IMPLICATVRA -- in 16 volumes, vol. 11

metaphoricum implicaturum: Grice made a dictionary of figures of rhetoric – from A to Z.

accumulation: Grice, “As its name implies, this is the utterer accumulating arguments in a concise forceful manner.”

adnomination: Grice: As the name implies, this is the repetition of words with the same root word.

alliteration: Grice: “As the name implies, this is a device, where a series of words in a row have the same first consonant sound. It was quite used by my ancestors – they called it ‘head-rhyme.’” Example: "She sells sea shells by the sea shore".

Adynaton: Grice: “This is almost like Hyperbole, as in the ditty, “Every nice girl loves a sailor.” It is an extreme exaggeration used to make a point. It is like the opposite of "understatement". Example: "I've told you a million times."

anacoluthon: Grice, as the name implies, this is a Transposition of clauses to achieve an unnatural (or non-natural) order in a sentence. “Join them, if you can’t beat’em.”

anadiplosis: Repetition of a word at the end of a clause and then at the beginning of its succeeding clause. anaphora: Repetition of the same word or set of words in a paragraph.

anastrophe: Grice: As the name implies this Changing the object, subject and verb order in a clause, as in “Me loves she,” as uttered by Tarzan.

anti-climax: It is when a specific point, expectations are raised, everything is built-up and then suddenly something boring or disappointing happens. Example: "People, pets, batteries, ... all are dead."

anthimeria: Transformation of a word of a certain word class to another word class.

antimetabole: A sentence consisting of the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in reverse order.

antirrhesis: Disproving an opponent's argument. antistrophe: Repetition of the same word or group of words in a paragraph in the end of sentences. antithesis: Juxtaposition of opposing or contrasting ideas.

aphorismus: Statement that calls into question the definition of a word. aposiopesis: Breaking off or pausing speech for dramatic or emotional effect. apposition: Placing of two statements side by side, in which the second defines the first. assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds: "Smooth move!" or "Please leave!" or "That's the fact Jack!"

asteismus: Mocking answer or humorous answer that plays on a word.

asterismos: Beginning a segment of speech with an exclamation of a word. asyndeton: Omission of conjunctions between related clauses. cacophony: Words producing a harsh sound. cataphora: Co-reference of one expression with another expression which follows it, in which the latter defines the first. (example: If you need one, there's a towel in the top drawer.) classification: Linking a proper noun and a common noun with an article chiasmus: Two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point climax: Arrangement of words in order of descending to ascending order. commoratio: Repetition of an idea, re-worded conduplicatio: Repetition of a key word conversion (word formation): An unaltered transformation of a word of one word class into another word class consonance: Repetition of consonant sounds, most commonly within a short passage of verse correlative verse: Matching items in two sequences diacope: Repetition of a word or phrase with one or two intervening words dubitatio: Expressing doubt and uncertainty about oneself dystmesis: A synonym for tmesis ellipsis: Omission of words elision: Omission of one or more letters in speech, making it colloquial enallage: Wording ignoring grammatical rules or conventions enjambment: Incomplete sentences at the end of lines in poetry enthymeme: An informal syllogism epanalepsis: Ending sentences with their beginning. epanodos: Word repetition. epistrophe: (also known as antistrophe) Repetition of the same word or group of words at the end of successive clauses. The counterpart of anaphora epizeuxis: Repetition of a single word, with no other words in between euphony: Opposite of cacophony – i.e. pleasant-sounding half rhyme: Partially rhyming words hendiadys: Use of two nouns to express an idea when it normally would consist of an adjective and a noun hendiatris: Use of three nouns to express one idea homeoptoton: ending the last parts of words with the same syllable or letter. homographs: Words we write identically but which have a differing meaning homoioteleuton: Multiple words with the same ending homonyms: Words that are identical with each other in pronunciation and spelling, but different in meaning homophones: Words that are identical with each other in pronunciation, but different in meaning homeoteleuton: Words with the same ending hypallage: A transferred epithet from a conventional choice of wording.hyperbaton: Two ordinary associated words are detached. The term may also be used more generally for all different figures of speech which transpose natural word order in sentences.[13] hyperbole: Exaggeration of a statement hypozeuxis: Every clause having its own independent subject and predicate hysteron proteron: The inversion of the usual temporal or causal order between two elements isocolon: Use of parallel structures of the same length in successive clauses internal rhyme: Using two or more rhyming words in the same sentence kenning: Using a compound word neologism to form a metonym litotes derived from a Greek word meaning "simple", is a figure of speech which employs an understatement by using double negatives or, in other words, positive statement is expressed by negating its opposite expressions. Examples: "not too bad" for "very good" is an understatement as well as a double negative statement that confirms a positive idea by negating the opposite. Similarly, saying "She is not a beauty queen," means "She is ugly" or saying "I am not as young as I used to be" in order to avoid saying "I am old". Litotes, therefore, is an intentional use of understatement that renders an ironical effect. merism: Referring to a whole by enumerating some of its parts mimesis: Imitation of a person's speech or writing onomatopoeia: Word that imitates a real sound (e.g. tick-tock or boom) paradiastole: Repetition of the disjunctive pair "neither" and "nor" parallelism: The use of similar structures in two or more clauses paraprosdokian: Unexpected ending or truncation of a clause paremvolia: Interference of speak by speakingparenthesis: A parenthetical entry paroemion: Alliteration in which every word in a sentence or phrase begins with the same letter parrhesia: Speaking openly or boldly, in a situation where it is unexpected (e.g. politics) pleonasm: The use of more words than are needed to express meaning polyptoton: Repetition of words derived from the same root polysyndeton: Close repetition of conjunctions pun: When a word or phrase is used in two (or more) different senses rhythm: A synonym for parallelism sibilance: Repetition of letter 's', it is a form of consonance sine dicendo: An inherently superfluous statement, the truth value of which can easily be taken for granted. When held under scrutiny, it becomes readily apparent that the statement has not in fact added any new or useful information to the conversation (e.g. 'It's always in the last place you look.') solecism: Trespassing grammatical and syntactical rules spoonerism: Switching place of syllables within two words in a sentence yielding amusement superlative: Declaring something the best within its class i.e. the ugliest, the most precious synathroesmus: Agglomeration of adjectives to describe something or someone syncope: Omission of parts of a word or phrase symploce: Simultaneous use of anaphora and epistrophe: the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning and the end of successive clauses synchysis: Words that are intentionally scattered to create perplexment synesis: Agreement of words according to the sense, and not the grammatical form synecdoche: Referring to a part by its whole or vice versa synonymia: Use of two or more synonyms in the same clause or sentence tautology: Redundancy due to superfluous qualification; saying the same thing twice tmesis: Insertions of content within a compound word zeugma: The using of one verb for two or more actions Tropes accismus: expressing the want of something by denying it[16] allegory: A metaphoric narrative in which the literal elements indirectly reveal a parallel story of symbolic or abstract significance.allusion: Covert reference to another work of literature or art ambiguity: Phrasing which can have two meanings anacoenosis: Posing a question to an audience, often with the implication that it shares a common interest with the speaker analogy: A comparison anapodoton: Leaving a common known saying unfinished antanaclasis: A form of pun in which a word is repeated in two different senses.[20] anthimeria: A substitution of one part of speech for another, such as noun for a verb and vice versa.[21] anthropomorphism: Ascribing human characteristics to something that is not human, such as an animal or a god (see zoomorphism) antimetabole: Repetition of words in successive clauses, but in switched order antiphrasis: A name or a phrase used ironically. antistasis: Repetition of a word in a different sense. antonomasia: Substitution of a proper name for a phrase or vice versa a: Briefly phrased, easily memorable statement of a truth or opinion, an adage apologia: Justifying one's actions aporia: Faked or sincere puzzled questioning apophasis: (Invoking) an idea by denying its (invocation) appositive: Insertion of a parenthetical entry apostrophe: Directing the attention away from the audience to an absent third party, often in the form of a personified abstraction or inanimate object. archaism: Use of an obsolete, archaic word (a word used in olden language, e.g. Shakespeare's language) auxesis: Form of hyperbole, in which a more important-sounding word is used in place of a more descriptive term bathos: Pompous speech with a ludicrously mundane worded anti-climax burlesque metaphor: An amusing, overstated or grotesque comparison or example. catachresis: Blatant misuse of words or phrases. cataphora: Repetition of a cohesive device at the end categoria: Candidly revealing an opponent's weakness cliché: Overused phrase or theme circumlocution: Talking around a topic by substituting or adding words, as in euphemism or periphrasis congeries: Accumulation of synonymous or different words or phrases together forming a single message correctio: Linguistic device used for correcting one's mistakes, a form of which is epanorthosis dehortatio: discouraging advice given with seeming sagacity denominatio: Another word for metonymy diatyposis: The act of giving counsel double negative: Grammar construction that can be used as an expression and it is the repetition of negative words dirimens copulatio: Balances one statement with a contrary, qualifying statement[22] distinctio: Defining or specifying the meaning of a word or phrase you use dysphemism: Substitution of a harsher, more offensive, or more disagreeable term for another. Opposite of euphemism dubitatio: Expressing doubt over one's ability to hold speeches, or doubt over other ability ekphrasis: Lively describing something you see, often a painting epanorthosis: Immediate and emphatic self-correction, often following a slip of the tongue encomium: A speech consisting of praise; a eulogy enumeratio: A sort of amplification and accumulation in which specific aspects are added up to make a point epicrisis: Mentioning a saying and then commenting on it epiplexis: Rhetorical question displaying disapproval or debunks epitrope: Initially pretending to agree with an opposing debater or invite one to do something erotema: Synonym for rhetorical question erotesis: Rhetorical question asked in confident expectation of a negative answer euphemism: Substitution of a less offensive or more agreeable term for another grandiloquence: Pompous speech exclamation: A loud calling or crying out humour: Provoking laughter and providing amusement hyperbaton: Words that naturally belong together separated from each other for emphasis or effect hyperbole: Use of exaggerated terms for emphasis hypocatastasis: An implication or declaration of resemblance that does not directly name both terms hypophora: Answering one's own rhetorical question at length hysteron proteron: Reversal of anticipated order of events; a form of hyperbaton innuendo: Having a hidden meaning in a sentence that makes sense whether it is detected or not inversion: A reversal of normal word order, especially the placement of a verb ahead of the subject (subject-verb inversion). irony: Use of word in a way that conveys a meaning opposite to its usual meaning.[23] litotes: Emphasizing the magnitude of a statement by denying its opposite malapropism: Using a word through confusion with a word that sounds similar meiosis: Use of understatement, usually to diminish the importance of something memento verbum: Word at the top of the tongue, recordabantur merism: Referring to a whole by enumerating some of its parts metalepsis: Figurative speech is used in a new context metaphor: An implied comparison between two things, attributing the properties of one thing to another that it does not literally possess.[24] metonymy: A thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept neologism: The use of a word or term that has recently been created, or has been in use for a short time. Opposite of archaism non sequitur: Statement that bears no relationship to the context preceding occupatio see apophasis: Mentioning something by reportedly not mentioning it onomatopoeia: Words that sound like their meaning oxymoron: Using two terms together, that normally contradict each other par'hyponoian: Replacing in a phrase or text a second part, that would have been logically expected. parable: Extended metaphor told as an anecdote to illustrate or teach a moral lesson paradiastole: Extenuating a vice in order to flatter or soothe paradox: Use of apparently contradictory ideas to point out some underlying truth paraprosdokian: Phrase in which the latter part causes a rethinking or reframing of the beginning paralipsis: Drawing attention to something while pretending to pass it over parody: Humouristic imitation paronomasia: Pun, in which similar-sounding words but words having a different meaning are used pathetic fallacy: Ascribing human conduct and feelings to nature periphrasis: A synonym for circumlocution personification/prosopopoeia/anthropomorphism: Attributing or applying human qualities to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena pleonasm: The use of more words than is necessary for clear expression praeteritio: Another word for paralipsis procatalepsis: Refuting anticipated objections as part of the main argument proslepsis: Extreme form of paralipsis in which the speaker provides great detail while feigning to pass over a topic prothesis: Adding a syllable to the beginning of a word proverb: Succinct or pithy, often metaphorical, expression of wisdom commonly believed to be true pun: Play on words that will have two meanings rhetorical question: Asking a question as a way of asserting something. Asking a question which already has the answer hidden in it. Or asking a question not for the sake of getting an answer but for asserting something (or as in a poem for creating a poetic effect) satire: Humoristic criticism of society sensory detail imagery: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell sesquipedalianism: use of long and obscure words simile: Comparison between two things using like or as snowclone: Alteration of cliché or phrasal template style: how information is presented superlative: Saying that something is the best of something or has the most of some quality, e.g. the ugliest, the most precious etc. syllepsis: The use of a word in its figurative and literal sense at the same time or a single word used in relation to two other parts of a sentence although the word grammatically or logically applies to only one syncatabasis (condescension, accommodation): adaptation of style to the level of the audience synchoresis: A concession made for the purpose of retorting with greater force. synecdoche: Form of metonymy, referring to a part by its whole, or a whole by its part synesthesia: Description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another. tautology: Superfluous repetition of the same sense in different words Example: The children gathered in a round circle transferred epithet: A synonym for hypallage. truism: a self-evident statement tricolon diminuens: Combination of three elements, each decreasing in size tricolon crescens: Combination of three elements, each increasing in size verbal paradox: Paradox specified to language verba ex ore: Taking the words out of someone’s mouth, speaking of what the interlocutor wanted to say.[14] verbum volitans: A word that floats in the air, on which everyone is thinking and is just about to be imposed.[14] zeugma: Use of a single verb to describe two or more actions zoomorphism: Applying animal characteristics to humans or gods. Refs. Holdcroft: “Grice on indirect communication,” Journal of Rhetoric.”

Fallacia – Grice compilied a “Fallaciae: A to Z.” Formal fallacies Main article: Formal fallacy A formal fallacy is an error in logic that can be seen in the argument's form.[4] All formal fallacies are specific types of non sequitur.  Appeal to probability – a statement that takes something for granted because it would probably be the case (or might be the case).[5][6] Argument from fallacy (also known as the fallacy fallacy) – the assumption that if an argument for some conclusion is fallacious, then the conclusion is false.[7] Base rate fallacy – making a probability judgment based on conditional probabilities, without taking into account the effect of prior probabilities.[8] Conjunction fallacy – the assumption that an outcome simultaneously satisfying multiple conditions is more probable than an outcome satisfying a single one of them.[9] Masked-man fallacy (illicit substitution of identicals) – the substitution of identical designators in a true statement can lead to a false one.[10] Propositional fallacies A propositional fallacy is an error in logic that concerns compound propositions. For a compound proposition to be true, the truth values of its constituent parts must satisfy the relevant logical connectives that occur in it (most commonly: [and], [or], [not], [only if], [if and only if]). The following fallacies involve inferences whose correctness is not guaranteed by the behavior of those logical connectives and are not logically guaranteed to yield true conclusions. Types of propositional fallacies:  Affirming a disjunct – concluding that one disjunct of a logical disjunction must be false because the other disjunct is true; A or B; A, therefore not B.[11] Affirming the consequent – the antecedent in an indicative conditional is claimed to be true because the consequent is true; if A, then B; B, therefore A.[11] Denying the antecedent – the consequent in an indicative conditional is claimed to be false because the antecedent is false; if A, then B; not A, therefore not B.[11] Quantification fallacies A quantification fallacy is an error in logic where the quantifiers of the premises are in contradiction to the quantifier of the conclusion. Types of quantification fallacies:  Existential fallacy – an argument that has a universal premise and a particular conclusion.[12] Formal syllogistic fallacies Syllogistic fallacies – logical fallacies that occur in syllogisms.  Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise (illicit negative) – a categorical syllogism has a positive conclusion, but at least one negative premise.[12] Fallacy of exclusive premises – a categorical syllogism that is invalid because both of its premises are negative.[12] Fallacy of four terms (quaternio terminorum) – a categorical syllogism that has four terms.[13] Illicit major – a categorical syllogism that is invalid because its major term is not distributed in the major premise but distributed in the conclusion.[12] Illicit minor – a categorical syllogism that is invalid because its minor term is not distributed in the minor premise but distributed in the conclusion.[12] Negative conclusion from affirmative premises (illicit affirmative) – a categorical syllogism has a negative conclusion but affirmative premises.[12] Fallacy of the undistributed middle – the middle term in a categorical syllogism is not distributed.[14] Modal fallacy – confusing possibility with necessity. Modal scope fallacy – a degree of unwarranted necessity is placed in the conclusion. Informal fallacies Main article: Informal fallacy Informal fallacies – arguments that are logically unsound for lack of well-grounded premises.[15]  Argument to moderation (false compromise, middle ground, fallacy of the mean, argumentum ad temperantiam) – assuming that the compromise between two positions is always correct.[16] Continuum fallacy (fallacy of the beard, line-drawing fallacy, sorites fallacy, fallacy of the heap, bald man fallacy) – improperly rejecting a claim for being imprecise.[17] Correlative-based fallacies Suppressed correlative – a correlative is redefined so that one alternative is made impossible (e.g., "I'm not fat because I'm thinner than him").[18] Definist fallacy – defining a term used in an argument in a biased manner. The person making the argument expects the listener will accept the provided definition, making the argument difficult to refute.[19] Divine fallacy (argument from incredulity) – arguing that, because something is so incredible or amazing, it must be the result of superior, divine, alien or paranormal agency.[20] Double counting – counting events or occurrences more than once in probabilistic reasoning, which leads to the sum of the probabilities of all cases exceeding unity. Equivocation – using a term with more than one meaning in a statement without specifying which meaning is intended.[21] Ambiguous middle term – using a middle term with multiple meanings.[22] Definitional retreat – changing the meaning of a word when an objection is raised.[1] Motte-and-bailey fallacy – conflating two positions with similar properties, one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one more controversial (the "bailey").[23] The arguer first states the controversial position, but when challenged, states that they are advancing the modest position.[24][25] Fallacy of accent – changing the meaning of a statement by not specifying on which word emphasis falls. Persuasive definition – purporting to use the "true" or "commonly accepted" meaning of a term while, in reality, using an uncommon or altered definition. (cf. the if-by-whiskey fallacy) Ecological fallacy – inferences about the nature of specific individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong.[26] Etymological fallacy – reasoning that the original or historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its actual present-day usage.[27] Fallacy of composition – assuming that something true of part of a whole must also be true of the whole.[28] Fallacy of division – assuming that something true of a thing must also be true of all or some of its parts.[29] False attribution – an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased or fabricated source in support of an argument. Fallacy of quoting out of context (contextotomy, contextomy; quotation mining) – refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original context in a way that distorts the source's intended meaning.[30] False authority (single authority) – using an expert of dubious credentials or using only one opinion to sell a product or idea. Related to the appeal to authority. False dilemma (false dichotomy, fallacy of bifurcation, black-or-white fallacy) – two alternative statements are held to be the only possible options when in reality there are more.[31] False equivalence – describing two or more statements as virtually equal when they are not. Feedback fallacy - believing in the objectivity of an evaluation to be used as the basis for improvement without verifying that the source of the evaluation is a disinterested party.[32] Historian's fallacy – assuming that decision makers of the past had identical information as those subsequently analyzing the decision.[33] This should not to be confused with presentism, in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically projected into the past. Historical fallacy – a set of considerations is thought to hold good only because a completed process is read into the content of the process which conditions this completed result.[34] Baconian fallacy - using pieces of historical evidence without the aid of specific methods, hypotheses, or theories in an attempt to make a general truth about the past. Commits historians "to the pursuit of an impossible object by an impracticable method".[35] Homunculus fallacy – using a "middle-man" for explanation; this sometimes leads to regressive middle-men. It explains a concept in terms of the concept itself without explaining its real nature (e.g.: explaining thought as something produced by a little thinker - a homunculus - inside the head simply identifies an intermediary actor and does not explain the product or process of thinking).[36] Inflation of conflict – arguing that, if experts in a field of knowledge disagree on a certain point within that field, no conclusion can be reached or that the legitimacy of that field of knowledge is questionable.[37] If-by-whiskey – an argument that supports both sides of an issue by using terms that are selectively emotionally sensitive. Incomplete comparison – insufficient information is provided to make a complete comparison. Inconsistent comparison – different methods of comparison are used, leaving a false impression of the whole comparison. Intentionality fallacy – the insistence that the ultimate meaning of an expression must be consistent with the intention of the person from whom the communication originated (e.g. a work of fiction that is widely received as a blatant allegory must necessarily not be regarded as such if the author intended it not to be so.)[38] Lump of labour fallacy – the misconception that there is a fixed amount of work to be done within an economy, which can be distributed to create more or fewer jobs.[39] Kettle logic – using multiple, jointly inconsistent arguments to defend a position.[dubious – discuss] Ludic fallacy – the belief that the outcomes of non-regulated random occurrences can be encapsulated by a statistic; a failure to take into account that unknown unknowns have a role in determining the probability of events taking place.[40] McNamara fallacy (quantitative fallacy) – making a decision based only on quantitative observations, discounting all other considerations. Mind projection fallacy – subjective judgments are "projected" to be inherent properties of an object, rather than being related to personal perceptions of that object. Moralistic fallacy – inferring factual conclusions from purely evaluative premises in violation of fact–value distinction. For instance, inferring is from ought is an instance of moralistic fallacy. Moralistic fallacy is the inverse of naturalistic fallacy defined below. Moving the goalposts (raising the bar) – argument in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded. Nirvana fallacy (perfect-solution fallacy) – solutions to problems are rejected because they are not perfect. Proof by assertion – a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction; sometimes confused with argument from repetition (argumentum ad infinitum, argumentum ad nauseam) Prosecutor's fallacy – a low probability of false matches does not mean a low probability of some false match being found. Proving too much – an argument that results in an overly-generalized conclusion (e.g.: arguing that drinking alcohol is bad because in some instances it has led to spousal or child abuse). Psychologist's fallacy – an observer presupposes the objectivity of their own perspective when analyzing a behavioral event. Referential fallacy[41] – assuming all words refer to existing things and that the meaning of words reside within the things they refer to, as opposed to words possibly referring to no real object or that the meaning of words often comes from how they are used. Reification (concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) – treating an abstract belief or hypothetical construct as if it were a concrete, real event or physical entity (e.g.: saying that evolution selects which traits are passed on to future generations; evolution is not a conscious entity with agency). Retrospective determinism – the argument that because an event has occurred under some circumstance, the circumstance must have made its occurrence inevitable. Slippery slope (thin edge of the wedge, camel's nose) – asserting that a proposed. relatively small, first action will inevitably lead to a chain of related events resulting in a significant and negative event and, therefore, should not be permitted.[42] Special pleading – the arguer attempts to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule or principle without justifying the exemption (e.g.: a defendant who murdered his parents asks for leniency because he is now an orphan). Improper premise Begging the question (petitio principii) – using the conclusion of the argument in support of itself in a premise (e.g.: saying that smoking cigarettes is deadly because cigarettes can kill you; something that kills is deadly).[43][44][45] Loaded label – while not inherently fallacious, use of evocative terms to support a conclusion is a type of begging the question fallacy. When fallaciously used, the term's connotations are relied on to sway the argument towards a particular conclusion. For example, an organic foods advertisement that says "Organic foods are safe and healthy foods grown without any pesticides, herbicides, or other unhealthy additives." Use of the term "unhealthy additives" is used as support for the idea that the product is safe.[46] Circular reasoning (circulus in demonstrando) – the reasoner begins with what he or she is trying to end up with (e.g.: all bachelors are unmarried males). Fallacy of many questions (complex question, fallacy of presuppositions, loaded question, plurium interrogationum) – someone asks a question that presupposes something that has not been proven or accepted by all the people involved. This fallacy is often used rhetorically so that the question limits direct replies to those that serve the questioner's agenda. Faulty generalizations Faulty generalization – reach a conclusion from weak premises. Unlike fallacies of relevance, in fallacies of defective induction, the premises are related to the conclusions yet only weakly support the conclusions. A faulty generalization is thus produced.  Accident – an exception to a generalization is ignored.[47] No true Scotsman – makes a generalization true by changing the generalization to exclude a counterexample.[48] Cherry picking (suppressed evidence, incomplete evidence) – act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.[49] Survivorship bias – a small number of successes of a given process are actively promoted while completely ignoring a large number of failures False analogy – an argument by analogy in which the analogy is poorly suited.[50] Hasty generalization (fallacy of insufficient statistics, fallacy of insufficient sample, fallacy of the lonely fact, hasty induction, secundum quid, converse accident, jumping to conclusions) – basing a broad conclusion on a small sample or the making of a determination without all of the information required to do so.[51] Inductive fallacy – A more general name to some fallacies, such as hasty generalization. It happens when a conclusion is made of premises that lightly support it. Misleading vividness – involves describing an occurrence in vivid detail, even if it is an exceptional occurrence, to convince someone that it is a problem; this also relies on the appeal to emotion fallacy. Overwhelming exception – an accurate generalization that comes with qualifications that eliminate so many cases that what remains is much less impressive than the initial statement might have led one to assume.[52] Thought-terminating cliché – a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance, conceal lack of forethought, move on to other topics, etc. – but in any case, to end the debate with a cliché rather than a point. Questionable cause Questionable cause is a general type of error with many variants. Its primary basis is the confusion of association with causation, either by inappropriately deducing (or rejecting) causation or a broader failure to properly investigate the cause of an observed effect.  Cum hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "with this, therefore because of this"; correlation implies causation; faulty cause/effect, coincidental correlation, correlation without causation) – a faulty assumption that, because there is a correlation between two variables, one caused the other.[53] Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "after this, therefore because of this"; temporal sequence implies causation) – X happened, then Y happened; therefore X caused Y.[54] Wrong direction (reverse causation) – cause and effect are reversed. The cause is said to be the effect and vice versa.[55] The consequence of the phenomenon is claimed to be its root cause. Ignoring a common cause Fallacy of the single cause (causal oversimplification[56]) – it is assumed that there is one, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes. Furtive fallacy – outcomes are asserted to have been caused by the malfeasance of decision makers. Gambler's fallacy – the incorrect belief that separate, independent events can affect the likelihood of another random event. If a fair coin lands on heads 10 times in a row, the belief that it is "due to the number of times it had previously landed on tails" is incorrect.[57] Inverse gambler's fallacy Magical thinking – fallacious attribution of causal relationships between actions and events. In anthropology, it refers primarily to cultural beliefs that ritual, prayer, sacrifice, and taboos will produce specific supernatural consequences. In psychology, it refers to an irrational belief that thoughts by themselves can affect the world or that thinking something corresponds with doing it. Regression fallacy – ascribes cause where none exists. The flaw is failing to account for natural fluctuations. It is frequently a special kind of post hoc fallacy. Relevance fallacies Appeal to the stone (argumentum ad lapidem) – dismissing a claim as absurd without demonstrating proof for its absurdity.[58] Argument from ignorance (appeal to ignorance, argumentum ad ignorantiam) – assuming that a claim is true because it has not been or cannot be proven false, or vice versa.[59] Argument from incredulity (appeal to common sense) – "I cannot imagine how this could be true; therefore, it must be false."[60] Argument from repetition (argumentum ad nauseam, argumentum ad infinitum) – repeating an argument until nobody cares to discuss it any more;[61][62] sometimes confused with proof by assertion Argument from silence (argumentum ex silentio) – assuming that a claim is true based on the absence of textual or spoken evidence from an authoritative source, or vice versa.[63] Ignoratio elenchi (irrelevant conclusion, missing the point) – an argument that may in itself be valid, but does not address the issue in question.[64] Red herring fallacies A red herring fallacy, one of the main subtypes of fallacies of relevance, is an error in logic where a proposition is, or is intended to be, misleading in order to make irrelevant or false inferences. In the general case any logical inference based on fake arguments, intended to replace the lack of real arguments or to replace implicitly the subject of the discussion.[65][66]  Red herring – introducing a second argument in response to the first argument that is irrelevant and draws attention away from the original topic (e.g.: saying “If you want to complain about the dishes I leave in the sink, what about the dirty clothes you leave in the bathroom?”).[67] See also irrelevant conclusion.  Ad hominem – attacking the arguer instead of the argument. (N.b., "ad hominem" can also refer to the dialectical strategy of arguing on the basis of the opponent's own commitments. This type of ad hominem is not a fallacy.) Circumstantial ad hominem - stating that the arguer's personal situation or perceived benefit from advancing a conclusion means that their conclusion is wrong.[68] Poisoning the well – a subtype of ad hominem presenting adverse information about a target person with the intention of discrediting everything that the target person says.[69] Appeal to motive – dismissing an idea by questioning the motives of its proposer. Kafka-trapping – a sophistical and unfalsifiable form of argument that attempts to overcome an opponent by inducing a sense of guilt and using the opponent's denial of guilt as further evidence of guilt.[70] Tone policing – focusing on emotion behind (or resulting from) a message rather than the message itself as a discrediting tactic. Traitorous critic fallacy (ergo decedo, 'thus leave') – a critic's perceived affiliation is portrayed as the underlying reason for the criticism and the critic is asked to stay away from the issue altogether. Easily confused with the association fallacy ("guilt by association") below. Appeal to authority (argument from authority, argumentum ad verecundiam) – an assertion is deemed true because of the position or authority of the person asserting it.[71][72] Appeal to accomplishment – an assertion is deemed true or false based on the accomplishments of the proposer. This may often also have elements of appeal to emotion (see below). Courtier's reply – a criticism is dismissed by claiming that the critic lacks sufficient knowledge, credentials, or training to credibly comment on the subject matter. Appeal to consequences (argumentum ad consequentiam) – the conclusion is supported by a premise that asserts positive or negative consequences from some course of action in an attempt to distract from the initial discussion.[73] Appeal to emotion – an argument is made due to the manipulation of emotions, rather than the use of valid reasoning.[74] Appeal to fear – an argument is made by increasing fear and prejudice towards the opposing side[75] Appeal to flattery – an argument is made due to the use of flattery to gather support.[76] Appeal to pity (argumentum ad misericordiam) – an argument attempts to induce pity to sway opponents.[77] Appeal to ridicule – an argument is made by presenting the opponent's argument in a way that makes it appear ridiculous (or, arguing or implying that because it is ridiculous it must be untrue).[78] Appeal to spite – an argument is made through exploiting people's bitterness or spite towards an opposing party.[79] Judgmental language – insulting or pejorative language to influence the audience's judgment. Pooh-pooh – dismissing an argument perceived unworthy of serious consideration.[80] Wishful thinking – a decision is made according to what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than according to evidence or reason.[81] Appeal to nature – judgment is based solely on whether the subject of judgment is 'natural' or 'unnatural'.[82] (Sometimes also called the "naturalistic fallacy", but is not to be confused with the other fallacies by that name.) Appeal to novelty (argumentum novitatis, argumentum ad antiquitatis) – a proposal is claimed to be superior or better solely because it is new or modern.[83] Appeal to poverty (argumentum ad Lazarum) – supporting a conclusion because the arguer is poor (or refuting because the arguer is wealthy). (Opposite of appeal to wealth.)[84] Appeal to tradition (argumentum ad antiquitatem) – a conclusion supported solely because it has long been held to be true.[85] Appeal to wealth (argumentum ad crumenam) – supporting a conclusion because the arguer is wealthy (or refuting because the arguer is poor).[86] (Sometimes taken together with the appeal to poverty as a general appeal to the arguer's financial situation.) Argumentum ad baculum (appeal to the stick, appeal to force, appeal to threat) – an argument made through coercion or threats of force to support position.[87] Argumentum ad populum (appeal to widespread belief, bandwagon argument, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people) – a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because a majority or many people believe it to be so.[88] Association fallacy (guilt by association and honor by association) – arguing that because two things share (or are implied to share) some property, they are the same.[89] Ipse dixit (bare assertion fallacy) – a claim that is presented as true without support, as self-evidently true, or as dogmatically true. This fallacy relies on the implied expertise of the speaker or on an unstated truism.[90][91] Bulverism (psychogenetic fallacy) – inferring why an argument is being used, associating it to some psychological reason, then assuming it is invalid as a result. The assumption that if the origin of an idea comes from a biased mind, then the idea itself must also be a falsehood.[37] Chronological snobbery – a thesis is deemed incorrect because it was commonly held when something else, known to be false, was also commonly held.[92][93] Fallacy of relative privation (also known as "appeal to worse problems" or "not as bad as") – dismissing an argument or complaint due to what are perceived to be more important problems. First World problems are a subset of this fallacy.[94][95] Genetic fallacy – a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context.[96] I'm entitled to my opinion – a person discredits any opposition by claiming that they are entitled to their opinion. Moralistic fallacy – inferring factual conclusions from evaluative premises, in violation of fact-value distinction; e.g. making statements about what is, on the basis of claims about what ought to be. This is the inverse of the naturalistic fallacy. Naturalistic fallacy – inferring evaluative conclusions from purely factual premises[97][98] in violation of fact-value distinction. Naturalistic fallacy (sometimes confused with appeal to nature) is the inverse of moralistic fallacy. Is–ought fallacy[99] – statements about what is, on the basis of claims about what ought to be. Naturalistic fallacy fallacy[100] (anti-naturalistic fallacy)[101] – inferring an impossibility to infer any instance of ought from is from the general invalidity of is-ought fallacy, mentioned above. For instance, is {\displaystyle P\lor \neg P}P \lor \neg P does imply ought {\displaystyle P\lor \neg P}P \lor \neg P for any proposition {\displaystyle P}P, although the naturalistic fallacy fallacy would falsely declare such an inference invalid. Naturalistic fallacy fallacy is a type of argument from fallacy. Straw man fallacy – misrepresenting an opponent's argument by broadening or narrowing the scope of a premise and refuting a weaker version (e.g.: saying “You tell us that A is the right thing to do, but the real reason you want us to do A is that you would personally profit from it).[102] Texas sharpshooter fallacy – improperly asserting a cause to explain a cluster of data.[103] Tu quoque ('you too' – appeal to hypocrisy, whataboutism) – the argument states that a certain position is false or wrong or should be disregarded because its proponent fails to act consistently in accordance with that position.[104] Two wrongs make a right – occurs when it is assumed that if one wrong is committed, another wrong will rectify it.[105] Vacuous truth – a claim that is technically true but meaningless, in the form of claiming that no A in B has C, when there is no A in B. For example, claiming that no mobile phones in the room are on when there are no mobile phones in the room at all.

metaphorical implicaturum -- Grice, “You’re the cream in my coffee” – “You’re the salt in my stew” – “You’re the starch in my collar” – “You’re the lace in my shoe.” metaphor, a figure of speech (or a trope) in which a word or phrase that literally denotes one thing is used to denote another, thereby implicitly comparing the two things. In the normal use of the sentence ‘The Mississippi is a river’, ‘river’ is used literally – or as some would prefer to say, used in its literal sense. By contrast, if one assertively uttered “Time is a river,” one would be using ‘river’ metaphorically – or be using it in a metaphorical sense. Metaphor has been a topic of philosophical discussion since Aristotle; in fact, it has almost certainly been more discussed by philosophers than all the other tropes together. Two themes are prominent in the discussions up to the nineteenth century. One is that metaphors, along with all the other tropes, are decorations of speech; hence the phrase ‘figures of speech’. Metaphors are adornments or figurations. They do not contribute to the cognitive meaning of the discourse; instead they lend it color, vividness, emotional impact, etc. Thus it was characteristic of the Enlightenment and proto-Enlightenment philosophers – Hobbes and Locke are good examples – to insist that though philosophers may sometimes have good reason to communicate their thought with metaphors, they themselves should do their thinking entirely without metaphors. The other theme prominent in discussions of metaphor up to the nineteenth century is that metaphors are, so far as their cognitive force is concerned, elliptical similes. The cognitive force of ‘Time is a river’, when ‘river’ in that sentence is used metaphorically, is the same as ‘Time is like a river’. What characterizes almost all theories of metaphor from the time of the Romantics up through our own century is the rejection of both these traditional themes. Metaphors – so it has been argued – are not cognitively dispensable decorations. They contribute to the cognitive meaning of our discourse; and they are indispensable, not only to religious discourse, but to ordinary, and even scientific, discourse, not to mention poetic. Nietzsche, indeed, went so far as to argue that all speech is metaphorical. And though no consensus has yet emerged on how and what metaphors contribute to meaning, nor how we recognize what they contribute, nearconsensus has emerged on the thesis that they do not work as elliptical similes. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Why it is not the case that you’re the cream in my coffee.” H. P. Grice, “One figure of rhetoric too many.” “Metanonymy.”

Ariskant -- Aristkantian metaphysical deduction: cf. the transcendental club. or argument. transcendental argument Metaphysics, epistemology An argument that starts from some accepted experience or fact to prove that there must be something which is beyond experience but which is a necessary condition for making the accepted experience or fact possible. The goal of a transcendental argument is to establish the transcendental dialectic truth of this precondition. If there is something X of which Y is a necessary condition, then Y must be true. This form of argument became prominent in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where he argued that the existence of some fundamental a priori concepts, namely the categories, and of space and time as pure forms of sensibility, are necessary to make experience possible. In contemporary philosophy, transcendental arguments are widely proposed as a way of refuting skepticism. Wittgenstein used this form of argument to reject the possibility of a private language that only the speaker could understand. Peter Strawson employs a transcendental argument to prove the perception-independent existence of material particulars and to reject a skeptical attitude toward the existence of other minds. There is disagreement about the kind of necessity involved in transcendental arguments, and Barry Stroud has raised important questions about the possibility of transcendental arguments succeeding. “A transcendental argument attempts to prove q by proving it is part of any correct explanation of p, by proving it a precondition of p’s possibility.” Nozick Philosophical Explanations transcendental deduction Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics For Kant, the argument to prove that certain a priori concepts are legitimately, universally, necessarily, and exclusively applicable to objects of experience. Kant employed this form of argument to establish the legitimacy of space and time as the forms of intuition, of the claims of the moral law in the Critique of Practical Reason, and of the claims of the aesthetic judgment of taste in the Critique of Judgement. However, the most influential example of this form of argument appeared in the Critique of Pure Reason as the transcendental deduction of the categories. The metaphysical deduction set out the origin and character of the categories, and the task of the transcendental deduction was to demonstrate that these a priori concepts do apply to objects of experience and hence to prove the objective validity of the categories. The strategy of the proof is to show that objects can be thought of only by means of the categories. In sensibility, objects are subject to the forms of space and time. In understanding, experienced objects must stand under the conditions of the transcendental unity of apperception. Because these conditions require the determination of objects by the pure concepts of the understanding, there can be no experience that is not subject to the categories. The categories, therefore, are justified in their application to appearances as conditions of the possibility of experience. In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Kant extensively rewrote the transcendental deduction, although he held that the result remained the same. The first version emphasized the subjective unity of consciousness, while the second version stressed the objective character of the unity, and it is therefore possible to distinguish between a subjective and objective deduction. The second version was meant to clarify the argument, but remained extremely difficult to interpret and assess. The presence of the two versions of this fundamental argument makes interpretation even more demanding. Generally speaking, European philosophers prefer the subjective version, while Anglo-American philosophers prefer the objective version. The transcendental deduction of the categories was a revolutionary development in modern philosophy. It was the main device by which Kant sought to overcome the errors and limitations of both rationalism and empiricism and propelled philosophy into a new phase. “The explanation of the manner in which concepts can thus relate a priori to objects I entitle their transcendental deduction.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. metaphysical realism, in the widest sense, the view that (a) there are real objects (usually the view is concerned with spatiotemporal objects), (b) they exist independently of our experience or our knowledge of them, and (c) they have properties and enter into relations independently of the concepts with which we understand them or of the language with which we describe them. Anti-realism is any view that rejects one or more of these three theses, though if (a) is rejected the rejection of (b) and (c) follows trivially. (If it merely denies the existence of material things, then its traditional name is ‘idealism.’) Metaphysical realism, in all of its three parts, is shared by common sense, the sciences, and most philosophers. The chief objection to it is that we can form no conception of real objects, as understood by it, since any such conception must rest on the concepts we already have and on our language and experience. To accept the objection seems to imply that we can have no knowledge of real objects as they are in themselves, and that truth must not be understood as correspondence to such objects. But this itself has an even farther reaching consequence: either (i) we should accept the seemingly absurd view that there are no real objects (since the objection equally well applies to minds and their states, to concepts and words, to properties and relations, to experiences, etc.), for we should hardly believe in the reality of something of which we can form no conception at all; or (ii) we must face the seemingly hopeless task of a drastic change in what we mean by ‘reality’, ‘concept’, ‘experience’, ‘knowledge’, ‘truth’, and much else. On the other hand, the objection may be held to reduce to a mere tautology, amounting to ‘We (can) know reality only as we (can) know it’, and then it may be argued that no substantive thesis, which anti-realism claims to be, is derivable from a mere tautology. Yet even if the objection is a tautology, it serves to force us to avoid a simplistic view of our cognitive relationship to the world. In discussions of universals, metaphysical realism is the view that there are universals, and usually is contrasted with nominalism. But this either precludes a standard third alternative, namely conceptualism, or simply presupposes that concepts are general words (adjectives, common nouns, verbs) or uses of such words. If this presupposition is accepted, then indeed conceptualism would be the same as nominalism, but this should be argued, not legislated verbally. Traditional conceptualism holds that concepts are particular mental entities, or at least mental dispositions, that serve the classificatory function that universals have been supposed to serve and also explain the classificatory function that general words undoubtedly also serve. -- metaphysics, most generally, the philosophical investigation of the nature, constitution, and structure of reality. It is broader in scope than science, e.g., physics and even cosmology (the science of the nature, structure, and origin of the universe as a whole), since one of its traditional concerns is the existence of non-physical entities, e.g., God. It is also more fundamental, since it investigates questions science does not address but the answers to which it presupposes. Are there, for instance, physical objects at all, and does every event have a cause? So understood, metaphysics was rejected by positivism on the ground that its statements are “cognitively meaningless” since they are not empirically verifiable. More recent philosophers, such as Quine, reject metaphysics on the ground that science alone provides genuine knowledge. In The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (1954), Bergmann argued that logical positivism, and any view such as Quine’s, presupposes a metaphysical theory. And the positivists’ criterion of cognitive meaning was never formulated in a way satisfactory even to them. A successor of the positivist attitude toward metaphysics is Grice’s tutee at St. John’s – for his Logic Paper for the PPE -- P. F. Strawson’s preference (especially in Individuals: an essay in descriptive metaphysics) for what he calls descriptive metaphysics, which is “content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world,” as contrasted with revisionary metaphysics, which is “concerned to produce a better structure.” The view, sometimes considered scientific (but an assumption rather than an argued theory), that all that there is, is spatiotemporal (a part of “nature”) and is knowable only through the methods of the sciences, is itself a metaphysics, namely metaphysical naturalism (not to be confused with natural philosophy). It is not part of science itself. In its most general sense, metaphysics may seem to coincide with philosophy as a whole, since anything philosophy investigates is presumably a part of reality, e.g., knowledge, values, and valid reasoning. But it is useful to reserve the investigation of such more specific topics for distinct branches of philosophy, e.g., epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and logic, since they raise problems peculiar to themselves. Perhaps the most familiar question in metaphysics is whether there are only material entities – materialism – or only mental entities, i.e., minds and their states – idealism – or both – dualism. Here ‘entity’ has its broadest sense: anything real. More specific questions of metaphysics concern the existence and nature of certain individuals – also called particulars – (e.g., God), or certain properties (e.g., are there properties that nothing exemplifies?) or relations (e.g., is there a relation of causation that is a necessary connection rather than a mere regular conjunction between events?). The nature of space and time is another important example of such a more specific topic. Are space and time peculiar individuals that “contain” ordinary individuals, or are they just systems of relations between individual things, such as being (spatially) higher or (temporally) prior. Whatever the answer, space and time are what render a world out of the totality of entities that are parts of it. Since on any account of knowledge, our knowledge of the world is extremely limited, concerning both its spatial and temporal dimensions and its inner constitution, we must allow for an indefinite number of possible ways the world may be, might have been, or will be. And this thought gives rise to the idea of an indefinite number of possible worlds. This idea is useful in making vivid our understanding of the nature of necessary truth (a necessarily true proposition is one that is true in all possible worlds) and thus is commonly employed in modal logic. But the idea can also make possible worlds seem real, a highly controversial doctrine. The notion of a spatiotemporal world is commonly that employed in discussions of the socalled issue of realism versus anti-realism, although this issue has also been raised with respect to universals, values, and numbers, which are not usually considered spatiotemporal. While there is no clear sense in asserting that nothing is real, there seems to be a clear sense in asserting that there is no spatiotemporal world, especially if it is added that there are minds and their ideas. This was Berkeley’s view. But contemporary philosophers who raise questions about the reality of the spatiotemporal world are not comfortable with Berkeleyan minds and ideas and usually just somewhat vaguely speak of “ourselves” and our “representations.” The latter are themselves often understood as material (states of our brains), a clearly inconsistent position for anyone denying the reality of the spatiotemporal world. Usually, the contemporary anti-realist does not actually deny it but rather adopts a view resembling Kant’s transcendental idealism. Our only conception of the world, the anti-realist would argue, rests on our perceptual and conceptual faculties, including our language. But then what reason do we have to think that this conception is true, that it corresponds to the world as the world is in itself? Had our faculties and language been different, surely we would have had very different conceptions of the world. And very different conceptions of it are possible even in terms of our present faculties, as seems to be shown by the fact that very different scientific theories can be supported by exactly the same data. So far, we do not have anti-realism proper. But it is only a short step to it: if our conception of an independent spatiotemporal world is necessarily subjective, then we have no good reason for supposing that there is such a world, especially since it seems selfcontradictory to speak of a conception that is independent of our conceptual faculties. It is clear that this question, like almost all the questions of general metaphysics, is at least in part epistemological. Metaphysics can also be understood in a more definite sense, suggested by Aristotle’s notion (in his Metaphysics, the title of which was given by an early editor of his works, not by Aristotle himself) of “first philosophy,” namely, the study of being qua being, i.e., of the most general and necessary characteristics that anything must have in order to count as a being, an entity (ens). Sometimes ‘ontology’ is used in this sense, but this is by no means common practice, ‘ontology’ being often used as a synonym of ‘metaphysics’. Examples of criteria (each of which is a major topic in metaphysics) that anything must meet in order to count as a being, an entity, are the following. (A) Every entity must be either an individual thing (e.g., Socrates and this book), or a property (e.g., Socrates’ color and the shape of this book), or a relation (e.g., marriage and the distance between two cities), or an event (e.g., Socrates’ death), or a state of affairs (e.g., Socrates’ having died), or a set (e.g., the set of Greek philosophers). These kinds of entities are usually called categories, and metaphysics is very much concerned with the question whether these are the only categories, or whether there are others, or whether some of them are not ultimate because they are reducible to others (e.g., events to states of affairs, or individual things to temporal series of events). (B) The existence, or being, of a thing is what makes it an entity. (C) Whatever has identity and is distinct from everything else is an entity. (D) The nature of the “connection” between an entity and its properties and relations is what makes it an entity. Every entity must have properties and perhaps must enter into relations with at least some other entities. (E) Every entity must be logically self-consistent. It is noteworthy that after announcing his project of first philosophy, Aristotle immediately embarked on a defense of the law of non-contradiction. Concerning (A) we may ask (i) whether at least some individual things (particulars) are substances, in the Aristotelian sense, i.e., enduring through time and changes in their properties and relations, or whether all individual things are momentary. In that case, the individuals of common sense (e.g., this book) are really temporal series of momentary individuals, perhaps events such as the book’s being on a table at a specific instant. We may also ask (ii) whether any entity has essential properties, i.e., properties without which it would not exist, or whether all properties are accidental, in the sense that the entity could exist even if it lost the property in question. We may ask (iii) whether properties and relations are particulars or universals, e.g., whether the color of this page and the color of the next page, which (let us assume) are exactly alike, are two distinct entities, each with its separate spatial location, or whether they are identical and thus one entity that is exemplified by, perhaps even located in, the two pages. Concerning (B), we may ask whether existence is itself a property. If it is, how is it to be understood, and if it is not, how are we to understand ‘x exists’ and ‘x does not exist’, which seem crucial to everyday and scientific discourse, just as the thoughts they express seem crucial to everyday and scientific thinking? Should we countenance, as Meinong did, objects having no existence, e.g. golden mountains, even though we can talk and think about them? We can talk and think about a golden mountain and even claim that it is true that the mountain is golden, while knowing all along that what we are thinking and talking about does not exist. If we do not construe non-existent objects as something, then we are committed to the somewhat startling view that everything exists. Concerning (C) we may ask how to construe informative identity statements, such as, to use Frege’s example, ‘The Evening Star is identical with the Morning Star’. This contrasts with trivial and perhaps degenerate statements, such as ‘The Evening Star is identical with the Evening Star’, which are almost never made in ordinary or scientific discourse. The former are essential to any coherent, systematic cognition (even to everyday recognition of persons and places). Yet they are puzzling. We cannot say that they assert of two things that they are one, even though ordinary language suggests precisely this. Neither can we just say that they assert that a certain thing is identical with itself, for this view would be obviously false if the statements are informative. The fact that Frege’s example includes definite descriptions (‘the Evening Star’, ‘the Morning Star’) is irrelevant, contrary to Russell’s view. Informative identity statements can also have as their subject terms proper names and even demonstrative pronouns (e.g., ‘Hesperus is identical with Phosphorus’ and ‘This [the shape of this page] is identical with that [the shape of the next page]’), the reference of which is established not by description but ostensively, perhaps by actual pointing. Concerning (D) we can ask about the nature of the relationship, usually called instantiation or exemplification, between an entity and its properties and relations. Surely, there is such a relationship. But it can hardly be like an ordinary relation such as marriage that connects things of the same kind. And we can ask what is the connection between that relation and the entities it relates, e.g., the individual thing on one hand and its properties and relations on the other. Raising this question seems to lead to an infinite regress, as Bradley held; for the supposed connection is yet another relation to be connected with something else. But how do we avoid the regress? Surely, an individual thing and its properties and relations are not unrelated items. They have a certain unity. But what is its character? Moreover, we can hardly identify the individual thing except by reference to its properties and relations. Yet if we say, as some have, that it is nothing but a bundle of its properties and relations, could there not be another bundle of exactly the same properties and relations, yet distinct from the first one? (This question concerns the so-called problem of individuation, as well as the principle of the identity of indiscernibles.) If an individual is something other than its properties and relations (e.g., what has been called a bare particular), it would seem to be unobservable and thus perhaps unknowable. Concerning (E), virtually no philosopher has questioned the law of non-contradiction. But there are important questions about its status. Is it merely a linguistic convention? Some have held this, but it seems quite implausible. Is the law of non-contradiction a deep truth about being qua being? If it is, (E) connects closely with (B) and (C), for we can think of the concepts of self-consistency, identity, and existence as the most fundamental metaphysical concepts. They are also fundamental to logic, but logic, even if ultimately grounded in metaphysics, has a rich additional subject matter (sometimes merging with that of mathematics) and therefore is properly regarded as a separate branch of philosophy. The word ‘metaphysics’ has also been used in at least two other senses: first, the investigation of entities and states of affairs “transcending” human experience, in particular, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will (this was Kant’s conception of the sort of metaphysics that, according to him, required “critique”); and second, the investigation of any alleged supernatural or occult phenomena, such as ghosts and telekinesis. The first sense is properly philosophical, though seldom occurring today. The second is strictly popular, since the relevant supernatural phenomena are most questionable on both philosophical and scientific grounds. They should not be confused with the subject matter of philosophical theology, which may be thought of as part of metaphysics in the general philosophical sense, though it was included by Aristotle in the subject matter of metaphysics in his sense of the study of being qua being. Refs.: H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson, “Seminars on Aristotle’s Categoriae,” Oxford.

