotent, which is absurd. If God cannot, then it appears that there is something God cannot do. Many philosophers have sought to avoid this consequence by claiming that the notion of performing a logically contradictory task is empty, and that question 1 specifies no task that God can perform or fail to perform. 2 Can God cease to be omnipotent? If God can and were to do so, then at any time thereafter, God would no longer be completely sovereign over all things. If God cannot, then God cannot do something that others can do, namely, impose limitations on one’s own powers. A popular response to question 2 is to say that omnipotence is an essential attribute of a necessarily existing being. According to this response, although God cannot cease to be omnipotent any more than God can cease to exist, these features are not liabilities but rather the lack of liabilities in God. 3 Can God create another being who is omnipotent? Is it logically possible for two beings to be omnipotent? It might seem that there could be, if they never disagreed in fact with each other. If, however, omnipotence requires control over all possible but counterfactual situations, there could be two omnipotent beings only if it were impossible for them to disagree. 4 Can God create a stone too heavy for God to move? If God can, then there is something that God cannot do  move such a stone  and if God cannot, then there is something God cannot do  create such a stone. One reply is to maintain that ‘God cannot create a stone too heavy for God to move’ is a harmless consequence of ‘God can create stones of any weight and God can move stones of any weight.’ 

paradox of analysis: Grice: “One (not I, mind – I don’t take anything seriously) must take the paradox of analysis very seriously.” an argument that it is impossible for an analysis of a meaning to be informative for one who already understands the meaning. Consider: ‘An F is a G’ e.g., ‘A circle is a line all points on which are equidistant from some one point’ gives a correct analysis of the meaning of ‘F’ only if ‘G’ means the same as ‘F’; but then anyone who already understands both meanings must already know what the sentence says. Indeed, that will be the same as what the trivial ‘An F is an F’ says, since replacing one expression by another with the same meaning should preserve what the sentence says. The conclusion that ‘An F is a G’ cannot be informative for one who already understands all its terms is paradoxical only for cases where ‘G’ is not only synonymous with but more complex than ‘F’, in such a way as to give an analysis of ‘F’. ‘A first cousin is an offspring of a parent’s sibling’ gives an analysis, but ‘A dad is a father’ does not and in fact could not be informative for one who already knows the meaning of all its words. The paradox appears to fail to distinguish between different sorts of knowledge. Encountering for the first time and understanding a correct analysis of a meaning one already grasps brings one from merely tacit to explicit knowledge of its truth. One sees that it does capture the meaning and thereby sees a way of articulating the meaning one had not thought of before. Refs.: H. P. Grice: “Dissolving the paradox of analysis via the principle of conversational helpfulness – How helpful is ‘unmarried male’ as an analysis of ‘bachelor’?”

paradox of omniscience: Grice: “A favourite with the second Wilde,” i. e. the Wilde reader in natural religion, as opposed to the Wilde reader in philosophical psychology -- an objection to the possibility of omniscience, developed by Patrick Grim, that appeals to an application of Cantor’s power set theorem. Omniscience requires knowing all truths; according to Grim, that means knowing every truth in the set of all truths. But there is no set of all truths. Suppose that there were a set T of all truths. Consider all the subsets of T, that is, all members of the power set 3T. Take some truth T1. For each member of 3T either T1 is a member of that set or T1 is not a member of that set. There will thus correspond to each member of 3T a further truth specifying whether T1 is or is not a member of that set. Therefore there are at least as many truths as there are members of 3T. By the power set theorem, there are more members of 3T than there are of T. So T is not the set of all truths. By a parallel argument, no other set is, either. So there is no set of all truths, after all, and therefore no one who knows every member of that set. The objection may be countered by denying that the claim ‘for every proposition p, if p is true God knows that p’ requires that there be a set of all true propositions. 

paraphilosophy: “I phoned Gellner: you chould entitle your essay, an attack on ordinary language PARA-philosophy, since that is what Austin asks us to do.”