metaphysical wisdom: J. London-born philosopher, cited by H. P. Grice in his third programme lecture on Metaphysics. “Wisdom used to say that metaphysics is nonsense, but INTERESTING nonsense.” Some more “contemporary” accounts of “metaphysics” sound, on the face of it at least, very different from either of these.   Consider, for example, from the OTHER place, John Wisdom's description of a metaphysical, shall we say, ‘statement’ – I prefer ‘utterance’ or pronouncement!  Wisdom says that a metaphysical, shall we say, ‘proposition’ is, characteristically, a sort of illuminating falsehood, a pointed paradox, which uses what Wisdom calls ‘ordinary language’ in a disturbing, baffling, and even shocking way, but not otiosely, but in order to make your tutee aware of a hidden difference or a hidden resemblance between this thing and that thing – a difference and a resemblance hidden by our ordinary ways of “talking.”  The metaphysician renders what is clear, obscure.  And the metaphysician MUST retort to some EXTRA-ordinary language, as Wisdom calls it!    Of course, to be fair to Wisdom and the OTHER place, Wisdom does not claim this to be a complete characterisation, nor perhaps a literally correct one.   Since Wisdom loves a figure of speech and a figure of thought!  Perhaps what Wisdom claims should *itself* be seen as an illuminating paradox, a meta-meta-physical one!  In any case, its relation to Aristotle's, or, closer to us, F. H. Bradley's, account of the matter is not obvious, is it?  But perhaps a relation CAN be established.   Certainly not every metaphysical statement is a paradox serving to call attention to an usually unnoticed difference or resemblance.   For many a metaphysical statement is so obscure (or unperspicuous, as I prefer) that it takes long training, usually at Oxford, before the metaphysician’s meaning can be grasped.  A paradox, such as Socrates’s, must operate with this or that familiar concept.  For the essence of a paradox is that it administers a shock, and you cannot shock your tutee when he is standing on such unfamiliar ground that he has no particular expectations.   Nevertheless there IS a connection between “metaphysics” and Wisdom's kind of paradox.   He is not speaking otiosely!  Suppose we consider the paradox:  i. Everyone is really always alone.   Considered by itself, it is no more than an epigram -- rather a flat one  - about the human condition.   The implicaturum, via hyperbole, is “I am being witty.”  The pronouncement (i)  might be said, at least, to minimise the difference between “being BY oneself” and “being WITH other people,” Heidegger’s “Mit-Sein.”  But now consider the pronouncement (i), not simply by itself, but surrounded and supported by a certain kind of “metaphysical” argument: by a “metaphysical” argument to the effect that what passes for “knowledge” of the other's mental or psychological process is, at best, an unverifiable conjecture, since the mind (or soul) and the body are totally distinct things, and the working of the mind (or soul, as Aristotle would prefer, ‘psyche’) is always withdrawn behind the screen of its bodily manifestations, as Witters would have it. (Not in vain Wisdom calls himself or hisself a disciple of Witters!)   When this solitude-affirming paradox, (i) is seen in the context of a general theory about the soul and the body and the possibilities and limits of so-called “knowledge” (as in “Knowledge of other minds,” to use Wisdom’s fashionable sobriquet), when it is seen as embodying such a “metaphysical” theory, indeed the paradox BECOMES clearly a “metaphysical” statement.   But the fact that the statement or proposition is most clearly seen as “metaphysical” in such a setting does not mean that there is no “metaphysics” at all in it when it is deprived of the setting. (Cf. my “The general theory of context.”). An utterance like  (ii) Everyone is alone.  invites us to change, for a moment at least and in one respect, our ordinary way of looking at and talking about things, and hints (or the metaphysician implicates rather) that the changed view the tutee gets is the truer, the profounder, view.   Cf. Cook Wilson, “What we know we know,” as delighting this air marshal. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Metaphysics,” in D. F. Pears, “The nature of metaphysics: the Third-Programme Lectures for 1953.”

Totum -- Holos – holism -- Methodus -- methodological holism, also called metaphysical holism, the thesis that with respect to some system there is explanatory emergence, i.e., the laws of the more complex situations in the system are not deducible by way of any composition laws or laws of coexistence from the laws of the simpler or simplest situation(s). Explanatory emergence may exist in a system for any of the following reasons: that at some more complex level a variable interacts that does not do so at simpler levels, that a property of the “whole” interacts with properties of the “parts,” that the relevant variables interact by different laws at more complex levels owing to the complexity of the levels, or (the limiting case) that strict lawfulness breaks down at some more complex level. Thus, explanatory emergence does not presuppose descriptive emergence, the thesis that there are properties of “wholes” (or more complex situations) that cannot be defined through the properties of the “parts” (or simpler situations). The opposite of methodological holism is methodological individualism, also called explanatory reductionism, according to which all laws of the “whole” (or more complex situations) can be deduced from a combination of the laws of the simpler or simplest situation(s) and either some composition laws or laws of coexistence (depending on whether or not there is descriptive emergence). Methodological individualists need not deny that there may be significant lawful connections among properties of the “whole,” but must insist that all such properties are either definable through, or connected by laws of coexistence with, properties of the “parts.”

michelstaedter: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Michelstaedter: retorica e persuasione," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

migliio: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Miglio," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

middle platonism, the period of Platonism between Antiochus of Ascalon and Plotinus, characterized by a rejection of the skeptical stance of the New Academy and by a gradual advance, with many individual variations, toward a comprehensive dogmatic position on metaphysical principles, while exhibiting a certain latitude, as between Stoicizing and Peripateticizing positions, in the sphere of ethics. Antiochus himself was much influenced by Stoic materialism (though disagreeing with the Stoics in ethics), but in the next generation a neo-Pythagorean influence made itself felt, generating the mix of doctrines that one may most properly term Middle Platonic. From Eudorus of Alexandria (fl. c.25 B.C.) on, a transcendental, two-world metaphysic prevailed, featuring a supreme god, or Monad, a secondary creator god, and a world soul, with which came a significant change in ethics, substituting, as an ‘end of goods’ (telos), “likeness to God” (from Plato, Theaetetus 176b), for the Stoicizing “assimilation to nature” of Antiochus. Our view of the period is hampered by a lack of surviving texts, but it is plain that, in the absence of a central validating authority (the Academy as an institution seems to have perished in the wake of the capture of Athens by Mithridates in 88 B.C.), a considerable variety of doctrine prevailed among individual Platonists and schools of Platonists, particularly in relation to a preference for Aristotelian or Stoic principles of ethics. Most known activity occurred in the late first and second centuries A.D. Chief figures in this period are Plutarch of Chaeronea (c.45–125), Calvenus Taurus (fl. c.145), and Atticus (fl. c.175), whose activity centered on Athens (though Plutarch remained loyal to Chaeronea in Boeotia); Gaius (fl. c.100) and Albinus (fl. c.130) – not to be identified with “Alcinous,” author of the Didaskalikos; the rhetorician Apuleius of Madaura (fl. c.150), who also composed a useful treatise on the life and doctrines of Plato; and the neo-Pythagoreans Moderatus of Gades (fl. c.90), Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl. c.140), and Numenius (fl. c.150), who do not, however, constitute a “school.” Good evidence for an earlier stage of Middle Platonism is provided by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c.25 B.C.–A.D. 50). Perhaps the single most important figure for the later Platonism of Plotinus and his successors is Numenius, of whose works we have only fragments. His speculations on the nature of the first principle, however, do seem to have been a stimulus to Plotinus in his postulation of a supraessential One. Plutarch is important as a literary figure, though most of his serious philosophical works are lost; and the handbooks of Alcinous and Apuleius are significant for our understanding of second-century Platonism.Luigi Speranza, “Middle Griceianism and Middle Platonism, Compared.”

Miletusians, or Ionian Miletusians, or Milesians, the pre-Socratic philosophers of Miletus, a Grecian city-state on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes produced the earliest philosophies, stressing an “arche” or material source from which the cosmos and all things in it were generated: water for Thales, and then there’s air, fire, and earth – the fifth Grice called the ‘quintessentia.’

more grice to the mill: Mill: Scots-born philosopher (“One should take grice to one mill but not to the mill –“ Grice --) and social theorist. He applied the utilitarianism of his contemporary Bentham to such social matters as systems of education and government, law and penal systems, and colonial policy. He also advocated the associationism of Hume. Mill was an influential thinker in early nineteenth-century London, but his most important role in the history of philosophy was the influence he had on his son, J. S. Mill. He raised his more famous son as a living experiment in his associationist theory of education. His utilitarian views were developed and extended by J. S. Mill, while his associationism was also adopted by his son and became a precursor of the latter’s phenomenalism.  More grice to the mill -- Mill, Scots London-born empiricist philosopher and utilitarian social reformer. He was the son of Mill, a leading defender of Bentham’s utilitarianism, and an advocate of reforms based on that philosophy. Mill was educated by his father (and thus “at Oxford we always considered him an outsider!” – Grice) in accordance with the principles of the associationist psychology adopted by the Benthamites and deriving from David Hartley, and was raised with the expectation that he would become a defender of the principles of the Benthamite school. Mill begins the study of Grecian at three and Roman at eight, and later assisted Mill in educating his brothers. He went to France to learn the language (“sc. French --” Grice ), and studied chemistry and mathematics at Montpellier. He wrote regularly for the Westminster Review, the Benthamite journal. He underwent a mental crisis that lasted some months. This he later attributed to his rigid education; in any case he emerged from a period of deep depression still advocating utilitarianism but in a very much revised version. Mill visits Paris during the revolution, meeting Lafayette and other popular leaders, and was introduced to the writings of Saint-Simon and Comte. He also met Harriet Taylor, to whom he immediately became devoted. They married only in 1851, when Taylor died. He joined the India House headquarters of the East India Company, serving as an examiner until the company was dissolved in 1858 in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny. Mill sat in Parliament. Harriet dies and is buried at Avignon, where Mill thereafter regularly resided for half of each year. Mill’s major works are his “System of Logic, Deductive and Inductive,” “Political Economy,” “On Liberty,” “Utilitarianism,” in Fraser’s Magazine, “The Subjection of Women” – Grice: “I wrote a paper for Hardie on this. His only comment was: ‘what do you mean by ‘of’?” --; “An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy,” and “Religion.” His writing style is excellent, and his history of his own mental development, the “Autobiography” is a major Victorian literary text. His main opponents philosophically are Whewell and Hamilton, and it is safe to say that after Mill their intuitionism in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and ethics could no longer be defended. Mill’s own views were later to be eclipsed by those of such Oxonian lumaries as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and the other Oxonian Hegelian idealists (Bosanquet, Pater). His views in metaphysics and philosophy of science have been revived and defended by Russell and the logical positivists, while his utilitarian ethics has regained its status as one of the major ethical theories. His social philosophy deeply infuenced the Fabians and other groups on the English left; its impact continues. Mill was brought up on the basis of, and to believe in, the strict utilitarianism of his father. His own development largely consisted in his attempts to broaden it, to include a larger and more sympathetic view of human nature, and to humanize its program to fit this broader view of human beings. In his own view, no doubt largely correct, he did not so much reject his father’s principles as fill in the gaps and eliminate rigidities and crudities. He continued throughout his life his father’s concern to propagate principles conceived as essential to promoting human happiness. These extended from moral principles to principles of political economy to principles of logic and metaphysics. Mill’s vision of the human being was rooted in the psychological theories he defended. Arguing against the intuitionism of Reid and Whewell, he extended the associationism of his father. On this theory, ideas have their genetic antecedents in sensation, a complex idea being generated out of a unique set of simple, elementary ideas, through associations based on regular patterns in the presented sensations. Psychological analysis reveals the elementary parts of ideas and is thus the means for investigating the causal origins of our ideas. The elder Mill followed Locke in conceiving analysis on the model of definition, so that the psychological elements are present in the idea they compose and the idea is nothing but its associated elements. Mill emerged from his mental crisis with the recognition that mental states are often more than the sum of the ideas that are their genetic antecedents. On the revised model of analysis, the analytical elements are not actually present in the idea, but are present only dispositionally, ready to be recovered by association under the analytical set. Moreover, it is words that are defined, not ideas, though words become general only by becoming associated with ideas. Analysis thus became an empirical task, rather than something settled a priori according to one’s metaphysical predispositions, as it had been for Mill’s predecessors. The revised psychology allowed the younger Mill to account empirically in a much more subtle way than could the earlier associationists for the variations in our states of feeling. Thus, for example, the original motive to action is simple sensations of pleasure, but through association things originally desired as means become associated with pleasure and thereby become desirable as ends, as parts of one’s pleasure. But these acquired motives are not merely the sum of the simple pleasures that make them up; they are more than the sum of those genetic antecedents. Thus, while Mill holds with his father that persons seek to maximize their pleasures, unlike his father he also holds that not all ends are selfish, and that pleasures are not only quantitatively but also qualitatively distinct. In ethics, then, Mill can hold with the intuitionists that our moral sentiments are qualitatively distinct from the lower pleasures, while denying the intuitionist conclusion that they are innate. Mill urges, with his father and Bentham, that the basic moral norm is the principle of utility, that an action is right provided it maximizes human welfare. Persons always act to maximize their own pleasure, but the general human welfare can be among the pleasures they seek. Mill’s position thus does not have the problems that the apparently egoistic psychology of his father created. The only issue is whether a person ought to maximize human welfare, whether he ought to be the sort of person who is so motivated. Mill’s own ethics is that this is indeed what one ought to be, and he tries to bring this state of human being about in others by example, and by urging them to expand the range of their human sympathy through poetry like that of Wordsworth, through reading the great moral teachers such as Jesus and Socrates, and by other means of moral improvement. Mill also offers an argument in defense of the principle of utility. Against those who, like Whewell, argue that there is no basic right to pleasure, he argues that as a matter of psychological fact, people seek only pleasure, and concludes that it is therefore pointless to suggest that they ought to do anything other than this. The test of experience thus excludes ends other than pleasure. This is a plausible argument. Less plausible is his further argument that since each seeks her own pleasure, the general good is the (ultimate) aim of all. This latter argument unfortunately presupposes the invalid premise that the law for a whole follows from laws about the individual parts of the whole. Other moral rules can be justified by their utility and the test of experience. For example, such principles of justice as the rules of property and of promise keeping are justified by their role in serving certain fundamental human needs. Exceptions to such secondary rules can be justified by appeal to the principle of utility. But there is also utility in not requiring in every application a lengthy utilitarian calculation, which provides an objective justification for overlooking what might be, objectively considered in terms of the principle of utility, an exception to a secondary rule. Logic and philosophy of science. The test of experience is also brought to bear on norms other than those of morality, e.g., those of logic and philosophy of science. Mill argues, against the rationalists, that science is not demonstrative from intuited premises. Reason in the sense of deductive logic is not a logic of proof but a logic of consistency. The basic axioms of any science are derived through generalization from experience. The axioms are generic and delimit a range of possible hypotheses about the specific subject matter to which they are applied. It is then the task of experiment and, more generally, observation to eliminate the false and determine which hypothesis is true. The axioms, the most generic of which is the law of the uniformity of nature, are arrived at not by this sort of process of elimination but by induction by simple enumeration: Mill argues plausibly that on the basis of experience this method becomes more reliable the more generic is the hypothesis that it is used to justify. But like Hume, Mill holds that for any generalization from experience the evidence can never be sufficient to eliminate all possibility of doubt. Explanation for Mill, as for the logical positivists, is by subsumption under matter-of-fact generalizations. Causal generalizations that state sufficient or necessary and sufficient conditions are more desirable as explanations than mere regularities. Still more desirable is a law or body of laws that gives necessary and sufficient conditions for any state of a system, i.e., a body of laws for which there are no explanatory gaps. As for explanation of laws, this can proceed either by filling in gaps or by subsuming the law under a generic theory that unifies the laws of several areas. Mill argues that in the social sciences the subject matter is too complex to apply the normal methods of experiment. But he also rejects the purely deductive method of the Benthamite political economists such as his father and David Ricardo. Rather, one must deduce the laws for wholes, i.e., the laws of economics and sociology, from the laws for the parts, i.e., the laws of psychology, and then test these derived laws against the accumulated data of history. Mill got the idea for this methodology of the social sciences from Comte, but unfortunately it is vitiated by the false idea, already noted, that one can deduce without any further premise the laws for wholes from the laws for the parts. Subsequent methodologists of the social sciences have come to substitute the more reasonable methods of statistics for this invalid method Mill proposes. Mill’s account of scientific method does work well for empirical sciences, such as the chemistry of his day. He was able to show, too, that it made good sense of a great deal of physics, though it is arguable that it cannot do justice to theories that explain the atomic and subatomic structure of matter – something Mill himself was prepared to acknowledge. He also attempted to apply his views to geometry, and even more implausibly, to arithmetic. In these areas, he was certainly bested by Whewell, and the world had to wait for the logical work of Russell and Whitehead before a reasonable empiricist account of these areas became available. Metaphysics. The starting point of all inference is the sort of observation we make through our senses, and since we know by experience that we have no ideas that do not derive from sense experience, it follows that we cannot conceive a world beyond what we know by sense. To be sure, we can form generic concepts, such as that of an event, which enable us to form concepts of entities that we cannot experience, e.g., the concept of the tiny speck of sand that stopped my watch or the concept of the event that is the cause of my present sensation. Mill held that what we know of the laws of sensation is sufficient to make it reasonable to suppose that the immediate cause of one’s present sensation is the state of one’s nervous system. Our concept of an objective physical object is also of this sort; it is the set of events that jointly constitute a permanent possible cause of sensation. It is our inductive knowledge of laws that justifies our beliefs that there are entities that fall under these concepts. The point is that these entities, while unsensed, are (we reasonably believe) part of the world we know by means of our senses. The contrast is to such things as the substances and transcendent Ideas of rationalists, or the God of religious believers, entities that can be known only by means that go beyond sense and inductive inferences therefrom. Mill remained essentially pre-Darwinian, and was willing to allow the plausibility of the hypothesis that there is an intelligent designer for the perceived order in the universe. But this has the status of a scientific hypothesis rather than a belief in a substance or a personal God transcending the world of experience and time. Whewell, at once the defender of rationalist ideas for science and for ethics and the defender of established religion, is a special object for Mill’s scorn. Social and political thought. While Mill is respectful of the teachings of religious leaders such as Jesus, the institutions of religion, like those of government and of the economy, are all to be subjected to criticism based on the principle of utility: Do they contribute to human welfare? Are there any alternatives that could do better? Thus, Mill argues that a free-market economy has many benefits but that the defects, in terms of poverty for many, that result from private ownership of the means of production may imply that we should institute the alternative of socialism or public ownership of the means of production. He similarly argues for the utility of liberty as a social institution: under such a social order individuality will be encouraged, and this individuality in turn tends to produce innovations in knowledge, technology, and morality that contribute significantly to improving the general welfare. Conversely, institutions and traditions that stifle individuality, as religious institutions often do, should gradually be reformed. Similar considerations argue on the one hand for democratic representative government and on the other for a legal system of rights that can defend individuals from the tyranny of public opinion and of the majority. Status of women. Among the things for which Mill campaigned were women’s rights, women’s suffrage, and equal access for women to education and to occupations. He could not escape his age and continued to hold that it was undesirable for a woman to work to help support her family. While he disagreed with his father and Bentham that all motives are egoistic and self-interested, he nonetheless held that in most affairs of economics and government such motives are dominant. He was therefore led to disagree with his father that votes for women are unnecessary since the male can speak for the family. Women’s votes are needed precisely to check the pursuit of male self-interest. More generally, equality is essential if the interests of the family as such are to be served, rather than making the family serve male self-interest as had hitherto been the case. Changing the relation between men and women to one of equality will force both parties to curb their self-interest and broaden their social sympathies to include others. Women’s suffrage is an essential step toward the moral improvement of humankind. Grice: “I am fascinated by how Griceian Mill can be.” “In treating of the ‘proposition,’ some considerations of a comparatively elementary nature respecting its form must be premised,and the ‘import’ which the emisor conveyed by a token of an expression of a ‘proposition’ – for one cannot communicate but that the cat is on the mat -- . A proposition is a move in the conversational game in which a feature (P) is predicated of the subject (S) – The S is P – The subject and the predicate – as in “Strawson’s dog is shaggy” -- are all that is necessarily required to make up a proposition. But as we can not conclude from merely seeing two “Strawson’s dog” and “shaggy” put together, that “Strawson’s dog” is the subject and “shaggy” the predicate, that is, that the predicate is intended to be ‘predicated’ of the subject, it is necessary that there should be some mode or form of indicating that such is, in Griceian parlance, the ‘intention,’ sc. some sign to signal this predication – my father says that as I was growing up, I would say “dog shaggy” – The explicit communication of a predication is sometimes done by a slight alteration of the expression that is the predicate or the expression that is the subject – sc., a ‘casus’ – even if it is ‘rectum’ – or ‘obliquum’ --  inflectum.” Grice: “The example Mill gives is “Fire burns.”” “The change from ‘burn’ to ‘burns’ shows that the emisor intends to predicate the predicate “burn” of the subject “fire.” But this function is more commonly fulfilled by the copula, which serves the purporse of the sign of predication, “est,” (or by nothing at all as in my beloved Grecian! “Anthropos logikos,” -- when the predication is, again to use Griceian parlance, ‘intended.’” Grice: “Mill gives the example, ‘The king of France is smooth.” “It may seem to be implied, or implicated – implicatum, implicaturum -- not only that the quality ‘smooth’ can be predicated of the king of France, but moreover that there is a King of France. Grice: “Mill notes: ‘It’s different with ‘It is not the case that the king of France is smooth’”. “This, however should not rush us to think that ‘is’ is aequi-vocal, and that it can be ‘copula’ AND ‘praedicatum’, e. g. ‘… is a spatio-temporal continuant.’ Grice: “Mill then gives my example: ‘Pegasus is [in Grecian mythology – i. e. Pegasus is *believed* to exist by this or that Grecian mythographer], but does not exist.’” “A flying horse is a fiction of some Grecian poets.” Grice: “Mill hastens to add that the annulation of the implicaturum is implicit or contextual.” “By uttering ‘A flying horse is a Griceian allegory’ the emisor cannot possibly implicate that a flying horse is a spatio-temporal continuant, since by uttering the proposition itself the emisor is expressly asserting that the thing has no real existence.” “Many volumes might be filled” – Grice: “And will be filled by Strawson!” -- with the frivolous speculations concerning the nature of being (ƒø D½, øPÃw±, ens, entitas, essentia, and the like), which have arisen from overlooking the implicaturum of ‘est’; from supposing that when by uttering “S est P” the emisor communicates that S is a spatio-temporal continuant. when by uttering it, the emisor communicates that the S is some *specified* thing, a horse and a flier, to be a phantom, a mythological construct, or the invention of the journalists (like Marmaduke Bloggs, who climbed Mt. Everest on hands and knees) even to be a nonentity (as a squared circle) it must still, at bottom, answer to the same idea; and that a proposition must be found for it which shall suit all these cases. The fog which rises from this very narrow spot diffuses itself over the whole surface of ontology. Yet it becomes us not to triumph over the great intellect of Ariskant because we are now able to preserve ourselves from many errors into which he, perhaps inevitably, fell. The fire-teazer of a steam-engine produces by his exertions far greater effects than Milo of Crotona could, but he is not therefore a stronger man. The Grecians – like some uneducated Englishman -- seldom knew any language but their own! This render it far more difficult for *them* than it is for us, to acquire a readiness in detecting the implicaturum. One of the advantages of having accurately studied Grecian and Roman at Clifton, especially of those languages which Ariskant used as the vehicle of his thought, is the practical lesson we learn respecting the implicaturm, by finding that the same expression in Grecian, say (e. g. ‘is’) corresponds, on different occasions, to a different expression in Gricese, say (i. e. ‘hazz’). When not thus exercised, even the strongest understandings find it difficult to believe that things which fall under a class, have not in some respect or other a common nature; and often expend much labour very unprofitably (as is frequently done by Ariskant) in a vain attempt to discover in what this common nature consists. But, the habit once formed, intellects much inferior are capable of detecting even an impicaturum which is common or generalised to Grecian and Griceses: and it is surprising that this sous-entendu or impicaturum now under consideration, though it is ordinary at Oxford as well as in the ancient, should have been overlooked by almost every philosopher until Grice. Grice: “Mill was proud of Mill.” “The quantity of futilitarian speculation which had been caused by a misapprehension of the nature of the copula, is hinted at by Hobbes; but my father is the first who distinctly characterized the implicaturm, and point out to me how many errors in the received systems of philosophy it has had to answer for. It has, indeed, misled the moderns scarcely less than the ancients, though their mistakes, because our understandings are not yet so completely emancipated from their influence, do not appear equally irrational. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Grice to the Mill,” L. G. Wilton, “Mill’s mentalism,” for the Grice Club. Grice treasured Hardie’s invocation of Mill’s method during a traffic incident on the HIhg. Mill’s methods, procedures for discovering necessary conditions, sufficient conditions, and necessary and sufficient conditions, where these terms are used as follows: if whenever A then B (e.g., whenever there is a fire then oxygen is present), then B is a necessary (causal) condition for A; and if whenever C then D (e.g., whenever sugar is in water, then it dissolves), then C is a sufficient (causal) condition for D. Method of agreement. Given a pair of hypotheses about necessary conditions, e.g., (1) whenever A then B1 whenever A then B2, then an observation of an individual that is A but not B2 will eliminate the second alternative as false, enabling one to conclude that the uneliminated hypothesis is true. This method for discovering necessary conditions is called the method of agreement. To illustrate the method of agreement, suppose several people have all become ill upon eating potato salad at a restaurant, but have in other respects had quite different meals, some having meat, some vegetables, some desserts. Being ill and not eating meat eliminates the latter as the cause; being ill and not eating dessert eliminates the latter as cause; and so on. It is the condition in which the individuals who are ill agree that is not eliminated. We therefore conclude that this is the cause or necessary condition for the illness. Method of difference. Similarly, with respect to the pair of hypotheses concerning sufficient conditions, e.g., (2) whenever C1 then D whenever C2 then D, an individual that is C1 but not D will eliminate the first hypothesis and enable one to conclude that the second is true. This is the method of difference. A simple change will often yield an example of an inference to a sufficient condition by the method of difference. If something changes from C1 to C2, and also thereupon changes from notD to D, one can conclude that C2, in respect of which the instances differ, is the cause of D. Thus, Becquerel discovered that burns can be caused by radium, i.e., proximity to radium is a sufficient but not necessary condition for being burned, when he inferred that the radium he carried in a bottle in his pocket was the cause of a burn on his leg by noting that the presence of the radium was the only relevant causal difference between the time when the burn was present and the earlier time when it was not. Clearly, both methods can be generalized to cover any finite number of hypotheses in the set of alternatives. The two methods can be combined in the joint method of agreement and difference to yield the discovery of conditions that are both necessary and sufficient. Sometimes it is possible to eliminate an alternative, not on the basis of observation, but on the basis of previously inferred laws. If we know by previous inductions that no C2 is D, then observation is not needed to eliminate the second hypothesis of (2), and we can infer that what remains, or the residue, gives us the sufficient condition for D. Where an alternative is eliminated by previous inductions, we are said to use the method of residues. The methods may be generalized to cover quantitative laws. A cause of Q may be taken not to be a necessary and sufficient condition, but a factor P on whose magnitude the magnitude of Q functionally depends. If P varies when Q varies, then one can use methods of elimination to infer that P causes Q. This has been called the method of concomitant variation. More complicated methods are needed to infer what precisely is the function that correlates the two magnitudes. Clearly, if we are to conclude that one of (1) is true on the basis of the given data, we need an additional premise to the effect that there is at least one necessary condition for B and it is among the set consisting of A1 and A2. 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 571 Mimamsa mimesis 572 The existence claim here is known as a principle of determinism and the delimited range of alternatives is known as a principle of limited variety. Similar principles are needed for the other methods. Such principles are clearly empirical, and must be given prior inductive support if the methods of elimination are to be conclusive. In practice, generic scientific theories provide these principles to guide the experimenter. Thus, on the basis of the observations that justified Kepler’s laws, Newton was able to eliminate all hypotheses concerning the force that moved the planets about the sun save the inverse square law, provided that he also assumed as applying to this specific sort of system the generic theoretical framework established by his three laws of motion, which asserted that there exists a force accounting for the motion of the planets (determinism) and that this force satisfies certain conditions, e.g., the action-reaction law (limited variety). The eliminative methods constitute the basic logic of the experimental method in science. They were first elaborated by Francis Bacon (see J. Weinberg, Abstraction, Relation, and Induction, 1965). They were restated by Hume, elaborated by J. F. W. Herschel, and located centrally in scientific methodology by J. S. Mill. Their structure was studied from the perspective of modern developments in logic by Keynes, W. E. Johnson, and especially Broad. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Grice to the Mill,” G. L. Brook, “Mill’s Mentalism”, Sutherland, “Mill in Dodgson’s Semiotics.”

Icon: Iconicity and mimesis. Grice: “If it hurts, you involuntarily go ‘Ouch.’ ‘Ouch’ can voluntarily become a vehicle for communication, under voluntary control. But we must allow for any expression to become a vehicle for communication, even if there is no iconic or mimetic association -- (from Greek mimesis, ‘imitation’), the modeling of one thing on another, or the presenting of one thing by another; imitation. The concept played a central role in the account formulated by Plato and Aristotle of what we would now call the fine arts. The poet, the dramatist, the painter, the musician, the sculptor, all compose a mimesis of reality. Though Plato, in his account of painting, definitely had in mind that the painter imitates physical reality, the general concept of mimesis used by Plato and Aristotle is usually better translated by ‘representation’ than by ‘imitation’: it belongs to the nature of the work of art to represent, to re-present, reality. This representational or mimetic theory of art remained far and away the dominant theory in the West until the rise of Romanticism – though by no means everyone agreed with Plato that it is concrete items of physical reality that the artist represents. The hold of the mimetic theory was broken by the insistence of the Romantics that, rather than the work of art being an imitation, it is the artist who, in his or her creative activity, imitates Nature or God by composing an autonomous object. Few contemporary theorists of art would say that the essence of art is to represent; the mimetic theory is all but dead. In part this is a reflection of the power of the Romantic alternative to the mimetic theory; in part it is a reflection of the rise to prominence over the last century of nonobjective, abstract painting and sculpture and of “absolute” instrumental music. Nonetheless, the phenomenon of representation has not ceased to draw the attention of theorists. In recent years three quite different general theories of representation have appeared: Nelson Goodman’s (The Languages of Art), Nicholas Wolterstorff’s (Works and Worlds of Art), and Kendall Walton’s (Mimesis as Make-Believe). Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Aristotle’s mimesis and Paget’s ta-ta theory of communication.”

Ta-ta: Paget: author beloved by Grice, inventor of what Grice calls the “ta-ta” theory of communication.

Grice’s bellow -- “Ouch” – Grice’s theory of communication in “Meaning revisited.” Grice’s paradox of the ta-ta. Why would a simulation of pain be taken as a sign of pain if the sendee recognises that the emisor is simulating a ‘causally provoked,’ rather than under voluntary control, expression of pain. Grice’s wording is subtle and good. “Stage one in the operation involves the supposition that the creature actually voluntarily produces a certain sort of behaviour which is such that its nonvoluntary production would be evidence that the creature is, let us say, in pain.” Cf. Ockham, ‘risus naturaliter significat interiorem laetitiam.’ But the laughter does NOT resemble the inner joy. There is natural causality, but not iconicity. So what Grice and Ockham are after is ‘artificial laughter’ which does imitate (mimic) natural laughter. “Risus significat naturaliter interiorem laetitiam.” “Risus voluntaries significat NON-naturaliter interiorem laetitiam.” Ockham wants to say that it is via the iconicity of the artificial laughter that the communication is effected. So if ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, non-natural communication recapitulates natural communication. “Risus voluntarius non-significat naturaliter (via risus involutarius significans naturaliter) interiorem laetitiam.  “The kinds of cases of this which come most obviously to mind will be cases of faking or deception.” “A creature normally voluntarily produces behaviour not only when, but *because*, its nonvoluntary production would be evidence that the creature is in a certain state, with the effect that the rest of the world, other creatures around, treat the production, which is in fact voluntary, as if it were a nonvoluntary production.” “That is, they come to just the same conclusion about the creature’s being in the state in question, the signalled state.” Note Grice’s technical use of Shannon’s ‘signal.’  “The purpose of the creature’s producing the behaviour voluntarily would be so that the rest of the world should think that it is in the state which the nonvoluntary production would signify.”  Note that at this point, while it is behaviour that signifies – the metabolia has to apply ultimately to the emisor. So that it is the creature who signifies – or it signifies. The fact that Grice uses ‘it’ for the creature is telling – For, if Grice claims that only rational Homo sapiens can communicate, Homo sapiens is an ‘it.’  “In stage two not only does creature X produce this behaviour voluntarily, instead of nonvoluntarily, as in the primitive state.” By primitive he means Stage 0. “… but we also assume that it is *recognised* by another creature Y, involved with X in some transaction, as being the voluntary production of certain form of behaviour the nonvoluntary production of which evidences, say, pain.” So again, there is no iconicity. Does the “Ouch” in Stage 0 ‘imitate’ the pain. How can ‘pain,’ which is a state of the soul, be ‘imitated’ via a physical, material, medium? There are ways. Pain may involve some discomfort in the soul. The cry, “Ouch,” involuntary, ‘imitates this disturbance or discomfort. But what about inner joy and the laughter. Ape studies have demonstrated that the show of teeth is a sign of agreession. It’s not Mona Lisa’s smile. So Mona Lisa’s inner joy is signified by her smile. Is this iconic? Is there a resemblance or imitation here? Yes. Because the inner joy is the opposite of discomfort, and the distended muscles around the mouth resemble the distended state of the immaterial soul of Mona Lisa. As a functionalist, Grice was also interested in the input. What makes Mona Lisa smile? What makes you to utter “Ouch” when you step on a thorn? Is the disturbance (of pain, since this is the example Grice uses) or the distension of joy resemble the external stimulus? Yes. Because a thorn on the ground is NOT to be there – it is a disturbance of the environment. Looking at Leonardo da Vinci who actually is commanding, “Smile!” is enough of a stimulus for “The Gioconda” to become what Italians call ‘the gioconda.’  “That is, creature X is now supposed not just to simulate pain-behaviour, but also to be recognised as simulating pain-behaviour.” “The import of the recognition by Y that the production is voluntary UNDERMINES, of course, any tendency on the part of Y to come to the conclusion that creature X is in pain.” “So, one might ask, what would be required to restore the situation: what COULD be ADDED which would be an ‘antidote,’ so to speak, to the dissolution on the part of Y of the idea that X is in pain?” “A first step in this direction would be to go to what we might think of as stage three.” “Here, we suppose that creature Y not only recognises that the behaviour is voluntary on the part of X, but also recognises that X *intends* Y to recognise HIS [no longer its] behaviour as voluntary.” “That is, we have now undermined the idea that this is a straightforward piece of deception.” “Deceiving consists in trying to get a creature to accept certain things AS SIGNS [but cf. Grice on words not being signs in ‘Meaning’] as something or other without knowing that this is a faked case.” “Here,  however, we would have a sort of perverse faked case, in which something is faked but at the same time a clear indication is put in that the faking has been done.” Cf. Warhol on Campbell soup and why Aristotle found ‘mimesis’ so key “Creature Y can be thought of as initially BAFFLED by this conflicting performance.” “There is this creature, as it were, simulating pain, but announcing, in a certain sense, that this is what IT [again it, not he] is doing.” “What on earth can IT be up to?” “It seems to me that if Y does raise the question of why X should be doing this, it might first come up with the idea that X is engaging in some form of play or make-believe, a game to which, since X’s behaviour is seemingly directed TOWARDS Y [alla Kurt Lewin], Y is EXPECTED OR INTENDED to make some appropriate contribution. “Cases susceptible of such an interpretation I regard as belonging to stage four.” “But, we may suppose, there might be cases which could NOT be handled in this way.” “If Y is to be expected to be a fellow-participant with X in some form of play, it ought to be possible for Y to recognise what kind of contribution Y [the sendee – the signalee] is supposed to make; and we can envisage the possibility that Y has no clue on which to base such recognition, or again that though SOME form of contribution seems to be SUGGESTED, when Y obliges by coming up with it, X, instead of producing further pain-behaviour, gets cross and perhaps repeats its original, and now problematic, performance.” [“Ouch!”].  “We now reach stage five, at which Y supposes not that X is engaged in play, but that what X is doing is trying to get Y to believe OR ACCEPT THAT X *is* in pain.” That is, not just faking that he is in pain, but faking that he is in pain because he IS in pain. Surely the pain cannot be that GROSS if he has time to consider all this! So “communicating pain” applies to “MINOR pain,” which the Epicureans called “communicable pains” (like a tooth-ache – Vitters after reading Diels, came up with the idea that Marius was wrong and that a tooth-pain is NOT communicable!  “: that is, trying to get Y to believe in or accept the presence of that state in X which the produced behaviour, when produced NONVOLUNTARILY, in in fact a natural sign of, naturally means.” Here the under-metabolis is avoidable: “when produced nonvolutarily, in in fact THE EFFECT OF, or the consequence of.” And if you want to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition: “that STATE in X of which the produced behaviour is the CONSEQUENCE or EFFECT. CAUSATUM. The causans-causatum distinction.  “More specifically, one might say that at stage five, creature Y recognises that creature X in the first place INTENDS that Y recognise the production of the sign of pain (of what is USUALLY the sign of pain) to be voluntary, and further intends that Y should regard this first intention I1 as being a sufficient reason for Y to BELIEVE that X is in pain.” But would that expectation occur in a one-off predicament? “And that X has these intentions because he has the additional further INTENTION I3 that Y should not MERELY have sufficient REASON for believing that X is in pain, but should actually [and AND] believe it.” This substep shows that for Grice it’s the INFLUENCING and being influenced by others (or the institution of decision), rather than the exchange of information (giving and receiving information), which is basic. The protreptic, not the exhibitive. “Whether or not in these circumstances X will not merely recognise that X intends, in a certain rather QUEER way, to get Y to believe that X is in pain, whether Y not only recognises this but actually goes on to believe that X is in pain, would presumably DEPEND on a FURTHER SET OF CONDITIONS which can be summed up under the general heading that Y should regard X as TRUSTWORTHY [as a good meta-faker!] in one or another of perhaps a variety of ways.” This is Grice’s nod to G. J. Warnock’s complex analysis of the variety of ways in which one can be said to be ‘trustworthy’ – last chapter of ‘trustworthiness in conversation,’ in Warnock’s brilliant, “The object of morality.” “For example, suppose Y thinks that, either in general or at least in THIS type of CASE [this token, a one-off predicament? Not likely!] X would NOT want Y to believe that X is in pain UNLESS [to use R. Hall and H. L. A. Hart’s favourite excluder defeater] X really WERE in pain.” [Cf. Hardie, “Why do you use the subjunctive?” “Were Hardie to be here, I would respond!” – Grice]. “Suppose also (this would perhaps not apply to a case of pain but might apply to THE COMMUNICATION of other states [what is communicated is ONLY a state of the soul] that Y also believes that X is trustworthy, not just in the sense of not being malignant [malevolent, ill-willed, maleficent], but also in the sense of being, as it were, in general [semiotically] responsible, for example, being the sort of creature, who takes adequate trouble to make sure that what HE [not it] is trying to get the other creature to believe is in fact the case.” Sill, “’I have a toothache” never entails that the emisor has a toothache! – a sign is anything we can lie with!” (Eco). “… and who is not careless, negligent, or rash.” “Then, given the general fulfilment of the idea that Y regards X either in general or in this particular case of being trustworthy in this kind of competent, careful, way, one would regard it as RATIONAL [reasonable] not only for Y to recognise these intentions on the part of X that Y should have certain beliefs about X’s being in pain, but also for Y actually to pass to adopting these beliefs.” Stage six annuls mimesis, or lifts  the requirement of mimesis – “we relax this requirement.” “As Judith Baker suggests, it would be unmanly to utter (or ‘let out’) a (natural) bellow!” Here Grice speaks of the decibels of the emission of the bellow – as indicating this or that degree of pain. But what about “It’s raining.” We have a state of affairs (not necessarily a state in the soul of the emissor). So by relaxing the requirement, the emissor chooses a behaviour which is “suggestive, in some recognizable way” with the state of affairs of rain “without the performance having to be the causal effect of (or ‘response to,’ as Grice also has it) that state of affairs, sc. that it is raining.  The connection becomes “non-natural,” or ‘artificial’: any link will do – as long as the correlation is OBVIOUS, pre-arranged, or foreknown. – ‘one-off predicament’. There are problems with ‘stage zero’ and ‘stage six.’ When it comes to stage zero, Grice is supposing, obviously that a state of affairs is the CAUSE of some behaviour in a creature – since there is no interpretant – the phenomenon may very obliquely called ‘semiotic.’ “If a tree falls in the wood and nobody is listening…” – So stage zero need not involve a mimetic aspect. Since stage one involves ‘pain,’ i.e. the proposition that ‘X is in pain,’ as Grice has it. Or as we would have it, ‘A is in pain’ or ‘The emisor is in pain.’ Althought he uses the metaphor of the play where B is expected or intended to make an appropriate contribution or move in the game, it is one of action, he will have to accept that ‘The emisor is in pain’ and act appropriately. But Grice is not at all interested in the cycle of what B might do – as Gardiner is, when he talks of a ‘conversational dyad.’ Grice explores the conversational ‘dyad’ in his Oxford lectures on the conversational imlicaturum. A poetic line might not do but: “A: I’m out of gas.” B: “There’s a garage round the corner.” – is the conversational dyad. In B’s behaviour, we come to see that he has accepted that A is out of gas. And his ‘appropriate contribution’ in the game goes beyond that acceptance – he makes a ‘sentence’ move (“There is a garage round the corner.”). So strictly a conversational implicaturum is the communicatum by the second item in a conversational dyad. Now there are connections to be made between stage zero and stage six. Why? Well, because stage six is intended to broaden the range of propositions that are communicated to be OTHER than a ‘state’ in the emisor – X is in pain --. But Grice does not elaborate on the ‘essential psychological attitude’ requirement. Even if we require this requirement – Grice considers two requirements. The requirement he is interested in relaxing is that of the CAUSAL connection – he keeps using ‘natural’ misleadingly --. But can he get rid of it so easily? Because in stage six, if the emisor wants to communicate that the cat is on the mat, or that it is raining, it will be via his BELIEF that the cat is on the mat or that it is raining. The cat being on the mat or it being raining would CAUSE the emisor to have that belief. Believing is the CAUSAL consequence. Grice makes a comparison between the mimesis or resemblance of a bellow produced voluntarily or not – and expands on the decibels. The ‘information’ one may derive at stage 0 of hearing an emisor (who is unaware that he is being observed) is one that is such and such – and it is decoded by de-correlating the decibels of the bellow. More decibels, higher pain. There is a co-relation here. Grice ventures that perhaps that’s too much information (he is following someone’s else objection). Why would not X just ‘let out a natural bellow.’ Grice states there are – OBVIOUSLY – varioius reasons why he would not – the ‘obviously’ implicates the objection is silly (typical tutee behaviour).  The first is charming. Grice, seeing the gender of the tutee, says that it woud be UNMANLY for A to let out a natural bellow. He realizes that ‘unmanly’ may be considered ‘artless sexism’ (this is the late mid-70s, and in the provinces!) – So he turns the ‘unmanly’ into the charmingly Oxonian, “ or otherwise uncreaturely.” – which is a genial piece of ironic coinage! Surely ‘manly’ and ‘unmanly,’ if it relates to ‘Homo sapiens,’ need not carry a sexist implicaturum. Another answer to the obvious objection that Grice gives relates to the level of informativeness – the ‘artificial’ (as he calls it) – His argument is that if one takes Aristotle’s seriously, and the ‘artificial bellow’ is to ‘imitate’ the ‘natural bellow,’ it may not replicate ALL THE ‘FEATURES’ – which is the expression Grice uses --  he means semiotic distinctive feature --. So he does not have to calculate the ‘artificial bellow’ to correlate exactly to the quantity of decibels that the ‘natural bellow’ does. This is important from a CAUSAL point of view, or in terms of Grice’s causal theory of behaviour. A specific pain (prooked by Stimulus S1) gives the RESPONSE R2 – with decibels D1. A different stimulus S2 woud give a different RESPONSE R2, with different decibels D2. So Grice is exploring the possibility of variance here. In a causal involuntary scenario, there is nothing the creature can do. The stimulus Sn will produce the creature Cn to be such that its response is Rn (where Rn is a response with decibels – this being the semiotic distinctive feature Fn – Dn. When it comes to the ‘artificial bellow,’ the emisor’s only point is to express the proposition, ‘I am in pain,’ and not ‘I am in pain such that it causes a natural bellow of decibels Dn,” which would flout the conversational postulate of conversational fortitude. The overinformativeness would baffle the sendee, if not the sender). At this point there is a break in the narrative, and Grice, in a typical Oxonian way, goes on to say, “But then, we might just as well relax the requirement that the proposition concerns a state of the sender.” He gives no specific example, but refers to a ‘state of affairs’ which does NOT involve a state of the sender – AND ONE TO WHICH, HOWEVER, THE SENDER RESPONDS with a behaviour. I. e. the state of the affairs, whatever it is, is the stimulus, and the creature’s behaviour is the response. While ‘The cat is on the mat’ or ‘It is raining’ does NOT obviously ‘communicate’ that the sender BELIEVES that to be, the ‘behaviour’ which is the response to the external state of affairs is mediated by this state – this is pure functionalism. So, in getting at stage six – due to the objection by his tutee – he must go back to stage zero. Now, he adds MANY CRUCIAL features with these relaxations of the requirements. Basically he is getting at GRICESE. And what he says is very jocular. He knows he is lecturing to ‘service professionals,’ not philosophers, so he keep adding irritating notes for them (but which we philosophers find charming), “and we get to something like what people are getting at (correctly, I would hope) when they speak of a semiotic system!” These characteristics are elaborated under ‘gricese’ – But in teleological terms they can even be ordered. What is the order that Grice uses? At this stage, he has already considered in detail the progression, with his ‘the dog is shaggy,’ so we know where he is getting at – but he does not want to get philosophically technical at the lecture. He is aiming then at compositionality. There is utterance-whole and utterance-part, or as he prefers ‘complete utterance’ and ‘non-complete utterance’. ‘dog’ and ‘shaggy’ would be non-complete. So the external ‘state of affairs’ is Grice’s seeing that Strawson’s dog is shaggy and wanting to communicate this to Pears (Grice co-wrote an essay only with two Englishmen, these being Strawson and Pears – ‘The three Englishmen’s essay,’ as he called it’ --. So there is a state of affairs, pretty harmless, Strawson’s dog is being shaggy – perhaps he needs a haircut, or some brooming. “Shaggy” derives from ‘shag’ plus –y, as in ‘’twas brillig.’ – so this tells that it is an adjectival or attribute predication – of the feature of being ‘shaggy’ to ‘dog.’ When the Anglo-Saxons first used ‘dog’ – the Anglo-Saxon ‘Adam,’ he should have used ‘hound’. Grice is not concerned at the point with ‘dog,’ since he KNOWS that Strawson’s dog is “Fido” – dogs being characteristically faithful and the Strawsons not being very original – “I kid” --. In this case, we need a ‘communication function.’ The sender perceives that Fido is shaggy and forms the proposition ‘Fido is shaggy.’ This is via his belief, caused by his seeing that Fido is shaggy. He COMPOSES a complete utterance. He could just utter, elliptically, ‘shaggy’ – but under quieter circumstances, he manages to PREDICATE ‘shagginess’ to Strawson’s dog – and comes out with “Fido is shaggy.” That is all the ‘syntactics’ that Gricese needs (Palmer, “Remember when all we had to care about was nouns and verbs?”) (Strictly, “I miss the good old days when all we had to care was nouns and verbs”). Well here we have a ‘verb,’ “is,” and a noun – “nomen adjectivum” – or ‘adjective noun’, shaggy. Grice is suggesting that the lexicon (or corpus) is hardly relevant. What is important is the syntax. Having had to read Chomsky under Austin’s tutelage (they spent four Saturday mornings with the Mouton paperback, and Grice would later send a letter of recommendation on one of his tutees for study with Chomsky overseas). But Grice has also read Peano. So he needs a set of FINITE set of formation rules – that will produce an INFINITE SET of ‘sentences’ where Grice highers the decibels when he says ‘infinite,’ hoping it will upset the rare Whiteheadian philosopher in the audience! Having come up with “Fido is shaggy,’ the sender sends it to the sendee. “Any link will do” – The link is ‘arranged’ somehow – arranged simpliciter in a one-off predicament, or pre-arranged in two-off predicament, etc. Stages 2, 3, 4, and 5 – have all to do with ‘trustworthy’ – which would one think otiose seeing that Sir John Lyons has said that prevarication in the golden plover and the Homo sapiens is an essential feature of language! (But we are at the Oxford of Warnock!). So, the sender sends “Fido is shaggy,’ and Pears gets it. He takes Grice to be expressing his belief that Strawson’s dog is shaggy, and comes not only to accept that Grice believes this, but to accept that Strawson’s dog is shaggy. As it happens, Pears recommends a bar of soap to make his hairs at least look ‘cuter.’ Refs.: H. P. Grice, “A teleological model of communication.”

minimal transformationalism. Grice: “I wonder where Chomsky got the idea of a ‘transformation’?” -- Grice was proud that his system PIROTESE ‘allowed for the most minimal transformations.” transformational grammar Philosophy of language The most powerful of the three kinds of grammar distinguished by Chomsky. The other two are finite-state grammar and phrasestructure grammar. Transformational grammar is a replacement for phrase-structure grammar that (1) analyzes only the constituents in the structure of a sentence; (2) provides a set of phrase-structure rules that generate abstract phrase-structure representations; (and 3) holds that the simplest sentences are produced according to these rules. Transformational grammar provides a further set of transformational rules to show that all complex sentences are formed from simple elements. These rules manipulate elements and otherwise rearrange structures to give the surface structures of sentences. Whereas phrase-structure rules only change one symbol to another in a sentence, transformational rules show that items of a given grammatical form can be transformed into items of a different grammatical form. For example, they can show the transformation of negative sentences into positive ones, question sentences into affirmative ones and passive sentences into active ones. Transformational grammar is presented as an improvement over other forms of grammar and provides a model to account for the ability of a speaker to generate new sentences on the basis of limited data. “The central idea of transformational grammar is determined by repeated application of certain formal operations called ‘grammatical transformations’ to objects of a more elementary sort.” Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice: “Some like Quine, but Chomsky’s MY man,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

miracle, an extraordinary event brought about by God. In the medieval understanding of nature, objects have certain natural powers and tendencies to exercise those powers under certain circumstances. Stones have the power to fall to the ground, and the tendency to exercise that power when liberated from a height. A miracle is then an extraordinary event in that it is not brought about by any object exercising its natural powers – e.g., a liberated stone rising in the air – but brought about directly by God. In the modern understanding of nature, there are just events (states of objects) and laws of nature that determine which events follow which other events. There is a law of nature that heavy bodies when liberated fall to the ground. A miracle is then a “violation” of a law of nature by God. We must understand by a law a principle that determines what happens unless there is intervention from outside the natural order, and by a “violation” such an intervention. There are then three problems in identifying a miracle. The first is to determine whether an event of some kind, if it occurred, would be a violation of a law of nature (beyond the natural power of objects to bring about). To know this we must know what are the laws of nature. The second problem is to find out whether such an event did occur on a particular occasion. Our own memories, the testimony of witnesses, and physical traces will be the historical evidence of this, but they can mislead. And the evidence from what happened on other occasions that some law L is a law of nature is evidence supporting the view that on the occasion in question L was operative, and so there was no violation. Hume claimed that in practice there has never been enough historical evidence for a miracle to outweigh the latter kind of counterevidence. Finally, it must be shown that God was the cause of the violation. For that we need grounds from natural theology for believing that there is a God and that this is the sort of occasion on which he is likely to intervene in nature.

misfire: used by Grice in Meaning Revisited. Cf. Austin. “When the utterance is a misfire, the procedure which we purport to invoke is disallowed or is botched: and our act (marrying, etc.) is void or without effect, etc. We speak of our act as a purported act, or perhaps an attempt, or we use such an expression as ‘went through a form of marriaage’ by contrast with ‘married.’ If somebody issues a performative utterance, and the  utterance is classed as a misfire because the procedure  invoked is not accepted , it is presumably persons other  than the speaker who do not accept it (at least if the  speaker is speaking seriously ). What would be an ex-  ample ? Consider ‘I divorce you*, said to a wife by her  husband in a Christian country, and both being Chris-  tians rather than Mohammedans. In this case it might  be said, ‘nevertheless he has not (successfully) divorced  her: we admit only some other verbal or non-verbal pro-  cedure’; or even possibly ‘we (we) do not admit any  procedure at all for effecting divorce — marriage is indis-  soluble’. This may be carried so far that we reject what  may be called a whole code of procedure, e.g. the code of  honour involving duelling: for example, a challenge may  be issued by ‘my seconds will call on you’, which is  equivalent to ‘ I challenge you’, and we merely shrug it off  The general position is exploited in the unhappy story of  Don Quixote.   Of course, it will be evident that it is comparatively  simple if we never admit any ‘such’ procedure at all —  that is, any procedure at all for doing that sort of thing,  or that procedure anyway for doing that particular thing.  But equally possible are the cases where we do sometimes  — in certain circumstances or at certain hands — accept     n n^A/'Q/1n  U UlUVlfU u     plUVWUiV/, ULIL UW 111     T\llt 1 n nrttT at* amaiitvwifnnaati at* af   ULIL 111 ttllj UL1U/1 L/llCUllli3Lail\/^ KJL CIL     other hands. And here we may often be in doubt (as in      28     Horn to do things with Words     the naming example above) whether an infelicity should  be brought into our present class A. i or rather into  A. 2 (or even B. i or B. 2). For example, at a party, you  say, when picking sides, ‘I pick George’: George grunts  ‘I’m not playing.’ Has George been picked? Un-  doubtedly, the situation is an unhappy one. Well, we  may say, you have not picked George, whether because  there is no convention that you can pick people who  aren’t playing or because George in the circumstances is  an inappropriate object for the procedure of picking. Or  on a desert island you may say to me ‘Go and pick up  wood’; and I may say 4 1 don’t take orders from you’ or  ‘you’re not entitled to give me orders’ — I do not take  orders from you when you try to ‘assert your authority’  (which I might fall in with but may not) on a desert  island, as opposed to the case when you are the captain  on a ship and therefore genuinely have authority.

missum: If Grice uses psi-transmission (and emission, when he speaks of ‘pain,’ and the decibels of the emission of a bellow) he also uses transmission, and mission, transmissum, and missum. Grice was out on a mission. Grice uses ‘emissor,’ but then there’s the ‘missor.’ This is in key with modern communication theory as instituted by Shannon. The ‘missor’ ‘sends’ a ‘message’ to a recipient – or missee. But be careful, he may miss it. In any case, it shows that e-missor is a compound of ‘ex-‘ plus ‘missor,’ so that makes sense. It transliterates Grice’s ut-terer (which literally means ‘out-erer’). And then there’s the prolatum, from proferre, which has the professor, as professing that p, that is. As someone said, if H. P. Girce were to present a talk to the Oxford Philosophical Society he would possibly call it “Messaging.” c. 1300, "a communication transmitted via a messenger, a notice sent through some agency," from Old French message "message, news, tidings, embassy" (11c.), from Medieval Latin missaticum, from Latin missus "a sending away, sending, dispatching; a throwing, hurling," noun use of past participle of mittere "to release, let go; send, throw" (see mission). The Latin word is glossed in Old English by ærende. Specific religious sense of "divinely inspired communication via a prophet" (1540s) led to transferred sense of "the broad meaning (of something)," which is attested by 1828. To get the message "understand" is by 1960.

m’naghten: a rule in England’s law defining legal insanity for purposes of creating a defense to criminal liability: legal insanity is any defect of reason, due to disease of the mind, that causes an accused criminal either not to know the nature and quality of his act, or not to know that his act was morally or legally wrong. Adopted in the Edward Drummond-M’Naghten case in England in 1843, the rule harks back to the responsibility test for children, which was whether they were mature enough to know the difference between right and wrong. The rule is alternatively viewed today as being either a test of a human being’s general status as a moral agent or a test of when an admitted moral agent is nonetheless excused because of either factual or moral/legal mistakes. On the first (or status) interpretation of the rule, the insane are exempted from criminal liability because they, like young children, lack the rational agency essential to moral personhood. On the second (or mistake) interpretation of the rule, the insane are exempted from criminal liability because they instantiate the accepted moral excuses of mistake or ignorance. Refs.: H. P. Grice and H. L. A. Hart, ‘Legal rules;’ D. F. Pears, “Motivated irrationality.”

mnemic causation, a type of causation in which, in order to explain the proximate cause of an organism’s behaviour, it is necessary to specify not only the present state of the organism and the present stimuli operating upon it, but also this or that past experience of the organism. The term was introduced by Russell in The Analysis of Mind, and borrowed, but never returned, by Grice for his Lockeian logical construction of personal identity or “I” in terms of an chain of mnemonic temporary states. “Unlike Russell, I distinguish between the mnemic and the mnemonic.”

Modus -- mode of co-relation: a technical jargon, under ‘mode’ – although Grice uses ‘c’ to abbreviate it, and sometimes speaks of ‘way’ of ‘co-relation’ – but ‘mode’ was his favourite.  Grice is not sure whether ‘mode’ ‘of’ and ‘correlation’ are the appropriate terms. Grice speaks of an associative mode of correlation – vide associatum. He also speaks of a conventional mode of correlation (or is it mode of conventional correlation) – vide non-conventional, and he speaks of an iconic mode of correlation, vide non-iconic. Indeed he speaks once of ‘conventional correlation’ TO THE ASSOCIATED  specific response. So the mode is rather otiose. In the context when he uses ‘conventional correlation’ TO THE ASSOCIATED specific response, he uses ‘way’ rather than mode – Grice wants ‘conventional correlation’ TO THE ASSOCIATED specific RESPONSE to be just one way, or mode. There’s ASSOCIATIVE correlation, and iconic correlation, and ‘etc.’ Strictly, as he puts it, this or that correlation is this or that provision of a way in which the expressum is correlated to a specific response. When symbolizing he uses the informal “correlated in way c with response r’ – having said that ‘c’ stands for ‘mode of correlation.’ But ‘mode sounds too pretentious, hence his retreat to the more flowing ‘way.’  Modus – modelllo -- model theory: Grice, “The etymology of ‘model’ is fascinating.”  H. P. Grice, “A conversational model.” Grice: “Since the object of the present exercise, is to provide a bit of theory which will explain, for a certain family of cases, why is it that a particular implicaturum is present, I would suggest that the final test of the adequacy and utility of this model should be: can it be used to construct an explanation of the presence of such an implicaturum, and is it more comprehensive and more economical than any rival? is the no doubt pre-theoretical explanation which one would be prompted to give of such an implicaturum consistent with, or better still a favourable pointer towards the requirements involved in the model? cf. Sidonius: Far otherwise: whoever disputes with you will find those protagonists of heresy, the Stoics, Cynics, and Peripatetics, shattered with their own arms and their own engines; for their heathen followers, if they resist the doctrine and spirit of Christianity, will, under your teaching, be caught in their own familiar entanglements, and fall headlong into their own toils; the barbed syllogism of your arguments will hook the glib tongues of the casuists, and it is you who will tie up their slippery questions in categorical clews, after the manner of a clever physician, who, when compelled by reasoned thought, prepares antidotes for poison even from a serpent.qvin potivs experietvr qvisqve conflixerit stoicos cynicos peripateticos hæresiarchas propriis armis propriis qvoqve concvti machinamentis nam sectatores eorum Christiano dogmati ac sensvi si repvgnaverint mox te magistro ligati vernaculis implicaturis in retia sua præcipites implagabvntur syllogismis tuæ propositionis vncatis volvbilem tergiversantvm lingvam inhamantibvs dum spiris categoricis lubricas qvæstiones tv potivs innodas acrivm more medicorvm qui remedivm contra venena cum ratio compellit et de serpente conficivnt.” Grice: “Since the object of the present exercise, is to provide a bit of theory which will explain, for a certain family of cases, why is it that a particular conversational implicaturum is present, I would suggest that the final tess  of the adequacy and utility of this MODEL should be various. First: can the model be used to construct an explanation (argumentum) of the presence of this or that conversational implicaturum? Second, is the model it more comprehensive than any rival in providing this explanation? Third, is the model more economical than any rival in providing this explanation? Fourth, is the no doubt pre-theoretical (antecedent) explanation which one would be prompted to give of such a conversational implicaturum consistent with the requirements involved in the model. Fifth: is the no doubt pre-threoretical (antecedent) explanation which one would be prompted to give of such a conversational implciaturum  better still, a favourable POINTER towards the requirements involved in the model? Cf. Sidonius: Far otherwise: whoever disputes with you will find those protagonists of heresy, the Stoics, Cynics, and Peripatetics, shattered with their own arms and their own engines; for their heathen followers, if they resist the doctrine and spirit of Christianity, will, under your teaching, be caught in their own familiar entanglements, and fall headlong into their own toils; the barbed syllogism of your arguments will hook the glib tongues of the casuists, and it is you who will tie up their slippery questions in categorical clews, after the manner of a clever physician, who, when compelled by reasoned thought, prepares antidotes for poison even from a serpent -- qvin potivs experietvr qvisqve conflixerit stoicos cynicos peripateticos hæresiarchas propriis armis propriis qvoqve concvti machinamentis nam sectatores eorum Christiano dogmati ac sensvi si repvgnaverint mox te magistro ligati vernacvlis implicatvris in retia sva præcipites implagabvntur syllogismis tuæ propositionis vncatis volvbilem tergiversantvm lingvam inhamantibvs dum spiris categoricis lvbricas qvæstiones tv potivs innodas acrivm more medicorvm qui remedivm contra venena cvm ratio compellit et de serpente conficivnt. qvin potivs experietvr qvisqve conflixerit stoicos cynicos peripateticos hæresiarchas propriis armis propriis qvoqve concvti machinamentis nam sectatores eorum Christiano dogmati ac sensvi si repvgnaverint mox te magistro ligati vernacvlis IMPILICATVRIS in retia sva præcipites implagabvntur syllogismis tuæ propositionis vncatis volvbilem tergiversantvm lingvam inhamantibvs dum spiris categoricis lubricas qvæstiones tv potivs innodas acrivm more medicorvm qui remedivm contra venena cvm ratio compellit et de serpente conficivnt. So Grice has the phenomenon: the conversational implcaturum – the qualifying adjective is crucial, since surely he is not interested in non-conventional NON-conversational implicatura derived from moral maxims! --. And then he needs a MODEL – that of the principle or postulate of conversational benevolence. It fits the various requirements. First: the model can be used to construct an explanation (argumentum) of the presence of this or that conversational implicaturum. Second, REQUIREMENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL GENERALITY --  the model is more comprehensive than any rival. Third, the OCCAM requirement: the model is more ECONOMICAL than any rival – in what sense? – “in providing this explanation” of this or that conversational implicaturum. Fourth, the J. L. Austin requirement, this or that requirement involved in the model is SURELY consistent with the no doubt pre-theoretical antecedent explanation (argumentum) that one would be prompted to give. Fifth, the second J. L. Austin requirement: towards this or that requirement involved in the model the no-doubt pre-theoretical (antecedent) explanation (argument) that one would be prompted to give is, better still, a favourable pointer. Grice’s oversuse of ‘model’ is due to Max Black, who understands model theory as a branch of philosophical semantics that deals with the connection between a language and its interpretations or structures. Basic to it is the characterization of the conditions under which a sentence is true in structure. It is confusing that the term ‘model’ itself is used slightly differently: a model for a sentence is a structure for the language of the sentence in which it is true. Model theory was originally developed for explicitly constructed, formal languages, with the purpose of studying foundational questions of mathematics, but was later applied to the semantical analysis of empirical theories, a development initiated by the Dutch philosopher Evert Beth, and of natural languages, as in Montague grammar. More recently, in situation theory, we find a theory of semantics in which not the concept of truth in a structure, but that of information carried by a statement about a situation, is central. The term ‘model theory’ came into use in the 0s, with the work on first-order model theory by Tarski, but some of the most central results of the field date from before that time. The history of the field is complicated by the fact that in the 0s and 0s, when the first model-theoretic findings were obtained, the separation between first-order logic and its extensions was not yet completed. Thus, in 5, there appeared an article by Leopold Löwenheim, containing the first version of what is now called the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem. Löwenheim proved that every satisfiable sentence has a countable model, but he did not yet work in firstorder logic as we now understand it. One of the first who did so was the Norwegian logician Thoralf Skolem, who showed in 0 that a set of first-order sentences that has a model, has a countable model, one form of the LöwenheimSkolem theorem. Skolem argued that logic was first-order logic and that first-order logic was the proper basis for metamathematical investigations, fully accepting the relativity of set-theoretic notions in first-order logic. Within philosophy this thesis is still dominant, but in the end it has not prevailed in mathematical logic. In 0 Kurt Gödel solved an open problem of Hilbert-Ackermann and proved a completeness theorem for first-order logic. This immediately led to another important model-theoretic result, the compactness theorem: if every finite subset of a set of sentences has a model then the set has a model. A good source for information about the model theory of first-order logic, or classical model theory, is still Model Theory by C. C. Chang and H. J. Keisler 3. When the separation between first-order logic and stronger logics had been completed and the model theory of first-order logic had become a mature field, logicians undertook in the late 0s the study of extended model theory, the model theory of extensions of first-order logic: first of cardinality quantifiers, later of infinitary languages and of fragments of second-order logic. With so many examples of logics around  where sometimes classical theorems did generalize, sometimes not  Per Lindström showed in 9 what sets first-order logic apart from its extensions: it is the strongest logic that is both compact and satisfies the LöwenheimSkolem theorem. This work has been the beginning of a study of the relations between various properties logics may possess, the so-called abstract model. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “The postulate of conversational co-operation,” Oxford.

senofane: “Or as Strawson would prefer, Xenophanes, but since he emigrated to Italy, we might just as well use an “S”” – Grice. Grice: “You have to be careful when you research for this in Italy – they spell it with an ‘s’!” --  Grecian philosopher, a proponent of an idealized conception of the divine, and the first of the pre-Socratics to propound epistemological views. Born in Colophon, an Ionian Grecian city on the coast of Asia Minor, he emigrated as a young man to the Grecian West Sicily and southern Italy. The formative influence of the Milesians is evident in his rationalism. He is the first of the pre-Socratics for whom we have not only ancient reports but also quite a few verbatim quotations  fragments from his “Lampoons” Silloi and from other didactic poetry. Xenophanes attacks the worldview of Homer, Hesiod, and traditional Grecian piety: it is an outrage that the poets attribute moral failings to the gods. Traditional religion reflects regional biases blond gods for the Northerners; black gods for the Africans. Indeed, anthropomorphic gods reflect the ultimate bias, that of the human viewpoint “If cattle, or horses, or lions . . . could draw pictures of the gods . . . ,” frg. 15. There is a single “greatest” god, who is not at all like a human being, either in body or in mind; he perceives without the aid of organs, he effects changes without “moving,” through the sheer power of his thought. The rainbow is no sign from Zeus; it is simply a special cloud formation. Nor are the sun or the moon gods. All phenomena in the skies, from the elusive “Twin Sons of Zeus” St. Elmo’s fire to sun, moon, and stars, are varieties of cloud formation. There are no mysterious infernal regions; the familiar strata of earth stretch down ad infinitum. The only cosmic limit is the one visible at our feet: the horizontal border between earth and air. Remarkably, Xenophanes tempers his theological and cosmological pronouncements with an epistemological caveat: what he offers is only a “conjecture.” In later antiquity Xenophanes came to be regarded as the founder of the Eleatic School, and his teachings were assimilated to those of Parmenides and Melissus. This appears to be based on nothing more than Xenophanes’ emphasis on the oneness and utter immobility of God. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Senofane in Italia.”