para-psychology, the study of certain anomalous phenomena and ostensible causal connections neither recognized nor clearly rejected by traditional science. Parapsychology’s principal areas of investigation are extrasensory perception ESP, psychokinesis PK, and cases suggesting the survival of mental functioning following bodily death. The study of ESP has traditionally focused on two sorts of ostensible phenomena, telepathy the apparent anomalous influence of one person’s mental states on those of another, commonly identified with apparent communication between two minds by extrasensory means and clairvoyance the apparent anomalous influence of a physical state of affairs on a person’s mental states, commonly identified with the supposed ability to perceive or know of objects or events not present to the senses. The forms of ESP may be viewed either as types of cognition e.g., the anomalous knowledge of another person’s mental states or as merely a form of anomalous causal influence e.g., a distant burning house causing one to have  possibly incongruous  thoughts about fire. The study of PK covers the apparent ability to produce various physical effects independently of familiar or recognized intermediate sorts of causal links. These effects include the ostensible movement of remote objects, materializations the apparently instantaneous production of matter, apports the apparently instantaneous relocation of an object, and in laboratory experiments statistically significant non-random behavior of normally random microscopic processes such as radioactive decay. Survival research focuses on cases of ostensible reincarnation and mental mediumship i.e., “channeling” of information from an apparently deceased communicator. Cases of ostensible precognition may be viewed as types of telepathy and clairvoyance, and suggest the causal influence of some state of affairs on an earlier event an agent’s ostensible precognitive experience. However, those opposed to backward causation may interpret ostensible precognition either as a form of unconscious inference based on contemporaneous information acquired by ESP, or else as a form of PK possibly in conjunction with telepathic influence by which the precognizer brings about the events apparently precognized. The data of parapsychology raise two particularly deep issues. The evidence suggesting survival poses a direct challenge to materialist theories of the mental. And the evidence for ESP and PK suggests the viability of a “magical” worldview associated usually with so-called primitive societies, according to which we have direct and intimate access to and influence on the thoughts and bodily states of others. H. P. Grice: "When, in the late 1940s, J. L. Austin instituted his *second* playgroup, for full-time philosophy dons -- my *first*, in a way --, its official rationale, given by its founder, was that all its members were hacks, spending our weekdays wrestling with the dissolution of this or that philosophical pseudo-problem, and that we deserved to be spending our Saturday mornings -- my Saturday afternoons were consacrated to the Demi-Johns -- in restorative para-philosophy. And so we started on such  topics as maps and diagrams and (in another term) rules of games." Refs.: H. P. Grice, “What J. L Austin meant by ‘paraphilosophy’!,” H. P. Grice, “Philosophy and para-philosophy.”

Pareto efficiency, also called Pareto optimality, a state of affairs in which no one can be made better off without making someone worse off. “If you are provided information, the one who gives you information loses.” “If you give information, you lose.” “If you influence, you win.” “If you get influenced,” you lose.” The  economist Vilfredo Pareto referred to ‘optimality,’ as used by Grice, rather than efficiency, but usage has drifted toward the less normative term, ‘efficiency.’ Pareto supposes that the utilitarian addition of welfare across conversationalist A and conversationalist B is meaningless. Pareto concludes that the only useful aggregate measures of welfare must be ordinal. One state of affairs is what Pareto calls “Pareto-superior” to another if conversationalist A cannot move to the second state without making his co-conversationalist B worse off. Although Pareto’s criterion is generally thought to be positive or descriptive (‘empiricist’) rather than normative (‘quasi-contractual, or rational’), it is often used as a normative principles for justifying particular changes or refusals to make changes. Some philosophers, such as Grice’s tutee Nozick, for example, take the Pareto criterion as a moral constraint and therefore oppose certain government policies. In the context of a voluntary exchange, it makes sense to suppose that every exchange is “Pareto-improving,” at least for the direct parties to the exchange, conversationalists A and B. If, however, we fail to account for any external effect of A’s and B’s conversational exchange on a third party, the conversational exchange may *not* be Pareto-improving (Grice’s example, “Mrs. Smith is a bag.”. Moreover, we may fail to provide collective, or intersubjective benefits that require the co-operation or co-ordination of A’s and B’s individual efforts (A may be more ready to volunteer than B, say). Hence, even in a conversational exchange, we cannot expect to achieve “Pareto efficiency,” but what Grice calls “Grice efficiency.” We might therefore suppose we should invite thet intervention of the voice of reason to help us helping each other. But in a typical conversational context, it is often hard to believe that a significant policy change can be Pareto-improving: there are sure to be losers from any change – “but the it’s gentlemanly to accept a loss.” – H. P. Grice. Refs.: “Conversational efficiency and conversational optimality: Pareto and I.” 

Griceian-cum-Parfitian identity: “Parfait identity” – Grice: “Oddly, the Strawsons enjoy to involve themselves with issues of identity.” Parfit cites H. P. Grice on “Personal identity,” philosopher internationally known for his major contributions to the metaphysics of persons, moral theory, and practical reasoning. Parfit first rose to prominence by challenging the prevalent view that personal identity is a “deep fact” that must be all or nothing and that matters greatly in rational and moral deliberations. Exploring puzzle cases involving fission and fusion, Parfit propounded a reductionist account of personal identity, arguing that what matters in survival are physical and psychological continuities. These are a matter of degree, and sometimes there may be no answer as to whether some future person would be me. Parfit’s magnum opus, Reasons and Persons 4, is a strikingly original book brimming with startling conclusions that have significantly reshaped the philosophical agenda. Part One treats different theories of morality, rationality, and the good; blameless wrongdoing; moral immorality; rational irrationality; imperceptible harms and benefits; harmless torturers; and the self-defeatingness of certain theories. Part Two introduces a critical present-aim theory of individual rationality, and attacks the standard selfinterest theory. It also discusses the rationality of different attitudes to time, such as caring more about the future than the past, and more about the near than the remote. Addressing the age-old conflict between self-interest and morality, Parfit illustrates that contrary to what the self-interest theory demands, it can be rational to care about certain other aims as much as, or more than, about our own future well-being. In addition, Parfit notes that the self-interest theory is a hybrid position, neutral with respect to time but partial with respect to persons. Thus, it can be challenged from one direction by morality, which is neutral with respect to both persons and time, and from the other by a present-aim theory, which is partial with respect to both persons and time. Part Three refines Parfit’s views regarding personal identity and further criticizes the self-interest theory: personal identity is not what matters, hence reasons to be specially concerned about our future are not provided by the fact that it will be our future. Part Four presents puzzles regarding future generations and argues that the moral principles we need when considering future people must take an impersonal form. Parfit’s arguments deeply challenge our understanding of moral ideals and, some believe, the possibility of comparing outcomes. Parfit has three forthcoming manuscripts, tentatively titled Rediscovering Reasons, The Metaphysics of the Self, and On What Matters. His current focus is the normativity of reasons. A reductionist about persons, he is a non-reductionist about reasons. He believes in irreducibily normative beliefs that are in a strong sense true. A realist about reasons for acting and caring, he challenges the views of naturalists, noncognitivists, and constructivists. Parfit contends that internalists conflate normativity with motivating force, that contrary to the prevalent view that all reasons are provided by desires, no reasons are, and that Kant poses a greater threat to rationalism than Hume. Parfit is Senior Research Fellow of All Souls , Oxford, and a regular visiting professor at both Harvard and New York . Legendary for monograph-length criticisms of book manuscripts, he is editor of the Oxford Ethics Series, whose goal is to make definite moral progress, a goal Parfit himself is widely believed to have attained. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “A parfit identity.”