sensus -- modified Occam’s razor: Grice was obsessed with ‘sense,’ and thought Oxonian philosohpers were multiplying it otiosely – notably L. J. Cohen (“The diversity of meaning”). The original razor is what Grice would have as ‘ontological,’ to which he opposes with in his ‘ontological marxism’. Entities should not be multiplied beyond the necessity of needing them as honest working entities. He keeps open house provided they come in help with the work. This restriction explains what Grice means by ‘necessity’ in the third lecture – a second sense does not do any work. The implicaturum does.  Grice loved a razor, and being into analogy and focal meaning, if he HAD to have semantic multiplicity, for the case of ‘is,’ (being) or ‘good,’ it had to be a UNIFIED semantic multiplicity, as displayed by paronymy. The essay had circulated since the Harvard days, and it was also repr. in Pragmatics, ed. Cole for Academic Press. Personally, I prefer dialectica.  ‒ Grice. This is the third James lecture at Harvard. It is particularly useful for Grices introduction of his razor, M. O. R., or Modified Occams Razor, jocularly expressed by Grice as: Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. An Englishing of the Ockhams Latinate, Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem. But what do we mean sense. Surely Occam was right with his Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem. We need to translate that alla linguistic turn. Grice jokes: Senses are not be multiplied beyond necessity. He also considers irony, stress (supra-segmental fourth-articulatory phonology), and truth, which the Grice Papers have under a special f. in the s. V . Three topics where the implicaturum helps. He is a scoundrel may well be the implicaturum of He is a fine friend. But cf. the pretense theory of irony. Grice, being a classicist, loved the etymological connection. With Stress, he was concerned with anti-Gettier uses of emphatic know: I KNOW. (Implicaturum: I do have conclusive evidence). Truth (or  is true) sprang from the attention by Grice to that infamous Bristol symposium between Austin and Strawson. Cf. Moores paradox. Grice wants to defend correspondence theory of Austin against the performative approach of Strawson. If  is true implicates someone previously affirmed this, that does not mean a ditto implicaturum is part of the entailment of a  is true utterance, further notes on logic and conversation, in Cole, repr. in a revised form, Modified Occams Razor, irony, stress, truth. The preferred citation should be the Harvard. This is originally the third James lecture, in a revised form.In that lecture, Grice introduced the M. O. R., or Modified Occams Razor. Senses are not be multiplied beyond necessity. The point is that entailment-cum-implicaturum does the job that multiplied senses should not do! The Grice Papers contains in a different f. the concluding section for that lecture, on irony, stress, and truth. Grice went back to the Modified Occams razor, but was never able to formalise it! It is, as he concedes, almost a vacuous methodological thingy! It is interesting that the way he defines the alethic value of true alrady cites satisfactory. I shall use, to Names such a property, not true but factually satisfactory. Grices sympathies dont lie with Strawsons Ramsey-based redundance theory of truth, but rather with Tarskis theory of correspondence. He goes on to claim his trust in the feasibility of such a theory. It is, indeed, possible to construct a theory which treats truth as (primarily) a property, not true but factually satisfactory. One may see that point above as merely verbal and not involving any serious threat. Lets also assume that it will be a consequence, or theorem, of such a theory that there will be a class C of utterances (utterances of affirmative Subjects-predicate sentences [such as snow is white or the cat is on the mat of the dog is hairy-coated such that each member of C designates or refers to some item and indicates or predicates some class (these verbs to be explained within the theory), and is factually satisfactory if the item belongs to the class. Let us also assume that there can be a method of introducing a form of expression, it is true that /it is buletic that  and linking it with the notion of factually or alethic or doxastic satisfactory, a consequence of which will be that to say it is true that Smith is happy will be equivalent to saying that any utterance of class C which designates Smith and indicates the class of happy people is factually satisfactory (that is, any utterance which assigns Smith to the class of happy people is factually satisfactory. Mutatis mutandis for Let Smith be happy, and buletic satisfactoriness. The move is Tarskian. TBy stress, Grice means suprasegmental phonology, but he was too much of a philosopher to let that jargon affect him! Refs.: The locus classicus, if that does not sound too pretentious, is Essay 3 in WoW, but there are references elsewhere, such as in “Meaning Revisited,” and under ‘semantics.’ The only one who took up Grice’s challenge at Oxford was L. J. Cohen, “Grice on the particles of natural language,” which got a great response by Oxonian R. C. S. Walker (citing D. Bostock, a tutee of Grice), to which Cohen again responded “Can the conversationalist hypothesis be defended.” Cohen clearly centres his criticism on the razor. He had an early essay, citing Grice, on the DIVERSITY of meaning. Cohen opposes Grice’s conversationalist hypothesis to his own ‘semantic hypothesis’ (“Multiply senses all you want.”). T. D. Bontly explores the topic of Grice’s MOR. “Ancestors of this essay were presented at meetings of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology (Edmonton, Alberta), of the the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association (San Francisco, CA) and at the University of Connecticut. I am indebted to all three groups and particularly to the commentators D. Sanford (at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology) and M. Reimer (at the APA). Thanks also to the following for helpful comments or discussion (inclusive): F. Adams, A. Ariew, P. Bloom, M. Devitt, B. Enc, C. Gaulker, M. Lynch, R. Millikan, J. Pust, E. Sober, R. C. Stalnaker, D. W. Stampe, and S. Wheeler.” Bontly writes, more or less (I have paraphrased him a little, with good intentions, always!) “Some philosophers have appealed to a principle which H. P. Grice, in his third William James lecture, dubs Modified Occam’s Razor (henceforth, “M. O. R.”): “Senses – rather than ‘entities,’ as the inceptor from Ockham more boringly has it -- are not to be multiplied beyond necessity’.” What is ‘necessity’? Bontly: “Superficially, Grice’s “M. O. R.” seems a routine application of Ockham’s principle of parsimony: ‘entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. Now, parsimony arguments, though common in science, are notoriously problematic, and their use by Grice faces one objection or two. Grice’s “M. O. R.” makes considerably more sense in light of certain assumptions about the psychological processes involved in language development, learning, and acquisition, and it describes recent *empirical*, if not philosophical or conceptual, of the type Grice seems mainly interested in -- findings that bear these assumptions out. [My] resulting account solves several difficulties that otherwise confront Grice’s “M. O. R.”, and it draws attention to problematic assumptions involved in using parsimony to argue for pragmatic accounts of the type of phenomena ‘ordinary-language’ philosophers were interested in. In more general terms, when an expression E has two or more uses – U1 and U2, say -- enabling its users to express two or more different meanings – M1 and M2, say -- one is tempted to assume that E is semantically (i.e. lexically) ambiguous, or polysemous, i.e., that some convention, constituting the language L, assign E these two meanings M1 and M2 corresponding to its two uses U1 and U2. One hears, for instance, that ‘or’ is ambiguous (polysemous) between a weak (inclusive) (‘p v q’) and a strong (exclusive) sense, ‘p w q.’ Grice actually feels that speaking of the meaning or sense of ‘or’ sounds harsh (“Like if I were asked what the meaning of ‘to’ is!”). But in one note from a seminar from Strawson he writes: “Jones is between Smith and Williams.” “I wouldn’t say that ‘between’ is ambiguous, even if we interpret the sentence in a physical sense, or in an ordering of merit, say.” Bontly: “Used exclusively, an utterance of ‘p or q’ (p v q) entails that ‘p’ and ‘q’ are NOT both true. Used inclusively, it does not. Still, ambiguity is not the only possible explanation.” (This reminds me of Atlas, “Philosophy WITHOUT ambiguity!” – ambitious title!). The phenomenon can also be approached pragmatically, from within the framework of a general theory conversation alla Grice. One could, e. g., first, maintain that ‘p or q’ is unambiguously monosemous inclusive and, second, apply Grice’s idea of an ‘implicaturum’ to explain the exclusive.” I actually traced this, and found that O. P. Wood in an odd review of a logic textbook (by Faris) in “Mind,” in the 1950s, makes the point about the inclusive-exclusive distinction, pre-Griceianly! Grice seems more interested, as you later consider, the implicaturum: “Utterer U has non-truth-functional grounds for uttering ‘p or q. Not really the ‘inclusive-exclusive’ distinction. Jennings deals with this in “The genealogy of disjunction,” and elsewhere, and indeed notes that ‘or’ may be a dead metaphor from ‘another.’  Bontly goes on: “On any such account, ‘p or q’ would have two uses U1 and U2 and two standard interpretations, I1 and I2, but NEVER two ‘conventional’ meanings,” M1 and M2 Or take ‘and’ (p.q) which (when used as a sentential connective) ordinarily stands for truth-functional conjunction (as in 1a, below). Often enough, though, ‘p and q’ seems to imply temporal priority (1b), while in other cases it suggests causal priority (1c). (1) a. Bill bought a shirt and Christy [bought] a sweater. b. Adam took off his shoes and [he] got into bed. c. “Jack fell down and [he] broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling o:ter.” (to rhyme with ‘water’ in an earlier line.”Apparently Grice loved this nursery rhyme too, “Jack is an Englishman; he must, therefore, be brave,” Jill says.” (Grice, “Aspects of reason.”)Bontly: “Again, one suspects an ambiguity, M1 and M2, but Grice argues that a ‘conversational’ explanation is available and preferable. According to the ‘pragmatist’ or ‘conversationalist’ hypothesis’ (as I shall call it), a temporal or a causal reading of “and” (p.q) may be part of what the UTTERER means, but such a reading I2, are not part of what the sentence means, or the word _and_ means, and thus belong in a general theory of conversation, not the grammar of a specific language.” Oddly, I once noticed that Chomsky, of all people, and since you speak of ‘grammar,’ competence, etc. refers to “A.” Albert? P. Grice in his 1966! Aspects of the theory of syntax. “A. P. Grice wants to say that the temporal succession is not part of the meaning of ‘and.’” I suspect one of Grice’s tutees at Oxford was spreading the unauthorized word! Bontly: “Many an alleged ambiguity seems amenable to Grice’s conversationalist hypothesis. Besides the sentential connectives or truth-functors, a pragmatic explanation has been applied fruitfully to quantifiers (Grice lists ‘all’ and ‘some (at least one’), definite descriptions (Grice lists ‘the,’ ‘the murderer’), the indefinite description (‘a finger’, much discussed by Grice, “He’s meeting a woman this evening.”), the genitive construction (‘Peter’s bat’), and the indirect speech act (‘Can you pass the salt?’) — to mention just a few. The literature on the Griceian treatment of these phenomena is extensive. Some classic treatments are found in the oeuvre of philosophers like Grice, Bach, Harnish, and Davis, and linguists like Horn, Gazdar, and Levinson. But the availability of a pragmatic explanation poses an interesting methodological problem. Prima facie, the alleged ‘ambiguity’ M1 and M2, can now be explained either semantically (by positing two or more senses S1 and S2, or M1 and M2, of expression E) or pragmatically (by positing just one sense (S) plus one super-imposed implicaturum, I).Sometimes, of course, one approach or the other is transparently inadequate. When the ‘use’ of E cannot be derived from a general conversational principle, the pragmatic explanation seems a non-starter.” Not for a radically radical pragmatist like Atlas! Ambitious! Similarly, an ambiguity- or polysemy- based explanation seems out of the question where the interpretation of E at issue is highly context-dependent.” (My favourite is Grice on “a,” that you analyse in term of ‘developmental’ or ontogenetical pragmatics – versus Millikan’s phylogenetical! But, in many cases, a semantic, or polysemy, and a conversational explanations both appear plausible, and the usual data — Grice’s intuitions about how the expression can and cannot be used, should or shouldn’t beused — appear to leave the choice of one of the two hypotheses under-determined.These were the cases that most interest Grice, the philosopher, since they impinge on various projects in philosophical analysis. (Cf. Grice, 1989, pp. 3–21 and passim).” Notably the ‘ordinary-language’ philosophy ‘project,’ I would think. I love the fact that in the inventory of philosophers who are loose about this (as in the reference you mention above, pp. 3-21, he includes himself in “Causal theory of perception”! “To adjudicate these border-line cases, Grice (1978) proposes a methodological principle which he dubs “Modified Occam’s Razor,” M. O. R.” ‘Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.’ (1978, pp. 118–119) “(I follow Grice in using the Latinate ‘Occam’ rather than the Anglo-Saxon ‘Ockham’ which is currently preferred). More fully, the idea is that one should not posit an alleged special, stronger SENSE S2, for an expression E when a general conversational principle suffices to explain why E, which bears only Sense 1, S1, receives a certain interpretation or carries implicaturum I. Thus, if the ‘use’ (or an ‘use’) of E can be explained pragmatically, other things being equal, the use should be explained pragmatically.” Griceians appeal to M. O. R. quite often,” pragmatically bearded or not! (I love Quine’s idea that Occam’s razor was created to shave Plato’s beard. Cfr. Schiffer’s anti-shave! It is affirmed, in spirit if not letter, by philosopher/linguist Atlas and Levinson, philosopher/linguist Bach, Bach and philosopher Harnish, Horn, Levinson, Morgan, linguist/philosopher Neale, philosopher Searle, philosopher Stalnaker, philosopher Walker (of Oxford), and philosopher Ziff” (I LOVE Ziff’s use, seeing that he could be otherwise so anti-Griceian, vide Martinich, “On Ziff on Grice on meaning,” and indeed Stampe (that you mention) on Ziff on Grice on meaning. One particularly forceful statement is found in “of all people” Kripke, who derides the ambiguity hypothesis as ‘the lazy man’s approach in philosophy’ and issues a strong warning.” When I read that, I was reminded that Stampe, in some unpublished manuscripts, deals with the loose use of Griceian ideas by Kripke. Stampe discusses at length, “Let’s get out of here, the cops are coming.” Stampe thinks Kripke is only superficially a Griceian! Kripke: “‘Do not posit an ambiguity unless you are really forced to, unless there are really compelling theoretical (or intuitive) grounds to suppose that an ambiguity really is present’ (1977, p. 20). A similar idea surfaces in Ruhl’s principle of “mono-semic” bias’. One’s initial effort is directed toward determining a UNITARY meaning S1 for a lexical item E, trying to attribute apparent variations (S2) in meaning to other factors. If such an effort fails, one tries to discover a means of relating the distinct meanings S1 and S2. If this effort fails, there are several words: E1 and E2 (1989, p. 4).” Grice’s ‘vice’ and Grice’s ‘vyse,’ different words in English, same in Old Roman (“violent.”). Ruhl’s position differs from Grice’s approach. Whereas Grice takes word-meaning to be its WEAKEST exhibited meaning, Ruhl argues that word-meaning can be so highly abstract or schematic as to provide only a CORE of meaning, making EVEN the weakest familiar reading a pragmatic specialisation.” Loved that! Ruhl as more Griceian than Grice! Indeed, Grice is freely using the very abstract notion of a Fregeian ‘sense,’ with the delicacy you would treat a brick! “The difference between Grice’s and Ruhl’s positions raises issues beyond the scope of the present essay (though see Atlas, 1989, for further discussion).”  I will! Atlas knows everything you wanted to know, and more, especially when it comes to linguists! He has a later book with ‘implicaturum’ in its subtitle. “Considering the central role that “M. O. R.” plays in Grice’s programme, one is thus surprised to find barely any attention paid to whether it is a good principle — to whether it is true that a pragmatic explanation, when available, is in general more likely to be true than its ‘ambiguity’ or polysemy, or bi-semy, or aequi-vocal rival.” Trying to play with this, I see that Grice loves ‘aequi-vocal.’ He thinks that ‘must’ is ‘aequi-vocal’ between an alethic and a practical ‘use.’ It took me some time to process that! He means that since it’s the ‘same,’ ‘aequi’, ‘voice’, vox’. So ‘aequi-vocal’ IS ‘uni-vocal.’ The Aristotelian in Grice, I guess! “Grice himself offers vanishingly little argument.” How extended is a Harvard philosophical audience’s attention-span? “Examining just two (out of the blue, unphilosophical) cases where we seem happy to attribute a secondary or derivative sense S2 to one word or expression E, but not another, Grice notes that, in both cases, the supposition that the expression E has an additional sense S2 is not superfluous, or unparsimonious, accounting for certain facets of the use of E that cannot, apparently, be explained pragmatically.” I wonder if a radically radical pragmatist would agree! I never met a polysemous expression! Grice concludes that, therefore, ‘there is as yet no reason NOT to accept M. O. R. ’ (1978, p. 120) — faint praise for a principle so important to his philosophical programme! Besides this weak argument for “M. O. R.,” Grice (1978) also mentions a few independent, rather loose, tests for alleged ambiguity.” (“And how to fail them,” as Zwicky would have it!) But Grice’s rationale for “M. O. R.,” presumably, is a thought Grice does not bother to articulate, thinking perhaps that the principle’s name, its kinship with Occam’s famous razor, ‘Do not multiply entities beyond necessity,’ made its epistemic credentials sufficiently obvious already.” Plus, Harvard is very Occamist!“To lay it out, though, the thought is surely that parsimony -- and other such qualities as simplicity, generality, and unification -- are always prized in scientific (and philosophical?) explanation, the more parsimonious (etc.) of two otherwise equally adequate theories being ipso facto more likely to be true. If, as would seem to be the case, a pragmatic explanation were more parsimonious than its semantic, or ‘conventionalist,’ or ambiguity, or polysemic, or polysemy or bi-semic rival, the conversational explanation would be supported by an established, received, general principle of scientific inference.” I love your exploration of Newton on this below! Hypotheses non fingo! “Certainly, some such argument is on Grice’s mind when he names his principle as he does, and much the same thought surely lies behind Kripke’s references to ‘general methodological considerations’ and ‘considerations of economy’ Other ‘Griceian’ appeals to these theoretical virtues are even more transparent. Linguist J. L. Morgan tells us, for instance, that ‘Occam’s Razor dictates that we take a Gricean account of an indirect speech act as the correct analysis, lacking strong evidence to the contrary’ Philosopher Stalnaker argues that a major advantage accrues to a pragmatic treatment of Strawson’s presupposition in that ‘there will then be no need to complicate the semantics or the lexicon’” or introduce metaphysically dubious truth-value gaps! Linguist S. C. Levinson suggests that a major selling point for a conversational theory in general is that such a theory promises to ‘effect a radical simplification of the semantics’ and ‘approximately halve the size of the lexicon’.” So we don’t need to learn two words, ‘vyse’ and ‘vice.’ There can be little doubt, therefore, that a Griceian takes parsimony to argue for the pragmatic approach.” I use the rather pedantic and awful spelling “Griceian,” so that I can keep the pronunciation /grais/ and also because Fodor used it! And non-philosophers, too! “But a parsimony argument is notoriously problematic, and the argument for “M. O. R.” is no exception. The preference for a parsimonious theory is surprisingly difficult to justify, as is the assumption that a pragmatic explanation IS more parsimonious. This does not mean Grice’s “M. O. R.” is entirely without merit. On the contrary, Grice is right to hold that senses should not be multiplied, if a conversational principle will do.” But the justification for M. O. R. need have nothing to do with the idea that parsimony is, always and everywhere, a virtue in scientific theories.”  Also because we are dealing with philosophy, not science, here? What makes Grice’s “M. O. R.” reasonable, rather, is a set of assumptions about the psychological processes involved in language learning, development, and acquisition, and I will report some empirical (rather than conceptual, as Grice does) evidence that these assumptions are, at least, roughly correct. One disclaimer. While I shall defend Grice’s “M. O. R.,” and therefore the research programme initiated by Grice, it is not my goal here to vindicate any specific pragmatic account, nor to argue that any given linguistic phenomenon requires a pragmatic explanation.” This reminds me of Kilgariff, a Longman linguist. He has a lovely piece, “I don’t believe in word SENSE!” I think he found that Longman had, under ‘horse’: 1. Quadruped animal. 2. Painting of a horse, notably by Stubbs! He did not like that! Why would ‘sense,’ a Fregeian notion, have a place in something like ‘lexicography,’ that deals with corpuses and statistics? “The task is, rather, to understand the logic of a particular type of inference, a type of Griceian inference that can be and has been employed by a philosopher such as Grice who disagree on many other points of theory. Since it would be impossible within the confines of this essay to discuss these disagreements, or to do justice to the many ways in which Grice’s paradigm or programme has been revised and extended (palaeo-Griceians, neo-Griceians, post-Griceians), my discussion is confined to a few hackneyed examples hackneyed by Grice himself, and to Grice’s orthodox theory, if a departure therefrom will be noted where relevant. The conversational explanation of an alleged ambiguity or polysemy or bi-semy aims to show how an utterer U can take an expression E with one conventional meaning and use it as if it had other meanings as well. Typically, this requires showing how the utterer U’s intended message can be ‘inferred,’ with the aid of a general principle of communicative behaviour, from the conventional meaning or sense of the word E that U utters. In Grice’s pioneering account, for instance, the idea is that speech is subject to a Principle of Conversational Co-Operation (In earlier Oxford seminars, where he introduced ‘implicaturum’ he speaks of two principles in conflict: the principle of conversational self-interest, and the principle of conversational benevolence! I much love THAT than the rather artificial Kant scheme at Harvard). ‘Make your conversational contribution, or move, such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the conversational exchange in which you are engaged.’(1975, p. 44). “Sub-ordinate to the Principle of Conversational Co-Operation are four conversational maxims (he was jocularly ‘echoing’ Kant!) falling under the four Kantian conversational categories of Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Modus. Roughly: Make your contribution true. Kant’s quality has to do with affirmation and negation, rather. Make your contribution informative. Kant’s quantity has to do with ‘all’ and ‘one,’ rather. Make your contribution relevant. Kant’s relation God knows what it has to do with. Make your contribution perspicuous [sic]. Kant’s modus has to do with ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent.’ Grice actually has ‘sic’ in the original “Logic and Conversation.” It’s like the self-refuting Kantian. Also in ‘be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity’” ‘proguard obfuscation,’ sort of thing? “… further specifying what cooperation entails (pp. 45–46).” It’s sad Grice did not remember about the principle of conversational benevolence clashing with the principle of conversational self-interest, or dismissed the idea, when he wrote that ‘retro-spective’ epilogue about the maxims, etc. Bontly: “Unlike the constitutive (to use Anscombe and Searle, not regulative) principles of a grammar, the Principle of Conversational Co-Operation and the conversational, universalisable, maxims are to be thought of not as an arbitrary convention – vide Lewis -- but rather as a rational STRATEGY or guideline (if ‘strategy’ is too strong) for achieving one’s communicative ends.” I DO think ‘strategy’ is too strong. A strategist is a general: it’s a zero-sum game, war. I think Grice’s idea is that U is a rational agent dealing with his addressee A, another rational agent. So, it’s not strategic rationality, but communicative rationality. But then I’m being an etymologist! Surely chess players speak of ‘strategies,’ but then they also speak of ‘check mate,” kill the king! Bontly quotes from Grice: “‘[A]nyone who cares about the goals that are central to conversation,’ says Grice, ought to find the principle of conversational cooperation eminently reasonable (p. 49).” If not rational! I love Grice’s /: rational/reasonable. He explores on this later, “The price of that pair of shoes is not reasonable, but hardly irrational!” Bontly: “Like a grammar, however, the principle of conversational co-operation is (supposedly) tacitly known (or assumed) by conversationalists, who can thus call on it to interpret each other’s conversational moves.” Exactly. Parents teach their children well, not to lie, etc. “These interpretive practices being mutual ‘knowledge,’ or common ground, moreover, an utterer U can plan on his co-conversationalist B using the principle of conversational cooperation, to interpret his own utterances, enabling him to convey a good deal of information (and influencing) implicitly by relying on others to infer his intended meaning.”INFORMING seems to do, because, although Grice makes a distinction between ‘informing’ and ‘influencing,’ he takes an ‘exhibitive’ approach. So “Close the door!” means “I WANT YOU To believe that I want you to close the door.” I.e. I’m informing – influencing VIA informing. “Detailed discussions of Grice’s principle of conversational cooperation are found in many of the essays collected in Grice (1989), as well as in the work by linguists like Levinson (1983) and linguist/philosopher Neale (1992). Extensions and refinements of Grice’s approach are developed by linguist Horn (1972), linguist/philosopher Bach and philosopher Harnish (1979), linguist Gazdar (1979), linguist/philosopher Atlas and philosopher Levinson (1981), anthropologist Sperber and linguist Wilson (1986), linguist/philosopher Bach (1994), linguisdt Levinson (2000), and linguist Carston (2002).). The Principle of conversational cooperation and its conversational maxims allow Grice to draw a distinction between two dimensions of an utterer’s meaning within the total significance.” I never liked that Grice uses “signification,” here when in “Meaning” he had said: “Words, for all that Locke said, are NOT signs.” “We apply ‘sign’ to traffic signals, not to ‘dog’.” Bontly: “That which is ‘closely related to the conventional meaning of the word’ uttered is what the utterer has SAID (1975, p. 44),” or the explicatum, or explicitum. That which must instead be inferred with the aid of the principle of conversational cooperation is what the utterer U has conversationally implicated, the IMPLICATURUM (pp. 49–50), or implicitum. This dichotomy is in several ways oversimplified. First, Grice (1975, 1978) also makes room for ‘conventional’ implicaturums (“She was poor BUT she was honest”) and non-conversational non-conventional implicaturums (“Thank you,” abiding with the maxim, ‘be polite’), although these dimensions are both somewhat controversial (cf. Bach’s attack on conventional implicaturum) and can be set aside here. Also controversial is the precise delineation of Grice’s notion of what is said.” He grants he is using ‘say’ ‘artifiicially,’ which means, “natural TO ME!.” Some (anthropologist Sperber and linguist Wilson, 1986; linguist Carston, 1988, 2002; philosopher Recanati, 1993) hold that ‘what is said,’ the DICTUM, the explicatum, or explicitum, is significantly underdetermined by the conventional meaning of the word uttered, with the result that considerable pragmatic intrusive processing must occur even to recover what the utterer said.” And Grice allows that an implicaturum can occur within the scope of an operator.“Linguist/philosopher Bach disagrees, though he does add an ‘intermediate’ dimension (that of conversational ‘impliciture’) which is, in part, pragmatically determined, enriched, or intruded. For my purpose, the important distinction is between that element of meaning which is conventional or ‘encoded’ and that element which is ‘inferred,’ ab-duced, or pragmatically determined, whether or not it is properly considered part of what is said,” in Grice’s admittedly artificial use of this overused verb! (“A horse says neigh!”) A conversational implicaturum can itself be either particularized (henceforth, PCIs) or generalized (GCIs) (56).” Most familiar examples of implicaturum are particularised, where the inference to the utterer U’s intended meaning relies on a specific assumption regarding the context of utterance.” Grice’s first example, possibly, “Jones has beautiful handwriting” (Grice 1961).“Alter that context much at all and the implicaturum will simply disappear, perhaps to be replaced by another. With a generalised implicaturum, on the other hand, the inference or abduction to U’s intended interpretation is relatively context-independent, going through unless special clues to the contrary are provided to defeat it.”Love the ‘defeat.’ Levinson cites one of Grice’s unpublications as “Probability, defeasibility, and mood operators,” where Grice is actually writing, “desirability.”! “For instance, an utterance of the sentence” ‘SOME residents survived the earth-quake,’ would quite generally, absent any special clues to the contrary, seem to implicate that not all survived. All survived, alas, seems to be, to some, no news. Cruel world. No special ‘stage-setting’ has to be provided to make the implicaturum appreciable. No particular context needs to be assumed in order to calculate the likely intended meaning. All one needs to know is that an utterer U who thought that everyone, all residents survived the earthquake (or that none did?) would probably make this stronger assertion (in keeping with Grice’s first sub-maxim of Quantity: ‘Make your contribution as informative as required’).” Perhaps it’s best to deal with buildings. “Some – some 75%, I would say -- of the buildings did not collapse after the earth-quake on the tiny island, and fortunately, no fatalities need be reported. It wasn’t such a big earth-quake as pessimist had predicted.” “A Gricean should maintain that the ‘ambiguity’ of “some” -> “not all” canvassed at the outset can all be explained in terms of a generalized conversational implicaturum. For instance, linguist Horn shows, in his PhD on English, how an exclusive use of ‘or’ can be treated as a consequence of the maxim of Quantity. Roughly, since ‘p AND q’ is always ‘more informative,’ stronger, than ‘p or q’, an utterer U’s choosing to assert only the disjunction would ordinarily indicate that he takes one or the other disjunct to be false. He could assert the conjunction anyway, but then he would be violating Grice’s first submaxim of Quality: ‘Do not say what you believe to be false’ For similar reasons, the assertion of a disjunction would ordinarily seem to implicate that the utterer U does not know which disjunct is true (otherwise he would assert that disjunct rather than the entire disjunction) and hence, and this is the way Grice puts it, which is technically, the best way, that the utterer wants to be ‘interpreted’ as having some ‘non-truth-functional grounds’ for believing the disjunction (philosopher Grice, 1978; linguist Gazdar, 1979).  For recall that this all goes under the scope of a psychological attitude. In “Method in psychological philosophy: from the banal to the bizarre,” repr. in “The conception of value,” Grice considers proper disjunctions: “The eagle is not sure whether to attack the rabbit or the dove.” I think Loar plays with this too in his book for Cambridge on meaning and mind and Grice. “Grice (1981) takes a similar line with regard to asymmetric uses of ‘and’.” Indeed, I loved his “Jones got into bed and took off his clothes, but I do not want to suggest in that order.” “Is that a linguistic offence?” Don’t think so!” “The fourth submaxim of Manner,” ‘be orderly’ -- I tend to think this is ad-hoc and that Grice had this maxim JUST to explain away the oddity of “She got a children and married,” by Strawson in Strawson 1952. “says that utterers should be ‘orderly,’ and when describing a sequence of events, an orderly presentation would normally describe the events in the order in which they occurred. So an utterance of  (1b) (‘Jones took off his trousers – he had taken off his shoes already -- and got into bed.’ “would ordinarily (unless the utterer U ‘indicates’ otherwise) implicate that Jones did so in that order, hence the temporal reading of ‘and’.” “(Grice’s (1981) account of asymmetric ‘and’ seems NOT to account for causal interpretations like (1c).”Ryle says in “Informal logic,” 1953, in Dilemmas, “She felt ill and took arsenic,” has the conscript ‘and’ of Whitehead and Russell, not the ‘civil’ ‘and’ of the informalist. “Oxonian philosopher R. C. S. Walker – what took him to respond to Cohen? Walker quotes from Bostock, who was Grice’s tutee at St. John’s -- (1975, p. 136) suggests that the causal reading can be derived from the maxim of Relation.”Nowell-Smith had spoken of ‘be relevant’ in Ethics. But Grice HAD to be a Kantian!“Since conversationalists are expected to make their utterances relevant, one expects that conjoined sentences will ‘have some bearing to one another’, often a causal bearing. More nearly adequate accounts of the temporal and causal uses of ‘and’ (so-called ‘conjunction buttressing’) are found in linguist/philosopher Atlas and linguist Levinson (1981) and in linguist Levinson (1983, 2000). Linguist Carston (1988, 2002) develops a rival pragmatic account within the framework of anthropologist Sperber’s and linguist Wilson’s Relevance Theory, on which temporal and causal readings are explicatures rather than implicaturums. For the purposes of this essay, it is immaterial which of these accounts best accords with the data. In these and many other cases, it seems that a general principle regarding communicative RATIONALITY can provide an alternative to positing a semantic ambiguity.”Williamson is lecturing at Yale that ‘rationality’ has little to do with it!“But a Gricean goes a step further and claims that the implicaturum account (when available) is BETTER than an ambiguity or polysemy account. One possible argument for the stronger thesis is that the various specialised uses of ‘or’ (etc.) bear all the usual hallmarks of a conversational implicaturum. An implicaturum is: calculable (i.e. derivable from what is said or dictum or explicatum or explicitum via the Principle of conversational cooperation and the conversational maxims); cancellable (retractable without contradiction), and; non-detachable (incapable of being paraphrased away) Grice, 1975, pp. 50 and 57–58). They ought also to be, sort of, universal.” (Cf. Elinor Keenan Ochs, “The universality of conversational implicaturum.” I hope Williamson considers this. In Madagascar, they have other ‘norms’ of conversation: since speakers are guarded, implicatura to the effect, “I don’t know” are never invited! Unlike the true lexical ambiguity that arises from a language-specific convention, an implicaturum derives rather from general features of communicative RATIONALITY and should thus be similar across different languages (philosopher Kripke, 1977; linguist Levinson, 1983).”I’m not sure. Cfr. Ochs in Madagascar. But she is a linguist/anthropologist, rather than a philosopher? From a philosophical point of view, perhaps the best who treated this issues is English philosopher Martin Hollis in his essays on ‘rationality’ and ‘relativism’ (keywords!)“Since the ‘ambiguity’ in question here has all these features, at least to some degree, the implicaturum approach may well seem irresistible. It is well known, however, that none of the features listed on various occasions by Grice are sufficient (individually or jointly) to establish the presence of a conversational implicaturum (Grice, 1978; linguist Sadock, 1978). Take calculability.” Or how to ‘work it out,’ to keep it Anglo-Saxon, as pretentious Grice would not! The main difficulty is that a conversationalimplicaturum can become fossilized, or ‘conventionalised’ over time but remain calculable nonetheless, as happens with some ‘dead’ metaphors — one-time non-literal uses which congealed into a new conventional meaning.” A linguist at Berkeley worked on this, Traugott, on items in the history of the English language, or H-E-L, for short, H.O.T.E.L, history of the English language. I don’t think Grice considers this. He sticks with old Roman ‘animal’ -> ‘non-human’, strictly, having a ‘soul,’ or animus, anima. (I think Traugott’s focus was on verb forms, like “I have eaten,” meaning, literally, “I possess eating,” or something. But she does quote Grice and speaks of fossilization. “For instance, the expression.” ‘S went to the bathroom’ (Jones?) could, for obvious reasons, be used with its original, compositional, meaning to implicate that S ‘relieved himself’.” “The intended meaning would still be calculable today.”Or “went to powder her nose?” (Or consider the pre-Griceian (?) child’s overinformative, standing from table at dinner, “I’m going to the bathroom to do number 2 (unless he is flouting the maxim). “But the use has been absorbed, or encoded into some people’s grammar, as witnessed by the fact that  ‘S went to the bathroom on the living room carpet.’ is not contradictory (linguist J. L. Morgan, 1978; linguist Sadock, 1978).”I wonder what some contextualists at Yale (De Rose) would say about that!? Cf. Jason Stanley, enfant terrible. “Grice’s cancellability is similarly problematic. While one may cancel the exclusive interpretation of ‘p or q’ (e.g. by adding ‘or possibly both’), the added remark could just as well be disambiguating an ambiguous utterance as canceling the implicaturum (philosopher Walker, 1975; linguist Sadock, 1978).”Excellent POINT! Walker would be fascinated to see that Grice once coined ‘disimplicaturum’ for some loose uses. “Macbeth saw Banquo.” “That tie is yellow under that light, but orange under this one.” Actually, Grice creates ‘disimplicaturum’ to refute Davidson on intending: “Jones intends to climb Mt Everest next weekend.” Intending DOES entail BELIEF, but people abuse ‘intend’ and use it ‘loosely,’ with one sense dropped. Similarly, Grice says, with “You’re the cream in my coffee,” where the ‘disimplicaturum’ is TOTAL!“Non-detachability fares no better. When two sentences are synonymous (if there is, pace Quine, such a thing), utterances of them ought to generate the same implicaturum. But they will also have the same semantic implications, so the non-detachability of an alleged implicaturum shows very little if anything at all (linguist Sadock, 1978).”I never liked non-detachability, because it ENTAILS that there MUST be a synonym expression: cfr. God? Divinity? “Universality is perhaps the best test of the four.”I agree. When linguists like Elinor Keenan disregard this, I tend to think: “the cunning of conversational reason,” alla Hollis. Grice was a member of Austin’s playgroup, and the conversational MAXIMS were ‘universalisable’ within THAT group. That seems okay for both Kant AND Hegel!“Since an implicaturum can fossilise into a conventional meanings, however, it is always possible for a cross-linguistic alleged ‘ambiguity’ to be pragmatic in some language though lexical in another.”Is that ‘f*rnication’? Or is it Grice on ‘pushing up the daisies’ as an “established idiom” for ‘… is dead’ in WJ5? Austin and Grice would I think take for granted THREE languages: Greek and Roman, that they studied at their public schools – and this is important, because Grice says his method of analysis is somehow grounded on his classical education – and, well, English. Donald Davidson, in the New World, would object to the ‘substantiation’ that speaking of “Greek” as a language, say, may entail.“So while Grice’s tests are suggestive, they supply no clear verdict on the presence of an implicaturum. Besides these inconclusive tests for implicaturum, Grice could also appeal to various diagnostic tests for alleged ambiguity.” “And how to fail them,” to echo Zwicky. Grice himself suggests three, although none of them prove terribly helpful.”Loved your terrible. Cfr. ‘terrific’. And the king entering St. Paul’s cathedral: “Aweful!” meaning ‘awe-some!’“First, Grice points out that each alleged sense Sn of an allegedly ambiguous word E ought to be expressible ‘in a reasonably wide range of linguistic environments’ (1978, p. 117). The fact that the strong implicaturum of ‘or’ is UNavailable within the scope of a negation, for instance, would seem to count AGAINST alleged ambiguity or polysemy. On the other hand, the strong implicaturum of ‘or’ IS available within the scope of a propositional-attitude verb. A strong implicaturum of ‘and’ is arguably available in both environments, within the scope of a negation, and within the scope of a psychological-attitude verb. So the first test seems a wash.”Metaphorically, or implicaturally. J“Second, Grice says, if the expression E is ambiguous with one sense S2 being derived (somehow) from the initial or original or etymological sense S1, that derivative sense S2 ‘ought to conform to whatever principle there may be which governs the generation of derivative senses’ (pp. 117–118).”GRICE AT HIS BEST! I think he is trying to irritate Quine, who is seating on second row at Harvard! (After all Quine thought he was a field linguist!)Bontly, charmingly: “Not knowing the content of thi principle Grice invokes— and Grice gives us no hint as to what it might be — we cannot bring it, alas, to bear here!”I THINK he was thinking Ullman. At Oxford, linguists were working on ‘semantics,’ cfr. Gardiner. And he just thought that it would be Unphilosophical on his part to bore his philosophical Harvard audience with ‘facts.’ At one point he does mention that the facts of the history of the English language (how ‘disc’ can be used, etc.) are not part of the philosopher’s toolkit?“Third and finally, Grice says, we must ‘give due (but not undue) weight to MY INTUITIONS about the existence (or indeed non-existence) of a putative sense S2 of a word E.’ (p. 120).”Emphasis on ‘my’ mine! -- As I say, I never had any intuition about an expression having an extra-putative sense. Not even ‘bank,’ – since in Old Germanic, it’s all etymologically related!Bontly: “But, even granting the point that ‘or’ is NON-INTUITIVELY ambiguous in quite the same way that ‘bank’ IS, allegedly, INTUITIVELY ambiguous, the source of our present difficulty is precisely the fact that ‘p or q’ often *seems* intuitively to imply that one or the other disjunct is false.”Grice apparently uses ‘intuition’ and ‘introspection’ interchangeably, if that helps? Continental phenomenological philosophers would make MUCH of this! For Grice’s intuitions are HIS own. In a lecture at Wellesley, of all places (in Grice 1989) he writes: “My problems with my use of E arise from MY intuitions about the use of E. I don’t care how YOU use E. Philosophy is personal.” Much criticised, but authentic, in a way!“Since he discounts the latter intuition, Grice cannot place much weight on the former!”As I say, Grice’s intuitions are hard to fathom! So are his introspections! Actually, I think that Grice’s sticking with introspections and intuitions save him, as Suppes shows in PGRICE ed Grandy and Warner, from being a behaviourist. He is, rather, an intentionalist!“While a complete review of ambiguity tests is beyond the scope of this essay, we have perhaps seen enough to motivate the methodological problem with which we began: viz., that an, intuitive, alleged, ambiguity seems fit to be explained either semantically (ambiguity thesis, polysemy, bi-semy) or pragmatically/conversationally, with little by way of direct evidence to tell us which is which!”“If philosophy generated no problems, it would be dead!” – Grice. J“Linguists Zwicky and Sadock review several linguistic tests for ambiguity (e.g. conjunction reduction) and point out that most are ill-suited to detect ambiguities where the meanings in question are privative opposites,”Oddly, Grice’s first publication ever was on “Negation and privation,” 1938!Bontly: “i.e. where one meaning is a specialization or specification of the other (as for instance with the female and neutral senses of ‘goose’).”Or cf. Urmson, “There is an animal in the backyard.” “You mean Aunt Matilda?”Bontly: “Since the putative ambiguities of ‘or’ and the like are all of this sort, it seems inevitable that these tests will fail us here as well. For further discussion, see linguist Horn (1989, pp. 317–18 and 365–66) and linguist Carston (2002, pp. 274–77).It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find that a Gricean typically falls back on a methodological argument like parsimony, as instantiated in “M. O. R.”Let’s now turn to Parsimony and Its Problems. It may, at first, be less than obvious why an ambiguity or polysemy or bi-semy account should be deemed less parsimonious than its Gricean rival.” Where the conventionalist or ambiguist posits an additional sense S2, Grice adds, to S1, a conversational implicaturum, I”. Cheap, but no free lunch! (Grice saves)Bontly: “Superficially, little seems to be gained.” Ah, the surfaces of Oxford superficiality! “Looking closer, however, the methodological virtues of the Grice’s approach seem fairly clear.”Good!Bontly: “First, the principles and inference patterns that a pragmatic or conversational account utilizes are independently motivated. The principles and inference patterns are needed in any case to account for the relatively un-controversial class of particularized implicatura, and they provide an elegant approach to phenomena like figures of rhetoric, or speech -- metaphor, irony, meiosis, litotes, understatement, sarcasm – cfr. Holdcroft -- and tricks like Strawson’s presupposition. So it would seem that Grice can make do with explanatory material already on hand, whereas the ambiguity or polysemy theorist must posit a new semantic rule in each and every case. Furthermore, the explanatory material has an independent grounding in considerations of rationality.”I love that evening when Grice received a phonecall at Berkeley: “Professor Grice: You have been appointed the Immanuel Kant Memorial Lecturer at Stanford.” He gave the lectures on aspects of reason and reasoning!Bontly: “Since conversation is typically a goal-directed activity, it makes sense for conversationalists to abide by the Principle of Conversational Cooperation (something like Kant’s categorical imperative, in conversational format) and its (universalisable) conversational maxims, and so it makes sense for a co-conversationalist to interpret the conversationalist accordingly. A pragmatic explanation is therefore CHEAP – hence Occam on ‘aeconomicus’ -- the principle it calls on being explainable by — and perhaps even reducible to — facts about rational behavior in general.”I loved your “REDUCE.” B. F. Loar indeed thought, and correctly, that the maxims are ‘empirical generalisations over functional states.’ Genius!Bontly: A pragmatic account is not only more economic, or cheaper. It also reveals an orderliness or systematicity that positing a separate lexical ambiguity or polysemy or bisemy in each and every case would seem to miss (linguist/philosopher Bach). To a Griceian, it is no accident that a sentential connective or truth-functor (“not,” “and,” “or,” and “if”), a quantified expression (Grice’s “all” and “some (at least one)”) and a description (Grice’s “the”) all lend themselves to a weak and a stronger interpretation”Cf. Holdcroft, “Weak or strong?” in “Words and deeds.”Bontly: “Note, for instance, that a sentence with the logical form ‘Some Fs are Gs’,  and the pleonethetic, to use Geach’s and Altham’s coinage, ‘Most Fs are Gs’, and ‘A few Fs are Gs’ are all allegedly ‘ambiguous’ in the SAME way. Each of those expressions has an obvious weak reading in addition to a stronger reading: ‘Not all Fs are Gs’.Good because Grice’s first examination was: “That pillar-box seems red to me.” And he analyses the oddness in terms of ‘strength.’ (Grice 1961). He tries to analyse this ‘strength’ in terms of ‘entailment,’ but fails (“Neither ‘The pillar-box IS red’ NOR ‘The pillar-box SEEMS red’ entail each other.”)Bontly: For the conventionalist or polysemy theorist, there is no apparent reason why this should be so. There is no reason, that is, why three etymologically unrelated words (“some,” “most,” and “few”) should display the SAME pattern of alleged ambiguity. The Gricean, on the other hand, explains each the SAME way, by appealing to some rational principle of conversation. The implicatura are all ‘scalar’ quantity implicatura, attributable to the utterer U’s having uttered a weaker, less informative, sentence than he might have.” Linguist Levinson, 1983). Together, these considerations make a persuasive case for the Grice’s approach. A pragmatic explanation is more economical, and the resulting view of conversation is more natural and unified. Since economy and unification are both presumably virtues to be sought in a scientific or philosophical explanation — virtues which for brevity I lump together under Occamist ‘parsimony’ — it would NOT be unreasonable to conclude that a pragmatic explanation is (ceteris paribus) a better explanation. So it seems that Grice’s principle, the “M. O. R.” is correct. Senses ought not to be multiplied when pragmatics will do. Still, there are several reasons to be suspicious of the parsimony argument. “I lay out three. It bears emphasis that none of these are objections to the pragmatic approach per se.” I have no quarrel with the theory of conversation or particular attempts to apply it to conversational phenomena. The objections focus rather on the role that parsimony (or simplicity, or generality, etc.) plays in arguments PRO the implicaturum and CONTRA ambiguity or polysemy.” Then, there’s Dead Metaphors. First is a worry that parsimony is too blunt an instrument, generalizing to unwanted conclusions. Versions of this objection appear in philosopher Walker (1975), linguist Morgan (1978), and linguist Sadock (1978).” More recently, Reimer (1998) and Devitt (forthcoming) use it to argue against a Gricean treatment of the referential/attributive distinction.”But have they read Grice’s VACUOUS NAMES? I know you did! Grice notes: “My distinction has nothing to do with Donnellan’s!” Grice’s approach is syntactic: ‘the’ and “THE,” identificatory and non-identificatory uses. R. M. Sainsbury and D. E. Over have worked on this. Fascinating. Bontly: “For as with the afore-mentioned so-called ‘dead’ metaphor, it can happen that a word has a secondary use that is pragmatically predictable, and yet fully conventional. In many such cases, of course, the original, etymological meaning is long forgotten: e. g. the contemporary use of ‘fornication’, originally a euphemism for activities done in fornice (that is, in the vaulted underground dwellings that once served as brothels in Rome). (I owe this [delightful] example to Sam Wheeler). Few speakers recall the original meaning, so the metaphor can no longer be ‘calculated,’ as Grice’s “You’re the cream in my coffee!” (title of song) can!” The metaphor is both dead _and buried_.”Still un-buriable?“In other cases, however, speakers do possess the information to construct a Gricean explanation, and yet the metaphor is dead anyway.”Reimer’s (1998) example of the verb ‘incense’ is a case in point. One conventional meaning (‘to make or become angry’) began life as a metaphorical extension of the other (‘to make fragrant with incense’). The reason for the extension is fairly transparent (resting on familiar comparisons of burning and emotion), but the use allegedly represents an additional sense nonetheless.”What dictionaries have as ‘fig.’ But are we sure that when the dictionaries list things like 1., 2., 3., they are listing SENSES!? Cf. Grice, “I don’t give a hoot what the dictionary says,” to Austin, “And that’s where you make your big mistake.” Once Grice actually opened the dictionary (he was studying ‘feeling + adj.’ – he got to ‘byzantine,’ finding that MOST adjectives did, and got bored!Bontly: Such examples suggest that an implicaturum makes up an important source of semantic—and, according to linguist Levinson (2000), syntactic—innovation. A linguistic phenomenon can begin life as a pragmatic specialization or an extension and subsequently become conventionalized by stages, making it difficult to determine at what point (and for which ‘utterers’) a use has become fully conventional. One consequence is that an expression E can have, allegedly, a second sense S2, even when a pragmatic explanation appears to make it explanatorily superfluous, and parsimony can therefore mislead.”I’m not sure dictionary readers read ‘fig.’ as a different ‘sense,’ and lexicographers need not be Griceian in style!Bontly: “A related point is that an ambiguity account needn’t be LESS unified than an implicaturum account after all. If pragmatic considerations can explain the origin and development of new linguistic conventions, the ambiguity or polysemy theorist can provide a unified dia-chronic account of how several un-related expressions came to exhibit similar patterns of alleged ‘ambiguity.’ Quantifiers like ‘some’, ‘most’, and ‘a few’ may be similarly allegedly ambiguous today because they generated similar implicaturums in the past (cf. Millikan, 2001).”OKAY, so that’s the right way to go then? Diachrony and evolution, right?Bontly: “Then, there’s Tradeoffs. A ‘dead’ metaphor suggests that parsimony is too strong for the pragmatist’s purposes, but as a pragmatic account could have hidden costs to offset the semantic savings, parsimony may also be too weak! E. g. an implicaturum account looks, at least superficially, to multiply (to use Occam’s term) inferential labour, leaving it to the addressee to infer the utterer’s intended meaning from the words uttered, the context, and the conversational principle. Thus there are trade-offs involved, and the account which is semantically more parsimonious may be less parsimonious all things considered.”Grice once invited the “P. E. R. E.,” principle of economy of rational effort, though. Things which seem to be psychologically UNREAL are just DEEMED, tacitly, to occur.Bontly: “To be clear, this is not to suggest that the ambiguity or polysemy account can dispense with inference entirely. Were the exclusive and inclusive senses of ‘or’ BOTH lexically encoded (as they were in Old Roman, ‘vel’ and ‘aut,’ hence Whitehead’s choice of ‘v’ for ‘p v q’) still hearers would need to infer from contextual clues which meaning were intended. The worry is not, therefore, so much that the implicaturum account increases the number of inferences which conversants or conversationalists have to perform. The issue concerns rather the complexity of these inferences. Alleged dis-ambiguation is a highly constrained process. In principle, one need only choose the relevant sense Sn, from a finite list represented in the so-called ‘mental lexicon’. Implicaturum calculation, on the other hand, is a matter of finding the best explanation (abductively, alla Hanson) for an utterer’s utterance, the utterer’s meaning being introduced as an explanatory hypothesis, answering to a ‘why’ question. Unlike dis-ambiguation, where the various possible readings are known in advance, in the conversational explanation, the only constraints are provided by the addressee’s understanding of the context and the conversational principle. So it appears that Grice’s approach saves on the lexical semantics by placing a greater inferential burden on utterer and addressee.”But Grice played bridge, and loved those burdens. Stampe actually gives a lovely bridge alleged counter-example to Grice (in Grice 1989).Bontly: “Now, a Gricean can try to lessen this load in various ways. Grice can argue, for instance, that the inference used to recover a generalised implicaturum is less demanding than that for a particularized one, that familiarity with types of generalised implicate can “stream-line” the inferential process, and so on.”Love that, P. E. R. E., or principle of economy of rational effort, above?!Bontly: “We examine these moves. There’s Justification. Another difficulty with Grice’s appeals to parsimony is the most fundamental. On the one hand, it can hardly be denied that parsimony plays a role in scientific, if not philosophical, inference.” Across the sciences, if not in philosophy, it is standard practice to cite parsimony (simplicity, generality, etc.) as a reason to choose one hypothesis over another; philosophers often do the same.”Bontly’s ‘often’ implicates, ‘often not’! Grice became an opponent of his own minimalism at a later stage of his life, vide his “Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of Paul Grice,” by Paul Grice!Bontly: “At the same time, however, it remains quite mysterious, if that’s the word, why parsimony (etc.) should be given such weight by Occamists like Grice. If it were safe to assume that Nature is simple and economical, the preference for theories with these qualities would make perfect sense. Sir Isaac Newton offers such an ontological rationale for parsimony in the “Principia.” Sir Isaac writes (in Roman?) “I am to admit no more cause of a natural thing than such as are true and sufficient to explain its appearance.” “To this purpose, the philosopher says that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less serves.” “For Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of a superfluous cause.” “While a blanket assertion about the simplicity of Nature is hardly uncommon in the history of science, today it is viewed with suspicion.” Bontly:  “Newton’s reasons were presumably theological.” “If I knew that the Creator values simplicity and economy, I should expect the creatION to display these qualities as well.” “Lacking much information about the Creator’s tastes, however, the assumption becomes quite difficult, if not impossible, to support.”Cfr. literature on ‘biological diversity.’Bontly: “(Sober discusses several objections to an ontological justification for the principle of parsimony. Philosopher of science Mary Hesse surveys several other attempts to justify the use of parsimony and simplicity in scientific inference. Philosophers of science today are largely persuaded that the role of parsimony is ‘purely methodological’ epistemological, pragmatist, rather than ontological — that it is rational to reject unnecessary posits (or complex, dis-unified theories) no matter what Nature is like. One might argue, for instance, that the principle of parsimony is really just a principle of minimum risk. The more existence claims one accepts, the greater the chance of accepting a falsehood. Better, then, to do without any existence claim one does not need. Philosopher J. J. C. Smart attributes this view to John Stuart Mill.”Cf. Grice: “Not to bring more Grice to the Mill.”Bontly: “Now, risk minimization may be a reasonable methodological principle, but it does not suffice to explain the role of parsimony in natural science. When a theoretical posit is deemed explanatorily superfluous, the accepted practice is not merely to withhold belief in its existence but to conclude positively that it does not exist. As Sober notes, ‘Occam’s razor preaches atheism about unnecessary entities, not just a-gnosticism.’” Similarly, Grice’s razor tells us that we should believe an expression E to be unambiguous, aequi-vocal, monosemous, unless we have evidence for a second meaning. The absence of evidence for this alleged additional, ‘multiplied’ ‘sense’ is presumed to count as evidence that this alleged second, additional, multiplied, sense is absent, does not exist. But an absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of an absence.” The difficult question about scientific methodology is why we should count one as the other. Why, that is, should a lack of evidence for an existence claim count as evidence for a non-existence claim? The minimum risk argument leaves this question unanswered. Indeed, philosophers of science have had so little success in explaining why parsimony should be a guide to truth that many are tempted to conclude that it and the other ‘super-empirical virtues’ have no epistemic value whatsoever. Their role is rather pragmatic, or aesthetic.”This is in part Strawson’s reply in his “If and the horseshoe” (1968), repr. in PGRICE, in Grandy/Warner. He says words to the effect: “Grice’s theory may be more BEAUTIFUL than mine, but that’s that!” (Strawson thinks that ‘if’ acts as ‘so’ or ‘therefore’ but in UNASSERTED clauses. So it’s a matter of a ‘conventional’ IMPLICATURUM to the inferrability of “if p, q” or “p; so, q.” I agree with Strawson that Grice’s account of ‘conventional’ implicaturum is not precisely too beautiful?Bontly: “Parsimony can make a theory easier to understand or apply, and it pleases those of us with a taste for desert landscapes, but (according to these sceptics) they do not make the theory any more likely to be true.”The reference to the ‘desert landscape’ is genial. Cfr. Strawson’s “A logician’s landscape.” Later in life, Grice indeed found it unfair that an explanation of cherry trees blooming in spring should be explained as a ‘desert landscape.’ “That’s impoverishing it!”Bontly: “van Fraassen, for instance, tells us that a super-empirical virtue ‘does not concern the relation between the theory and the world, but rather the use and usefulness of the theory; it provide reasons to prefer the theory independently of questions of truth.” “If that were correct, it would be doubtful that parsimony can shoulder the burden Grice places on it.” “For then the conventionalist may happily grant that a pragmatic explanation is clever and elegant, and beautiful.”  “The conventionalist can agree that an implicaturum account comprehends a maximum of phenomena with a minimum of theoretical apparatus.” “But when it comes to truth, or alethic satisfactoriness, as Grice would prefer, a conventionalist may insist that parsimony is simply irrelevant.” “One Gricean sympathizer who apparently accepts the ‘aesthetic’ view of parsimony is the philosopher of science R. C. S. Walker (1975), who claims that the ‘[c]hoice between Grice’s and Cohen’s theories is an aesthetic matter’ and concludes that ‘we should not regard either the Conversationalist Hypothesis or its [conventionalist] rivals as definitely right or wrong.’” Cfr. Strawson in Grandy/Warner, but Strawson is no Griceian sympathiser! “Now asking Grice to justify the principle of parsimony may seem a bit unfair.” “Grice also assumes the reality of the external world, the existence of intentional mental states, and the validity of modus ponens.” “Need Grice justify these assumptions as well?” “Of course not!” “But even if the epistemic value of parsimony is taken entirely for granted, it is unclear why it should even count in semantics.” “All sides agree, after all, that many, perhaps even most, expressions of natural language are allegedly ‘ambiguous.’” “There are both poly-semies, where one word has multiple, though related, meanings (‘horn’, ‘trunk’), and homo-nymies, where two distinct words have converged on a single phonological form (‘bat’, ‘pole’).”  “The distinction between poly-semy and homo-nymy is notoriously difficult to draw with any precision, chiefly because we lack clear criteria for the identity of words (Bach).” “If words are individuated phono-logically, there would be no homo-nyms.” “If words are individuated semantically, there would be no poly-semies.” “Individuating words historically leads to some odd consequences: e.g., that ‘bank’ is poly-semous rather than homo-nymous, since the ‘sense’ in which it means financial institution and the ‘sense’ in which it means edge of a river are derived from a common source.” “I owe this example to David Sanford. For further discussion, see Jackendoff.”Soon at Hartford. And Sanford is right!Bontly: “Given that ambiguity is hardly rare, then, one wonders whether a semantic theory ought really to minimize it (cf. Stampe, 1974).” “One might indeed argue that the burden of proof here is on the pragmatist, not the ambiguity or polysemy theorist.” “Perhaps we ought to assume, ceteris paribus, that every regular use of an expression represents a SPECIAL sense.” “Such a methodological policy may be less economical than Grice’s, but it does extend the same pattern of explanation to all alleged ambiguities, and it might even accord better with the haphazard ways in which natural languages are prone to evolve (Millikan, 2001).”Yes, the evolutionary is the way to go!Bontly: “So Grice owe us some reason to think that parsimony and the like should count in semantics.” “He needn’t claim, of course, that parsimony is always and everywhere a reason to believe a hypothesis true.” “He needn’t produce a global justification for Occam’s Razor, that is—a local justification, one specific to language, would suffice.” “I propose to set aside the larger issue about parsimony in general, therefore, and argue that Modified Occam’s Razor can be justified by considerations peculiar to the study of language.” “Now for A Developmental Account of Semantic Parsimony.”  “My approach to parsimony in linguistics is inspired by Sober’s work on parsimony arguments in evolutionary biology.”And Grice was an evolutionary philosopher of sorts.Bontly: “In Sober’s view, philosophers have misunderstood the role of parsimony in scientific inference, taking it to function as a global, domain-general principle of scientific reasoning (akin perhaps to an axiom of the probability calculus).” “A more realistic analysis, Sober claims, shows that parsimony arguments function as tacit references to domain-specific process assumptions — to assumptions (whether clearly articulated or not) about the process(es) that generate the phenomena under study.” “Where these processes tend to be frugal, parsimony is a reasonable principle of theory-choice.” “Where they are apt to be profligate, it is not.” “What makes parsimony reasonable in one area of inquiry may, on Sober’s view, be quite unrelated to the reasons it counts in another.” “Parsimony arguments in the units of selection controversy, for instance, rest on one set of process assumptions (i.e. assumptions about the conditions necessary for ‘group’ selection to occur).” “The application of parsimony to ‘phylogenetic’ inference rests on a completely different set of assumptions (about rates of evolutionary change).” “As Sober notes, in either case the assumptions are empirically testable, and it could turn out that parsimony is a reliable principle of inference in one, both, or neither of these areas. Sober’s approach amounts to a thorough-going local reductionism about parsimony.It counts in theory-choice if and only if there are domain-specific reasons to think the theory which is more economical (in some specifiable respect) is more likely to be true. The ‘only if’ claim is the more controversial part of the bi-conditional, and I need not defend it here. For present purposes I need only the weaker claim that domain-specific assumptions can be sufficient to justify using parsimony — that parsimony is a sensible principle of inference if the phenomena in question result from processes themselves biased, as it were, towards parsimony. Now, in natural-language semantics, the phenomena in question are ordinarily taken to be the semantic rules or conventions shared by a community of speakers.”Cf. Peacocke on Grice as applied to ‘community of utterers,’ in Evans/McDowell, Truth and meaning, Oxford. Bontly: “The task is to uncover the ‘arbitrary’ mappings between a sound and a meaning (or concepts or referent) of which utterers have tacit knowledge. This ‘semantic competence’ is shaped by both the inputs that language learners encounter and the cognitive processes that guide language acquisition from infancy through adulthood. So the question is whether that input and these processes are themselves biased toward semantic parsimony and against the acquisition of multiple meanings for single phonological forms. As I shall now argue, there are several reasons to suspect that such a bias should exist. Psychologists often conceptualize learning in general and word learning in particular as a process of generating and testing hypotheses. A child (or, in many cases, an adult) encounters an unfamiliar word, forms one or more hypotheses as to its possible meaning, checks the hypotheses against the ways in which he hears the word used, and finally adopts one such hypothesis. This ‘child-as-scientist’ model is plainly short on details, but whatever mechanism implements the generating and testing, it would seem that the process cannot be repeated with every subsequent exposure to a word. Once a hypothesis is accepted — a word learned — the process effectively halts, so that the next time the child hears that word, he doesn’t have to hypothesize. Instead, the child can access the known meaning and use it to grasp the intended message. For that reason, an unfamiliar word ought to be the only one to trigger the learning process, and that of course makes ambiguity problematic. Take a person who knows one meaning of an ambiguous word, but not the other. To him, the word is not unfamiliar, even when used with an unfamiliar meaning. At least, it will not sound unfamiliar. So, the learning process will not kick in unless some other source of evidence suggests another, as-yet-unknown meaning. Presumably the evidence will come from ‘anomalous’ utterances: i.e. uses that are contextually absurd, given only the familiar meaning. This is not to say, of course, that hearing one anomalous utterance would be sufficient to re-start the learning process. Since there are other reasons why an utterance may seem anomalous (e.g. the utterer simply misspoke), it might take several anomalies to convince one that the word has another meaning. In the absence of anomalies, however, it seems highly unlikely that learners would seriously entertain the possibility of a second sense. A related point is that acquisition involves, or is at least thought to involve, a variety of ‘boot-strapping’ operations where the learner uses what he knows of the language in order to learn more.”Oddly Grice has a bootstrap principle (it relates to having one’s metalanguage as rich as one’s object-language.Bontly: “It has been argued, for instance, that children use semantic information to constrain hypotheses about words’ syntactic features (Pinker) and, conversely, syntactic information to constrain hypotheses about words’ semantic features (Gleitman). Likewise, children must surely use their knowledge of some words’ meanings to constrain hypotheses as to the meanings of others, thus inferring the meanings of unfamiliar words from context. However, that process only works insofar as one can safely assume that the familiar words in an utterance are typically used with their familiar meanings. If it were assumed that familiar words are typically used with unknown meanings, the bootstraps would be too weak. Together, these considerations point to the hypothesis that language acquisition is semantically conservative. Children will posit new meanings for familiar words only when necessary—only when they encounter utterances that make no sense to them, even though all the words are familiar. Interestingly, experimental work in language acquisition provides empirical evidence for much the same conclusion. Psychologists have long observed that children have considerable difficulties learning and using homo-nyms (Peters and Zaidel), leading many to suspect that young children operate under the helpful, though mistaken, assumption that a word can have but one meaning (Slobin). Children have similar difficulties acquiring synonyms and may likewise assume that a given meaning can be represented by at most one word. (Markman & Wachtel, see Bloom for a different explanation). I cannot here survey the many experimental studies bearing on this hypothesis, but one series of experiments conducted by Michele Mazzocco is particularly germane. Mazzocco presents children from several age-groups, as well as adults, with stories designed to mimic one’s first encounter with the secondary meaning of an ambiguous word. To control the effects of antecedent familiarity with secondary meanings, the stories used familiar words (e.g., ‘rope’) as if they had further unknown meanings—as ‘pseudo-homo-nyms’.For comparison, other stories included a non-sense word (e.g. ‘blus’) used as if it had a conventional meaning — as a ‘pseudo-word’ — to mimic one’s first encounter with an entirely unfamiliar word.”Cf. Grice’s seminar at Berkeley: “How pirots karulise elatically: some simpler ways.”“A pirot  can be said to potch or cotch an obble as fang or feng or fid with another obble.”“A person can be said to perceive or cognize an object as having the property f or f2 or being in a relation R with another object.”Bontly: Some stories, finally, used only genuine words with only their familiar meanings. After hearing a story, subjects are presented with a series of illustrations and asked to pick out the item referred to in the story. In a subsequent experiment, subjects had to act out their interpretations of the stories. In the pseudo-homo-nym condition, one picture would always illustrate the word’s conventional but contextually inappropriate meaning, one would depict the unfamiliar but contextually appropriate meaning, and the rest would be distractors. As one would expect, adults and older children (10- to 12-year-olds) performed equally well on these tasks, reliably picking out the intended meanings for familiar words, non-sense words and pseudo-homonyms alike. Young children (3- to 5-year-olds), on the other hand, could understand the stories where familiar words were used conventionally, and they were reasonably good at inferring the intended meanings of non-sense words from context, but they could not do so for pseudo-homonyms. Instead, they reliably chose the picture illustrating the familiar meaning, even though the story made that meaning quite inappropriate. These results are noteworthy for several reasons. It is significant, first of all, that spontaneous positing of ambiguities did not occur. As long as the known meaning of a word comported with its use in a story, subjects show not the slightest tendency to assign that word a new, secondary meaning—just as one would expect if the acquisition process were semantically conservative. Second, note that performance in the non-sense word condition confirms the familiar finding that young children can acquire the meanings of novel words from context — just as the bootstrapping procedure suggests. Unlike older children and adults, however, these young children are unable to determine the meanings of pseudo-homo-nyms from context, even though they could do so for pseudo-words — exactly what one would expect if young children assumed that words can have one meaning only. Why young children would have such a conservative bias remains controversial. Unfortunately it would take us too far afield to delve into this debate here. Doherty finds evidence that the understanding of ambiguity is strongly correlated with a grasp of synonymy, suggesting that these biases have a common source.” Doherty also finds evidence that the understanding of ambiguity/synonymy is strongly predicted by the ability to reason about false beliefs, suggesting the intriguing hypothesis that young children’s biases are due to their lack of a representational ‘theory of mind’).”  Cf. Grice on transmission of true beliefs in “Meaning, revisited.” – a transcendental argument.Bontly: “Nonetheless, Mazzocco’s results provide empirical evidence for our conjecture that a person will typically posit a second meaning for a known word only when necessary (and, as with young children, not always then). And that, of course, is precisely the sort of process assumption that would make Grice’s “M. O. R.” a reasonable principle for theory choice in semantics. For we have been operating under the assumption that the principal task of linguistic semantics is to describe the competent speaker’s tacit linguistic knowledge. If that knowledge is shaped by a process biased toward semantic parsimony, our semantic theorizing ought surely to be biased in the same direction. Is Pragmatism Vindicated?” That said, the question is still open whether Grice’s “M. O. R.,” understood now developmentally, ontogenetically, and not phylogenetically, as perhaps Millikan would prefer, has such consequences as Gricea typically assumes. In particular, it remains for us to consider whether and, if so, when the above process assumptions favor implicaturum hypotheses over ambiguity hypotheses, and the answer would seem to hang on two further issues. First, there is in each case the question whether a child learning the language will find it necessary to posit a second sense for a given expression. The fact that linguists, apprised as they are of the principles of conversation, find it unnecessary to introduce a second sense for (e.g.) ‘or’ does NOT imply that children would find it unnecessary. For one thing, children might acquire the various uses of ‘or’ well before they have any pragmatic understanding themselves.”Cfr. You can eat the cake or the sandwich.”Bontly: Even if they do not, the order in which the various uses are acquired could make considerable difference.It may be, for instance, that a child who first learned the inclusive use of ‘or’ would have no need to posit a second exclusive sense, whereas a child who originally interpreted ‘or’ exclusively might need eventually to posit an additional, inclusive sense. So we may well have to determine what meaning children first attach to an expression in order to determine whether they would find it necessary to posit a second. The issues raised above are pretty clearly empirical ones, and significant inter-personal differences could complicate matters considerably. Just for the sake of argument, however, let us grant that children do indeed first learn to interpret ‘or’ inclusively, to interpret ‘and’ as mere conjunction, and so on. Let us assume, that is, that the meanings which Grice typically takes to be conventional are just that. In fact, the assumption that weak uses are typically learned first has garnered some empirical support, as one referee brought to my attention. Paris shows that children are less likely than adults to interpret ‘or’ exclusively (see also Sternberg, and Braine and Rumain). More recent experimental work indicates that children first learn to interpret ‘and’ a-temporally (Noveck and Chevaux) and ‘some’ weakly (as compatible with ‘all’) (Noveck, 2001). Even so, it remains an interesting question whether children would posit secondary senses for any of these expressions, and Grice would be on firm ground in arguing that they would not. First, the ‘ambiguities’ discussed at the outset all involve secondary uses which can, with the help of pragmatic principles, be understood in terms of the presumed primary meaning of the expression. If a child, encountering this secondary use for the first time, already knows the primary meaning, and if he has moreover an understanding of the norms of conversation—if he is a ‘Griceian child’ —, he ought to be able to understand the secondary use perfectly well. He can recover the implicaturum and infer the speaker’s meaning from the encoded meaning of the utterance. To the ‘Griceian child,’ therefore, the utterance would not be anomalous. It would make perfect sense in context, giving him no reason to posit a secondary meaning. But what about children who are not yet Griceans — children too young to understand pragmatic principles or to have the conceptual resources to make inferences about other people’s likely communicative intentions? While there seems to be no consensus as to when pragmatic abilities emerge, several considerations suggest that they develop fairly early. Bloom argues that pragmatic understanding is part of the best account of how children learn the meanings of words. Papafragou discusses evidence that children can calculate implicaturums as early as age three. Such children, knowing only the primary meaning of the expression, would be unable to recover the conversational implicaturum and thus unable to grasp the secondary use of the expression via the pragmatic route. Nonetheless, I argue that they would still (at least in most cases) find it unnecessary to posit a second meaning for the expression. Consider: the ‘ambiguities’ at issue all involve secondary meanings which are specificatory, being identical to the primary but for some additional feature making it more restricted or specific. The primary and second meanings would thus be privative, as opposed to polar, opposites; Zwicky and Sadock). What a speaker means when he uses the expression in this secondary way, therefore, would typically imply the proposition he would mean if he were speaking literally (i.e. if he were using the primary meaning of the expression). One could thus say something true using the secondary sense only in contexts where one could say something true using the primary sense—whenever ‘P exclusive-or Q’ is true, so is ‘P inclusive-or Q’; whenever ‘P and-then Q’ is true, so is ‘P and Q’; and so on. Thus even when the intended meaning involves the alleged second sense, the utterance would still come out true if interpreted with the primary sense in mind. And this means, crucially, that the utterance would not seem anomalous, there being no obvious clash between the primary interpretation of the utterance and the conversational context. The utterance may well be pragmatically inappropriate when interpreted this way, but our pre-Gricean child is insensitive to such niceties. Otherwise, he would be already a ‘Gricean’ child. On our account, therefore, the pre-Gricean child still sees no need to posit a second meaning for the expression, even though he could not grasp the intended (specificatory) meaning. We may illustrate the above with the help of an ‘ambiguity’ in the indefinite description (“a dog”) made famous by Grice. A philosopher would ordinarily take an expressions of the form ‘an F’ to be a straightforward existential quantifier, “(Ex)”, as would seem to be the case in ‘I am going to a meeting’ On the other hand, an utterance of ‘I broke a finger’ seems to imply that it is my finger which I broke (unless you are a nurse – I think Horn’s cancellation goes), whereas ‘I saw a dog in the backyard’ would seem to carry the opposite sort of implication — i.e. that it was not my dog which I saw.”Grice finds this delightful ‘reductio’ of the sense-positer: “a” would have _three_ senses!Bontly: “We have then the potential for a three-way ambiguity, but our ruminations on word learning argue against it.”Take a child who has learned (somehow) the weak (existential quantier) use of ‘an F’ (Ex)Fx, but has for some reason never been exposed to strong uses: ‘my,’ ‘not mine.’ Now the child hears his mother say ‘Come look! There is a dog in the backyard!’ Running to the window, the child sees not his mother’s pet dog Fido, but some strange dog, that is not her mother’s. To an adult, this would be entirely predictable.” Using the indefinite description ‘a dog’ (logical form, “(Ex)Dx”) instead of the name for the utterer’s dog would lead one to expect that Fido (the utterer’s dog) is not the dog in question.”Actually, like Ryle, Grice has a shaggy-dog story in WJ5, “That dog is hairy-coated.” “Shaggy, if you must!”. Bontly: “And if the child were of an age to have a rudimentary understanding of the pragmatic aspects of language use, he would make the same prediction and thus see no need here to posit a second ‘sense’ for ‘an F,’ and take ‘not mine’ as an implicaturum.”It’s different with what Grice would have as an ‘established idiom’ (his example, “He’s pushing up the daisies,” but not “He is fertilizing the daffodils”) as one might argue that “I broke a finger” is. Bontly: “The child would not, because the intended, contextually appropriate interpretation would be clear given the primary meaning plus pragmatics, or implicaturum. But even if the child fails to grasp the intended meaning of his mother’s remark, it still seems unlikely that the child would be compelled to posit an ambiguity. No matter what the child’s mother means, there is, after all, a dog in the backyard (“Gotcha! That’s _a_ dog, my Fido is, ain’t it?!”). So the primary interpretation still yields a true proposition. While the ‘pre-Gricean child’ thus misses (part of) the intended meaning of the utterance, still he would not experience a clash between his interpretation and the contextually appropriate interpretation. Perhaps the pre-Gricean child could be forced to see an anomaly. Consider the following example. A parent offers her pre-Gricean child dessert, saying, ‘Ice-cream, or cake?’ When the child helps himself to some of each, the mother removes the cake with a look of annoyance and says:‘I said ice-cream OR cake’.  “While the mother’s behavioural response makes it abundantly clear that the child’s ‘inclusive’ interpretation is inappropriate, there are several reasons why he might still refrain from positing an ambiguity. For one, young children, who are more Griceian (even pre-Griceian) and logical than a few adults, appear to operate under the assumption that a word can have one meaning only, and it may be that pre-Gricean children are simply unable to override this assumption. This would seem particularly likely if Doherty is right that the ability to understand ambiguity requires a robust ‘theory of mind’.At any rate, the position taken here is that recognition of anomaly is necessary for one to posit a second meaning, not that it is sufficient. Contrast this with a similar case where, coming to the window, the child sees no dog but does see (e.g.) a motorcycle, a tree, a bird, and a fence.Then he would have reason to consider an ambiguity, though other explanations might also fit.” “Perhaps Mom was joking or hallucinating.” The claim is, then, that language acquisition works in such a way as to make it unlikely that learners would introduce a second senses for the ‘ambiguities’ in question. Of course, that claim is contingent on a very large assumption — viz., that the meaning which Grice take to be lexically ‘encoded’ is indeed the primary meaning of the expression — and that assumption may be mistaken.” In the continuing debate over Donnellan’s referential/attributive distinction, for instance, Grice takes it as uncontroversial that Russell on ‘the’ provides at least one of the conventional interpretations for sentences of the form ‘The king of France is bald’ (i.e., the attributive interpretation).” Grice’s example in “Vacuous names,” that Bontly quotes,  is “Jones’s butler mixed our coats and hats,” when “Jones’s butler” is actually Jones’s haberdasher dressed as a butler for the occasion.” So Grice distinguishes between THE butler (identificatory) and ‘the’ butler (non-identificatory, whoever he might be). Bontly: From there, they argue that we needn’t posit a secondary (referential) semantics for descriptions since the referential use can be captured by Russell’s theory supplemented by Grice’s pragmatics. Grice, 1969 (Vacuous Names); Kripke, 1977; Neale, 1990). From a developmental perspective, however, the ‘uncontroversial’ assumption that Russell on ‘the’ provides the primary meaning for description phrases is certainly questionable. It being likely that the vast majority of descriptions children hear early in life are used referentially, Grice’s position could conceivably have things exactly backwards— perhaps the referential is primary with the attributive acquired later, either as an additional meaning or a pragmatic extension. Still, the fact, if it is a fact, that a referential use is more common in children’s early environment does not imply that the referential is acquired first.” Exclusive uses of ‘or’ are at least as frequent as inclusive uses, and yet there is a good deal of evidence that the inclusive is developmentally primary. (Paris, Sternberg, Braine and Rumain). Either way, the point remains that plausible assumptions about language acquisition do indeed justify a role for parsimony in semantics. These ‘process’ assumptions may, of course, turn out to be incorrect.” If the evidence points the other way—if it emerges that the learning process posits ambiguities quite freely—then Grice’s “M. O. R.” could conceivably be groundless.”Making it a matter of empirical support or lack thereof, and that was perhaps why Millikan thought that was the wrong way to go? But then if she thought the evolutionary was the right way to go, wouldn’t THAT make Grice’s initially ‘sort of’ analytic pragmatist methodological philosophical decision a matter of fact or lack thereof? Bontly: “Nonetheless, we can see now that the debate between Grice and the conventionalists is ultimately an empirical, rather than, as Grice perhaps thougth, a conceptual one. Choices between pragmatic and semantic accounts may be under-determined by Grice’s intuitions about meaning and use, but they need not be under-determined tout court. Then there’s Tradeoffs, Dead Metaphors, and a Dilemma. The developmental approach to parsimony provides some purchase on the problems regarding tradeoffs and dead metaphors as well. The former problem is that parsimony can be a double-edged sword. While an ambiguity account does multiply senses, the implicaturum account appears to multiply inferential labour. Hearers have to ‘work out’ or ‘calculate’ the utterer’s meaning from the conversational principle, without the benefit of a list of possible meanings as in disambiguation. Pragmatic inference thus seems complex and time-consuming. But the fact is that we are rarely conscious of engaging in any reasoning of the sort Grice requires, pace his Principle of Economy of Rational Effort. Consequently, the claim that communicators actually work through all these complicated inferences seems psychologically unrealistic. To combat these charges, Grice’s response is to claim that implicaturum calculation is largely unconscious and implicit.”Indeed Grice’s principle of economy of rational effort. Bontly: “Background assumptions can be taken for granted, steps can be skipped, and only rarely need the entire process breach the surface of consciousness. This picture seems particularly plausible with a generalised implicaturum as opposed to a particularized one.” When a particular use of an expression E, though unconventional, has become standard or regular (“I broke a finger”? “He’s pushing up the daisies”), the inferential process can be considerably stream-lined; it gets ‘short-circuited’ or ‘compressed by precedent’ (Bach and Harnish). “Bach’s and Harnish’s notion of short-circuited inference is similar to but not quite the same as J. L. Morgan’s notion of short-circuited implicaturum. The latter involves conventions of use (as Searle would put it), to which Bach and Harnish see their account as an alternative. Levinson objects to Bach’s and Harnish’s characterization of default inferences as those compressed by the weight of precedent. A generalised implicaturum, Levinson says, ‘is generative, driven by general heuristics and not dependent on routinization’ But Levinson’s complaint against Bach and Harnish may seem uncharitable. Even on Bach’s and Harnish’s view, where a default inference is that ‘compressed by the weight of precedent’, a generalised implicaturum is still generative: it is still generated by the maxims of conversation. Only the stream-lined character of the inference is dependent on precedent, not the implicaturum itself. If the addressee has calculated the EXCLUSIVE meaning of ‘or’ enough times in the past (from  his mother, we’ll assume) it becomes the default, allowing one to proceed directly to the exclusive interpretation (unless something about the context provides a clue that the standard interpretation would here be inappropriate. Now, the idea that the generalised implicaturum can be the default interpretation, reached without all the fancy inference, provides an obvious reply to the worry about tradeoffs. While it is true that a pragmatic inference, as Grice calls it, in contrast with the ‘logical inference, -- “Retrospective Epilogue” -- are in principle abductive, fairly complex and potentially laborious, familiarity can simplify the process enormously, to the point where it becomes no more difficult than dis-ambiguation.” But the appeal to a default interpretation raises an interesting difficulty that (to my knowledge) Grice never adequately addressed. It is now quite unclear why this default interpretation should be considered an implicaturum rather than an additional sense of the expression.”Because it’s cancellable?Bontly: “To say that it is a default interpretation is, after all, to say that utterers and addressees learn to associate that interpretation with the type of expression in question. The default meaning is known in advance, and all one has to do is be on the lookout for information that could rule it out. “‘Short-circuited’ implicaturum-calculation is thus hard to differentiate from disambiguation, making Grice’s hypothesis look more like a notional variant than a real competitor to the ambiguity hypothesis. Insofar as Grice has considered this problem, his answer appears to be that linguistic meanings, being conventional, are inherently arbitrary.”cf. Bach and Harnish, 1979, pp. 192–195).”Indeed, in his evolutionary take on language, it all starts with Green’s self-expression. You get hit, and you express pain unvoluntarily. Then you proceed to simulate the response in absence of the hit, but the meaning is “I’m in pain.” Finally, you adopt the conventions, arbitrary, and say, ‘pain,’ which is only arbitrarily connected with, well, the pain. It is the last stage that Grice stresses as ‘artificial,’ and ‘arbitrary,’ “non-iconic,” as he retorts to Peirceian terminology he was familiar with since his Oxford days. Bontly: “The exclusive use of ‘or’, on the other hand, is entirely predictable from the conversational principle, so there is nothing arbitrary about it. Thus the exclusive interpretation cannot be part of the encoded meaning, even if it is the default interpretation. Familiarity with that use, in other words, can remove the need to go through the canonical inference, but it does not change the fact that the use has a ‘natural’ (i.e., non-conventional, principled, indeed rational) explanation. It doesn’t change the fact that it is calculable. At this point, however, Grice’s defense of default pragmatic interpretations collides with our remaining issue, the problem of a dead metaphor, such as “He is pushing up the daisies.”” Or as Grice prefers, an ‘established’ or ‘recognised’ ‘idiom.’Bontly: “A metaphor and other conversational implicatura can become conventionalized and ‘die’, turning into new senses. In many such cases the original rationale for the use is long forgotten, but in other cases the dead metaphor remains calculable. A dead metaphors thus pose a nasty, macabre?, dilemma for Grice.”Especially if the implicaturum is “He is dead”!Bontly: “On the one hand, it is tempting to argue that a dead metaphor involves a new conventional meaning precisely because the interpretation in question is no longer actually inferred via Gricean inferences (though one could do so if one had to—if, say, one somehow forgot that the expression had this secondary meaning). If a conversational implicaturum had to be not just calculaBLE but actually calculatED, that would suffice to explain why this one-time, one-off, implicaturum is now semantically significant. But that reply is apparently closed to pragmatists, for then it will be said that the same is true of (e.g.) the exclusive use of ‘or.’ The exclusive interpretation is certainly calculabLE, but since no one actually calculatES it (except in the most unusual of circumstances, as Grice at Harvard!), the implication should be considered semantic, not pragmatic. On the other hand, Grice might maintain that an implicaturum need only be calculabLE and stick by their view that the exclusive reading of ‘or’ is conversationally implicated. But then we shall have to face the consequence that many a dead metaphor (“He is pushing up the daisies”) is likewise calculabLE and thus, according to the present view, ought not to be considered conventional meanings of the expressions in question, which in most cases seems quite wrong.”I’m never sure what Grice means by an ‘established idiom.’ Established by whom? Perhaps he SHOULD consult the dictionary every now and then! Sad the access to OED3 is so expensive!Bontly: What one needs, evidently, is some reason to treat these two types of cases differently.To treat the exclusive use of ‘or’ as an implicaturum (even though it is only rarely calculatED as such) while at the same time to view (e.g.) the once metaphorical use of ‘incense’ (or ‘… pushing up the daisies”) as semantically significant (even though it remains calculabLE).” And the developmental account of parsimony offers just such a reason. On the present view, the reason that the ambiguity account has the burden of proof has to do with the nature of the acquisition, learning, ontogenetical process and specifically with the presumption that language learners will avoid postulating unnecessary senses. But the implicaturum must be calculable by the learner, given his prior understanding of the expression E and his level of pragmatic sophistication.”Grice was a sophisticated. As I think Dora B.-O knows, Moore has been claiming that Grice’s idea that animals cannot mean, because they are not ‘sophisticated’ enough, is an empirical claim, even for Grice!Bontly: “t may be, therefore, that children at the relevant developmental stage have no difficulty understanding the exclusive use of ‘or’ (etc.) as an implicaturum and yet lack the understanding necessary to predict that ‘incense’ could be used to mean to make or become angry, or that to say of someone that he ‘is pushing up the daisies,’ means that, having died and getting buried, the corpse is helping the flowers to grow. The child might not realize, for instance, that ‘incense’ also means an aromatic substance that burns with a pleasant odour, and even those who do probably lack the general background knowledge necessary to appreciate the metaphorical connections between burning and emotion.”Cf. Turner and Fauconnier on ‘blends.’Bontly: Either way, the metaphor would be dead to the child, forcing him to learn that use the same way they learn any arbitrary convention.”It may do to explore ‘established idioms’ in, say, parts of England, which are not so ‘established’ in OTHER parts. Nancy Mitford with his U and non-U distinction may do. “He went to Haddon Hall” invites, for Mitford, the ‘unintended’ implicaturum that the utterer is NOT upper-class. “Surely we drop “hall.’ What else can Haddon be?” But the inference may be lacking for a non-U addressee or utterer. Similarly, in the north of England, “our Mary,” invites the implicaturum of ‘affection,’ and this may go over the head of members of the south-of-England community.Bontly: “The way out of the dilemma, then, is to look to learning.”Alla Kripkenstein?Bontly: To the problem of tradeoffs, Grice can reply that it is better to multiply (if we must use the Occamist verb) inferences – logical inference and pragmatic inference -- than multiply senses because language acquisition is biased in that direction. And Grice may likewise answer the problem of a dead metaphor, or established idiom like, “He’s been pushing up the daisies for some time, now. The reason that Grice’s “M. O. R.” does not mandate an implicaturum account for Grice as well is that such a dead metaphor or established idiom is not calculable by children at the time they learn such expressions, even if they are calculable by some adult speakers.”Is that a fact? I would think that a child is a ‘relentless literalist,’ as Grice called Austin. “Pushing up the daisies?” “I don’t see any daisies!”I think Brigitte Nerlich has a similar example re: irony: MOTHER: What a BEAUTIFUL day! (ironically)CHILD: What do you mean? It’s pouring and nasty. MOTHER: I was being ironic.I don’t think the child is going to posit a second sense to ‘beautiful’ meaning ‘nasty.’Bontly: “For the deciding question in applying Grice’s “M. O. R.” is NOT whether the implicaturum account is available to a philosopher like Grice, but whether it is available to the learner! On this way of carving things up, by the way, some alleged ambiguities which Grice would treat as implicatura could turn out to be semantically significant after all. Likewise, some allegedly dead metaphor may turn out to be very much alive.” Look! He did kick the bucket!” “But he’s PRETENDING to die, dear! Some uses, finally, may vary from utterer to utterer, there being no guarantee that every utterer will have learned the use in the same way. As a conclusion, a better understanding of developmental processes might therefore enlarge our appreciation of the ways in which semantics and pragmatics interact.”Indeed.REFERENCES Atlas, J. D. “Philosophy without Ambiguity.” Oxford: Clarendon Press. E: Wolfson, Oxford. Philosopher. And S. Levinson, “It-clefts, informativeness, and logical form: Radical pragmatics (revised standard version),” in P. Cole (ed.), Radical Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.Bach, K. “Thought and Reference,” Oxford.“Conversational impliciture,” Mind & Language, 9And R. Harnish, “Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts,” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 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Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Papafragou, A. “Mind-reading and verbal communication,” Mind & Language, 17Paris, S. “Comprehension of language connectives and propositional logical relationships,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 16.Peters, A./E. Zaidel, “The acquisition of homonymy. Cognition, 8.Pinker, S. “Language Learnability and Language Development,” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reimer, M. “Donnellan’s distinction/Kripke’s test.” Analysis, 58.Ruhl, C. “On Monosemy: A Study in Linguistic Semantics,” Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Sadock, J. “On testing for conversational implicaturum,” in P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, vol. 9, Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, Repr. in Davis, 1991. Searle, J. R. “Indirect speech acts,” n P. Cole and J. Morgan, Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, Repr. in Davis, 1991. Slobin, D. “Crosslinguistic evidence for a language-making capacity,” n D. Slobin, The Cross-linguistic Study of Language Acquisition, vol. 2. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Smart, J. “Ockham’s razor,” in J. Fetzer, “Principles of Philosophical Reasoning,” Totowa, NJ: Rowan and Allanheld. Sober, E. “The principle of parsimony,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 32“Reconstructing the Past,” Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.“Let’s razor Ockham’s razor,” in D. Knowles, Explanation and Its Limits. Cambridge.Stalnaker, R. C. “Pragmatic presupposition,” in M. Munitz/P. Unger, “Semantics and Philosophy,” New York: Academic Press, pp. 197–213. Repr. in Davis, 1991. Stampe, D. W. “Attributives and interrogatives,” in M. Munitz/P. Unger, Semantics and Philosophy. New York: Academic Press.Sternberg, R. “Developmental patterns in the encoding and combination of logical connectives,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 28 Van Fraassen, B. “The Scientific Image,” Oxford.Walker, R. C. S. “Conversational implicaturums: a reply to Cohen,” in S. W. 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modus: Grice was an expert on mode. There is one mode too many. If Grice found ‘senses’ obsolete (“Sense are not to be multiplied beyond necessity”), he was always ready to welcome a new mode – e. g. the quessertive --. or mode. ἔγκλισις , enclisis, mood of a verb, D.H.Comp.6, D.T.638.7, A.D. Synt.248.14, etc.Many times, under ‘mode,’ Grice describes what others call ‘aspect.’ Surely ‘tense’ did not affect him much, except when it concerned “=”. But when it came to modes, he included ‘aspect,’ so there’s the optative, the imperative, the indicative, the informational, and then the future intentional and the future indicative, and the subjunctive, and the way they interact with the praesens, praeteritum and futurum, and wih the axis of what Aristotle called ‘teleios’ and ‘ateleios,’ indefinite and definite, or ‘perfectum, and ‘imperfectum, ‘but better ‘definitum’ and ‘indefinitum.’ Grice uses psi-asrisk, to be read asterisk-sub-psi. He is not concerned with specficics. All the specifics the philosopher can take or rather ‘assume’ as ‘given.’ The category of mode translates ‘tropos,’ modus. Kant wrongly assumed it was Modalitat, which irritated Grice so much that he echoed Kant as saying ‘manner’! Grice is a modista. He sometimes uses ‘modus,’ after Abbott. The earliest record is of course “Meaning.” After elucidating what he calls ‘informative cases,’ he moves to ‘imperative’ ones. Grice agreed with Thomas Urquhart that English needed a few more moods! Grice’s seven modes.Thirteenthly, In lieu of six moods which other languages have at most, this one injoyeth seven in its conjugable words. Ayer had said that non-indicative utterances are hardly significant. Grice had been freely using the very English not Latinate ‘mood’ until Moravcsik, of all people, corrects him: What you mean ain’t a mood. I shall call it mode just to please you, J. M. E. The sergeant is to muster the men at dawn is a perfect imperative. They shall not pass is a perfect intentional. A version of this essay was presented in a conference whose proceedings were published, except for Grices essay, due to technical complications, viz. his idiosyncratic use of idiosyncratic symbology! By mode Grice means indicative or imperative. Following Davidson, Grice attaches probability to the indicative, via the doxastic, and desirability to the indicative, via the buletic-boulomaic.  He also allows for mixed utterances. Probability is qualified with a suboperator indicating a degree d; ditto for desirability, degree d. In some of the drafts, Grice kept using mode until Moravsik suggested to him that mode was a better choice, seeing that Grices modality had little to do with what other authors were referring to as mood. Probability, desirability, and modality, modality, desirability, and probability; modality, probability, desirability. He would use mode operator. Modality is the more correct term, for things like should, ought, and must, in that order. One sense. The doxastic modals are correlated to probability. The buletic or boulomaic modals are correlated to desirability. There is probability to a degree d. But there is also desirability to a degree d.  They both combine in Grices attempt to show how Kants categorical imperative reduces to the hypothetical or suppositional. Kant uses modality in a way that Grice disfavours, preferring modus. Grice is aware of the use by Kant of modality qua category in the reduction by Kant to four of the original ten categories in Aristotle). The Jeffrey-style entitled Probability, desirability, and mode operators finds Grice at his formal-dress best. It predates the Kant lectures and it got into so much detail that Grice had to leave it at that. So abstract it hurts. Going further than Davidson, Grice argues that structures expressing probability and desirability are not merely analogous. They can both be replaced by more complex structures containing a common element. Generalising over attitudes using the symbol ψ, which he had used before, repr. WoW:v, Grice proposes G ψ that p. Further, Grice uses i as a dummy for sub-divisions of psychological attitudes. Grice uses Op supra i sub α, read: operation supra i sub alpha, as Grice was fastidious enough to provide reading versions for these, and where α is a dummy taking the place of either A or B, i. e. Davidsons prima facie or desirably, and probably. In all this, Grice keeps using the primitive !, where a more detailed symbolism would have it correspond exactly to Freges composite turnstile (horizontal stroke of thought and vertical stroke of assertoric force, Urteilstrich) that Grice of course also uses, and for which it is proposed, then: !─p. There are generalising movements here but also merely specificatory ones. α is not generalised. α is a dummy to serve as a blanket for this or that specifications. On the other hand, ψ is indeed generalised. As for i, is it generalising or specificatory? i is a dummy for specifications, so it is not really generalising. But Grice generalises over specifications. Grice wants to find buletic, boulomaic or volitive as he prefers when he does not prefer the Greek root for both his protreptic and exhibitive versions (operator supra exhibitive, autophoric, and operator supra protreptic, or hetero-phoric). Note that Grice (WoW:110) uses the asterisk * as a dummy for either assertoric, i.e., Freges turnstile, and non-assertoric, the !─ the imperative turnstile, if you wish. The operators A are not mode operators; they are such that they represent some degree (d) or measure of acceptability or justification. Grice prefers acceptability because it connects with accepting that which is a psychological, souly attitude, if a general one. Thus, Grice wants to have It is desirable that p and It is believable that p as understood, each, by the concatenation of three elements. The first element is the A-type operator. The second element is the protreptic-type operator. The third element is the phrastic, root, content, or proposition itself. It is desirable that p and It is believable that p share the utterer-oriented-type operator and the neustic or proposition. They only differ at the protreptic-type operator (buletic/volitive/boulomaic or judicative/doxastic). Grice uses + for concatenation, but it is best to use ^, just to echo who knows who. Grice speaks in that mimeo (which he delivers in Texas, and is known as Grices Performadillo talk ‒ Armadillo + Performative) of various things. Grice speaks, transparently enough, of acceptance: V-acceptance and J-acceptance. V not for Victory but for volitional, and J for judicative. The fact that both end with -acceptance would accept you to believe that both are forms of acceptance. Grice irritatingly uses 1 to mean the doxastic, and 2 to mean the bulematic. At Princeton in Method, he defines the doxastic in terms of the buletic and cares to do otherwise, i. e. define the buletic in terms of the doxastic. So whenever he wrote buletic read doxastic, and vice versa. One may omits this arithmetic when reporting on Grices use. Grice uses two further numerals, though: 3 and 4. These, one may decipher – one finds oneself as an archeologist in Tutankamons burial ground, as this or that relexive attitude. Thus, 3, i. e. ψ3, where we need the general operator ψ, not just specificatory dummy, but the idea that we accept something simpliciter. ψ3 stands for the attitude of buletically accepting an or utterance: doxastically accepting that p or doxastically accepting that ~p. Why we should be concerned with ~p is something to consider.  G wants to decide whether to believe p or not. I find that very Griceian. Suppose I am told that there is a volcano in Iceland. Why would I not want to believe it? It seems that one may want to decide whether to believe p or not when p involves a tacit appeal to value. But, as Grice notes, even when it does not involve value, Grice still needs trust and volition to reign supreme. On the other hand, theres 4, as attached to an attitude, ψ4. This stands for an attitude of buletically accepting an or utterance: buletically accepting that p, or G buletically accepting that ~p, i. e. G wants to decide whether to will, now that p or not. This indeed is crucial, since, for Grice, morality, as with Kantotle, does cash in desire, the buletic. Grice smokes. He wills to smoke. But does he will to will to smoke? Possibly yes. Does he will to will to will to smoke? Regardless of what Grice wills, one may claim this holds for a serious imperatives (not Thou shalt not reek, but Thou shalt not kill, say) or for any p if you must (because if you know that p causes cancer (p stands for a proposition involving cigarette) you should know you are killing yourself. But then time also kills, so what gives? So I would submit that, for Kant, the categoric imperative is one which allows for an indefinite chain, not of chain-smokers, but of good-willers. If, for some p, we find that at some stage, the P does not will that he wills that he wills that he wills that, p can not be universalisable. This is proposed in an essay referred to in The Philosophers Index but Marlboro Cigarettes took no notice. One may go on to note Grices obsession on make believe. If I say, I utter expression e because the utterer wants his addressee to believe that the utterer believes that p, there is utterer and addresse, i. e. there are two people here  ‒ or any soul-endowed creature  ‒ for Grices squarrel means things to Grice. It even implicates. It miaows to me while I was in bed. He utters miaow. He means that he is hungry, he means (via implicaturum) that he wants a nut (as provided by me). On another occasion he miaowes explicating, The door is closed, and implicating Open it, idiot. On the other hand, an Andy-Capps cartoon read: When budgies get sarcastic Wild-life programmes are repeating One may note that one can want some other person to hold an attitude. Grice uses U or G1 for utterer and A or G2 for addressee. These are merely roles. The important formalism is indeed G1 and G2. G1 is a Griceish utterer-person; G2 is the other person, G1s addressee. Grice dislikes a menage a trois, apparently, for he seldom symbolises a third party, G3. So, G ψ-3-A that p is 1 just in case G ψ2(G ψ1 that p) or G ψ1 that ~p is 1. And here the utterers addressee, G2 features: G1 ψ³ protreptically that p is 1 just in case G buletically accepts ψ² (G buletically accepts ψ² (G doxastically accepts ψ1 that p, or G doxastically accepts ψ1 that ~p))) is 1. Grice seems to be happy with having reached four sets of operators, corresponding to four sets of propositional attitudes, and for which Grice provides the paraphrases. The first set is the doxastic proper. It is what Grice has as doxastic,and which is, strictly, either indicative, of the utterers doxastic, exhibitive state, as it were, or properly informative, if addressed to the addressee A, which is different from U himself, for surely one rarely informs oneself. The second is the buletic proper. What Grice dubs volitive, but sometimes he prefers the Grecian root. This is again either self- or utterer-addressed, or utterer-oriented, or auto-phoric, and it is intentional, or it is other-addressed, or addressee-addressed, or addressee- oriented, or hetero-phoric, and it is imperative, for surely one may not always say to oneself, Dont smoke, idiot!. The third is the doxastic-interrogative, or doxastic-erotetic. One may expand on ? here is minimal compared to the vagaries of what I called the !─ (non-doxastic or buletic turnstile), and which may be symbolised by ?─p, where ?─ stands for the erotetic turnstile. Geachs and Althams erotetic somehow Grice ignores, as he more often uses the Latinate interrogative. Lewis and Short have “interrŏgātĭo,” which they render as “a questioning, inquiry, examination, interrogation;” “sententia per interrogationem, Quint. 8, 5, 5; instare interrogation; testium; insidiosa; litteris inclusæ; verbis obligatio fit ex interrogatione et responsione; as rhet. fig., Quint. 9, 2, 15; 9, 3, 98. B. A syllogism: recte genus hoc interrogationis ignavum ac iners nominatum est, Cic. Fat. 13; Sen. Ep. 87 med. Surely more people know what interrogative means what erotetic means, he would not say ‒ but he would. This attitude comes again in two varieties: self-addressed or utterer-oriented, reflective (Should I go?) or again, addresee-addressed, or addressee-oriented, imperative, as in Should you go?, with a strong hint that the utterer is expecting is addressee to make up his mind in the proceeding, not just inform the utterer. Last but not least, there is the fourth kind, the buletic-cum-erotetic. Here again, there is one varietiy which is reflective, autophoric, as Grice prefers, utterer-addressed, or utterer-oriented, or inquisitive (for which Ill think of a Greek pantomime), or addressee-addressed, or addressee-oriented. Grice regrets that Greek (and Latin, of which he had less ‒ cfr. Shakespeare who had none) fares better in this respect the Oxonian that would please Austen, if not Austin, or Maucalay, and certainly not Urquhart -- his language has twelve parts of speech: each declinable in eleven cases, four numbers, eleven genders (including god, goddess, man, woman, animal, etc.); and conjugable in eleven tenses, seven moods, and four voices.These vocal mannerisms will result in the production of some pretty barbarous English sentences; but we must remember that what I shall be trying to do, in uttering such sentences, will be to represent supposedly underlying structure; if that is ones aim, one can hardly expect that ones speech-forms will be such as to excite the approval of, let us say, Jane Austen or Lord Macaulay. Cf. the quessertive, or quessertion, possibly iterable, that Grice cherished. But then you cant have everything. Where would you put it? Grice: The modal implicaturum. Grice sees two different, though connected questions about mode. First, there is the obvious demand for a characterisation, or partial characterisation, of this or that mode as it emerges in this or that conversational move, which is plausible to regard as modes primary habitat) both at the level of the explicatum or the implicaturum, for surely an indicative conversational move may be the vehicle of an imperatival implicaturum. A second, question is how, and to what extent, the representation of mode (Hares neustic) which is suitable for application to this or that conversational move may be legitimately exported into philosophical psychology, or rather, may be grounded on questions of philosophical psychology, matters of this or that psychological state, stance, or attitude (notably desire and belief, and their species). We need to consider the second question, the philosophico- psychological question, since, if the general rationality operator is to read as something like acceptability, as in U accepts, or A accepts, the appearance of this or that mode within its scope of accepting is proper only if it may properly occur within the scope of a generic psychological verb I accept that . Lewis and Short have “accepto,” “v. freq. a. accipio,” which Short and Lewis render as “to take, receive, accept,” “argentum,” Plaut. Ps. 2, 2, 32; so Quint. 12, 7, 9; Curt. 4, 6, 5; Dig. 34, 1, 9: “jugum,” to submit to, Sil. Ital. 7, 41. But in Plin. 36, 25, 64, the correct read. is coeptavere; v. Sillig. a. h. l. The easiest way Grice finds to expound his ideas on the first question is by reference to a schematic table or diagram (Some have complained that I seldom use a board, but I will today. Grice at this point reiterates his temporary contempt for the use/mention distinction, which which Strawson is obsessed. Perhaps Grices contempt is due to Strawsons obsession. Grices exposition would make the hair stand on end in the soul of a person especially sensitive in this area. And Im talking to you, Sir Peter! (He is on the second row). But Grices guess is that the only historical philosophical mistake properly attributable to use/mention confusion is Russells argument against Frege in On denoting, and that there is virtually always an acceptable way of eliminating disregard of the use-mention distinction in a particular case, though the substitutes are usually lengthy, obscure, and tedious. Grice makes three initial assumptions. He avails himself of two species of acceptance, Namesly, volitive acceptance and judicative acceptance, which he, on occasion, calls respectively willing that p and willing that p.  These are to be thought of as technical or semi-technical, theoretical or semi-theoretical, though each is a state which approximates to what we vulgarly call thinking that p and wanting that p, especially in the way in which we can speak of a beast such as a little squarrel as thinking or wanting something  ‒ a nut, poor darling little thing. Grice here treats each will and judge (and accept) as a primitive. The proper interpretation would be determined by the role of each in a folk-psychological theory (or sequence of folk-psychological theories), of the type the Wilde reader in mental philosophy favours at Oxford, designed to account for the behaviours of members of the animal kingdom, at different levels of psychological complexity (some classes of creatures being more complex than others, of course). As Grice suggests in Us meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning, at least at the point at which (Schema Of Procedure-Specifiers For Mood-Operators) in ones syntactico-semantical theory of Pirotese or Griceish, one is introducing this or that mode (and possibly earlier), the proper form to use is a specifier for this or that resultant procedure. Such a specifier is of the general form, For the utterer U to utter x if C, where the blank is replaced by the appropriate condition. Since in the preceding scheme x represents an utterance or expression, and not a sentence or open sentence, there is no guarantee that this or that actual sentence in Pirotese or Griceish contains a perspicuous and unambiguous modal representation. A sentence may correspond to more than one modal structure. The sentence is structurally ambiguous (multiplex in meaning  ‒ under the proviso that senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity) and will have more than one reading, or parsing, as every schoolboy at Clifton knows when translating viva voce from Greek or Latin, as the case might be. The general form of a procedure-specifier for a modal operator involves a main clause and an antecedent clause, which follows if. In the schematic representation of the main clause, U represents an utterer, A his addressee, p the radix or neustic; and Opi represents that operator whose number is i (1, 2, 3, or 4), e.g g., Op3A represents Operator 3A, which, since ?⊢ appears in the Operator column for 3A) would be ?A ⊢ p. This reminds one of Grandys quessertions, for he did think they were iterable (possibly)). The antecedent clause consists of a sequence whose elements are a preamble, as it were, or preface, or prefix, a supplement to a differential (which is present only in a B-type, or addressee-oriented case), a differential, and a radix. The preamble, which is always present, is invariant, and reads: The U U wills (that) A A judges (that) U  (For surely meaning is a species of intending is a species of willing that, alla Prichard, Whites professor, Corpus). The supplement, if present, is also invariant. And the idea behind its varying presence or absence is connected, in the first instance, with the volitive mode. The difference between an ordinary expression of intention  ‒ such as I shall not fail, or They shall not pass  ‒  and an ordinary imperative (Like Be a little kinder to him) is accommodated by treating each as a sub-mode of the volitive mode, relates to willing that p) In the intentional case (I shall not fail), the utterer U is concerned to reveal to his addressee A that he (the utterer U) wills that p. In the imperative case (They shall not pass), the utterer U is concerned to reveal to his addressee A that the utterer U wills that the addresee A will that p.  In each case, of course, it is to be presumed that willing that p will have its standard outcome, viz., the actualization, or realisation, or direction of fit, of the radix (from expression to world, downwards). There is a corresponding distinction between two uses of an indicative. The utterer U may be declaring or affirming that p, in an exhibitive way, with the primary intention to get his addressee A to judge that the utterer judges that p. Or the U is telling (in a protreptic way) ones addressee that p, that is to say, hoping to get his addressee to judge that p. In the case of an indicative, unlike that of a volitive, there is no explicit pair of devices which would ordinarily be thought of as sub-mode marker. The recognition of the sub-mode is implicated, and comes from context, from the vocative use of the Names of the addressee, from the presence of a speech-act verb, or from a sentence-adverbial phrase (like for your information, so that you know, etc.). But Grice has already, in his initial assumptions, allowed for such a situation. The exhibitive-protreptic distinction or autophoric-heterophoric distinction, seems to Grice to be also discernible in the interrogative mode (?). Each differentials is associated with, and serve to distinguish, each of the two basic modes (volitive or judicative) and, apart from one detail in the case of the interrogative mode, is invariant between autophoric-exhibitive) and heterophoric-protreptic sub-modes of any of the two basic modes. They are merely unsupplemented or supplemented, the former for an exhibitive sub-mode and the latter for a protreptic sub-mode. The radix needs (one hopes) no further explanation, except that it might be useful to bear in mind that Grice does not stipulated that the radix for an intentional (buletic exhibitive utterer-based) incorporate a reference to the utterer, or be in the first person, nor that the radix for an imperative (buletic protreptic addressee-based) incorporate a reference of the addresee, and be in the second person. They shall not pass is a legitimate intentional, as is You shall not get away with it; and The sergeant is to muster the men at dawn, as uttered said by the captain to the lieutenant) is a perfectly good imperative. Grice gives in full the two specifiers derived from the schema. U to utter to A autophoric-exhibitive ⊢ p if U wills that A judges that U judges p. Again, U to utter to A ! heterophoric-protreptic p if U wills that A A judges that U wills that A wills that p. Since, of the states denoted by each differential, only willing that p and judging that p are strictly cases of accepting that p, and Grices ultimate purpose of his introducing this characterization of mode is to reach a general account of expressions which are to be conjoined, according to his proposal, with an acceptability operator, the first two numbered rows of the figure are (at most) what he has a direct use for. But since it is of some importance to Grice that his treatment of mode should be (and should be thought to be) on the right lines, he adds a partial account of the interrogative mode. There are two varieties of interrogatives, a yes/no interrogatives (e. g. Is his face clean? Is the king of France bald? Is virtue a fire-shovel?) and x-interrogatives, on which Grice qua philosopher was particularly interested, v. his The that and the why.  (Who killed Cock Robin?, Where has my beloved gone?, How did he fix it?). The specifiers derivable from the schema provide only for yes/no interrogatives, though the figure could be quite easily amended so as to yield a restricted but very large class of x-interrogatives. Grice indicates how this could be done. The distinction between a buletic and a doxastic interrogative corresponds with the difference between a case in which the utterer U indicates that he is, in one way or another, concerned to obtain information (Is he at home?), and a case in which the utterer U indicates that he is concerned to settle a problem about what he is to do ‒ Am I to leave the door open?, Shall I go on reading? or, with an heterophoric Subjects, Is the prisoner to be released? This difference is fairly well represented in grammar, and much better represented in the grammars of some other languages. The hetero-phoric-cum-protreptic/auto-phoric-cum- exhibitive difference may not marked at all in this or that grammar, but it should be marked in Pirotese. This or that sub-mode is, however, often quite easily detectable. There is usually a recognizable difference between a case in which the utterer A says, musingly or reflectively, Is he to be trusted?  ‒ a case in which the utterer might say that he is just wondering  ‒ and a case in which he utters a token of the same sentence as an enquiry. Similarly, one can usually tell whether an utterer A who utters Shall I accept the invitation?  is just trying to make up his mind, or is trying to get advice or instruction from his addressee. The employment of the variable α needs to be explained. Grice borrows a little from an obscure branch of logic, once (but maybe no longer) practised, called, Grice thinks, proto-thetic ‒ Why? Because it deals with this or that first principle or axiom, or thesis), the main rite in which is to quantify over, or through, this or that connective. α is to have as its two substituents positively and negatively, which may modify either will or judge, negatively willing or negatively judging that p is judging or willing that ~p. The quantifier (∃1α) . . . has to be treated substitutionally. If, for example, I ask someone whether John killed Cock Robin (protreptic case), I do not want the addressee merely to will that I have a particular logical quality in mind which I believe to apply. I want the addressee to have one of the Qualities in mind which he wants me to believe to apply. To meet this demand, supplementation must drag back the quantifier. To extend the schema so as to provide specifiers for a single x-interrogative (i. e., a question like What did the butler see? rather than a question like Who went where with whom at 4 oclock yesterday afternoon?), we need just a little extra apparatus. We need to be able to superscribe a W in each interrogative operator e.g., together with the proviso that a radix which follows a superscribed operator must be an open radix, which contains one or more occurrences of just one free variable. And we need a chameleon variable λ, to occur only in this or that quantifier. (∃λ).Fx is to be regarded as a way of writing (∃x)Fx. (∃λ)Fy is a way of writing (∃y)Fy. To provide a specifier for a x-superscribed operator, we simply delete the appearances of α in the specifier for the corresponding un-superscribed operator, inserting instead the quantifier (∃1λ) () at the position previously occupied by (∃1α) (). E.g. the specifiers for Who killed Cock Robin?, used as an enquiry, would be: U to utter to A  killed Cock Robin if U wills A to judge U to will that (∃1λ) (A should will that U judges (x killed Cock Robin)); in which (∃1λ) takes on the shape (∃1x) since x is the free variable within its scope. Grice compares his buletic-doxastic distinction to prohairesis/doxa distinction by Aristotle in Ethica Nichomachea. Perhaps his simplest formalisation is via subscripts: I will-b but will-d not. Refs.: The main references are given above under ‘desirability.’ The most systematic treatment is the excursus in “Aspects,” Clarendon. BANC. modus. “The distinction between Judicative and Volitive Interrogatives corresponds with the difference between cases in which a questioner is indicated as being, in one way or another, concerned to obtain information ("Is he at home?"), and cases in which the questioner is indicated as being concerned to settle a problem about what he is to do ("Am I to leave the door open?", "Is the prisoner to be released?", "Shall I go on reading?"). This difference is better represented in Grecian and Roman.”The Greek word was ‘egklisis,’ which Priscian translates as ‘modus’ and defines as ‘inclinatio anima, affectionis demonstrans.’ The Greeks recognised five: horistike, indicativus, pronuntiativus, finitus, or definitivus, prostastike, imperativus, euktike, optativus, hypotaktike (subjunctivus, or conjunnctivus, but also volitivus, hortativus, deliberativus, iussivus, prohibitivus anticipativus ) and aparemphatos infinitivus or infinitus.  Modus -- odus optativus. optative enclisis (gre: ευκτική έγκλιση, euktike enclisis, hence it may be seen as a modus optatīvus. Something that fascinated Grice. The way an ‘action’ is modalised in the way one describes it. He had learned the basics for Greek and Latin at Oxford, and he was exhilarated to be able to teach now on the subtleties of the English system of ‘aspect.’ To ‘opt’ is to choose. So ‘optativus’ is the deliberative mode. Grice proved the freedom of the will with a “grammatical argument.” ‘Given that the Greeks and the Romans had an optative mode, there is free will.” Romans, having no special verbal forms recognized as Optative, had no need of the designation modus optativus. Yet they sometimes used it, ad imitationem. Modus -- modality: Grice: “Modality is the manner in which a proposition (or statement) describes or applies to its subject matter. Derivatively,’ modality’ refers to characteristics of entities or states of affairs described by this or that modal proposition. Modalities are classified as follows. An assertoric proposition is the expression of a mere fact. Alethic modality includes necessity and possibility. The latter two sometimes are referred to respectively as the apodeictic modality and the problematic modality – vide Grice’s category of conversational mode – which covers three categories under what Kant calls the ‘Funktion’ of Mode – the assertoric, the apodeictic and the problematic). Grice takes ‘must’ as basic and defines ‘may’ in terms of ‘must.’ Causal modality includes causal necessity or empirical necessity and causal possibility or empirical possibility. The deontic modality includes obligation and permittedness. Of course this hardly means that ‘must’ is polysemous. It is ‘aequi-vocal’ at most. There is epistemic modality or modalities such as knowing that and doxastic modality (what Grice calls ‘credibility,’ as opposed to ‘desirability’) or modalities ones such as believing that. There is desiderative modality such as ‘willing that’ (what Grice calls ‘desirability’ as prior to ‘credibility.’) Following medieval philosophers, a proposition can be distinguished on the basis of whether the modality is introduced via adverbial modification of the “copula” or verb (“sensus divisus”) – as in Grice’s “Fido is shaggy” versus “Fido may be shaggy” – (in Roman, “Fidus est fidelis” versus “Fidus sit fidelis” – Grice: “Not to be confused with “Fido, sit!” ) or via a modal operator that modifies the proposition (“sensus compositus” – as preferred by Strawson: “It is the case that,” “It is not the case that,” “It must be the case that” and “It may be the case that”). Grice actually calls ‘adverbial modifier’ the external version. The internal version he just calls, as everybody at Clifton does, ‘conjugation’ (“We are not Tarzan!”). Grice: "In Gricese, in the instance in which the indicative occurs after "acsian" here is no doubt in the minds of those who ask the question, the content of the dependent clause being by them regarded as a fact. Mk. X. 2. Da genealsehton him pharisei and hine axodon hwseber alyfS senegum men his wif forlsetan. Interrogabant eum: INTERROGABANT EUM: SI LICET Si licet. L. XII. 36. beo gelice pam mannum be hyra hlaforde abidafr hwsenne he sy fram gyftum gecyrred. L. XXII. 24. hi flitun betwux him hwylc hyra wsere yldest. J. XIX. 24. uton hleotan hwylces ures heo sy. Mk. XV. 24. hi hlotu wurpon, hwset gehwa name. mittentes  sortem super eis, quis quid tolleret. MITTENTES SORTEM SVPER EIS, QVIS QVID TOLLERET. M. XXVII. 49. Uton geseon hwseber Helias cume and wylle  hyne alysan. Mk. V. 14. hi ut eodon bset hi gesawon hwset par gedon wsere. L. XIX. 3.he wolde geseon hwylc se hselend wsere. Mk. IX. 34.hi on wege smeadon hwylc hyra yldost wsere. Mk. IX. 10. L. XI, 38. XXII. 23. L. XIV. 28. Hwylc eower wyle timbrian anne stypel, hu ne sytt he serest and teleS pa andfengas be him behefe synt, hwseder he hsebbe hine to full-fremmenne? L. I. 29. ba wearS heo on his sprsece gedrefed, and pohte hwset seo greting wsere. L. Ill, 15. XIV. 31. L. IX. 46. bset gepanc eode on hig, hwylc hyra yldest wsere. Mk. XV. 47. Da com Maria Magdalene and Josepes Maria, and beheoldon hwar he geled wsere. aspiciebant. ubi poneretur ASPICIEBANT. VBI PONERETVR. (Looked around, in order to discover). The notion of purpose is sometimes involved, the indirect question having something of the force of a final clause: Mk. XIII. 11. ne foresmeage ge hwset ge specan. L. XXI. 14.  *) Direct rather than indirect question. L. XII. 22. ne beo ge ymbehydige eowre sawle hwset ge etan, ne eowrum lichaman hwset ge scrydun. M. VI, 25. L. XII. 11. ne beo ge embebencynde hu oSSe hwset ge specon oSSe andswarian. M. X. 19. ne bence ge hu oSSe hwset ge sprecun. L. XII. 29. Nelle ge secean hwset ge eton oSSe drincon.  J. XIX. 12. and sySSan sohte Pilatus hu he hyne forlete. quaerebat Pilatus dimittere eum. QVAEREBAT PILATVS DIMITTERE EVM  2. When the content of the dependent clause is regarded as an actual fact, which is the case when the leading verb expresses the act of learning, perceiving, etc., the indicative is used. M. VI. 28. BesceawiaS secyres Man hu hig weaxaO. M. XXI. 16.gehyrst bu hwset pas cwseoab? M. XXVII. 13. Ne gehyrst Jm hu fela sagena hig ongen be  secgeaS? L. XVIII. 6. M. IX. 13.leornigeab hwset is, ic wylle mildheortnesse nses  onssegdnesse. M. XXI. 20. loca nu hu hrsedlice bset fic-treow forscranc. Mk. XV. 4. loca hu mycelum hi be wregea§. M. XII. 4.Ne rsedde ge hwset David dyde hu he ineode on Godes hus, and set ba offring-hlafas? L. VI, 4. Mk. XII. 26. Be bam deadum ■ bset hi arison, ne rsedde ge on Moyses bec hu God to him cwseb? Mk. I, 26. Mk. V. 16. hi rehton him ba Se hit gesawon hu hit gedon  wses. L. VIII. 36. Da cyddon him ba Se gesawon hu he wses hal geworden. L. XXIII. 55.hig gesawon ba byrgene and hu his lichama aled wses.  J. XX. 14.heo geseah hwar se hselend stod. Vidit Jesum stantem.  *) VIDIT IESVM STANTEM. Not the endeavour to learn, perceive, which would require the SUBJUNCTIVE.  L. XXIV. 6. gebencao hu he spsec wiS eow. recordamini. Mk. VIII. 19.  3.After verbs of knowing both the indicative and subjunctive are used, usually the indicative. See general statement before § 2.  a) Indicative:*) L. XIII. 27. Ne cann ic hwanon ge synt. Mk. XIV, 68.  M. VI. 8. eower fseder wat hwset eow bearf ys.  M. XX. 22. Gyt nyton hwset gyt biddab.  L. XIII. 25. nat ic hwanon ge synt.   J. IX. 21. we nyton humete he nu gesyhb. quomodo autem  nunc videat, nescimus. QVOMODO AVTEM NVNC, NESCIMVS.  J. IX. 25. gif he synful is, bset ic nat.  si peccator est, nescio. SI PECCATOR EST, NESCIO. I know not if he is a sinner. gif he synful is, bset ic nat. "Gif he synful is, ᚦaet ic nat." In Oxonian: "If he sinful is, that I know not. M. XXVI. 70. Mk. IX. 6. X, 28. XIII, 33, 35. L. IX, 33.  XX, 7. XXII, 60. L. XXIII. 34. J. II. 9. III. 8. V. 13. VII.  27, 27, 28. VIII. 14, 14. J. IX. 29. 30. X. 6. XIII. 18.  XIV. 5. XV. 15.  b) Indicative and subjunctive: L. X. 22. nan man nat hwylc IS se sunu buton se fseder, ne hwylc SI Se fseder buton se sunu. -- In Latin, both times have subjunctive third person singular, "sit".)  c) Subjunctive.  a. In the protasis of a conditional sentence: J. VII. 51.Cwyst bu demS ure se senine man buton hyne man ser gehyre and wite hwset he do? J. XI. 57. pa pharisei hsefdon beboden gif hwa wiste hwaer he wsere paet he hyt cydde bset hig mihton hine niman. Translating the Latin subjunctive in 21 instances, the indic. in 9. As a rule, the mood (or mode, as Grice prefers) of the Latin (or Roman, as Grice prefers) verb does not determine the O. E. (or A. S., as Grice prefers) usage. In Anglo-Saxon, Oxonian, and Gricese, "si" seems to be no more than a literal (mimetic) rendering of Roman "sit," the correct third person singular subjunctive.  Ms. A. reads "ys" with'-sy" above. The Lind. gloss reads "is".  M. XXIV. 43. WitaS bset gyf se hiredes ealdor wiste on hwylcere tide se beof towerd waere witodlice he wolde wacigean. si sciret paterfamilias qua hora fur venturus esset vigilaret, (Cf. J. IV, 10. Gif bu wistest — hwaet se is etc.  Si scirest quis est. SI SCIREST QVIS EST.  /J. In the apodosis of a conditional sentence:  J. VII. 17. gyf hwa wyle his willan don he gecwemo (sic.  A.B.C. gecnsewS) be bsere lare hwseber heo si of Gode  hwseber be ic he me sylfum spece. L. VII. 39.  Gyf be man witega wsere witodlice he wiste hwset and hwylc bis wif wsere be his sethrinb bset heo synful  is. sciret utique quae et qualis est mulier. SCIRET VTIQVE QVAE ET QVALIS EST MULIER. y. After a hortatory subjunctive. M. VI. 3. Nyte bin wynstre hwset do bin swybre.  4. After verbs of saying and declaring. a) Here the indicative is used when the dependent clause contains a statement rather than a question. L. VIII. 39. cyS hu mycel be God gedon h3efS.  L. VIII. 47.Da bset wif geseah bset hit him nses dyrne heo com forht and astrehte hig to his fotum and geswutulude beforan eallum folce for hwylcum binge heo hit sethran and hu heo wearS sona hal. ob quam causam tetigerit eum, indicavit; et quemadmodum confestim SANATA SIT.  Further examples of the indicative are. L. XX. 2.*) Sege us on hwylcum anwalde wyrcst bu Sas bing  oSSe hwset ys se Se be bisne anwald sealde. L. VI. 47.  iElc bara be to me cymb and mine sprseca gehyi*S  and pa deb, ic him setywe hwam he gelic is.  b) When the subordinate clause refers to the future both the indicative and subjunctive are used:  *) Direct question, as the order of the words shows. Mk. XIII. 4. Sege us hwsenne bas bing gewurdon (A. geweorSon, H. gewurSen, R. gewurdon)  and hwylc tacen bid bsenne ealle bas Sing onginnaS beon geendud. (Transition to direct question.) Dic nobis, quando ista fient?  DIC NOBIS, QVANDO ISTA FIENT? et quod signum erit?  ET QVOD SIGNVM ERIT? M. XXIV. 3. Sege us hwsenne bas Sing gewurbun and hwile tacn si bines to-cymes.  J. XVIII. 32. he geswutelode hwylcon deaSe lie swulte. qua morte ESSET moriturus.   c) When the question presents a distinct alternative, so that the idea of doubt and uncertainty is prominent, the subjunctive in Gricese, Oxonian, and Anglo-Saxon, qua conjugated version, is used:  M. XXVI. 63. Ic halsige be Surh bone lyfiendan God, b*t Su secge us gyf \>u sy Crist Godes sunu. L. XXII. 67. J. X. 24. d) The following is hortatory as well as declarative:  L. XII. 5. Ic eow setywe hwsene ge ondredon. Ostendam autem vobis, quem TIMEATIS.  5. In three indirect questions which in the original are direct, the subjunctive is used:  M. XXIV. 45.Wens (sic. A. H. & R. wenst) \>u hwa sy getrywe and gleaw BEOW? Quis, putas, EST fidelis servus?  QVIS, PVTAS, EST FIDELIS SERVS. M. XXVI. 25. Cwyst bu lareow hwseSer ic hyt si? Numquid ego sum?  NVMQVID EGO SVM, J. VII. 26. CweSe we hwseber ba ealdras ongyton ^set bis IS Crist? Numquid vere cognoverunt principes, quia hie EST Christus?  § 11. RELATIVE CLAUSES. Except in the relations discussed in the following the indicative is used in relative clauses. Grice: "The verb 'to be' is actually composed of three different stems -- not only in Aristotle, but in Gricese." CONIUGATVM, persona, s-stem (cognate with Roman "sit"), b-stem, w-stem (cognate with Roman, "ero") MODVS INFINITVUM, the verb "sīn,” the verb "bion,” the verb "wesan.” MODVS INDICATIVM PRAESENS prima singularis: "ik" -- Oxonian "I" "em" Oxonian, "am." Bium wisu secunda singularis: "thū" -- Oxonian: "thou" "art" Oxonian "art" bis(t) wisis tertia singularis: "hē" Oxonian, 'he' "ist" (Cognate with Roman "est") Oxonian 'is' *bid wis(id) prima, secunda, tertia, pluralis "sindun" *biod wesad MODVS INDCATIVVM PRAETERITVM prima singularis "was" Oxonian: "was."  seconda singularis ""wāri" Oxonian "were" tertia singularis "was" Oxonian "was" prima, secunda, tertia, pluralis "wārun" Oxonian "were" MODVS  SVBIVCTIVVM PRAESENS prima, secunda, tertia, singularis "sīe" (Lost in Oxonian after Occam) "wese" (cognate with "was", and Roman, "erat") prima, secunda, tertia, pluralis "sīen" wesen MODVS  SVBIVNCTIVVM PRAETERITUM  prima, secunda, tertia, singularis wāri prima, secunda, tertia, pluralis wārin MODVS IMPERATIVUM singularis  "wis," "wes" (Cognate with "was" and Roman "erat") pluralis wesad MODVS PARTICIPIVM PRAESENT wesandi (cognate with Cicero's "essens" and "essentia" MODVS PARTICIPIVM PRAETERITVM "giwesan"   The present-tense forms of 'be' with the w-stem, "wesan" are almost never used.     Therefore, wesan is used as IMPERATIVE, in the past tense, and in the participium prasesens versions of     "sīn" -- Grice: "I rue the day when the Bosworth and Toller left Austin!" -- "Now the OED, is not supposed to include Anglo-Saxon forms!") and does not have a separate meaning. The b-stem is only met in the present indicative of wesan, and only for the first and second persons in the singular.    So we see that if Roman had the 'est-sit" distinction, the Oxonians had "The 'ist'/"sīe"/"wese" tryad).     Grice: "To simplify the Oxonian forms and make them correlative to Roman, I shall reduce the Oxonian triad,  'ist'/'sīe'/"wese" to the division actually cognate with Roman:  'ist'/'sīe."   And so, I shall speak of  the 'ist'/'sīe" distinction, or the 'est-sit' distinction interchangeably." Today many deny the distinction or confine attention just to modal operators. Modal operators in non-assertoric propositions are said to produce referential opacity or oblique contexts in which truth is not preserved under substitution of extensionally equivalent expressions. Modal and deontic logics provide formal analyses of various modalities. Intensional logics investigate the logic of oblique contexts. Modal logicians have produced possible worlds semantics interpretations wherein propositions MP with modal operator M are true provided P is true in all suitable (e.g., logically possible, causally possible, morally permissible, rationally acceptable) possible worlds. Modal realism grants ontological status to possible worlds other than the actual world or otherwise commits to objective modalities in nature or reality.  modus: the study of the logic of the operators ‘it is possible that’ (or, as Grice prefers, “it may be that”) and ‘it is necessary that’ (or as Grice prefers, “It must be that…”). For some reason, Grice used ‘mode’ at Oxford – but ‘manner’ in the New World! The sad thing is that when he came back to the Old World, to the puzzlmenet of Old-Worlders, he kept using ‘manner.’ So, everytime we see Grice using ‘manner,’ we need to translate to either the traditional Oxonian ‘modus,’ or the Gricese ‘mode.’ These operators Grice symbolizes by a diamond and a square respectively. and each can be defined in terms of the other. □p (necessarily p) is equivalent to ¬◇¬p ("not possible that not-p") ◇p (possibly p) is equivalent to ¬□¬p ("not necessarily not-p"). To say that Fido may be shaggy is to say that it is not necessarily false. Thus possP could be regarded as an abbreviation of -Nec-p Equally, to say that Fido *must* be shaggy is to deny that its negation is possible. Thus Af could be regarded as an abbreviation of -B-f. Grice prefers to take ‘poss” as primitive (“for surely, it may rain before it must pour!”). Grice’s ystem G of modality is obtained by introducing Poss. and Nec. If system, as Grice’s is, is classical/intuitionist/minimal, so is the corresponding modal logic. Grice surely concentrates on the classical case (“Dummett is overconcentraating on the intuitionist, and nobody at Oxford was, is, or will be minimal!”).  As with any kind of logic, there are three components to a system of modal logic: a syntactics, which determines the system or calculus + and the notion of well-formed formula (wff). Second, a semantics, which determines the consequence relation X on +-wffs. Third, a pragmatics or sub-system of inference, which determines the deductive consequence relation Y on +-wffs. The syntactis of the modal operators is the same in every system. Briefly, the modal operator is a one-place or unary ‘connective,’ or operator, strictly, since it does not connect two atoms into a molecule, like negation. There are many different systems of modal logic, some of which can be generated by different ways of setting up the semantics. Each of the familiar ways of doing this can be associated with a sound and complete system of inference. Alternatively, a system of inference can be laid down first and we can search for a semantics for it relative to which it is sound and complete. Grice gives primacy to the syntactic viewpoint. Semantic consequence is defined in modal logic in the usual classical way: a set of sentences 9 yields a sentence s, 9 X s, iff if no “interpretation” (to use Grice’s jargon in “Vacuous Names”) I makes all members of 9 true and s false. The question is how to extend the notion of “interpretation” to accommodate for “may be shaggy” – and “must be shaggy”. In classical sentential logic, an interpretation is an assignment to each sentence letter of exactly one of the two truth-values = and where n % m ! 1. So to determine relative possibility in a model, we identify R with a collection of pairs of the form where each of u and v is in W. If a pair is in R, v is possible relative to u, and if is not in R, v is impossible relative to u. The relative possibility relation then enters into the rules for the evaluating modal operator. We do not want to say, e. g. that at the actual world, it is possible for Grice to originate from a different sperm and egg, since the only worlds where this takes place are impossible relative to the actual world. So we have the rule that B f is true at a world u if f is true at some world v such that v is possible relative to u. Similarly, Af is true at a world u if f is true at every world v which is possible relative to u. R may have simple first-order properties such as reflexivity, (Ex)Rxx, symmetry, (Ex)(Ey)(Rxy P Ryx), and transitivity, (Ex)(Ey)(Ez)((Rxy & Ryz) P Rxz), and different modal systems can be obtained by imposing different combinations of these on R (other systems can be obtained from higher-order constraints). The least constrained system is the system Ghp, in which no structural properties are put on R. In G-hp we have B (B & C) X B B, since if B (B & C) holds at w* then (B & C) holds at some world w possible relative to w*, and thus by the truth-function for &, B holds at w as well, so B B holds at w*. Hence any interpretation that makes B (B & C) true (% true at w*) also makes B B true. Since there are no restrictions on R in G-hp, we can expect B (B & C) X B B in every system of modal logic generated by constraining R. However, for G-hp we also have C Z B C. For suppose C holds at w*. B C holds at w* only if there is some world possible relative to w* where C holds. But there need be no such world. In particular, since R need not be reflexive, w* itself need not be possible relative to w*. Concomitantly, in any system for which we stipulate a reflexive R, we will have C X B C. The simplest such system is known as T, which has the same semantics as K except that R is stipulated to be reflexive in every interpretation. In other systems, further or different constraints are put on R. For example, in the system B, each interpretation must have an R that is reflexive and symmetric, and in the system S4, each interpretation must have an R that is reflexive and transitive. In B we have B C Z B B C, as can be shown by an interpretation with nontransitive R, while in S4 we have B AC Z C, as can be shown by an interpretation with non-symmetric R. Correspondingly, in S4, B C X B B C, and in B, B AC X C. The system in which R is reflexive, transitive, and symmetric is called S5, and in this system, R can be omitted. For if R has all three properties, R is an equivalence relation, i.e., it partitions W into mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive equivalence classes. If Cu is the equivalence class to which u belongs, then the truth-value of a formula at u is independent of the truth-values of sentence letters at worlds not in Cu, so only the worlds in Cw* are relevant to the truth-values of sentences in an S5 interpretation. But within Cw* R is universal: every world is possible relative to every other. Consequently, in an S5 interpretation, we need not specify a relative possibility relation, and the evaluation rules for B and A need not mention relative possibility; e.g., we can say that B f is true at a world u if there is at least one world v at which f is true. Note that by the characteristics of R, whenever 9 X s in K, T, B, or S4, then 9 X s in S5: the other systems are contained in S5. K is contained in all the systems we have mentioned, while T is contained in B and S4, neither of which is contained in the other. Sentential modal logics give rise to quantified modal logics, of which quantified S5 is the bestknown. Just as, in the sentential case, each world in an interpretation is associated with a valuation of sentence letters as in non-modal sentential logic, so in quantified modal logic, each world is associated with a valuation of the sort familiar in non-modal first-order logic. More specifically, in quantified S5, each world w is assigned a domain Dw – the things that exist at w – such that at least one Dw is non-empty, and each atomic n-place predicate of the language is assigned an extension Extw of n-tuples of objects that satisfy the predicate at w. So even restricting ourselves to just the one first-order extension of a sentential system, S5, various degrees of freedom are already evident. We discuss the following: (a) variability of domains, (b) interpretation of quantifiers, and (c) predication. (a) Should all worlds have the same domain or may the domains of different worlds be different? The latter appears to be the more natural choice; e.g., if neither of of Dw* and Du are subsets of the other, this represents the intuitive idea that some things that exist might not have, and that there could have been things that do not actually exist (though formulating this latter claim requires adding an operator for ‘actually’ to the language). So we should distinguish two versions of S5, one with constant domains, S5C, and the other with variable domains, S5V. (b) Should the truth of (Dn)f at a world w require that f is true at w of some object in Dw or merely of some object in D (D is the domain of all possible objects, 4weWDw)? The former treatment is called the actualist reading of the quantifiers, the latter, the possibilist reading. In S5C there is no real choice, since for any w, D % Dw, but the issue is live in S5V. (c) Should we require that for any n-place atomic predicate F, an n-tuple of objects satisfies F at w only if every member of the n-tuple belongs to Dw, i.e., should we require that atomic predicates be existence-entailing? If we abbreviate (Dy) (y % x) by Ex (for ‘x exists’), then in S5C, A(Ex)AEx is logically valid on the actualist reading of E (%-D-) and on the possibilist. On the former, the formula says that at each world, anything that exists at that world exists at every world, which is true; while on the latter, using the definition of ‘Ex’, it says that at each world, anything that exists at some world or other is such that at every world, it exists at some world or other, which is also true; indeed, the formula stays valid in S5C with possibilist quantifiers even if we make E a primitive logical constant, stipulated to be true at every w of exactly the things that exist at w. But in S5V with actualist quantifiers, A(Ex)AEx is invalid, as is (Ex)AEx – consider an interpretation where for some u, Du is a proper subset of Dw*. However, in S5V with possibilist quantifiers, the status of the formula, if ‘Ex’ is defined, depends on whether identity is existence-entailing. If it is existenceentailing, then A(Ex)AEx is invalid, since an object in D satisfies (Dy)(y % x) at w only if that object exists at w, while if identity is not existence-entailing, the formula is valid. The interaction of the various options is also evident in the evaluation of two well-known schemata: the Barcan formula, B (Dx)fx P (Dx) B fx; and its converse, (Dx) B fx P B (Dx)fx. In S5C with ‘Ex’ either defined or primitive, both schemata are valid, but in S5V with actualist quantifiers, they both fail. For the latter case, if we substitute -E for f in the converse Barcan formula we get a conditional whose antecedent holds at w* if there is u with Du a proper subset of Dw*, but whose consequent is logically false. The Barcan formula fails when there is a world u with Du not a subset of Dw*, and the condition f is true of some non-actual object at u and not of any actual object there. For then B (Dx)f holds at w* while (Dx) B fx fails there. However, if we require atomic predicates to be existence-entailing, then instances of the converse Barcan formula with f atomic are valid. In S5V with possibilist quantifiers, all instances of both schemata are valid, since the prefixes (Dx) B and B (Dx) correspond to (Dx) (Dw) and (Dw) (Dx), which are equivalent (with actualist quantifiers, the prefixes correspond to (Dx 1 Dw*), and (Dw) (Dx 1 Dw) which are non-equivalent if Dw and Dw* need not be the same set). Finally in S5V with actualist quantifiers, the standard quantifier introduction and elimination rules must be adjusted. Suppose c is a name for an object that does not actually exist; then - Ec is true but (Dx) - Ex is false. The quantifier rules must be those of free logic: we require Ec & fc before we infer (Dv)fv and Ec P fc, as well as the usual EI restrictions, before we infer (Ev)fv. Refs.: H. P. Grice: “Modality: Desirability and Credibility;” H. P. Grice, “The may and the may not;” H. P. Grice, “The Big Philosophical Mistake: ‘What is actual is not also possible’.” modus: Grice: “In Roman, ‘modus’ may have been rendered as ‘way’, ‘fashion’ – but I will not, and use ‘modus’ as THEY did! ‘Modus’ is used in more than one ‘modus’ in philosophy. In Ariskantian logic, ‘modus’ refers either to the arrangement of universal, particular, affirmative, or negative propositions within a syllogism, only certain of which are valid this is often tr., confusingly, as ‘modus’ in English – “the valid modes, such as Barbara and Celarent.” But then ‘modus’ may be used to to the property a proposition has by virtue of which it is necessary or contingent, possible or impossible, or ‘actual.’ In Oxonian scholastic metaphysics, ‘modus’ is often used in a not altogether technical way to mean that which characterizes a thing and distinguishes it from others. Micraelius, in his best-selling “Lexicon philosophicum,” has it that “a mode does not compose a thing, but distinguishes it and makes it determinate.” ‘Modus’ is also used in the context of the modal distinction in the theory of distinctions to designate the distinction that holds between a substance and its modes or between two modes of a single substance. ‘Modus’ also appears in the technical vocabulary of medieval speculative ‘grammar’ or ‘semantics’ (“speculative semantics” makes more sense) -- in connection with the notions of the “modus significandi,” “the modus intelligendi” (more or less the same thing), and the “modus essendi.” The term ‘modus’ becomes especially important when Descartes (vide Grice, “Descartes on clear and distinct perception”), Spinoza (vide S. N. Hampshire, “Spinoza”), and Locke each take it up, giving it three somewhat different special meanings within their respective systems. Descartes (vide Grice, “Descartes on clear and distinct perception”) makes ‘modus’ a central notion in his metaphysics in his Principia philosophiae. For Descartes, each substantia is characterized by a principal attribute, ‘cogitatio’ for ‘anima’ and ‘extensio’ for ‘corpus’. Modes, then, are particular ways of being extended or thinking, i.e., particular sizes, shapes, etc., or particular thoughts, properties in the broad sense that individual things substances have. In this way, ‘modus’ occupies the role in Descartes’s philosophy that ‘accident’ does in Aristotelian philosophy. But for Descartes, each mode must be connected with the principal attribute of a substance, a way of being extended or a way of thinking, whereas for the Aristotelian, accidents may or may not be connected with the essence of the substance in which they inhere. Like Descartes, Spinoza recognizes three basic metaphysical terms, ‘substania,’ ‘attributum’, and ‘modus’. Recalling Descartes, Spinoza defines ‘modus’ as “the affections of a substance, or that which is in another, and which is also conceived through another” Ethics I. But for Spinoza, there is only one substance, which has all possible attributes. This makes it somewhat difficult to determine exactly what Spinoza means by ‘modus’, whether they are to be construed as being in some say a “property” of God, the one infinite substance, or whether they are to be construed more broadly as simply individual things that depend for their existence on God, just as Cartesian modes depend on Cartesian substance. Spinoza also introduces somewhat obscure distinctions between modus infinitus and modus finitus, and between immediate and mediate infinite modes. Now, much closer to Grice, Englishman and Oxonian Locke uses ‘mode’ in a way that evidently derives from Descartes’s usage, but that also differs from it. For Locke, a ‘modus’ is “such complex idea – as Pegasus the flying horse --, which however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as Dependences on, or Affections of Substances” Essay II. A ‘modus,’ for Locke, is thus an idea that represents to us the a ‘complex’ propertiy of a thing, sc. an idea derived from what Locke a ‘simple’ idea that come to us from experience. Locke distinguishes between a ‘modus simplex,’ like number, space, and infinity, which are supposed to be constructed by compounding the SAME simple idea many times, and ‘modus complexum,’ or ‘modus mixtum,’ a mode like obligation or theft, which is supposed to be compounded of at least two simple ideas of a different sort.  Refs.: Grice applies Locke’s idea of the modus mixtum in his ‘labour’ against Empiricism, cf. H. P. Grice, “I may care a hoot what the dictionary says, but it is not the case that I care a hoot what Micraelius’s “Lexicon philosophicum” says.” Modus – modulus -- Grice against a pragmatic or rational module: from Latin ‘modulus,’ ‘little mode.’  the commitment to functionally independent and specialized cognitive system in psychological organizatio, or, more generally, in the organization of any complex system. A ‘modulus’ entails that behavior is the product of components with subordinate functions, that these functions are realized in discrete physical systems, and that the subsystems are minimally interactive. Organization in terms of a modulus varies from simple decomposability to what Herbert Simon calls near decomposability. In the former, component systems are independent, operating according to intrinsically determined principles; system behavior is an additive or aggregative function of these independent contributions. In the latter, the short-run behavior of components is independent of the behavior of other components; the system behavior is a relatively simple function of component contributions. Gall defends a modular organization for the mind/brain, holding that the cerebral hemispheres consist of a variety of organs, or centers, each subserving specific intellectual and moral functions. This picture of the brain as a collection of relatively independent organs contrasts sharply with the traditional view that intellectual activity involves the exercise of a general unitary ‘faculty’ in a variety of this or that‘domain’, where a ‘domain’ is not a ‘modulus’ -- a view that was common to Descartes and Hume as well as Gall’s major opponents such as Flourens. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Bouillaud and Broca (a French doctor, of Occitan ancestry – brooch, broca – thorn --) defended the view that language is controlled by localized structures in the left hemisphere and is relatively independent of other cognitive activities. It was later discovered by Wernicke that there are at least two centers for the control of language, one more posterior and one more anterior. On these views, there are discrete physical structures responsible for communication, which are largely independent of one another and of structures responsible for other psychological functions. This is therefore a modular organization. This view of the neurophysiological organization of communication continues to have advocates, though the precise characterization of the functions these two centers serve is controversial. Many more recent views have tended to limit modularity to more peripheral functions such as vision, hearing, and motor control and speech, but have excluded “what I am interested in, viz. so-called higher cognitive processes.” – H. P. Grice, “The power structure of the soul.” Modus -- modus ponendo ponens: 1 the argument form ‘If A then B; A; therefore, B’, and arguments of this form compare fallacy of affirming the consequent; 2 the rule of inference that permits one to infer the consequent of a conditional from that conditional and its antecedent. This is also known as the rule of /-elimination or rule of /- detachment.  modus tollendo tollens: 1 the argument form ‘If A then B; not-B; therefore, not-A’, and arguments of this form compare fallacy of denying the antecedent; 2 the rule of inference that permits one to infer the negation of the antecedent of a conditional from that conditional and the negation of its consequent. 