Parmenides: a Grecian philosopher, the most influential of the pre-socratics, active in Elea Roman and modern Velia, an Ionian Grecian colony in southern Italy. He was the first Grecian thinker who can properly be called an ontologist or metaphysician. Plato refers to him as “venerable and awesome,” as “having magnificent depth” Theaetetus 183e 184a, and presents him in the dialogue Parmenides as a searching critic  in a fictional and dialectical transposition  of Plato’s own theory of Forms. Nearly 150 lines of a didactic poem by Parmenides have been preserved, assembled into about twenty fragments. The first part, “Truth,” provides the earliest specimen in Grecian intellectual history of a sustained deductive argument. Drawing on intuitions concerning thinking, knowing, and language, Parmenides argues that “the real” or “what-is” or “being” to eon must be ungenerable and imperishable, indivisible, and unchanging. According to a Plato-inspired tradition, Parmenides held that “all is one.” But the phrase does not occur in the fragments; Parmenides does not even speak of “the One”; and it is possible that either a holistic One or a plurality of absolute monads might conform to Parmenides’ deduction. Nonetheless, it is difficult to resist the impression that the argument converges on a unique entity, which may indifferently be referred to as Being, or the All, or the One. Parmenides embraces fully the paradoxical consequence that the world of ordinary experience fails to qualify as “what-is.” Nonetheless, in “Opinions,” the second part of the poem, he expounds a dualist cosmology. It is unclear whether this is intended as candid phenomenology  a doctrine of appearances  or as an ironic foil to “Truth.” It is noteworthy that Parmenides was probably a physician by profession. Ancient reports to this effect are borne out by fragments from “Opinions” with embryological themes, as well as by archaeological findings at Velia that link the memory of Parmenides with Romanperiod remains of a medical school at that site. Parmenides’ own attitude notwithstanding, “Opinions” recorded four major scientific breakthroughs, some of which, doubtless, were Parmenides’ own discoveries: that the earth is a sphere; that the two tropics and the Arctic and Antarctic circles divide the earth into five zones; that the moon gets its light from the sun; and that the morning star and the evening star are the same planet. The term Eleatic School is misleading when it is used to suggest a common doctrine supposedly held by Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Melissus of Samos, and anticipating Parmenides Xenophanes of Colophon. The fact is, many philosophical groups and movements, from the middle of the fifth century onward, were influenced, in different ways, by Parmenides, including the “pluralists,” Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus. Parmenides’ deductions, transformed by Zeno into a repertoire of full-blown paradoxes, provided the model both for the eristic of the Sophists and for Socrates’ elenchus. Moreover, the Parmenidean criteria for “whatis” lie unmistakably in the background not only of Plato’s theory of Forms but also of salient features of Aristotle’s system, notably, the priority of actuality over potentiality, the unmoved mover, and the man-begets-man principle. Indeed, all philosophical and scientific systems that posit principles of conservation of substance, of matter, of matter-energy are inalienably the heirs to Parmenides’ deduction. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Negation and privation,” “Lectures on negation.”

parsing: the process of determining the syntactic structure of a sentence according to the rules of a given grammar, say Gricese. This is to be distinguished from the generally simpler task of recognition, which is merely the determination of whether or not a given string is well-formed grammatical. In general, many different parsing strategies can be employed for grammars of a particular type, and a great deal of attention has been given to the relative efficiencies of these techniques. The most thoroughly studied cases center on the contextfree phrase structure grammars, which assign syntactic structures in the form of singly-rooted trees with a left-to-right ordering of “sister” nodes. Parsing procedures can then be broadly classified according to the sequence of steps by which the parse tree is constructed: top-down versus bottom-up; depth-first versus breadthfirst; etc. In addition, there are various strategies for exploring alternatives agendas, backtracking, parallel processing and there are devices such as “charts” that eliminate needless repetitions of previous steps. Efficient parsing is of course important when language, whether natural or artificial e.g., a programming language, is being processed by computer. Human beings also parse rapidly and with apparently little effort when they comprehend sentences of a natural language. Although little is known about the details of this process, psycholinguists hope that study of mechanical parsing techniques might provide insights. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Parsing in Gricese.”