molyneux question: also called Molyneux’s problem, the question that, in correspondence with Locke, William Molyneux or Molineux, 1656 98, a Dublin lawyer and member of the Irish Parliament, posed and Locke inserted in the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1694; book 2, chap. 9, section 8: Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish a Cube, and a Sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and t’other, which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see. Quære, Whether by his sight, before he touch’d them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe, which the Cube. Although it is tempting to regard Molyneux’s question as straightforwardly empirical, attempts to gauge the abilities of newly sighted adults have yielded disappointing and ambiguous results. More interesting, perhaps, is the way in which different theories of perception answer the question. Thus, according to Locke, sensory modalities constitute discrete perceptual channels, the contents of which perceivers must learn to correlate. Such a theory answers the question in the negative as did Molyneux himself. Other theories encourage different responses. 

mondolfo: essential Italian philosopher. Like Grice, Mondolfo believed seriously in the longitudinal unity of philosophy and made original research on the historiography of philosophy, especially during the Eleatic, Agrigento, and later Roman periods. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice, Mondolfo, e la filosofia greco-romana," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

Monte: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e del Monte," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

Montanism, a charismatic, schismatic movement in early Christianity, originating in Phrygia in the late second century. It rebuked the mainstream church for laxity and apathy, and taught moral purity, new, i.e. postbiblical, revelation, and the imminent end of the world. Traditional accounts, deriving from critics of the movement, contain exaggerations and probably some fabrications. Montanus himself, abetted by the prophetesses Maximilla and Prisca, announced in ecstatic speech a new, final age of prophecy. This fulfilled the biblical promises that in the last days the Holy Spirit would be poured out universally Joel 2: 28ff.; Acts 2: 16ff. and would teach “the whole truth” Jon. 14:26; 16:13. It also empowered the Montanists to enjoin more rigorous discipline than that required by Jesus. The sect denied that forgiveness through baptism covered serious subsequent sin; forbade remarriage for widows and widowers; practiced fasting; and condemned believers who evaded persecution. Some later followers may have identified Montanus with the Holy Spirit itself, though he claimed only to be the Spirit’s mouthpiece. The “new prophecy” flourished for a generation, especially in North Africa, gaining a famous convert in Tertullian. But the church’s bishops repudiated the movement’s criticisms and innovations, and turned more resolutely against postapostolic revelation, apocalyptic expectation, and ascetic extremes.

mooreism:  g. e. –  and his paradox: cited by H. P. Grice. Irish London-born philosopher who spearheaded the attack on idealism and was a major supporter of realism in all its forms: metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological. He was born in Upper Norwood, a suburb of London; did his undergraduate work at Cambridge ; spent 84 as a fellow of Trinity ; returned to Cambridge in 1 as a lecturer; and was granted a professorship there in 5. He also served as editor of Mind. The bulk of his work falls into four categories: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophical methodology. Metaphysics. In this area, Moore is mainly known for his attempted refutation of idealism and his defense thereby of realism. In his “The Refutation of Idealism” 3, he argued that there is a crucial premise that is essential to all possible arguments for the idealistic conclusion that “All reality is mental spiritual.” This premise is: “To be is to be perceived” in the broad sense of ‘perceive’. Moore argued that, under every possible interpretation of it, that premise is either a tautology or false; hence no significant conclusion can ever be inferred from it. His positive defense of realism had several prongs. One was to show that there are certain claims held by non-realist philosophers, both idealist ones and skeptical ones. Moore argued, in “A Defense of Common Sense” 5, that these claims are either factually false or self-contradictory, or that in some cases there is no good reason to believe them. Among the claims that Moore attacked are these: “Propositions about purported material facts are false”; “No one has ever known any such propositions to be true”; “Every purported physical fact is logically dependent on some mental fact”; and “Every physical fact is causally dependent on some mental fact.” Another major prong of Moore’s defense of realism was to argue for the existence of an external world and later to give a “Proof of an External World” 3. Epistemology. Most of Moore’s work in this area dealt with the various kinds of knowledge we have, why they must be distinguished, and the problem of perception and our knowledge of an external world. Because he had already argued for the existence of an external world in his metaphysics, he here focused on how we know it. In many papers and chapters e.g., “The Nature and Reality of Objects of Perception,” 6 he examined and at times supported three main positions: naive or direct realism, representative or indirect realism, and phenomenalism. Although he seemed to favor direct realism at first, in the majority of his papers he found representative realism to be the most supportable position despite its problems. It should also be noted that, in connection with his leanings mood toward representative realism, Moore maintained the existence of sense-data and argued at length for an account of just how they are related to physical objects. That there are sense-data Moore never doubted. The question was, What is their ontological status? With regard to the various kinds of knowledge or ways of knowing, Moore made a distinction between dispositional or non-actualized and actualized knowledge. Within the latter Moore made distinctions between direct apprehension often known as knowledge by acquaintance, indirect apprehension, and knowledge proper or propositional knowledge. He devoted much of his work to finding the conditions for knowledge proper. Ethics. In his major work in ethics, Principia Ethica 3, Moore maintained that the central problem of ethics is, What is good?  meaning by this, not what things are good, but how ‘good’ is to be defined. He argued that there can be only one answer, one that may seem disappointing, namely: good is good, or, alternatively, ‘good’ is indefinable. Thus ‘good’ denotes a “unique, simple object of thought” that is indefinable and unanalyzable. His first argument on behalf of that claim consisted in showing that to identify good with some other object i.e., to define ‘good’ is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. To commit this fallacy is to reduce ethical propositions to either psychological propositions or reportive definitions as to how people use words. In other words, what was meant to be an ethical proposition, that X is good, becomes a factual proposition about people’s desires or their usage of words. Moore’s second argument ran like this: Suppose ‘good’ were definable. Then the result would be even worse than that of reducing ethical propositions to non-ethical propositions  ethical propositions would be tautologies! For example, suppose you defined ‘good’ as ‘pleasure’. Then suppose you maintained that pleasure is good. All you would be asserting is that pleasure is pleasure, a tautology. To avoid this conclusion ‘good’ must mean something other than ‘pleasure’. Why is this the naturalistic fallacy? Because good is a non-natural property. But even if it were a natural one, there would still be a fallacy. Hence some have proposed calling it the definist fallacy  the fallacy of attempting to define ‘good’ by any means. This argument is often known as the open question argument because whatever purported definition of ‘good’ anyone offers, it would always be an open question whether whatever satisfies the definition really is good. In the last part of Principia Ethica Moore turned to a discussion of what sorts of things are the greatest goods with which we are acquainted. He argued for the view that they are personal affection and aesthetic enjoyments. Philosophical methodology. Moore’s methodology in philosophy had many components, but two stand out: his appeal to and defense of common sense and his utilization of various methods of philosophical/conceptual analysis. “A Defense of Common Sense” argued for his claim that the commonsense view of the world is wholly true, and for the claim that any view which opposed that view is either factually false or self-contradictory. Throughout his writings Moore distinguished several kinds of analysis and made use of them extensively in dealing with philosophical problems. All of these may be found in the works cited above and other essays gathered into Moore’s Philosophical Studies2 and Philosophical Papers 9. These have been referred to as refutational analysis, with two subforms, showing contradictions and “translation into the concrete”; distinctional analysis; decompositional analysis either definitional or divisional; and reductional analysis. Moore was greatly revered as a teacher. Many of his students and colleagues have paid high tribute to him in very warm and grateful terms.  Moore’s paradox, as first discussed by G. E. Moore, the perplexity involving assertion of what is expressed by conjunctions such as ‘It’s raining, but I believe it isn’t’ and ‘It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is’. The oddity of such presenttense first-person uses of ‘to believe’ seems peculiar to those conjunctions just because it is assumed both that, when asserting  roughly, representing as true  a conjunction, one also asserts its conjuncts, and that, as a rule, the assertor believes the asserted proposition. Thus, no perplexity arises from assertions of, for instance, ‘It’s raining today, but I falsely believed it wasn’t until I came out to the porch’ and ‘If it’s raining but I believe it isn’t, I have been misled by the weather report’. However, there are reasons to think that, if we rely only on these assumptions and examples, our characterization of the problem is unduly narrow. First, assertion seems relevant only because we are interested in what the assertor believes. Secondly, those conjunctions are disturbing only insofar as they show that Moore’s paradox Moore’s paradox 583    583 some of the assertor’s beliefs, though contingent, can only be irrationally held. Thirdly, autobiographical reports that may justifiably be used to charge the reporter with irrationality need be neither about his belief system, nor conjunctive, nor true e.g., ‘I don’t exist’, ‘I have no beliefs’, nor false e.g., ‘It’s raining, but I have no evidence that it is’. So, Moore’s paradox is best seen as the problem posed by contingent propositions that cannot be justifiably believed. Arguably, in forming a belief of those propositions, the believer acquires non-overridable evidence against believing them. A successful analysis of the problem along these lines may have important epistemological consequences.  Refs.: Grice, “Oxford seminars.” Grice dedicated a full chapter to the Moore paradox. Mainly, Moore is confused in lexicological ways. An emisor EXPRESSES the belief that p. What the emisor communicates is that p, not that he believes that p. He does not convey explicitly that he believes that p, nor implicitly. Belief and its expression is linked conceptually with the mode – indicative (‘est’); as is desire and its expression with the imperative mode (“sit”).