partition: Grice: “the division of a set into mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subsets (e. g., ‘philosopher’ and ‘non-philosopher’ – whether we define ‘philosopher’ as engaged in philosophical exploration,’ or ‘addicted to general reflections about his life.’ -- Derivatively, ‘partition’ can mean any set P whose members are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subsets of set S. Each subset of a partition P is called a partition class of S with respect to P. Partitions are intimately associated with equivalence relations, i.e. with relations that are transitive, symmetric, and reflexive. Given an equivalence relation R defined on a set S, R induces a partition P of S in the following natural way: members s1 and s2 belong to the same partition class of P if and only if s1 has the relation R to s2. Conversely, given a partition P of a set S, P induces an equivalence relation R defined on S in the following natural way: members s1 and s2 are such that s1 has the relation R to s2 if and only if s1 and s2 belong to the same partition class of P. For obvious reasons, then, partition classes are also known as equivalence classes. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “My love for Venn.”

pascal: cited by H. P. Grice, philosopher known for his brilliance as a polemicist and a stylist. Born at Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne, Pascal is educated by his father, Étienne, and first gains note for his contribution to semantics when he produced, under the influence of Desargues, a work on the projective geometry of one cone. This was published as “Essai pour les coniques,” and includes what has since become known as Pascal’s theorem. Pascal’s other semantical accomplishments include the original development of probability theory, worked out in correspondence with Fermat, and a method of infinitesimal analysis to which Leibniz gave credit for inspiring his own development of the calculus. Pascal’s fame rests on his work on hydrostatics, “Traités de l’équilibre des liqueurs et de la pesanteur de la masse de l’air,” and his experiments with the barometer, which attempted to establish the possibility of a vacuum and the weight of air as the cause of the mercury’s suspension. Pascal’s fame as a stylist rests primarily on his “Lettres provinciales,” which were an anonymous contribution to a dispute between the Jansenists, headed by Arnauld, and the Jesuits. Jansenism was a Catholic religious movement that emphasized an Augustinian position on questions of grace and free will. Pascal, who was not himself a Jansenist, wrote a series of scathing satirical letters ridiculing both Jesuit casuistry and the persecution of the Jansenists for their purported adherence to five propositions in Jansen’s Augustinus. Pascal’s philosophical contributions are found throughout his oeuvre, but primarily in his “Pensées,” an intended apology for Christianity. The influence of the Pensées on religious thought and later existentialism has been profound because of their extraordinary insight, passion, and depth. At the time of Pascal’s death some of the fragments were sewn together in clusters; many others were left unorganized, but recent scholarship has recovered much of the original plan of organization. Pascal’s “Pensées” raise sceptical arguments that had become part of philosophical parlance since Montaigne. While these arguments were originally raised in order to deny the possibility of knowledge, Pascal, like Descartes in the Meditations, tries to utilize them toward a positive end. Pascal argues that what scepticism shows us is not that knowledge is impossible, but that there is a certain paradox about human nature. Humans possess knowledge yet recognize that this knowledge cannot be rationally justified and that rational arguments can even be directed against it (fragments 109, 131, and 110). This peculiarity can be explained only through the Christian doctrine of the fall (e.g., fragment 117). Pascal extends his sceptical considerations by undermining the possibility of demonstrative proof of God’s existence. Such knowledge is impossible on philosophical grounds because such a proof could be successful only if an absurdity followed from denying God’s existence, and nature furnishes us with no knowledge incompatible with unbelief (fragments 429 and 781). Furthermore, demonstrative proof of God’s existence is incompatible with the epistemological claims of Christianity, which make God’s personal agency essential to religious knowledge (fragments 460, 449). Pascal’s use of skepticism and his refusal to admit proofs of God’s existence have led some commentators, like Richard Popkin “Fideism,” and Terence Penelhum “Skepticism and Fideism,” to interpret Pascal as a fideist, i.e., one who denies that religious belief can be based on anything other than pragmatic reasons. But such an interpretation disregards Pascal’s attempts to show that Christian belief is rational because of the explanatory power of its doctrines, particularly its doctrine of the fall (e.g., fragments 131, 137, 149, 431, 449, and 482)/ These purported demonstrations of the explanatory superiority of Christianity prepare the way for Pascal’s famous “wager” (fragment 418). The wager is among the fragments that Pascal had not classified at the time of his death, but textual evidence shows that it would have been included in Section 12, entitled “Commencement,” after the demonstrations of the superior explanatory power of Christianity. The wager is a direct application of the principles developed in Pascal’s earlier work on probability, where he discovered a calculus that could be used to determine the most rational action when faced with uncertainty about future events, or what is now known as decision theory. In this case the uncertainty is the truth of Christianity and its claims about afterlife; and the actions under consideration are whether to believe or not. The choice of the most rational action depends on what would now be called its “expected value.” The expected value of an action is determined by assigning a value, s, to each possible outcome of the action, and subtracting the cost of the action, c, from this value, and multiplying the difference by the probability of the respective outcomes and adding these products together. Pascal invites the reader to consider Christian faith and unbelief as if they were acts of wagering on the truth of Christianity. If one does believes, there are two possible outcomes: It is the case that God exists or it is not the case that God exists. If it is the case that God exists, the stake to be gained is infinite life. If it is not the case that God exists, there are no winnings. Because the potential winnings are infinite, religious belief is more rational than unbelief because of its greater expected value. The wager has been subjected to numerous criticisms. William James argues that it is indecisive, because it would apply with equal validity to any religion that offers a promise of infinite rewards (The Will to Believe). But this ignores Pascal’s careful attempt to show that only Christianity has adequate explanatory power, so that the choice is intended to be between Christianity and unbelief. A stronger objection to the wager arises from contemporary work in decision theory that prohibits the introduction of an ‘infinite value’ because they have the counter-intuitive result of making even the slightest risk irrational. While this objection is valid, it does not refute Pascal’s strategy in the Pensées, in which the proofs of Christianity’s explanatory power and the wager have only the preliminary role of inducing the reader to seek the religious certainty that comes only from a saving religious experience which he calls “inspiration” fragments 110, 381, 382, 588, 808.  Consider two conversations -- one of which begins by someone (X) making the claim: (i) "My neighbor's three-year-old child understands Russell's Theory of Types," and the other of which begins by someone (Y) making the claim: (I') "My neighbor's three-year-old child is an adult." It would not be inappropriate to reply to X, taking the remark as a hyperbole: (2) "You mean the child is a particularly bright lad." If X were to say: (3) "No, I mean what I say-he really does understand it," one might be inclined to reply: (4) "I don't believe you-the thing's impossible." But if the child were then produced, and did (as one knows he would not) expound the theory correctly, answer questions on it, criticize it, and so on, one would in the end be forced to acknowledge that the claim was literally true and that the child was a prodigy. Now consider one's reaction to Y's claim. To begin with, it might be somewhat similar to the previous case. One might say: (2') "You mean he's uncommonly sensible or very advanced for his age." If Y replies: (3') "No, I mean what I say," we might reply: (4') "Perhaps you mean that he won't grow any more, or that he's a sort of freak, that he's already fully developed." Y replies: (5') "No, he's not a freak, he's just an adult." At this stage -- or possibly if we are patient, a little later -- we shall be inclined to say that I just do not understand what Y is saying, and to suspect that he just does not know the ‘meaning’ of some of the words he is using – even th copula. For unless he is prepared to admit that he is using words in a figurative or unusual way, I shall say, not that I do not ‘believe’ him, but that I do not ‘understand’ what he means – if anything at all – He is being ‘absurd.’. And whatever kind of creature is ultimately produced for my inspection – ‘this adult three-year old’, it will not lead me to say that what Y explicitly conveys is true, but at most to say that I now see what he communicates or means, notably, that the three-year-old child is an adult. As a summary of the difference between the two imaginary conversations, I may say that in both cases I would tend to begin by supposing that my co-conversationalist is using words in a figurative or unusual or restricted way. But in the face of his repeated claim to not be doing so, it would be appropriate, in the first case, of a synthetic falsehood, to say that I do not believe him, and in the second case, of the absurdity or categorial falsity, to say that I do not understand him. (Mrs. Grice: “You’re the cream in my coffee” – Grice: “I do not understand you.” -- If, like Pascal, one thinks it prudent to prepare against a very long chance, I should, in the first case, of the synthetic falsehood, know what to prepare for. In the second, I should have no idea.” Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Pascal.”