mos, ethos: ethos: Grice: “I love Lorenz, and he loved his geese.” --  Grice: “In German, ‘deutsche’ means ‘tribal.’” -- philosophical ethology – phrase used by Grice for his creature construction routine. ethical constructivism, a form of anti-realism about ethics which holds that there are moral facts and truths, but insists that these facts and truths are in some way constituted by or dependent on our moral beliefs, reactions, or attitudes. For instance, an ideal observer theory that represents the moral rightness and wrongness of an act in terms of the moral approval and disapproval that an appraiser would have under suitably idealized conditions can be understood as a form of ethical constructivism. Another form of constructivism identifies the truth of a moral belief with its being part of the appropriate system of beliefs, e.g., of a system of moral and nonmoral beliefs that is internally coherent. Such a view would maintain a coherence theory of moral truth. Moral relativism is a constructivist view that allows for a plurality of moral facts and truths. Thus, if the idealizing conditions appealed to in an ideal observer theory allow that different appraisers can have different reactions to the same actions under ideal conditions, then that ideal observer theory will be a version of moral relativism as well as of ethical constructivism. Or, if different systems of moral beliefs satisfy the appropriate epistemic conditions e.g. are equally coherent, then the truth or falsity of particular moral beliefs will have to be relativized to different moral systems or codes. -- ethical objectivism, the view that the objects of the most basic concepts of ethics which may be supposed to be values, obligations, duties, oughts, rights, or what not exist, or that facts about them hold, objectively and that similarly worded ethical statements by different persons make the same factual claims and thus do not concern merely the speaker’s feelings. To say that a fact is objective, or that something has objective existence, is usually to say that its holding or existence is not derivative from its being thought to hold or exist. In the Scholastic terminology still current in the seventeenth century ‘objective’ had the more or less contrary meaning of having status only as an object of thought. In contrast, fact, or a thing’s existence, is subjective if it holds or exists only in the sense that it is thought to hold or exist, or that it is merely a convenient human posit for practical purposes. A fact holds, or an object exists, intersubjectively if somehow its acknowledgment is binding on all thinking subjects or all subjects in some specified group, although it does not hold or exist independently of their thinking about it. Some thinkers suppose that intersubjectivity is all that can ever properly be meant by objectivity. Objectivism may be naturalist or non-naturalist. The naturalist objectivist believes that values, duties, or whatever are natural phenomena detectable by introspection, perception, or scientific inference. Thus values may be identified with certain empirical qualities of anybody’s experience, or duties with empirical facts about the effects of action, e.g. as promoting or hindering social cohesion. The non-naturalist objectivist eschewing what Moore called the naturalistic fallacy believes that values or obligations or whatever items he thinks most basic in ethics exist independently of any belief about them, but that their existence is not a matter of any ordinary fact detectable in the above ways but can be revealed to ethical intuition as standing in a necessary but not analytic relation to natural phenomena. ‘Ethical subjectivism’ usually means the doctrine that ethical statements are simply reports on the speaker’s feelings though, confusingly enough, such statements may be objectively true or false. Perhaps it ought to mean the doctrine that nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. Attitude theories of morality, for which such statements express, rather than report upon, the speaker’s feelings, are also, despite the objections of their proponents, sometimes called subjectivist. In a more popular usage an objective matter of fact is one on which all reasonable persons can be expected to agree, while a matter is subjective if various alternative opinions can be accepted as reasonable. What is subjective in this sense may be quite objective in the more philosophical sense in question above.  -- ethics, the philosophical study of morality. The word is also commonly used interchangeably with ‘morality’ to mean the subject matter of this study; and sometimes it is used more narrowly to mean the moral principles of a particular tradition, group, or individual. Christian ethics and Albert Schweitzer’s ethics are examples. In this article the word will be used exclusively to mean the philosophical study. Ethics, along with logic, metaphysics, and epistemology, is one of the main branches of philosophy. It corresponds, in the traditional division of the field into formal, natural, and moral philosophy, to the last of these disciplines. It can in turn be divided into the general study of goodness, the general study of right action, applied ethics, metaethics, moral psychology, and the metaphysics of moral responsibility. These divisions are not sharp, and many important studies in ethics, particularly those that examine or develop whole systems of ethics, are interdivisional. Nonetheless, they facilitate the identification of different problems, movements, and schools within the discipline. The first two, the general study of goodness and the general study of right action, constitute the main business of ethics. Correlatively, its principal substantive questions are what ends we ought, as fully rational human beings, to choose and pursue and what moral principles should govern our choices and pursuits. How these questions are related is the discipline’s principal structural question, and structural differences among systems of ethics reflect different answers to this question. In contemporary ethics, the study of structure has come increasingly to the fore, especially as a preliminary to the general study of right action. In the natural order of exposition, however, the substantive questions come first. Goodness and the question of ends. Philosophers have typically treated the question of the ends we ought to pursue in one of two ways: either as a question about the components of a good life or as a question about what sorts of things are good in themselves. On the first way of treating the question, it is assumed that we naturally seek a good life; hence, determining its components amounts to determining, relative to our desire for such a life, what ends we ought to pursue. On the second way, no such assumption about human nature is made; rather it is assumed that whatever is good in itself is worth choosing or pursuing. The first way of treating the question leads directly to the theory of human well-being. The second way leads directly to the theory of intrinsic value. The first theory originated in ancient ethics, and eudaimonia was the Grecian word for its subject, a word usually tr. ‘happiness,’ but sometimes tr. ‘flourishing’ in order to make the question of human well-being seem more a matter of how well a person is doing than how good he is feeling. These alternatives reflect the different conceptions of human well-being that inform the two major views within the theory: the view that feeling good or pleasure is the essence of human well-being and the view that doing well or excelling at things worth doing is its essence. The first view is hedonism in its classical form. Its most famous exponent among the ancients was Epicurus. The second view is perfectionism, a view that is common to several schools of ancient ethics. Its adherents include Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Among the moderns, the best-known defenders of classical hedonism and perfectionism are respectively J. S. Mill and Nietzsche. Although these two views differ on the question of what human well-being essentially consists in, neither thereby denies that the other’s answer has a place in a good human life. Indeed, mature statements of each typically assign the other’s answer an ancillary place. Thus, hedonism, as expounded by Epicurus, takes excelling at things worth doing  exercising one’s intellectual powers and moral virtues in exemplary and fruitful ways, e.g.  as the tried and true means to experiencing life’s most satisfying pleasures. And perfectionism, as developed in Aristotle’s ethics, underscores the importance of pleasure  the deep satisfaction that comes from doing an important job well, e.g.  as a natural concomitant of achieving excellence in things that matter. The two views, as expressed in these mature statements, differ not so much in the kinds of activities they take to be central to a good life as in the ways they explain the goodness of such a life. The chief difference between them, then, is philosophical rather than prescriptive. The second theory, the theory of intrinsic value, also has roots in ancient ethics, specifically, Plato’s theory of Forms. But unlike Plato’s theory, the basic tenets of which include certain doctrines about the reality and transcendence of value, the theory of intrinsic value neither contains nor presupposes any metaphysical theses. At issue in the theory is what things are good in themselves, and one can take a position on this issue without committing oneself to any thesis about the reality or unreality of goodness or about its transcendence or immanence. A list of the different things philosophers have considered good in themselves would include life, happiness, pleasure, knowledge, virtue, friendship, beauty, and harmony. The list could easily be extended. An interest in what constitutes the goodness of the various items on the list has brought philosophers to focus primarily on the question of whether something unites them. The opposing views on this question are monism and pluralism. Monists affirm the list’s unity; pluralists deny it. Plato, for instance, was a monist. He held that the goodness of everything good in itself consisted in harmony and therefore each such thing owed its goodness to its being harmonious. Alternatively, some philosophers have proposed pleasure as the sole constituent of goodness. Indeed, conceiving of pleasure as a particular kind of experience or state of consciousness, they have proposed this kind of experience as the only thing good in itself and characterized all other good things as instrumentally good, as owing their goodness to their being sources of pleasure. Thus, hedonism too can be a species of monism. In this case, though, one must distinguish between the view that it is one’s own experiences of pleasure that are intrinsically good and the view that anyone’s experiences of pleasure, indeed, any sentient being’s experiences of pleasure, are intrinsically good. The former is called by Sidgwick egoistic hedonism, the latter universal hedonism. This distinction can be made general, as a distinction between egoistic and universal views of what is good in itself or, as philosophers now commonly say, between agent-relative and agent-neutral value. As such, it indicates a significant point of disagreement in the theory of intrinsic value, a disagreement in which the seeming arbitrariness and blindness of egoism make it harder to defend. In drawing this conclusion, however, one must be careful not to mistake these egoistic views for views in the theory of human well-being, for each set of views represents a set of alternative answers to a different question. One must be careful, in other words, not to infer from the greater defensibility of universalism vis-à-vis egoism that universalism is the predominant view in the general study of goodness. Right action. The general study of right action concerns the principles of right and wrong that govern our choices and pursuits. In modern ethics these principles are typically given a jural conception. Accordingly, they are understood to constitute a moral code that defines the duties of men and women who live together in fellowship. This conception of moral principles is chiefly due to the influence of Christianity in the West, though some of its elements were already present in Stoic ethics. Its ascendancy in the general study of right action puts the theory of duty at the center of that study. The theory has two parts: the systematic exposition of the moral code that defines our duties; and its justification. The first part, when fully developed, presents complete formulations of the fundamental principles of right and wrong and shows how they yield all moral duties. The standard model is an axiomatic system in mathematics, though some philosophers have proposed a technical system of an applied science, such as medicine or strategy, as an alternative. The second part, if successful, establishes the authority of the principles and so validates the code. Various methods and criteria of justification are commonly used; no single one is canonical. Success in establishing the principles’ authority depends on the soundness of the argument that proceeds from whatever method or criterion is used. One traditional criterion is implicit in the idea of an axiomatic system. On this criterion, the fundamental principles of right and wrong are authoritative in virtue of being self-evident truths. That is, they are regarded as comparable to axioms not only in being the first principles of a deductive system but also in being principles whose truth can be seen immediately upon reflection. Use of this criterion to establish the principles’ authority is the hallmark of intuitionism. Once one of the dominant views in ethics, its position in the discipline has now been seriously eroded by a strong, twentieth-century tide of skepticism about all claims of self-evidence. Currently, the most influential method of justification consistent with using the model of an axiomatic system to expound the morality of right and wrong draws on the jural conception of its principles. On this method, the principles are interpreted as expressions of a legislative will, and accordingly their authority derives from the sovereignty of the person or collective whose will they are taken to express. The oldest example of the method’s use is the divine command theory. On this theory, moral principles are taken to be laws issued by God to humanity, and their authority thus derives from God’s supremacy. The theory is the original Christian source of the principles’ jural conception. The rise of secular thought since the Enlightenment has, however, limited its appeal. Later examples, which continue to attract broad interest and discussion, are formalism and contractarianism. Formalism is best exemplified in Kant’s ethics. It takes a moral principle to be a precept that satisfies the formal criteria of a universal law, and it takes formal criteria to be the marks of pure reason. Consequently, moral principles are laws that issue from reason. As Kant puts it, they are laws that we, as rational beings, give to ourselves and that regulate our conduct insofar as we engage each other’s rational nature. They are laws for a republic of reason or, as Kant says, a kingdom of ends whose legislature comprises all rational beings. Through this ideal, Kant makes intelligible and forceful the otherwise obscure notion that moral principles derive their authority from the sovereignty of reason. Contractarianism also draws inspiration from Kant’s ethics as well as from the social contract theories of Locke and Rousseau. Its fullest and most influential statement appears in the work of Rawls. On this view, moral principles represent the ideal terms of social cooperation for people who live together in fellowship and regard each other as equals. Specifically, they are taken to be the conditions of an ideal agreement among such people, an agreement that they would adopt if they met as an assembly of equals to decide collectively on the social arrangements governing their relations and reached their decision as a result of open debate and rational deliberation. The authority of moral principles derives, then, from the fairness of the procedures by which the terms of social cooperation would be arrived at in this hypothetical constitutional convention and the assumption that any rational individual who wanted to live peaceably with others and who imagined himself a party to this convention would, in view of the fairness of its procedures, assent to its results. It derives, that is, from the hypothetical consent of the governed. Philosophers who think of a moral code on the model of a technical system of an applied science use an entirely different method of justification. In their view, just as the principles of medicine represent knowledge about how best to promote health, so the principles of right and wrong represent knowledge about how best to promote the ends of morality. These philosophers, then, have a teleological conception of the code. Our fundamental duty is to promote certain ends, and the principles of right and wrong organize and direct our efforts in this regard. What justifies the principles, on this view, is that the ends they serve are the right ones to promote and the actions they prescribe are the best ways to promote them. The principles are authoritative, in other words, in virtue of the wisdom of their prescriptions. Different teleological views in the theory of duty correspond to different answers to the question of what the right ends to promote are. The most common answer is happiness; and the main division among the corresponding views mirrors the distinction in the theory of intrinsic value between egoism and universalism. Thus, egoism and universalism in the theory of duty hold, respectively, that the fundamental duty of morality is to promote, as best as one can, one’s own happiness and that it is to promote, as best as one can, the happiness of humanity. The former is ethical egoism and is based on the ideal of rational self-love. The latter is utilitarianism and is based on the ideal of rational benevolence. Ethical egoism’s most famous exponents in modern philosophy are Hobbes and Spinoza. It has had few distinguished defenders since their time. Bentham and J. S. Mill head the list of distinguished defenders of utilitarianism. The view continues to be enormously influential. On these teleological views, answers to questions about the ends we ought to pursue determine the principles of right and wrong. Put differently, the general study of right action, on these views, is subordinate to the general study of goodness. This is one of the two leading answers to the structural question about how the two studies are related. The other is that the general study of right action is to some extent independent of the general study of goodness. On views that represent this answer, some principles of right and wrong, notably principles of justice and honesty, prescribe actions even though more evil than good would result from doing them. These views are deontological. Fiat justitia ruat coelum captures their spirit. The opposition between teleology and deontology in ethics underlies many of the disputes in the general study of right action. The principal substantive and structural questions of ethics arise not only with respect to the conduct of human life generally but also with respect to specific walks of life such as medicine, law, journalism, engineering, and business. The examination of these questions in relation to the common practices and traditional codes of such professions and occupations has resulted in the special studies of applied ethics. In these studies, ideas and theories from the general studies of goodness and right action are applied to particular circumstances and problems of some profession or occupation, and standard philosophical techniques are used to define, clarify, and organize the ethical issues found in its domain. In medicine, in particular, where rapid advances in technology create, overnight, novel ethical problems on matters of life and death, the study of biomedical ethics has generated substantial interest among practitioners and scholars alike. Metaethics. To a large extent, the general studies of goodness and right action and the special studies of applied ethics consist in systematizing, deepening, and revising our beliefs about how we ought to conduct our lives. At the same time, it is characteristic of philosophers, when reflecting on such systems of belief, to examine the nature and grounds of these beliefs. These questions, when asked about ethical beliefs, define the field of metaethics. The relation of this field to the other studies is commonly represented by taking the other studies to constitute the field of ethics proper and then taking metaethics to be the study of the concepts, methods of justification, and ontological assumptions of the field of ethics proper. Accordingly, metaethics can proceed from either an interest in the epistemology of ethics or an interest in its metaphysics. On the first approach, the study focuses on questions about the character of ethical knowledge. Typically, it concentrates on the simplest ethical beliefs, such as ‘Stealing is wrong’ and ‘It is better to give than to receive’, and proceeds by analyzing the concepts in virtue of which these beliefs are ethical and examining their logical basis. On the second approach, the study focuses on questions about the existence and character of ethical properties. Typically, it concentrates on the most general ethical predicates such as goodness and wrongfulness and considers whether there truly are ethical properties represented by these predicates and, if so, whether and how they are interwoven into the natural world. The two approaches are complementary. Neither dominates the other. The epistemological approach is comparative. It looks to the most successful branches of knowledge, the natural sciences and pure mathematics, for paradigms. The former supplies the paradigm of knowledge that is based on observation of natural phenomena; the latter supplies the paradigm of knowledge that seemingly results from the sheer exercise of reason. Under the influence of these paradigms, three distinct views have emerged: naturalism, rationalism, and noncognitivism. Naturalism takes ethical knowledge to be empirical and accordingly models it on the paradigm of the natural sciences. Ethical concepts, on this view, concern natural phenomena. Rationalism takes ethical knowledge to be a priori and accordingly models it on the paradigm of pure mathematics. Ethical concepts, on this view, concern morality understood as something completely distinct from, though applicable to, natural phenomena, something whose content and structure can be apprehended by reason independently of sensory inputs. Noncognitivism, in opposition to these other views, denies that ethics is a genuine branch of knowledge or takes it to be a branch of knowledge only in a qualified sense. In either case, it denies that ethics is properly modeled on science or mathematics. On the most extreme form of noncognitivism, there are no genuine ethical concepts; words like ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘good’, and ‘evil’ have no cognitive meaning but rather serve to vent feelings and emotions, to express decisions and commitments, or to influence attitudes and dispositions. On less extreme forms, these words are taken to have some cognitive meaning, but conveying that meaning is held to be decidedly secondary to the purposes of venting feelings, expressing decisions, or influencing attitudes. Naturalism is well represented in the work of Mill; rationalism in the works of Kant and the intuitionists. And noncognitivism, which did not emerge as a distinctive view until the twentieth century, is most powerfully expounded in the works of C. L. Stevenson and Hare. Its central tenets, however, were anticipated by Hume, whose skeptical attacks on rationalism set the agenda for subsequent work in metaethics. The metaphysical approach is centered on the question of objectivity, the question of whether ethical predicates represent real properties of an external world or merely apparent or invented properties, properties that owe their existence to the perception, feeling, or thought of those who ascribe them. Two views dominate this approach. The first, moral realism, affirms the real existence of ethical properties. It takes them to inhere in the external world and thus to exist independently of their being perceived. For moral realism, ethics is an objective discipline, a discipline that promises discovery and confirmation of objective truths. At the same time, moral realists differ fundamentally on the question of the character of ethical properties. Some, such as Plato and Moore, regard them as purely intellective and thus irreducibly distinct from empirical properties. Others, such as Aristotle and Mill, regard them as empirical and either reducible to or at least supervenient on other empirical properties. The second view, moral subjectivism, denies the real existence of ethical properties. On this view, to predicate, say, goodness of a person is to impose some feeling, impulse, or other state of mind onto the world, much as one projects an emotion onto one’s circumstances when one describes them as delightful or sad. On the assumption of moral subjectivism, ethics is not a source of objective truth. In ancient philosophy, moral subjectivism was advanced by some of the Sophists, notably Protagoras. In modern philosophy, Hume expounded it in the eighteenth century and Sartre in the twentieth century. Regardless of approach, one and perhaps the central problem of metaethics is how value is related to fact. On the epistemological approach, this problem is commonly posed as the question of whether judgments of value are derivable from statements of fact. Or, to be more exact, can there be a logically valid argument whose conclusion is a judgment of value and all of whose premises are statements of fact? On the metaphysical approach, the problem is commonly posed as the question of whether moral predicates represent properties that are explicable as complexes of empirical properties. At issue, in either case, is whether ethics is an autonomous discipline, whether the study of moral values and principles is to some degree independent of the study of observable properties and events. A negative answer to these questions affirms the autonomy of ethics; a positive answer denies ethics’ autonomy and implies that it is a branch of the natural sciences. Moral psychology. Even those who affirm the autonomy of ethics recognize that some facts, particularly facts of human psychology, bear on the general studies of goodness and right action. No one maintains that these studies float free of all conception of human appetite and passion or that they presuppose no account of the human capacity for voluntary action. It is generally recognized that an adequate understanding of desire, emotion, deliberation, choice, volition, character, and personality is indispensable to the theoretical treatment of human well-being, intrinsic value, and duty. Investigations into the nature of these psychological phenomena are therefore an essential, though auxiliary, part of ethics. They constitute the adjunct field of moral psychology. One area of particular interest within this field is the study of those capacities by virtue of which men and women qualify as moral agents, beings who are responsible for their actions. This study is especially important to the theory of duty since that theory, in modern philosophy, characteristically assumes a strong doctrine of individual responsibility. That is, it assumes principles of culpability for wrongdoing that require, as conditions of justified blame, that the act of wrongdoing be one’s own and that it not be done innocently. Only moral agents are capable of meeting these conditions. And the presumption is that normal, adult human beings qualify as moral agents whereas small children and nonhuman animals do not. The study then focuses on those capacities that distinguish the former from the latter as responsible beings. The main issue is whether the power of reason alone accounts for these capacities. On one side of the issue are philosophers like Kant who hold that it does. Reason, in their view, is both the pilot and the engine of moral agency. It not only guides one toward actions in conformity with one’s duty, but it also produces the desire to do one’s duty and can invest that desire with enough strength to overrule conflicting impulses of appetite and passion. On the other side are philosophers, such as Hume and Mill, who take reason to be one of several capacities that constitute moral agency. On their view, reason works strictly in the service of natural and sublimated desires, fears, and aversions to produce intelligent action, to guide its possessor toward the objects of those desires and away from the objects of those fears. It cannot, however, by itself originate any desire or fear. Thus, the desire to act rightly, the aversion to acting wrongly, which are constituents of moral agency, are not products of reason but are instead acquired through some mechanical process of socialization by which their objects become associated with the objects of natural desires and aversions. On one view, then, moral agency consists in the power of reason to govern behavior, and being rational is thus sufficient for being responsible for one’s actions. On the other view, moral agency consists in several things including reason, but also including a desire to act rightly and an aversion to acting wrongly that originate in natural desires and aversions. On this view, to be responsible for one’s actions, one must not only be rational but also have certain desires and aversions whose acquisition is not guaranteed by the maturation of reason. Within moral psychology, one cardinal test of these views is how well they can accommodate and explain such common experiences of moral agency as conscience, weakness, and moral dilemma. At some point, however, the views must be tested by questions about freedom. For one cannot be responsible for one’s actions if one is incapable of acting freely, which is to say, of one’s own free will. The capacity for free action is thus essential to moral agency, and how this capacity is to be explained, whether it fits within a deterministic universe, and if not, whether the notion of moral responsibility should be jettisoned, are among the deepest questions that the student of moral agency must face. What is more, they are not questions to which moral psychology can furnish answers. At this point, ethics descends into metaphysics.  ethnography, an open-ended family of techniques through which anthropologists investigate cultures; also, the organized descriptions of other cultures that result from this method. Cultural anthropology  ethnology  is based primarily on fieldwork through which anthropologists immerse themselves in the life of a local culture village, neighborhood and attempt to describe and interpret aspects of the culture. Careful observation is one central tool of investigation. Through it the anthropologist can observe and record various features of social life, e.g. trading practices, farming techniques, or marriage arrangements. A second central tool is the interview, through which the researcher explores the beliefs and values of members of the local culture. Tools of historical research, including particularly oral history, are also of use in ethnography, since the cultural practices of interest often derive from a remote point in time.  ethnology, the comparative and analytical study of cultures; cultural anthroplogy. Anthropologists aim to describe and interpret aspects of the culture of various social groups  e.g., the hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari, rice villages of the Chin. Canton Delta, or a community of physicists at Livermore Laboratory. Topics of particular interest include religious beliefs, linguistic practices, kinship arrangements, marriage patterns, farming technology, dietary practices, gender relations, and power relations. Cultural anthropology is generally conceived as an empirical science, and this raises several methodological and conceptual difficulties. First is the role of the observer. The injection of an alien observer into the local culture unavoidably disturbs that culture. Second, there is the problem of intelligibility across cultural systems  radical translation. One goal of ethnographic research is to arrive at an interpretation of a set of beliefs and values that are thought to be radically different from the researcher’s own beliefs and values; but if this is so, then it is questionable whether they can be accurately tr. into the researcher’s conceptual scheme. Third, there is the problem of empirical testing of ethnographic interpretations. To what extent do empirical procedures constrain the construction of an interpretation of a given cultural milieu? Finally, there is the problem of generalizability. To what extent does fieldwork in one location permit anthropologists to generalize to a larger context  other villages, the dispersed ethnic group represented by this village, or this village at other times?  ethnomethodology, a phenomenological approach to interpreting everyday action and speech in various social contexts. Derived from phenomenological sociology and introduced by Harold Garfinkel, the method aims to guide research into meaningful social practices as experienced by participants. A major objective of the method is to interpret the rules that underlie everyday activity and thus constitute part of the normative basis of a given social order. Research from this perspective generally focuses on mundane social activities  e.g., psychiatrists evaluating patients’ files, jurors deliberating on defendants’ culpability, or coroners judging causes of death. The investigator then attempts to reconstruct an underlying set of rules and ad hoc procedures that may be taken to have guided the observed activity. The approach emphasizes the contextuality of social practice  the richness of unspoken shared understandings that guide and orient participants’ actions in a given practice or activity. H. P. Grice, “The Teutons, according to Tacitus.”

dilemma. Grice: “Ryle overuses the word dilemma in his popularization, “Dilemmas”.” 1 Any problem where morality is relevant. This broad use includes not only conflicts among moral reasons but also conflicts between moral reasons and reasons of law, religion, or self-interest. In this sense, Abraham is in a moral dilemma when God commands him to sacrifice his son, even if he has no moral reason to obey. Similarly, I am in a moral dilemma if I cannot help a friend in trouble without forgoing a lucrative but morally neutral business opportunity. ’Moral dilemma’ also often refers to 2 any topic area where it is not known what, if anything, is morally good or right. For example, when one asks whether abortion is immoral in any way, one could call the topic “the moral dilemma of abortion.” This epistemic use does not imply that anything really is immoral at all. Recently, moral philosophers have discussed a much narrower set of situations as “moral dilemmas.” They usually define ‘moral dilemma’ as 3 a situation where an agent morally ought to do each of two acts but cannot do both. The bestknown example is Sartre’s student who morally ought to care for his mother in Paris but at the same time morally ought to go to England to join the Free  and fight the Nazis. However, ‘ought’ covers ideal actions that are not morally required, such as when someone ought to give to a certain charity but is not required to do so. Since most common examples of moral dilemmas include moral obligations or duties, or other requirements, it is more accurate to define ‘moral dilemma’ more narrowly as 4 a situation where an agent has a moral requirement to do each of two acts but cannot do both. Some philosophers also refuse to call a situation a moral dilemma when one of the conflicting requirements is clearly overridden, such as when I must break a trivial promise in order to save a life. To exclude such resolvable conflicts, ‘moral dilemma’ can be defined as 5 a situation where an agent has a moral requirement to adopt each of two alternatives, and neither requirement is overridden, but the agent cannot fulfill both. Another common move is to define ‘moral dilemma’ as 6 a situation where every alternative is morally wrong. This is equivalent to 4 or 5, respectively, if an act is morally wrong whenever it violates any moral requirement or any non-overridden moral requirement. However, we usually do not call an act wrong unless it violates an overriding moral requirement, and then 6 rules out moral dilemmas by definition, since overriding moral requirements clearly cannot conflict. Although 5 thus seems preferable, some would object that 5 includes trivial requirements and conflicts, such as conflicts between trivial promises. To include only tragic situations, we could define ‘moral dilemma’ as 7 a situation where an agent has a strong moral obligation or requirement to adopt each of two alternatives, and neither is overridden, but the agent cannot adopt both alternatives. This definition is strong enough to raise the important controversies about moral dilemmas without being so strong as to rule out their possibility by definition. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Ryle’s dilemmas: are they?”

epistemology, the discipline, at the intersection of ethics and epistemology, that studies the epistemic status and relations of moral judgments and principles. It has developed out of an interest, common to both ethics and epistemology, in questions of justification and justifiability  in epistemology, of statements or beliefs, and in ethics, of actions as well as judgments of actions and also general principles of judgment. Its most prominent questions include the following. Can normative claims be true or false? If so, how can they be known to be true or false? If not, what status do they have, and are they capable of justification? If they are capable of justification, how can they be justified? Does the justification of normative claims differ with respect to particular claims and with respect to general principles? In epistemology recent years have seen a tendency to accept as valid an account of knowledge as entailing justified true belief, a conception that requires an account not just of truth but also of justification and of justified belief. Thus, under what conditions is someone justified, epistemically, in believing something? Justification, of actions, of judgments, and of principles, has long been a central element in ethics. It is only recently that justification in ethics came to be thought of as an epistemological problem, hence ‘moral epistemology’, as an expression, is a fairly recent coinage, although its problems have a long lineage. One long-standing linkage is provided by the challenge of skepticism. Skepticism in ethics can be about the existence of any genuine distinction between right and wrong, or it can focus on the possibility of attaining any knowledge of right and wrong, good or bad. Is there a right answer? is a question in the metaphysics of ethics. Can we know what the right answer is, and if so how? is one of moral epistemology. Problems of perception and observation and ones about observation statements or sense-data play an important role in epistemology. There is not any obvious parallel in moral epistemology, unless it is the role of prereflective moral judgments, or commonsense moral judgments  moral judgments unguided by any overt moral theory  which can be taken to provide the data of moral theory, and which need to be explained, systematized, coordinated, or revised to attain an appropriate relation between theory and data. This would be analogous to taking the data of epistemology to be provided, not by sense-data or observations but by judgments of perception or observation statements. Once this step is taken the parallel is very close. One source of moral skepticism is the apparent lack of any observational counterpart for moral predicates, which generates the question how moral judgments can be true if there is nothing for them to correspond to. Another source of moral skepticism is apparently constant disagreement and uncertainty, which would appear to be explained by the skeptical hypothesis denying the reality of moral distinctions. Noncognitivism in ethics maintains that moral judgments are not objects of knowledge, that they make no statements capable of truth or falsity, but are or are akin to expressions of attitudes. Some other major differences among ethical theories are largely epistemological in character. Intuitionism maintains that basic moral propositions are knowable by intuition. Empiricism in ethics maintains that moral propositions can be established by empirical means or are complex forms of empirical statements. Ethical rationalism maintains that the fundamental principles of morality can be established a priori as holding of necessity. This is exemplified by Kant’s moral philosophy, in which the categorical imperative is regarded as synthetic a priori; more recently by what Alan Gewirth b.2 calls the “principle of generic consistency,” which he claims it is selfcontradictory to deny. Ethical empiricism is exemplified by classical utilitarianism, such as that of Bentham, which aspires to develop ethics as an empirical science. If the consequences of actions can be scientifically predicted and their utilities calculated, then ethics can be a science. Situationism is equivalent to concrete case intuitionism in maintaining that we can know immediately what ought to be done in specific cases, but most ethical theories maintain that what ought to be done is, in J. S. Mill’s words, determined by “the application of a law to an individual case.” Different theories differ on the epistemic status of these laws and on the process of application. Deductivists, either empiricistic or rationalistic, hold that the law is essentially unchanged in the application; non-deductivists hold that the law is modified in the process of application. This distinction is explained in F. L. Will, “Beyond Deduction.” There is similar variation about what if anything is selfevident, Sidgwick maintaining that only certain highly abstract principles are self-evident, Ross that only general rules are, and Prichard that only concrete judgments are, “by an act of moral thinking.” Other problems in moral epistemology are provided by the factvalue distinction  and controversies about whether there is any such distinction  and the isought question, the question how a moral judgment can be derived from statements of fact alone. Naturalists affirm the possibility, non-naturalists deny it. Prescriptivists claim that moral judgments are prescriptions and cannot be deduced from descriptive statements alone. This question ultimately leads to the question how an ultimate principle can be justified. If it cannot be deduced from statements of fact, that route is out; if it must be deduced from some other moral principle, then the principle deduced cannot be ultimate and in any case this process is either circular or leads to an infinite regress. If the ultimate principle is self-evident, then the problem may have an answer. But if it is not it would appear to be arbitrary. The problem of the justification of an ultimate principle continues to be a leading one in moral epistemology. Recently there has been much interest in the status and existence of “moral facts.” Are there any, what are they, and how are they established as “facts”? This relates to questions about moral realism. Moral realism maintains that moral predicates are real and can be known to be so; anti-realists deny this. This denial links with the view that moral properties supervene on natural ones, and the problem of supervenience is another recent link between ethics and epistemology. Pragmatism in ethics maintains that a moral problem is like any problem in that it is the occasion for inquiry and moral judgments are to be regarded as hypotheses to be tested by how well they resolve the problem. This amounts to an attempt to bypass the isought problem and all such “dualisms.” So is constructivism, a development owing much to the work of Rawls, which contrasts with moral realism. Constructivism maintains that moral ideas are human constructs and the task is not epistemological or metaphysical but practical and theoretical  that of attaining reflective equilibrium between considered moral judgments and the principles that coordinate and explain them. On this view there are no moral facts. Opponents maintain that this only replaces a foundationalist view of ethics with a coherence conception. The question whether questions of moral epistemology can in this way be bypassed can be regarded as itself a question of moral epistemology. And the question of the foundations of morality, and whether there are foundations, can still be regarded as a question of moral epistemology, as distinct from a question of the most convenient and efficient arrangement of our moral ideas. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Our knowledge of right and wrong: do we have it? Is it intuitive as Oxonians believe?”

mos: ethos -- meta-ethics: morality, an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, having the lessening of evil or harm as its goal, and including what are commonly known as the moral rules, moral ideals, and moral virtues. To say that it is a public system means that all those to whom it applies must understand it and that it must not be irrational for them to use it in deciding what to do and in judging others to whom the system applies. Games are the paradigm cases of public systems; all games have a point and the rules of a game apply to all who play it. All players know the point of the game and its rules, and it is not irrational for them to be guided by the point and rules and to judge the behavior of other players by them. To say that morality is informal means that there is no decision procedure or authority that can settle all its controversial questions. Morality thus resembles a backyard game of basketball more than a professional game. Although there is overwhelming agreement on most moral matters, certain controversial questions must be settled in an ad hoc fashion or not settled at all. For example, when, if ever, abortion is acceptable is an unresolvable moral matter, but each society and religion can adopt its own position. That morality has no one in a position of authority is one of the most important respects in which it differs from law and religion. Although morality must include the commonly accepted moral rules such as those prohibiting killing and deceiving, different societies can interpret these rules somewhat differently. They can also differ in their views about the scope of morality, i.e., about whether morality protects newborns, fetuses, or non-human animals. Thus different societies can have somewhat different moralities, although this difference has limits. Also within each society, a person may have his own view about when it is justified to break one of the rules, e.g., about how much harm would have to be prevented in order to justify deceiving someone. Thus one person’s morality may differ somewhat from another’s, but both will agree on the overwhelming number of non-controversial cases. A moral theory is an attempt to describe, explain, and if possible justify, morality. Unfortunately, most moral theories attempt to generate some simplified moral code, rather than to describe the complex moral system that is already in use. Morality does not resolve all disputes. Morality does not require one always to act so as to produce the best consequences or to act only in those ways that one would will everyone to act. Rather morality includes both moral rules that no one should transgress and moral ideals that all are encouraged to follow, but much of what one does will not be governed by morality. H. P. Grice, “Meta-ethics in postwar Oxford philosophy: Hare, Nowell-Smith, myself, and others!”  mos, ethos – meta-ethical -- meta-ethics:, Grice: “The Romans should have a verb for ‘mos,’ since it’s very nominational!” Surely what we need is something like Austin’s ‘doing things.’” mos , mōris, m. etym. dub.; perh. root ma-, measure; cf.: maturus, matutinus; prop., a measuring or guiding rule of life; hence, I.manner, custom, way, usage, practice, fashion, wont, as determined not by the laws, but by men's will and pleasure, humor, self-will, caprice (class.; cf.: consuetudo, usus). I. Lit.: “opsequens oboediensque'st mori atque imperiis patris,” Plaut. Bacch. 3, 3, 54: Grice: “Cicero was being brilliant when he found that ‘mos’ nicely translates Grecian ‘ethos’ – cf. Grice’s ethology. Ethologica --  Philosophical ethology -- 1 the subfield of psychology that traces the development over time of moral reasoning and opinions in the lives of individuals this subdiscipline includes work of Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan; 2 the part of philosophy where philosophy of mind and ethics overlap, which concerns all the psychological issues relevant to morality. There are many different psychological matters relevant to ethics, and each may be relevant in more than one way. Different ethical theories imply different sorts of connections. So moral psychology includes work of many and diverse kinds. But several traditional clusters of concern are evident. Some elements of moral psychology consider the psychological matters relevant to metaethical issues, i.e., to issues about the general nature of moral truth, judgment, and knowledge. Different metaethical theories invoke mental phenomena in different ways: noncognitivism maintains that sentences expressing moral judgments do not function to report truths or falsehoods, but rather, e.g., to express certain emotions or to prescribe certain actions. So some forms of noncognitivism imply that an understanding of certain sorts of emotions, or of special activities like prescribing that may involve particular psychological elements, is crucial to a full understanding of how ethical sentences are meaningful. Certain forms of cognitivism, the view that moral declarative sentences do express truths or falsehoods, imply that moral facts consist of psychological facts, that for instance moral judgments consist of expressions of positive psychological attitudes of some particular kind toward the objects of those judgments. And an understanding of psychological phenomena like sentiment is crucial according to certain sorts of projectivism, which hold that the supposed moral properties of things are mere misleading projections of our sentiments onto the objects of those sentiments. Certain traditional moral sense theories and certain traditional forms of intuitionism have held that special psychological faculties are crucial for our epistemic access to moral truth. Particular views in normative ethics, particular views about the moral status of acts, persons, and other targets of normative evaluation, also often suggest that an understanding of certain psychological matters is crucial to ethics. Actions, intentions, and character are some of the targets of evaluation of normative ethics, and their proper understanding involves many issues in philosophy of mind. Also, many normative theorists have maintained that there is a close connection between pleasure, happiness, or desiresatisfaction and a person’s good, and these things are also a concern of philosophy of mind. In addition, the rightness of actions is often held to be closely connected to the motives, beliefs, and other psychological phenomena that lie behind those actions. Various other traditional philosophical concerns link ethical and psychological issues: the nature of the patterns in the long-term development in individuals of moral opinions and reasoning, the appropriate form for moral education and punishment, the connections between obligation and motivation, i.e., between moral reasons and psychological causes, and the notion of free will and its relation to moral responsibility and autonomy. Some work in philosophy of mind also suggests that moral phenomena, or at least normative phenomena of some kind, play a crucial role in illuminating or constituting psychological phenomena of various kinds, but the traditional concern of moral psychology has been with the articulation of the sort of philosophy of mind that can be useful to ethics.  Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Meta-ethics in post-war Oxford philosophy: Hare, Nowell-Smith, myself, and others!” H. P. Grice, “The morality of morality.” H. P. Grice, “Lorenz and the ‘ethologie der ganse.’”

“practical reason” – Grice: “In ‘practical reason,’ we have Aristotle at his best: the category is ‘action,’ and the praedicabile is ‘rational.’ Now ‘action’ is supracategorial: It’s STRAWSON who acts, not his action!” -- -- “Or ‘to do things,’ as Austin would put it!” -- moral rationalism, the view that the substance of morality, usually in the form of general moral principles, can be known a priori. The view is defended by Kant in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, but it goes back at least to Plato. Both Plato and Kant thought that a priori moral knowledge could have an impact on what we do quite independently of any desire that we happen to have. This motivational view is also ordinarily associated with moral rationalism. It comes in two quite different forms. The first is that a priori moral knowledge consists in a sui generis mental state that is both belief-like and desire-like. This seems to have been Plato’s view, for he held that the belief that something is good is itself a disposition to promote that thing. The second is that a priori moral knowledge consists in a belief that is capable of rationally producing a distinct desire. Rationalists who make the first claim have had trouble accommodating the possibility of someone’s believing that something is good but, through weakness of will, not mustering the desire to do it. Accordingly, they have been forced to assimilate weakness of will to ignorance of the good. Rationalists who make the second claim about reason’s action-producing capacity face no such problem. For this reason, their view is often preferred. The best-known anti-rationalist about morality is Hume. His Treatise of Human Nature denies both that morality’s substance can be known by reason alone and that reason alone is capable of producing action. 

Griceian realism: a metaethical view committed to the objectivity of ethics. It has 1 metaphysical, 2 semantic, and 3 epistemological components. 1 Its metaphysical component is the claim that there are moral facts and moral properties whose existence and nature are independent of people’s beliefs and attitudes about what is right or wrong. In this claim, moral realism contrasts with an error theory and with other forms of nihilism that deny the existence of moral facts and properties. It contrasts as well with various versions of moral relativism and other forms of ethical constructivism that make moral facts consist in facts about people’s moral beliefs and attitudes. 2 Its semantic component is primarily cognitivist. Cognitivism holds that moral judgments should be construed as assertions about the moral properties of actions, persons, policies, and other objects of moral assessment, that moral predicates purport to refer to properties of such objects, that moral judgments or the propositions that they express can be true or false, and that cognizers can have the cognitive attitude of belief toward the propositions that moral judgments express. These cognitivist claims contrast with the noncognitive claims of emotivism and prescriptivism, according to which the primary purpose of moral judgments is to express the appraiser’s attitudes or commitments, rather than to state facts or ascribe properties. Moral realism also holds that truth for moral judgments is non-epistemic; in this way it contrasts with moral relativism and other forms of ethical constructivism that make the truth of a moral judgment epistemic. The metaphysical and semantic theses imply that there are some true moral propositions. An error theory accepts the cognitivist semantic claims but denies the realist metaphysical thesis. It holds that moral judgments should be construed as containing referring expressions and having truth-values, but insists that these referring expressions are empty, because there are no moral facts, and that no moral claims are true. Also on this theory, commonsense moral thought presupposes the existence of moral facts and properties, but is systematically in error. In this way, the error theory stands to moral realism much as atheism stands to theism in a world of theists. J. L. Mackie introduced and defended the error theory in his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 7. 3 Finally, if moral realism is to avoid skepticism it must claim that some moral beliefs are true, that there are methods for justifying moral beliefs, and that moral knowledge is possible. While making these metaphysical, semantic, and epistemological claims, moral realism is compatible with a wide variety of other metaphysical, semantic, and epistemological principles and so can take many different forms. The moral realists in the early part of the twentieth century were generally intuitionists. Intuitionism combined a commitment to moral realism with a foundationalist moral epistemology according to which moral knowledge must rest on self-evident moral truths and with the nonnaturalist claim that moral facts and properties are sui generis and not reducible to any natural facts or properties. Friends of noncognitivism found the metaphysical and epistemological commitments of intuitionism extravagant and so rejected moral realism. Later moral realists have generally sought to defend moral realism without the metaphysical and epistemological trappings of intuitionism. One such version of moral realism takes a naturalistic form. This form of ethical naturalism claims that our moral beliefs are justified when they form part of an explanatorily coherent system of beliefs with one another and with various non-moral beliefs, and insists that moral properties are just natural properties of the people, actions, and policies that instantiate them. Debate between realists and anti-realists and within the realist camp centers on such issues as the relation between moral judgment and action, the rational authority of morality, moral epistemology and methodology, the relation between moral and non-moral natural properties, the place of ethics in a naturalistic worldview, and the parity of ethics and the sciences. 