paternalism, interference with the liberty or autonomy of another person, with justifications referring to the promotion of the person’s good or the prevention of harm to the person. More precisely, P acts paternalistically toward Q if and only if a P acts with the intent of averting some harm or promoting some benefit for Q; b P acts contrary to or is indifferent to the current preferences, desires or values of Q; and c P’s act is a limitation on Q’s autonomy or liberty. The presence of both autonomy and liberty in clause c is to allow for the fact that lying to someone is not clearly an interference with liberty. Notice that one can act paternalistically by telling people the truth as when a doctor insists that a patient know the exact nature of her illness, contrary to her wishes. Note also that the definition does not settle any questions about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of paternalistic interventions. Typical examples of paternalistic actions are 1 laws requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets; 2 court orders allowing physicians to transfuse Jehovah’s Witnesses against their wishes; 3 deception of a patient by physicians to avoid upsetting the patient; 4 civil commitment of persons judged dangerous to themselves; and 5 laws forbidding swimming while lifeguards are not on duty. Soft weak paternalism is the view that paternalism is justified only when a person is acting non-voluntarily or one needs time to determine whether the person is acting voluntarily or not. Hard strong paternalism is the view that paternalism is sometimes justified even when the person being interfered with is acting voluntarily. The analysis of the term is relative to some set of problems. If one were interested in the organizational behavior of large corporations, one might adopt a different definition than if one were concerned with limits on the state’s right to exercise coercion. The typical normative problems about paternalistic actions are whether, and to what extent, the welfare of individuals may outweigh the need to respect their desire to lead their own lives and make their own decisions even when mistaken. J. S. Mill is the best example of a virtually absolute antipaternalism, at least with respect to the right of the state to act paternalistically. He argued that unless we have reason to believe that a person is not acting voluntarily, as in the case of a man walking across a bridge that, unknown to him, is about to collapse, we ought to allow adults the freedom to act even if their acts are harmful to themselves. 

patristic authors, also called church fathers, a group of early Christian authors originally so named because they were considered the “fathers” patres of the orthodox Christian churches. The term is now used more broadly to designate the Christian writers, orthodox or heterodox, who were active in the first six centuries or so of the Christian era. The chronological division is quite flexible, and it is regularly moved several centuries later for particular purposes. Moreover, the study of these writers has traditionally been divided by languages, of which the principal ones are Grecian, Latin, and Syriac. The often sharp divisions among patristic scholarships in the different languages are partly a reflection of the different histories of the regional churches, partly a reflection of the sociology of modern scholarship. Grecians. The patristic period in Grecian is usually taken as extending from the first writers after the New Testament to such figures as Maximus the Confessor 579/580662 or John of Damascus c.650c.750. The period is traditionally divided around the Council of Nicea 325. PreNicean Grecian authors of importance to the history of philosophy include Irenaeus 130/140 after ?, Clement of Alexandria c.150after 215, and Origen c.180c.254. Important Nicean and post-Nicean authors include Athanasius c.295373; the Cappadocians, i.e., Gregory of Nazianzus c.33090, Basil of Cesarea c.33079, and his brother, Gregory of Nyssa 335/340c.394; and John Chrysostom c.350 407. Philosophical topics and practices are constantly engaged by these Grecian authors. Justin Martyr second century, e.g., describes his conversion to Christianity quite explicitly as a transit through lower forms of philosophy into the true philosophy. Clement of Alexandria, again, uses the philosophic genre of the protreptic and a host of ancient texts to persuade his pagan readers that they ought to come to Christianity as to the true wisdom. Origen devotes his Against Celsus to the detailed rebuttal of one pagan philosopher’s attack on Christianity. More importantly, if more subtly, the major works of the Cappadocians appropriate and transform the teachings of any number of philosophic authors  Plato and the Neoplatonists in first place, but also Aristotle, the Stoics, and Galen. Latins. The Latin churches came to count four post-Nicean authors as its chief teachers: Ambrose 337/33997, Jerome c.347419, Augustine 354430, and Gregory the Great c.540604. Other Latin authors of philosophical interest include Tertullian fl. c.c.220, Lactantius c.260c.330, Marius Victorinus 280/285before 386, and Hilary of Poitiers fl. 35664. The Latin patristic period is typically counted from the second century to the fifth or sixth, i.e., roughly from Tertullian to Boethius. The Latin authors share with their Grecian contemporaries a range of relations to the pagan philosophic schools, both as rival institutions and as sources of useful teaching. Tertullian’s Against the Nations and Apology, for example, take up pagan accusations against Christianity and then counterattack a number of pagan beliefs, including philosophical ones. By contrast, the writings of Marius Victorinus, Ambrose, and Augustine enact transformations of philosophic teachings, especially from the Neoplatonists. Because philosophical erudition was generally not as great among the Latins as among the Grecians, they were both more eager to accept philosophical doctrines and freer in improvising variations on them. 

nicoletti -- paolo di venezia: philosopher, the son of Andrea Nicola, of Venice – He was born in Fliuli Venezia Giulia, a hermit of Saint Augustine O.E.S.A., he spent three years as a student at St. John’s, where the order of St. Augustine had a ‘studium generale,’ at Oxford and taught at Padova, where he became a doctor of arts. Paolo also held appointments at the universities of Parma, Siena, and Bologna. Paolo is active in the administration of his order, holding various high offices. He composed ommentaries on several logical, ethical, and physical works of Aristotle. His name is connected especially with his best-selling “Logica parva.” Over 150 manuscripts survive, and more than forty printed editions of it were made,  His huge sequel, “Logica magna,” was a flop. These Oxford-influenced tracts contributed to the favorable climate enjoyed by Oxonian semantics in northern Italian universities. Grice: “My favourite of Paul’s tracts is his “Sophismata aurea” – how peaceful for a philosopher to die while commentingon Aristotle’s “De anima.”!” His nom de plum is “Paulus Venetus.”-- Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Paolo da  Harborne, and Paolo da Venezia,” lecture for the Club Griceiano Anglo-Italiano, Bordighera.

Peano postulates, also called Peano axioms, a list of assumptions from which the integers can be defined from some initial integer, equality, and successorship, and usually seen as defining progressions. The Peano postulates for arithmetic were produced by G. Peano in 9. He took the set N of integers with a first term 1 and an equality relation between them, and assumed these nine axioms: 1 belongs to N; N has more than one member; equality is reflexive, symmetric, and associative, and closed over N; the successor of any integer in N also belongs to N, and is unique; and a principle of mathematical induction applying across the members of N, in that if 1 belongs to some subset M of N and so does the successor of any of its members, then in fact M % N. In some ways Peano’s formulation was not clear. He had no explicit rules of inference, nor any guarantee of the legitimacy of inductive definitions which Dedekind established shortly before him. Further, the four properties attached to equality were seen to belong to the underlying “logic” rather than to arithmetic itself; they are now detached. It was realized by Peano himself that the postulates specified progressions rather than integers e.g., 1, ½, ¼, 1 /8, . . . , would satisfy them, with suitable interpretations of the properties. But his work was significant in the axiomatization of arithmetic; still deeper foundations would lead with Russell and others to a major role for general set theory in the foundations of mathematics. In addition, with O. Veblen, T. Skolem, and others, this insight led in the early twentieth century to “non-standard” models of the postulates being developed in set theory and mathematical analysis; one could go beyond the ‘. . .’ in the sequence above and admit “further” objects, to produce valuable alternative models of the postulates. These procedures were of great significance also to model theory, in highlighting the property of the non-categoricity of an axiom system. A notable case was the “non-standard analysis” of A. Robinson, where infinitesimals were defined as arithmetical inverses of transfinite numbers without incurring the usual perils of rigor associated with them.  Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Definite descriptions in Peano and in the vernacular.”

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

peirce: c. s. – H. P. Grice, “Lectures on C. S. Peirce’s general theory of signs,” Oxford; philosopher, the founder of the philosophical movement called pragmatism. Peirce was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the second son of Benjamin Peirce, who was professor of mathematics and astronomy at Harvard and one of America’s leading mathematicians. Charles Peirce studied at Harvard  and in 1863 received a degree in chemistry. In 1861 he began work with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, and remained in this service for thirty years. Simultaneously with his professional career as a scientist, Peirce worked in logic and philosophy. He lectured on philosophy and logic at various universities and institutes, but was never able to obtain a permanent academic position as a teacher of philosophy. In 7 he retired to Milford, Pennsylvania, and devoted the rest of his life to philosophical work. He earned a meager income from occasional lectures and by writing articles for periodicals and dictionaries. He spent his last years in extreme poverty and ill health. Pragmatism. Peirce formulated the basic principles of pragmatism in two articles, “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” 187778. The title of the latter paper refers to Descartes’s doctrine of clear and distinct ideas. According to Peirce, the criteria of clarity and distinctness must be supplemented by a third condition of meaningfulness, which states that the meaning of a proposition or an “intellectual conception” lies in its “practical consequences.” In his paper “Pragmatism” 5 he formulated the “Principle of Pragmatism” or the “Pragmatic Maxim” as follows: In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception we should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception. By “practical consequences” Peirce means conditional propositions of the form ‘if p, then q’, where the antecedent describes some action or experimental condition, and the consequent describes an observable phenomenon or a “sensible effect.” According to the Pragmatic Maxim, the meaning of a proposition or of an “intellectual conception” can be expressed as a conjunction of such “practical conditionals.” The Pragmatic Maxim might be criticized on the ground that many meaningful sentences e.g., theoretical hypotheses do not entail any “practical consequences” in themselves, but only in conjunction with other hypotheses. Peirce anticipated this objection by observing that “the maxim of pragmatism is that a conception can have no logical effect or import differing from that of a second conception except so far as, taken in connection with other conceptions and intentions, it might conceivably modify our practical conduct differently from that of the second conception” “Pragmatism and Abduction,” 3. Theory of inquiry and philosophy of science. Peirce adopted Bain’s definition of belief as “that which a man is prepared to act upon.” Belief guides action, and as a content of belief a proposition can be regarded as a maxim of conduct. According to Peirce, belief is a satisfactory and desirable state, whereas the opposite of belief, the state of doubt, is an unsatisfactory state. The starting point of inquiry is usually some surprising phenomenon that is inconsistent with one’s previously accepted beliefs, and that therefore creates a state of doubt. The purpose of inquiry is the replacement of this state by that of belief: “the sole aim of inquiry is the settlement of opinion.” A successful inquiry leads to stable opinion, a state of belief that need not later be given up. Peirce regarded the ultimate stability of opinion as a criterion of truth and reality: “the real . . . is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of you and me.” He accepted, however, an objectivist conception of truth and reality: the defining characteristic of reality is its independence of the opinions of individual persons. In “The Fixation of Belief” Peirce argued that the scientific method, a method in which we let our beliefs be determined by external reality, “by something upon which our thinking has no effect,” is the best way of settling opinion. Much of his philosophical work was devoted to the analysis of the various forms of inference and argument employed in science. He studied the concept of probability and probabilistic reasoning in science, criticized the subjectivist view of probability, and adopted an objectivist conception, according to which probability can be defined as a relative frequency in the long run. Peirce distinguished between three main types of inference, which correspond to three stages of inquiry: i abduction, a tentative acceptance of an explanatory hypothesis which, if true, would make the phenomenon under investigation intelligible; ii deduction, the derivation of testable consequences from the explanatory hypothesis; and iii induction, the evaluation of the hypothesis in the light of these consequences. He called this method of inquiry the inductive method; in the contemporary philosophy of science it is usually called the hypothetico-deductive method. According to Peirce, the scientific method can be viewed as an application of the pragmatic maxim: the testable consequences derived from an explanatory hypothesis constitute its concrete “meaning” in the sense of the Pragmatic Maxim. Thus the Maxim determines the admissibility of a hypothesis as a possible meaningful explanation. According to Pierce, inquiry is always dependent on beliefs that are not subject to doubt at the time of the inquiry, but such beliefs might be questioned on some other occasion. Our knowledge does not rest on indubitable “first premises,” but all beliefs are dependent on other beliefs. According to Peirce’s doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth. Logic, the theory of signs, and the philosophy of language. In “The Logic of Relatives,” published in 3 in a collection of papers by himself and his students at the Johns Hopkins  Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns Hopkins , Peirce formalized relational statements by using subscript indices for individuals individual variables, and construed the quantifiers ‘some’ and ‘every’ as variable binding operators; thus Peirce can be regarded together Peirce, Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Sanders 652    652 with the G. logician Frege as one of the founders of quantification theory predicate logic. In his paper “On the Algebra of Logic  A Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation” 5 he interpreted propositional logic as a calculus of truth-values, and defined logically necessary truth in propositional logic as truth for all truth-value assignments to sentential letters. He studied the logic of modalities and in the 0s he invented a system of logical graphs called “existential graphs”, based on a diagrammatic representation of propositions, in which he anticipated some basic ideas of the possible worlds semantics of modal logic. Peirce’s letters and notebooks contain significant logical and philosophical insights. For example, he examined three-valued truth tables “Triadic Logic”, and discovered in 6 the possibility of representing the truth-functional connectives of propositional logic by electrical switching circuits. Peirce regarded logic as a part of a more general area of inquiry, the theory of signs, which he also called semeiotic nowadays usually spelled ‘semiotics’. According to Peirce, sign relations are triadic, involving the sign itself, its object or what the sign stands for, and an interpretant which determines how the sign represents the object; the interpretant can be regarded as the meaning of the sign. The interpretant of a sign is another sign which in turn has its own interpretant or interpretants; such a sequence of interpretants ends in an “ultimate logical interpretant,” which is “a change of habit of conduct.” On the basis of the triadic character of the sign relation Peirce distinguished three divisions of signs. These divisions were based on i the character of the sign itself, ii the relation between the sign and its object, and iii the way in which the interpretant represents the object. These divisions reflect Peirce’s system of three fundamental ontological categories, which he termed Quality or Firstness, Relation or Secondness, and Representation or Thirdness. Thus, according to the first division, a sign can be a a qualisign, a mere quality or appearance a First; b a sinsign or token, an individual object, or event a Second; or c a legisign or a general type a Third. Secondly, signs can be divided into icons, indices, and symbols on the basis of their relations to their objects: an icon refers to an object on the basis of its similarity to the object in some respect; an index stands in a dynamic or causal relation to its object; whereas a symbol functions as a sign of an object by virtue of a rule or habit of interpretation. Peirce’s third division divides signs into rhemes predicative signs, propositional signs propositions, and arguments. Some of the concepts and distinctions introduced by Peirce, e.g., the distinction between “types” and “tokens” and the division of signs into “icons,” “indices,” and “symbols,” have become part of the standard conceptual repertoire of philosophy and semiotics. In his philosophy of language Peirce made a distinction between a proposition and an assertion, and studied the logical character of assertive speech acts. Metaphysics. In spite of his critical attitude toward traditional metaphysics, Peirce believed that metaphysical questions can be discussed in a meaningful way. According to Peirce, metaphysics studies the most general traits of reality, and “kinds of phenomena with which every man’s experience is so saturated that he usually pays no particular attention to them.” The basic categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness mentioned above occupy a central position in Peirce’s metaphysics. Especially in his later writings he emphasized the reality and metaphysical irreducibility of Thirdness, and defended the view that general phenomena for example, general laws cannot be regarded as mere conjunctions of their actual individual instances. This view was associated with Peirce’s synechism, the doctrine that the world contains genuinely continuous phenomena. He regarded synechism as a new form of Scholastic realism. In the area of modalities Peirce’s basic categories appear as possibility, actuality, and necessity. Here he argued that reality cannot be identified with existence or actuality, but comprises real objective possibilities. This view was partly based on his realization that many conditional statements, for instance the “practical” conditionals expressing the empirical import of a proposition in the sense of the Pragmatic Maxim, cannot be construed as material or truth-functional conditionals, but must be regarded as modal subjunctive conditionals. In his cosmology Peirce propounded the doctrine of tychism, according to which there is absolute chance in the universe, and the basic laws of nature are probabilistic and inexact. Peirce’s position in contemporary philosophy. Peirce had few disciples, but some of his students and colleagues became influential figures in  philosophy and science, e.g., the philosophers James, Royce, and Dewey and the economist Thorstein Veblen. Peirce’s pragmatism Peirce, Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Sanders 653    653 became widely known through James’s lectures and writings, but Peirce was dissatisfied with James’s version of pragmatism, and renamed his own form of it ‘pragmaticism’, which term he considered to be “ugly enough to keep it safe from kidnappers.” Pragmatism became an influential philosophical movement during the twentieth century through Dewey philosophy of science and philosophy of education, C. I. Lewis theory of knowledge, Ramsey, Ernest Nagel, and Quine philosophy of science. Peirce’s work in logic influenced, mainly through his contacts with the G. logician Ernst Schröder, the model-theoretic tradition in twentieth-century logic. There are three comprehensive collections of Peirce’s papers: Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce 158, vols. 16 edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, vols. 78 edited by Arthur Burks; The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce 6, edited by Carolyn Eisele; and Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition 2. 

peirce’s law -- the principle ‘A P B P A P A’, which holds in classical logic but fails in the eyes of relevance logicians when ‘ P’ is read as ‘entails’.