Quinque sense: visum, olfactum, gustum, tactum, auditum – quinque organa: oculus, etc. Grice: “I am particularly irritated by Pitcher, of all people, quoting me to refute my idea that a ‘pain-sense’ is an otiosity! Of  course it is!” – “And I used to like Pitcher when he was at Oxford!” -- Some reamarks about ‘senusus.’ – Grice’s Modified occam’s razor: “Do not multiply senses beyond necessity – let there be five: visum, auditum, tactum, gustum, and olfactum --. “Some remarks about the (five?) senses” – Grice: “Grice: “And then there’s Shaftesbury who thinks he is being witty when he speaks of a ‘moral’ “sense”!” -- moral sense theory, an ethical theory, developed by some British philosophers  notably Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume  according to which the pleasure or pain a person feels upon thinking about or “observing” certain character traits is indicative of the virtue or vice, respectively, of those features. It is a theory of “moral perception,” offered in response to moral rationalism, the view that moral distinctions are derived by reason alone, and combines Locke’s empiricist doctrine that all ideas begin in experience with the belief, widely shared at the time, that feelings play a central role in moral evaluation and motivation. On this theory, our emotional responses to persons’ characters are often “perceptions” of their morality, just as our experiences of an apple’s redness and sweetness are perceptions of its color and taste. These ideas of morality are seen as products of an “internal” sense, because they are produced in the “observer” only after she forms a concept of the conduct or trait being observed or contemplated  as when a person realizes that she is seeing someone intentionally harm another and reacts with displeasure at what she sees. The moral sense is conceived as being analogous to, or possibly an aspect of, our capacity to recognize varying degrees of beauty in things, which modern writers call “the sense of beauty.” Rejecting the popular view that morality is based on the will of God, Shaftesbury maintains rather that morality depends on human nature, and he introduces the notion of a sense of right and wrong, possessed uniquely by human beings, who alone are capable of reflection. Hutcheson argues that to approve of a character is to regard it as virtuous. For him, reason, which discovers relations of inanimate objects to rational agents, is unable to arouse our approval in the absence of a moral sense. Ultimately, we can explain why, for example, we approve of someone’s temperate character only by appealing to our natural tendency to feel pleasure sometimes identified with approval at the thought of characters that exhibit benevolence, the trait to which all other virtues can be traced. This disposition to feel approval and disapproval is what Hutcheson identifies as the moral sense. Hume emphasizes that typical human beings make moral distinctions on the basis of their feelings only when those sentiments are experienced from a disinterested or “general” point of view. In other words, we turn our initial sentiments into moral judgments by compensating for the fact that we feel more strongly about those to whom we are emotionally close than those from whom we are more distant. On a widely held interpretation of Hume, the moral sense provides not only judgments, but also motives to act according to those judgments, since its feelings may be motivating passions or arouse such passions. Roderick Firth’s 787 twentieth-century ideal observer theory, according to which moral good is designated by the projected reactions of a hypothetically omniscient, disinterested observer possessing other ideal traits, as well as Brandt’s contemporary moral spectator theory, are direct descendants of the moral sense theory.  Refs: H. P. Grice: “Shaftesbury’s moral sense: some remarks about the ‘senses’ of this ‘expression’!” Refs.: H. P. Grice, G. J. Warnock, and J. O. Urmson: “The Roman names for the five senses.” Luigi Speranza, “The senses in iconography.” The Anglo-American Club. --.

mos, costume – Grice: “Can a single individual have an idio-mos, a practice? He certainly can device a set of pratices that nobody ever puts into use, as in my New Hightway Code, or my Deutero-Esperanto.” moral scepticism, any metaethical view that raises fundamental doubts about morality as a whole. Different kinds of doubts lead to different kinds of moral skepticism. The primary kinds of moral skepticism are epistemological. Moral justification skepticism is the claim that nobody ever has any or adequate justification for believing any substantive moral claim. Moral knowledge skepticism is the claim that nobody ever knows that any substantive moral claim is true. If knowledge implies justification, as is often assumed, then moral justification skepticism implies moral knowledge skepticism. But even if knowledge requires justification, it requires more, so moral knowledge skepticism does not imply moral justification skepticism. Another kind of skeptical view in metaethics rests on linguistic analysis. Some emotivists, expressivists, and prescriptivists argue that moral claims like “Cheating is morally wrong” resemble expressions of emotion or desire like “Boo, cheating” or prescriptions for action like “Don’t cheat”, which are neither true nor false, so moral claims themselves are neither true nor false. This linguistic moral skepticism, which is sometimes called noncognitivism, implies moral knowledge skepticism if knowledge implies truth. Even if such linguistic analyses are rejected, one can still hold that no moral properties or facts really exist. This ontological moral skepticism can be combined with the linguistic view that moral claims assert moral properties and facts to yield an error theory that all positive moral claims are false. A different kind of doubt about morality is often raised by asking, “Why should I be moral?” Practical moral skepticism answers that there is not always any reason or any adequate reason to be moral or to do what is morally required. This view concerns reasons to act rather than reasons to believe. Moral skepticism of all these kinds is often seen as immoral, but moral skeptics can act and be motivated and even hold moral beliefs in much the same way as non-skeptics. Moral skeptics just deny that their or anyone else’s moral beliefs are justified or known or true, or that they have adequate reason to be moral.   moral status, the suitability of a being to be viewed as an appropriate object of direct moral concern; the nature or degree of a being’s ability to count as a ground of claims against moral agents; the moral standing, rank, or importance of a kind of being; the condition of being a moral patient; moral considerability. Ordinary moral reflection involves considering others. But which others ought to be considered? And how are the various objects of moral consideration to be weighed against one another? Anything might be the topic of moral discussion, but not everything is thought to be an appropriate object of direct moral concern. If there are any ethical constraints on how we may treat a ceramic plate, these seem to derive from considerations about other beings, not from the interests or good or nature of the plate. The same applies, presumably, to a clod of earth. Many philosophers view a living but insentient being, such as a dandelion, in the same way; others have doubts. According to some, even sentient animal life is little more deserving of moral consideration than the clod or the dandelion. This tradition, which restricts significant moral status to humans, has come under vigorous and varied attack by defenders of animal liberation. This attack criticizes speciesism, and argues that “humanism” is analogous to theories that illegitimately base moral status on race, gender, or social class. Some philosophers have referred to beings that are appropriate objects of direct moral concern as “moral patients.” Moral agents are those beings whose actions are subject to moral evaluation; analogously, moral patients would be those beings whose suffering in the sense of being the objects of the actions of moral agents permits or demands moral evaluation. Others apply the label ‘moral patients’ more narrowly, just to those beings that are appropriate objects of direct moral concern but are not also moral agents. The issue of moral status concerns not only whether beings count at all morally, but also to what degree they count. After all, beings who are moral patients might still have their claims outweighed by the preferred claims of other beings who possess some special moral status. We might, with Nozick, propose “utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people.” Similarly, the bodily autonomy argument in defense of abortion, made famous by Thomson, does not deny that the fetus is a moral patient, but insists that her/his/its claims are limited by the pregnant woman’s prior claim to control her bodily destiny. It has often been thought that moral status should be tied to the condition of “personhood.” The idea has been either that only persons are moral patients, or that persons possess a special moral status that makes them morally more important than nonpersons. Personhood, on such theories, is a minimal condition for moral patiency. Why? Moral patiency is said to be “correlative” with moral agency: a creature has both or neither. Alternatively, persons have been viewed not as the only moral patients, but as a specially privileged elite among moral patients, possessing rights as well as interests. 

more grice to the mill: SOUS-ENTENDU, -UE, part. passé, adj. et subst. masc. I. − Part. passé de sous-entendre*. A. − Empl. impers. Il est sous-entendu que + complét. à l'ind. Il est inutile de préciser que. Synon. il va sans dire que.Elle lui écrivit (...) que (...) elle aurait enfin, après avoir été si souvent reçue chez eux, le plaisir de les inviter à son tour. De lui, elle ne disait pas un mot, il était sous-entendu que leur présence excluait la sienne (Proust,Swann,1913, p. 301). B. − Empl. ell. à valeur de prop. part. Sous-entendu (inv., le locuteur suppléant ce qui n'est pas exprimé mais suggéré). Ce qui signifie par là (que). Mon cher Ami, Encore une! sous-entendu: demande de croix d'honneur (Flaub.,Corresp.,1871, p. 287). II. − Adjectif A. − Synon. implicite, tacite; anton. avoué, explicite, formulé. 1. Qu'on laisse entendre sans l'exprimer. Le lendemain, à table, mon mari me dit (je me demandai d'abord s'il n'y avait pas là quelque dessein sous-entendu): − Sais-tu ce que m'a annoncé Brassy? Gurgine a essayé de se tuer (Daniel-Rops,Mort,1934, p. 291). 2. Qui reste implicite. Je me rappelle (...) d'avoir lu dans la déclaration des droits de l'homme cette maxime sous-entendue dans tous les codes qu'on nous a donnés depuis: « Tout ce qui n'est pas défendu par la loi ne peut être empêché, et nul ne peut être contraint à faire ce qu'elle n'ordonne pas » (Bonald,Législ. primit.,t. 1, 1802, p. 152).Toute mélodie commence par une anacrouse exprimée ou sous-entendue (D'Indy,Compos. mus.,t. 1, 1897-1900, p. 35). B. − GRAMM. Qui n'est pas exprimé, mais que le sens ou la syntaxe pourrait suppléer aisément. Observez qu'ainsi est tantôt adverbe, tantôt conjonction. (...) Il est encore adverbe dans celle-ci [cette phrase], ainsi que la vertu, le crime a ses degrés; il signifie de la même manière. C'est que, qui est la conjonction qui lie ensemble la phrase exprimée, le crime a ses degrés, avec la phrase sous-entendue, la vertu a ses degrés (Destutt de Tr.,Idéol. 2,1803, p. 140).L'intelligence fait donc naturellement usage des rapports d'équivalent à équivalent, de contenu à contenant, de cause à effet, etc., qu'implique toute phrase, où il y a un sujet, un attribut, un verbe, exprimé ou sous-entendu (Bergson,Évol. créatr.,1907, p. 149). III. − Subst. masc. A. − Au sing. Comportement de celui qui sous-entend les choses sans les exprimer explicitement. C'est la plus immense personnalité que je connaisse [Zola], mais elle est toute dans le sous-entendu: l'homme ne parle pas de lui, mais toutes les théories, toutes les idées, toutes les logomachies qu'il émet combattent uniquement, à propos de tout et de n'importe quoi, en faveur de sa littérature et de son talent (Goncourt, Journal, 1883, p. 251). B. − P. méton. 1. Parfois péj. Ce qui est sous-entendu, insinué dans des propos ou dans un texte, ou p. ext., par un comportement. Synon. allusion, insinuation.Plus libre que ses confrères, il ne craignait pas, − bien timidement encore, avec des clignements d'yeux et des sous-entendus, − de fronder les gens en place (Rolland,J.-Chr.,Adolesc., 1905, p. 365). − Au sing. à valeur de neutre. Henry Céard a passé avec moi toute la journée, causant du roman qu'il fait, − et qu'il veut faire dans le gris, le voilé, le sous-entendu (Goncourt,, Journal1878, p. 1276). − En partic. Allusion grivoise. Les conversations fourmillaient d'allusions et de sous-entendus dont la grivoiserie me choquait (Beauvoir,Mém. j. fille,1958, p. 165). 2. Ce qui n'est pas exprimé explicitement. Synon. restriction, réticence.Personne ne dit: « Je suis », si ce n'est dans une certaine attitude très instable et généralement apprise, et on ne le dit alors qu'avec quantité de sous-entendus: il y faut parfois un long commentaire (Valéry, Variété IV,1938, p. 228). REM. Sous-entente, subst. fém.,vx. a) Action de sous-entendre par artifice; p. méton., ce qui est ainsi sous-entendu. Il ne parle jamais qu'il n'y ait quelque sous-entente à ce qu'il dit. Il y a quelque sous-entente à cela (Ac. 1798-1878). b) Gramm. Synon. de sous-entendu. (Ds Bally 1951). Prononc. et Orth.: [suzɑ ̃tɑ ̃dy]. Ac. 1694: sousentendu, -ue, 1718: sousentendu, -üe, dep. 1740: sous-entendu, -ue. Fréq. abs. littér.: 249. Fréq. rel. littér.: xixes.: a) 189, b) 230; xxes.: a) 480, b) 484. Bbg. Ducrot (O.). Le Dire et le dit. Paris, 1984, pp. 13-31. − Kerbrat-Orecchioni (C.). L'Énonciation. De la subjectivité ds le lang. Paris, 1980, 290 p., passim. more grice to the mill: sous-entendu: used by, of all people, Mill. An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophybooks.google.com › books ... and speak with any approach to precision, and adopting into [the necessary sufficient clauses of a piece of philosophical conceptual analysis] a mere sous-entendu of common conversation in its most unprecise form. If I say to any one, Cf. understatement, as opposed to overstatement. The ‘statement’ thing complicates things, ‘underunderstanding’ seems better, or ‘sub-understanding,’ strictly. Trust Grice to bring more Grice to the Mill and provide a full essay, indeed theory, and base his own philosophy, on the sous-tentendu! Cf. Pears, Pears Cyclopaedia. “The English love meiosis, litotes, and understatement. The French don’t.” Note all the figures of rhetoric cited by Grice, and why they have philosophical import. Many entries here: hyperbole, meiosis, litotes, etc. Grice took ‘sous-entendu’ etymologically serious. It is UNDERSTOOD. Nobody taught you, but it understood. It is understood is like It is known. So “The pillar box seems red” is understood to mean, “It may not be.” Now a sous-entendu may be cancellable, in which case it was MIS-understood, or the emissor has changed his mind. Grice considers the paradoxes the understanding under ‘uptake,’ just to make fun of Austin’s informalism. The ‘endendu’ is what the French understand by ‘understand,’ the root being Latin intellectus, or intendo.

more, H: “Not to be confused with the other More, who was literally beheaded when he refused to swear to the Act of Supremacy which metaphorically named Henry VIII the head of the C. of E.” -- English philosopher, theologian, and poet, the most prolific of the Cambridge Platonists. He entered Christ’s , where he spent the rest of his life after becoming Fellow . He was primarily an apologist of anti-Calvinist, latitudinarian stamp whose inalienable philosophico- theological purpose was to demonstrate the existence and immortality of the soul and to cure “two enormous distempers of the mind,” atheism and “enthusiasm.” He describes himself as “a Fisher for Philosophers, desirous to draw them to or retain them in the Christian Faith.” His eclectic method deployed Neoplatonism notably Plotinus and Ficino, mystical theologies, cabalistic doctrines as More misconceived them, empirical findings including reports of witchcraft and ghosts, the new science, and the new philosophy, notably the philosophy of Descartes. Yet he rejected Descartes’s beast-machine doctrine, his version of dualism, and the pretensions of Cartesian mechanical philosophy to explain all physical phenomena. Animals have souls; the universe is alive with souls. Body and spirit are spatially extended, the former being essentially impenetrable, inert, and discerpible divisible into parts, the latter essentially penetrable, indiscerpible, active, and capable of a spiritual density, which More called essential spissitude, “the redoubling or contracting of substance into less space than it does sometimes occupy.” Physical processes are activated and ordered by the spirit of nature, a hylarchic principle and “the vicarious power of God upon this great automaton, the world.” More’s writings on natural philosophy, especially his doctrine of infinite space, are thought to have influenced Newton. More attacked Hobbes’s materialism and, in the 1660s and 1670s, the impieties of Dutch Cartesianism, including the perceived atheism of Spinoza and his circle. He regretted the “enthusiasm” for and conversion to Quakerism of Anne Conway, his “extramural” tutee and assiduous correspondent. More had a partiality for coinages and linguistic exotica. We owe to him ‘Cartesianism’ coined a few years before the first appearance of the  equivalent, and the substantive ‘materialist.’ “But he never coined ‘implicaturum,’” – Grice.

more, Sir Thomas: English humanist, statesman, martyr, and saint. A lawyer by profession, he entered royal service and became lord chancellor. After refusing to swear to the Act of Supremacy, which named (“metaphorically,” – Grice)  Henry VIII the head of the C. of E. h, More was (“ironically, but literally” – Grice) beheaded as a traitor. Although his writings include biography, poetry, letters, and anti-heretical tracts, his only philosophical work, Utopia published in Latin, 1516, is his masterpiece. Covering a wide variety of subjects including government, education, punishment, religion, family life, and euthanasia, Utopia contrasts European social institutions with their counterparts on the imaginary island of Utopia. Inspired in part by Plato’s Republic, the Utopian communal system is designed to teach virtue and reward it with happiness. The absence of money, private property, and most social distinctions allows Utopians the leisure to develop the faculties in which happiness consists. Because of More’s love of irony, Utopia has been subject to quite different interpretations. H. P. Grice, “A personal guide to the 39 articles, compleat with their 39 implicatura.”

mosca: Essential Italian philosopher, who made pioneering contributions to the theory of democratic elitism. Combining the life of a  professor with that of a politician, he taught such subjects as constitutional law, public law, political science, and history of political theory; at various times he was also an editor of the Parliamentary proceedings, an elected member of the Chamber of Deputies, an under-secretary for colonial affairs, a newspaper columnist, and a member of the Senate. For Mosca ‘elitism’ refers to the empirical generalization that a society is ruled by an organised minority. His democratic commitment is embodied in what he calls juridical defense: the normative principle that political developments are to be judged by whether and how they prevent any one person, class, force, or institution from dominating the others. Mosca’s third main contribution is a framework consisting of two intersecting distinctions that yield four possible ideal types, defined as follows: in autocracy, authority flows from the rulers to the ruled. In liberalism, from the ruled to the rulers. In democracy, the ruling class is open to renewal by members of other classes; in aristocracy it is not. He was influenced by, and in turn influenced, positivism, for the elitist thesis presumably constitutes the fundamental “law” of political “science.” Even deeper is his connection with the tradition of Machiavelli’s political realism. There is also no question that he practiced an empirical approach. In the tradition of elitism, he may be compared and contrasted with Pareto, Michels, and Schumpeter; and in the tradition of  political philosophy, to Croce, Gentile, and Gramsci. Refs.: H. P. Grice: “Mosca’s liberalism;” Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Mosca," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

Motus – motivatum – Grice, “Must our motives be impure?” “Obligation cashes out in motivation.” Motivatum -- motivation, a property central in motivational explanations of intentional conduct. To assert that Grice is driving to Lord’s today because she wants to see his cricket team play and believes that they are playing today at Lord’s is to offer an explanation of Grice’s action. On a popular interpretation, the assertion mentions a pair of attitudes: a desire and a belief. Grice’s s desire is a paradigmatic motivational attitude in that it inclines him to bring about the satisfaction of that very attitude. The primary function of motivational attitudes is to bring about their own satisfaction by inducing the agent to undertake a suitable course of action, and, arguably, any attitude that has that function is, ipso facto, a motivational one. The related thesis that only attitudes having this function are motivational  or, more precisely, motivation-constituting  is implausible. Grice hopes that the Oxfordshire Cricket Team won yesterday. Plainly, his hope cannot bring about its own satisfaction, since Grice has no control over the past. Even so, the hope seemingly may motivate action e.g., Grice’s searching for sports news on her car radio, in which case the hope is motivation-constituting. Some philosophers have claimed that our beliefs that we are morally required to take a particular course of action are motivation-constituting, and such beliefs obviously do not have the function of bringing about their own satisfaction i.e., their truth. However, the claim is controversial, as is the related claim that beliefs of this kind are “besires”  that is, not merely beliefs but desires as well. Refs.: “Desire, belief, and besire.”   

Grice: the explanatory-justificatory distinction – “To explain” is not to explicate, but to render ‘plain’ – To justify is hardly to render ‘plain’! Grice is aware of this, because he does not use the ‘explicatory-justificatory’ distinction. Therefore, the ‘justificatory’ is conceptually prior – a philosopher looks for justification – hardly to render stuff plain – “Quite the opposite: my claim to fame is to follow the alleged professional duty of a philosophy professor: to render obscure what is clear, and vice versa!” -- motivational explanation -- a type of explanation of goal-directed behavior where the explanans appeals to the motives of the agent. The explanation usually is in the following form: Smith swam hard in order to win the race. Here the description of what Smith did identifies the behavior to be explained, and the phrase that follows ‘in order to’ identifies the goal or the state of affairs the obtaining of which was the moving force behind the behavior. The general presumption is that the agent whose behavior is being explained is capable of deliberating and acting on the decisions reached as a result of the deliberation. Thus, it is dubious whether the explanation contained in ‘The plant turned toward the sun in order to receive more light’ is a motivational explanation. Two problems are thought to surround motivational explanations. First, since the state of affairs set as the goal is, at the time of the action, non-existent, it can only act as the “moving force” by appearing as the intentional object of an inner psychological state of the agent. Thus, motives are generally desires for specific objects or states of affairs on which the agent acts. So motivational explanation is basically the type of explanation provided in folk psychology, and as such it inherits all the alleged problems of the latter. And second, what counts as a motive for an action under one description usually fails to be a motive for the same action under a different description. My motive for saying “hello” may have been my desire to answer the phone, but my motive for saying “hello” loudly was to express my irritation at the person calling me so late at night. 

Motus – motivus – “Obligation cashes on motivation.” Grice, “Must our motives be impure?” --  motivational internalism, the view that moral motivation is internal to moral duty or the sense of duty. The view represents the contemporary understanding of Hume’s thesis that morality is essentially practical. Hume went on to point out the apparent logical gap between statements of fact, which express theoretical judgments, and statements about what ought to be done, which express practical judgments. Motivational internalism offers one explanation for this gap. No motivation is internal to the recognition of facts. The specific internal relation the view affirms is that of necessity. Thus, motivational internalists hold that if one sees that one has a duty to do a certain action or that it would be right to do it, then necessarily one has a motive to do it. For example, if one sees that it is one’s duty to donate blood, then necessarily one has a motive to donate blood. Motivational externalism, the opposing view, denies this relation. Its adherents hold that it is possible for one to see that one has a duty to do a certain action or that it would be right to do it yet have no motive to do it. Motivational externalists typically, though not universally, deny any real gap between theoretical and practical judgments. Motivational internalism takes either of two forms, rationalist and anti-rationalist. Rationalists, such as Plato and Kant, hold that the content or truth of a moral requirement guarantees in those who understand it a motive of compliance. Anti-rationalists, such as Hume, hold that moral judgment necessarily has some affective or volitional component that supplies a motive for the relevant action but that renders morality less a matter of reason and truth than of feeling or commitment. It is also possible in the abstract to draw an analogous distinction between two forms of motivational externalism, cognitivist and noncognitivist, but because the view springs from an interest in assimilating practical judgment to theoretical judgment, its only influential form has been cognitivist. 

mystische -- mystical experience, an experience alleged to reveal some aspect of reality not normally accessible to sensory experience or cognition. The experience  typically characterized by its profound emotional impact on the one who experiences it, its transcendence of spatial and temporal distinctions, its transitoriness, and its ineffability  is often but not always associated with some religious tradition. In theistic religions, mystical experiences are claimed to be brought about by God or by some other superhuman agent. Theistic mystical experiences evoke feelings of worshipful awe. Their content can vary from something no more articulate than a feeling of closeness to God to something as specific as an item of revealed theology, such as, for a Christian mystic, a vision of the Trinity. Non-theistic mystical experiences are usually claimed to reveal the metaphysical unity of all things and to provide those who experience them with a sense of inner peace or bliss. mystische -- ystic -- mysticism, a doctrine or discipline maintaining that one can gain knowledge of reality that is not accessible to sense perception or to rational, conceptual thought. Generally associated with a religious tradition, mysticism can take a theistic form, as it has in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, or a non-theistic form, as it has in Buddhism and some varieties of Hinduism. Mystics claim that the mystical experience, the vehicle of mystic  knowledge, is usually the result of spiritual training, involving some combination of prayer, meditation, fasting, bodily discipline, and renunciation of worldly concerns. Theistic varieties of mysticism describe the mystical experience as granted by God and thus not subject to the control of the mystic. Although theists claim to feel closeness to God during the mystical experience, they regard assertions of identity of the self with God as heretical. Non-theistic varieties are more apt to describe the experience as one that can be induced and controlled by the mystic and in which distinctions between the self and reality, or subject and object, are revealed to be illusory. Mystics claim that, although veridical, their experiences cannot be adequately described in language, because ordinary communication is based on sense experience and conceptual differentiation: mystical writings are thus characterized by metaphor and simile. It is con   593 troversial whether all mystical experiences are basically the same, and whether the apparent diversity among them is the result of interpretations influenced by different cultural traditions. H. P. Grice, “Vitters and the mystic,” Luigi Speranza, “Vitters und das mystische,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

myth: Grice was aware of Grice, the Welsh philosopher. For Grice had turned a ‘myth,’ the myth of the compact, into a thing that would justify moral obligation – When Grice, the Englishman, gives a mythical account of communication, alla Plato and Paget, he faces the same problem – which he hopes is “very minor,” compared to others. In this case, it’s not about ‘moral obligation’ but about “something else.” Grice was possibly motivated by Quine’s irreverent, “The mth of meaning,” a talk at France, “Le mythe de la signification.” It’s odd that he gives the example of a ‘social contract’, developed by G. R. Grice as a ‘myth’ as his own on ‘expressing pain.’ “My succession of stages is a methodological myth designed to exhibit the conceptual link between expression and communication. Rather than Plato, he appeals to Rawls and the myth of the social conpact! Grice knows a little about Descartess “Discours de la methode,” and he is also aware of similar obsession by Collingwood with philosopical methodology. Grice would joke on midwifery, as the philosopher’s apter method at Oxford: to strangle error at its birth. Grice typifies a generation at Oxford. While he did not socialize with the crème de la crème in pre-war Oxford, he shared some their approach. E.g. a love affair with Russell’s logical construction. After the war, and in retrospect, Grice liked to associate himself with Austin. He obviously felt the need to belong to a group, to make a difference, to make history. Many participants of the play group saw themselves as doing philosophy, rather than reading about it! It was long after that Grice started to note the differences in methodology between Austin and himself. His methodology changed a little. He was enamoured with formalism for a while, and he grants that this love never ceased. In a still later phase, he came to realise that his way of doing philosophy was part of literature (essay writing). And so he started to be slightly more careful about his style – which some found florid. The stylistic concerns were serious. Oxonian philosophers like Holloway had been kept away from philosophy because of the stereotype that the Oxonian philosophers style is pedantic, when it neednt! A philosopher should be allowed, as Plato was, to use a myth, if he thinks his tutee will thank him for that! Grice loved to compare his Oxonian dialectic with Platos Athenian (strictly, Academic) dialectic. Indeed, there is some resemblance of the use of myth in Plato and Grice for philosophical methodological purposes. Grice especially enjoys a myth in his programme in philosophical psychology. In this, he is very much being a philosopher. Non-philosophers usually criticise this methodological use of a myth, but they would, wouldnt they. Grice suggests that a myth has diagogic relevance. Creature construction, the philosopher as demi-god, if mythical, is an easier way for a philosophy don to instil his ideas on his tutee than, say, privileged access and incorrigibility. myth of Er, a tale at the end of Plato’s Republic dramatizing the rewards of justice and philosophy by depicting the process of reincarnation. Complementing the main argument of the work, that it is intrinsically better to be just than unjust, this longest of Plato’s myths blends traditional lore with speculative cosmology to show that justice also pays, usually in life and certainly in the afterlife. Er, a warrior who revived shortly after death, reports how judges assign the souls of the just to heaven but others to punishment in the underworld, and how most return after a thousand years to behold the celestial order, to choose their next lives, and to be born anew.  Refs.: The main source is Grice’s essay on ‘myth’, in The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.

N

N: SUBJECT INDEX: NATURA

N: NAME INDEX: ITALIAN

NEGRI

NICOLETTI

NOCE

N: NAME INDEX: ENGLISHMEN (Oxonian philosophy dons)

NOWELL-SMITH

naso del camello – thing edge of the wedge -- argumentum ad domino: slippery slope argument, an argument that an action apparently unobjectionable in itself would set in motion a train of events leading ultimately to an undesirable outcome. The metaphor portrays one on the edge of a slippery slope, where taking the first step down will inevitably cause sliding to the bottom. For example, it is sometimes argued that voluntary euthanasia should not be legalized because this will lead to killing unwanted people, e.g. the handicapped or elderly, against their will. In some versions the argument aims to show that one should intervene to stop an ongoing train of events; e.g., it has been argued that suppressing a Communist revolution in one country was necessary to prevent the spread of Communism throughout a whole region via the so-called domino effect. Slippery slope arguments with dubious causal assumptions are often classed as fallacies under the general heading of the fallacy of the false cause. This argument is also sometimes called the wedge argument. There is some disagreement concerning the breadth of the category of slippery slope arguments. Some would restrict the term to arguments with evaluative conclusions, while others construe it more broadly so as to include other sorites arguments. 

natura: Grice -- Grice: beyond the natural/non-natural distinction     ABSTRACT. When we approach, with Grice, the philosophical question involved in what we may call the ‘natural’/ ‘non-natural’ distinction, various conceptual possibilities are open to us. In this contribution, after providing a a historical survey of the distinction with special focus on  its treatment by Grice, I offer a thesis which, echoing Bennett, I label ‘meaning-naturalism.’        Keywords: H. Paul Grice, meaning, naturalism, non-natural meaning  Introduction  Grice sees his approach to ‘meaning’ (or “meaning that …”, as he would rather put it) as ‘rhapsody on a theme by Peirce.’  When he presents his “Meaning” to the Oxford Philosophical Society (only to be published almost a decade later by The Philosophical Review), Grice endows the philosophical community with a full-blown ‘natural’/‘non-natural’ distinction, for which he has naturally become somewhat infamously famous, as when a philosopher, exploring the different causes of death of this or that other philosopher cites Grice as having passed of ‘non-natural causes.’  What is Grice’s ‘natural’/‘non-natural’ distinction about?  As a member of the so-called ‘Oxford school of “ordinary-language” philosophy’ (he disliked the sobriquet), Grice seems initially to have been concerned with what at a later stage he calls a ‘pre-theoretical’ exploration of this or that use of the lexeme ‘mean,’ notably by Peirce.  Grice finds Peirce’s attempt to ‘replace’ the vernacular Anglo-Saxon ‘mean’ with ‘krypto-technical’ jargon as not too sympathetic to these or those Oxonian ears. So, it is this lexeme, or ‘expression,’ ‘mean,’ to which Grice’s distinction applies.  Carefully, as Bennett would point out, using lower-case ‘x’ and ‘y’ for tokens, Grice attempts to  formulate the distinction into two separate super-expressions, where the sub-expression “means that …” occurs:  i.  x meansN that p.  ii.  x meansNN that q.  What is ‘x’? Grice spends some time on this double-edged elucidation (and indeed, the ‘that’-clause explication is a later vintage). He grants that his main focus of concern is with (ii). In passing, he makes some rather intriguing running commentary.  It’s clear why Grice feels the need to spend some time in explicating what he is about to do. Grice’s distinction, as he formulates it, is supposed to ‘refine’ this or that distinction, made by this or that philosopher. While ‘ordinary-language’ philosophers are taken as approaching ‘ordinary-language,’ their underlying motivation is to criticise this or that philosopher’s mischaracterisation of the linguistic nuance at hand.  Grice’s avowed aim in his talk to the Oxford Philosophical Society is to shed light on, to use his characteristically cavalier wording, ‘what people have been thinking,’ which in that context, means ‘what other philosophers have been thinking’ – including Ayer -- or even getting at, ‘when they speak of such things as “natural” versus “conventional” signs.’  Grice thinks that, by his sticking with ‘meaning that …’ (rather than ‘sign’) and ‘non-natural’ (rather ‘conventional’) he is setting a better scene. Why would this be a conceptual improvement? Grice gives two reasons.  First, and again, Grice presents himself as a representative of the Oxonian school of ‘ordinary-language’ philosophy, and exercising what these philosophers referred to this or that adventure in ‘linguistic botany.’ Grice thus sets to explore, introspectively, relying on his intuitions behind his own usage, philosophical and other: a ‘word,’ for example, Grice notes, he would not naturally describe as a ‘sign.’ In Grice’s (but surely not Peirce’s) idio-lect, the expression ‘sign’ is restricted to things like a traffic signal, say.  Second, and again in this adventure in ‘linguistic-botany,’ x (or strictly ‘a,’ for ‘agent,’ now) that can ‘mean’ that p, in a way that is specifically NON-factive (as he’ll later put it, echoing the Kiparskys) but which need not be ‘conventional.’ Grice gives the example of ‘a gesture,’ which a few philosophers would associate with Sraffa’s!  The historical background  Grice’s cavalier reference to ‘what people are getting at’ sounds charmingly Oxonian. He surely has no intention to underestimate the knowledge of the fellow members of The Oxford Philosophical Society. He won’t be seen as ‘going to lecture’ them. This is not a seminar, but a public occasion. He is allowed to be a cavalier.  Had this been a seminar, and being indeed a Lit. Hum. Oxon., Grice knows he can trace the distinction he is making, as he refines alternative ones, to Plato’s Cratylus, where we have Socrates and his dialogical companion playing with various adverbial modifiers, notably, ‘phusei’ and ‘thesei.’  Plato’s ‘phusei,’ surely translates to Grice’s ‘nature’ in ‘natural.’ Plato is carefully in avoiding the subsantive nominative ‘phusis.’ His ‘phusei’ is meant to modify the way something may such may be said to ‘mean’ (‘semein’). Possibly the earliest incarnation of what later will be dubbed as the ‘pooh’ pooh theory of language.  Plato’s ‘thesei’ is slightly more complicated. It is best to stay lexically conservative here and understand it to mean, ‘by position,’ i.e. or, in Grice’s freer prose, by convention. While Plato has to his disposal various other lexemes to do duty for this, he chooses a rather weak one, and again, not in the nominative “thesis,” but as applied to something that ‘means’ that p or q. In any case, Plato’s interest, as indeed Grice’s, is ‘dialectic.’ That x (or a) means that q thesei, by position, entails (as Plato would say if he could borrow from Moore) that it is not the case that x (or a) means that q phusei, by nature. The distinction is supposed to be absolute.  The ‘phusis’/‘thesis’ distinction undergoes a fascinating development in the philosophical tradition, from Greek (or Grecian) into Latin (Roman), and eventually makes it to scholastic philosophy: ‘per natura’/ ‘per positionem,’ or ‘ad placitum.’  Closer to Grice, authors partly philosophising in Grice’s vernacular, such as Hobbes, who is indeed fighting against Latin for the the use of the vernacular in philosophical discourse, will speak of what Grice knew would be familiar terminology to his Oxford audience: ‘natural sign’ versus, rather than Grice’s intentionally rather ugly-sounding ‘non-natural,’ ‘artificial’ or ‘conventional’ sign.  Grice does not use ‘scare quotes,’ but perhaps Umberto Eco would have wished he did! (Indeed, it is best to see Grice as treating ‘a means that p’ as the only ‘literal’ use of ‘mean,’ with ‘natural’ and ‘expression-relative’ uses as ‘derivative, or transferred, or figurative. While he does NOT use ‘scare quotes’ for his examples of ‘meanN,’ as in iii.  iii. Smoke means that there is fire.  Grice cares to quote in the talk from just one rather recent philosopher who was being discussed at Oxford in connection with A. J. Ayer’s approach to ‘moral’ language as being merely ‘emotive.’  Grice makes an explicit reference to Stevenson. While Grice finds Stevenson’s account of the ‘non-natural’ use of “mean” ‘circular’ (in that it relies on conditioning related to ‘communication,’ Stevenson explores various ‘natural’ uses of ‘mean’, and, to emphasise the figurative status, explicitly employs ‘scare quotes.’ For Stevenson, (iii) becomes (iv).  iv. Smoke ‘means’ that there is fire.     For surely ‘smoke’ cannot have an intention – and ‘mean’ is too close to ‘intend’ in the Anglo-Saxon vernacular to allow smoke to mean that p or q – ‘mean’ at most. This is crucial (and suggests just one way of the figuration of ‘mean,’ that will go two ways with Grice when he sees this figuration as applying to ‘expression-relative’ uses of ‘mean,’ as in  v.  ‘There’s smoke’ ‘means’ that there’s smoke.  (Ubi fumus ibi ignis). By carefully deploying scare-quotes, Stevenson is fighting against ‘animism.’ The root of ‘mean’ is cognate with Latin ‘mentare’ and ‘mentire,’ and can notably be traced back to ‘mens,’ the mind. Surely smoke cannot really (if we must use one of those adverbs that Austin called ‘trouser words’) that there is fire – just ‘mean’ it. A careful ‘utterer’ is using the same lexeme in an obviously ‘figurative’ way, and marking this fact explicitly by appealing to an ‘echoic,’ or as Grice may prefer, ‘trans-categorial,’ use.  The ‘fun’ side to this (and for Grice, ‘philosophy need be fun’) is that Grice’s distinction then becomes now the ‘non-natural’/‘natural’ distinction. Scare quotes signal that the realm of ‘mean’ is the realm of the ‘mind,’ and not what Plato might have seen as the realm of nature simpliciter.   But back to Hobbes. Indeed, Hobbes may be drawing on the earlier explorations on this in Latin, by, of all people, Ockham, who speaks now of scenarios where ‘significare’ is modified by the adverb ‘naturaliter,’ and scenarios where it is not.  For this or that example of what Grice has as the ‘natural’ use of ‘mean’, Ockham will stick with ‘significare,’ qualified by ‘naturaliter.’  vi. By smiling, Smith means that he is happy.  Or as Ockham more generically puts it,  vii. Risus ‘significat’ naturaliter interiorem laetitiam.  But Ockham can go pretty Griceian too, as when he wonders about a ‘circulus’ – of a wine barrel ‘artificially’ (or not ‘naturaliter’) placed, or positioned, outside a building, yielding:  viii. Circulus ‘significat’ naturaliter vinum.  The circle, even if artificially (or at least not naturally) placed, is a ‘sign’ or means that wine which is being sold inside the building (Ockham is playing with the composite nature of ‘significare,’ literally to ‘make sign’). In the Peirceian theme on which Grice offers his rhapsody, and which he’ll later adopt in his “Retrospective epilogue,” there is an iconicity involved in the ‘circulus’ scenario, where this ‘iconicity’ requires some conceptual elucidation.   Ockham’s use of the Latin ‘significare’ poses a further question. Strictly, of course, is to ‘make’ (‘ficare’) a sign. Therefore, Grice feels its Latinate counterpart, ‘signifies that…’ as too strong a way to qualify a thing like an expression (or ‘word,’) which for him may not be a sign at all.  Grice’s cavalier attitude and provocative intent is further evidenced by the fact that, years later, when delivering the William James lectures at Harvard, and refining his “Meaning,” he does mention that his programme is concerned with the elucidation of the ‘total signification’ of a remark as uttered by this or that utterer, into this or that variety of this or that explicit and implicit component.  When Grice refers to “what people are thinking,” he is aware that Hobbes more or less maintains the Ockham (or ‘Occam,’ in Grice’s preferred spelling) paradigm, both in his work written in his late scholastic Latin (“Computatio, sive logica”) and the vernacular (“Leviathan”) which almost marks the beginning of so-called, by Sorley, “English philosophy.”  With the coming of empiricism, with Locke’s Essay (1690), and later Mill’s “System of Logic (mandatory reading at Oxford for the Lit. Hum. degree – “more Grice to the Mill,” Grice will put it) it seems obvious that the tradition in which Grice is immersed is not strange to ‘naturalism.’  “Nature” itself, as Plato already knew, need not be hypostasized. It is a fascinating fact that, for years, Oxford infamously kept two different chairs for the philosopher: one of ‘natural’ philosophy, and the Waynflete chair of ‘meta-physical philosophy,’ where ‘metaphysical’ is merely an obscure way of referring to the ‘trans-natural.’ Or is it the other way around?  Few empiricist philosophers need to postulate the ‘unity’ (less so, the uniformity) of “Nature,” even if this or that Griceians will later will. Witness Nancy Cartwright in the festschrift for Grice edited by Grandy and Warner for Clarendon, Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends (or “G. R. I. C. E.,” for short): ‘how the laws of nature lie.’  In its simplest formulation, which should do for the purposes of this contribution, the philosophical thesis of ‘naturalism’ may be understood as positing an ontological continuum between this or that allegation concerning ‘Nature’ and what is not nature (‘art,’ as in ‘artifice’).  And then, Grice comes to revisit “Meaning.”  In 1976, Grice gets invited to a symposium at Brighton and resumes his 1948 vintage ‘natural’/‘non-natural’ distinction. He had more or less kept it all through the William James lectures. At Brighton, Grice adds some crucial elaborations, in terms of what he now calls ‘philosophical psychology’ (Surely he doesn’t want to be seen as a ‘scientific’ psychologist). The audience is a different one, and not purely philosophical, so he can be cavalier and provocative in a different way.  While in his talk on “Meaning” for the Oxford Philosophical Society Grice had, rather casually, referred to this or that application, collocation, or occurrence, of the lexeme ‘mean’ as being this or that (Fregeian) ‘sense’ of the lexeme ‘mean’ -- and thus yielding ‘mean’ as, strictly, polysemous -- he now feels it’s time to weaken the claim to this or that (Ryleian) ‘use,’ not (Fregeian) ‘sense,’ of “mean.”  His motivation is obvious, and can be brought back a point he makes in his third William James lectures, and which in fact underlies his philosophical methodology regarding other philosophers’ mistakes when dealing with this or that linguistic nuance. If you are going to be Occamist, ‘senses,’ as specific entities, are not be multiplied beyond necessity.’ Grice is playing the etymological game here, concerning ‘mean’ (mens, mind). His example, in “Meaning revisited,” concerns Smith as ‘being caught in the grip of a vyse/vice.’ The root in both ‘vice’ and ‘vyse’ – Latin ‘vim’ – is cognate with ‘violence’ and gives two lexemes in Grice’s vernacular: one applies to something like a carpenter’s tool, and the other to the opposite of a virtue. Grice wants to explore how the ‘natural’/ ‘non-natural’ distinction may compare to the ‘vyse’/‘vice’ distinction. With ‘vice,’ Grice suggests, we have, in his vernacular, as opposed to Latin, two different lexemes (even if ultimately from a common Latin root, ‘vim,’ which surely mitigates the case for polysemy). But with ‘mean,’ that’s surely that’s not the case. The ultimate root is that of ‘mens,’ mind, and there’s no spelling difference to deal with.  Grice does not reverse the order of the terms in his ‘natural’/’non-natural’ distinction, though, as Eco would (“a sign is something you can use to lie”). Rather, he allows for this or that loose, or figurative, or ‘disimplicatural’ use of “means ….” His craving for a further philosophical generality justifies his disimplicature. This generality is of two kinds, one of which he deem thems ‘conceptual,’ or ‘methodological,’ and the other ‘mythic.’  The ‘conceptual’ or methodological manoevure is ontological in flavour. If there is a common core that both our (i) and (ii) above share, it should be rephrasable by a neutral form for both the ‘natural’ and the ‘non-natural’ scenario:  ix.  p is a consequence of x/a  ‘Consequentia’ is exactly the term used by Hobbes (some would prefer post-sequentia) when considering the generic concept of a ‘sign.’ It is thus very apt of Hacking (in his “Why does language matter to philosophy?”) to see Hobbes as a pre-Griceian (or is it, Grice as a post-Hobbesian?)  When it comes to ‘naturalism’ proper, we have to be careful in our exegesis of it as label for this or that philosophical overarching thesis. When reminiscing about his progress to ‘The City of the Eternal Truth,’ in his parody of Bunyan’s, pilgrim Grice meets face to face with the monster of “Naturalism.”  One may see this as Grice’s warning against some trends he found in The New World, ‘the devil of scientism,’ as he called it, towards ‘reductionism’ and ‘eliminationism,’ as flourishing in the idea that a ‘final cause’ is ‘mechanistically reducible.’ In Grice’s philosophical psychology, ‘Naturalism’ for Grice, amounts to rejecting this or that psychological law when this or that physiological law already explains the same phenomenon. Grice finds that his Occamism for ‘mean’ is not enough here and fangles an ‘ontological marxism’: this or that entity (an autonomous rational soul, say) that seems to go against naturalism may be justified, ‘provided they help with the house-work’ the philosopher is engaged in, in this case, and into the bargain, saving the philosopher’s existence.  The spirit, however, if not the letter, of ‘naturalism’ as a grand philosophical thesis still survives. Grice regards himself as ultimately a ‘constructivist.’ The realm of his ‘non-natural’ needs to be rooted in a previous realm of the ‘natural.’ He suggest here a ‘genitorially justified’ ‘myth’ for the ‘natural’/‘non-natural’ distinction:  x.                  a meaninngNN that q derives from x meaningN that p  Grice is exploring ‘emergence’ as a viable concept in philosophical psychology. Philosophical psychology is thus rooted in philosophical ethology. This or that psychological (or souly) state, (or attitude, or stance) may be understood as emerging from (or supervening on) a mere biological and ultimately physical (i. e. natural) state. (He is clear about that in his “Intention and uncertainty,” when, adopting the concept of ‘willing that’ from Prichard, he allows it to be amenable to a ‘physicalist’ treatment).  In his presidential address to the American Philosophical Association, Grice feels the need to creates a new philosophical sub-discipline, which he, echoing Carnap, christens ‘pirotology.’  Grice’s ‘pirotology’ concern Carnap’s ‘pirot,’ that ‘karulises elatically’ in his “Introduction to Semantics.” Grice adds a nod to Locke’s reflection on Prince Maurice’s ‘parot’ being “very intelligent, and rational.” The pirotological justification of the ‘natural’/‘non-natural’ distinction involves three stages.  The first stage in the sequence or series involves the pirot, P1, as a merely physical (or purely ‘natural’) entity, P1.  The second stage involves our ‘natural’ pirot giving way to the emergence, pretty much alla Nicolai Hartmann, of a now bio-logical pirot P2 (a ‘human’), endowed with the goal of survival and adaptation to its natural environment.  The third and last stage sees our P2 ‘re-constituting’ itself as now a psycho-logical pirot P3, as a ‘person’, endowed with a higher type of ‘soul.’ (Grice is following Aristotle’s progression in “De anima.”  Grice carefully avoids the use of ‘mind,’ in what he felt was an over-use by philosophers in the discipline of ‘mental philosophy,’ as it is referred to at Oxford in connection with Wilde. As a Kantotelian, Grice sees the biological pirot P2 as having a ‘soul,’ even if not a rational one. Grice was fascinated by Aristotle’s insight that, ‘soul,’ like ‘figure’ or ‘number,’ is a concept that cannot be defined by ‘genus,’ but only within this or that ‘series,’ such as the three-stage one he provides from the ‘natural’ to the ‘non-natural’ pirot.  It is thus no easy exegetic task to make sense of Grice’s somewhat rhetorical antipathy towards ‘Naturalism,’ but I shall leave that as an open question.  Beyond the distinction?  In the end, for Grice, the key-word is not ‘culture,’ as opposed to ‘nature,’ but ‘rationality,’ as displayed by our ‘non-natural’ pirot P3. Rationality becomes the philosopher’s main concern, as it is conceptualized to develop from this or that pre-rational propension, which is biological and ultimately physical, i.e. natural.  Grice’s exploration on the ‘natural’/ ‘non-natural’ distinction thus agrees with a very naturalistic approaches to things like adaptation and survival in a natural environment, and the evolution of altruism (a ‘talking pirot’ who transfers his psychological attitude to another pirot).  While his tone remains distinctively philosophical – and indeed displaying what he thought as a bit of ‘irreverent, conservative, dissenting rationalism,’ by his example he has indeed shown that the philosopher’s say has a relevance that no other discipline can provide. REFERENCES  Grice, H. P. (1948). ‘Meaning,’ repr. in Studies in the Way of Words.  Grice, H. P. (1975). ‘Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre,’ Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, repr. in Grice, 1991.  Grice, H. P. (1976). ‘Meaning revisited,’ repr. in Studies in the Way of Words.  Grice, H. P. (1986). ‘Reply to Richards,’ in Richard Grandy and Richard Warner, Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends. Oxord: The Clarendon Press.  Grice, H. P. (1991). The conception of value. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.  Hacking, I. M. (1977). Why does language matter to philosophy? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Hobbes, Thomas. Computatio sive logica.  Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan.  Locke, John. A theory concerning humane [sic] understanding.  Mellor, D. H. (n.d.) ‘Causes of deaths of philosophers’ (accessed February 20th, 2020) https://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/people/teaching-research-pages/mellor/dhm11/deaths-dg.html  Mill, J. S. A system of logic. London: Macmillan.  Ockham, William. Theory of signs.  Pietarinen, Ahti-Veikko and Francesco Bellucci (2016). ‘H. Paul Grice’s Lecture Notes on Charles S. Peirce’s Theory of Signs,’ International Review of Pragmatics, 8(1):82-129.  Sorley, W. R. (1920). A history of English philosophy. Cambridge. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Natural and non-natural, and naturalism.”

NECESSE -- necessitatum: ananke, when feeling very Grecian, Grice would use ‘ananke,’ instead of ‘must,’ which he thought too English! Grecian, necessity. The term was used by early Grecian philosophers for a constraining or moving natural force. In Parmenides frg. 8, line 30 ananke encompasses reality in limiting bonds; according to Diogenes Laertius, Democrianamnesis ananke 27 4065A-   27 tus calls the vortex that generates the cosmos ananke; Plato Timaeus 47e ff. refers to ananke as the irrational element in nature, which reason orders in creating the physical world. As used by Aristotle Metaphysics V.5, the basic meaning of ‘necessary’ is ‘that which cannot be otherwise’, a sense that includes logical necessity. He also distinguishes Physics II.9 between simple and hypothetical necessity conditions that must hold if something is to occur. 

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.

NATURA -- natural intelligence -- artificial (or non-natural) intelligence, also called AI, the scientific effort to design and build intelligent artifacts. Grice disliked the phrase “artificial intelligence.” “Strictly, what Minsky means is ‘non-natural’ intelligence.’”Since the effort inevitably presupposes and tests theories about the nature of intelligence, it has implications for the philosophy of mind  perhaps even more than does empirical psychology. For one thing, actual construction amounts to a direct assault on the mindbody problem; should it succeed, some form of materialism would seem to be vindicated. For another, a working model, even a limited one, requires a more global conception of what intelligence is than do experiments to test specific hypotheses. In fact, psychology’s own overview of its domain Arouet, François-Marie artificial intelligence 53   53 has been much influenced by fundamental concepts drawn from AI. Although the idea of an intelligent artifact is old, serious scientific research dates only from the 0s, and is associated with the development of programmable computers. Intelligence is understood as a structural property or capacity of an active system; i.e., it does not matter what the system is made of, as long as its parts and their interactions yield intelligent behavior overall. For instance, if solving logical problems, playing chess, or conversing in English manifests intelligence, then it is not important whether the “implementation” is electronic, biological, or mechanical, just as long as it solves, plays, or talks. Computers are relevant mainly because of their flexibility and economy: software systems are unmatched in achievable active complexity per invested effort. Despite the generality of programmable structures and the variety of historical approaches to the mind, the bulk of AI research divides into two broad camps  which we can think of as language-oriented and pattern-oriented, respectively. Conspicuous by their absence are significant influences from the conditionedresponse paradigm, the psychoanalytic tradition, the mental picture idea, empiricist atomistic associationism, and so on. Moreover, both AI camps tend to focus on cognitive issues, sometimes including perception and motor control. Notably omitted are such psychologically important topics as affect, personality, aesthetic and moral judgment, conceptual change, mental illness, etc. Perhaps such matters are beyond the purview of artificial intelligence; yet it is an unobvious substantive thesis that intellect can be cordoned off and realized independently of the rest of human life. The two main AI paradigms emerged together in the 0s along with cybernetic and information-theoretic approaches, which turned out to be dead ends; and both are vigorous today. But for most of the sixties and seventies, the language-based orientation dominated attention and funding, for three signal reasons. First, computer data structures and processes themselves seemed languagelike: data were syntactically and semantically articulated, and processing was localized serial. Second, twentieth-century linguistics and logic made it intelligible that and how such systems might work: automatic symbol manipulation made clear, powerful sense. Finally, the sorts of performance most amenable to the approach  explicit reasoning and “figuring out”  strike both popular and educated opinion as particularly “intellectual”; hence, early successes were all the more impressive, while “trivial” stumbling blocks were easier to ignore. The basic idea of the linguistic or symbol manipulation camp is that thinking is like talking  inner discourse  and, hence, that thoughts are like sentences. The suggestion is venerable; and Hobbes even linked it explicitly to computation. Yet, it was a major scientific achievement to turn the general idea into a serious theory. The account does not apply only, or even especially, to the sort of thinking that is accessible to conscious reflection. Nor is the “language of thought” supposed to be much like English, predicate logic, LISP, or any other familiar notation; rather, its detailed character is an empirical research problem. And, despite fictional stereotypes, the aim is not to build superlogical or inhumanly rational automata. Our human tendencies to take things for granted, make intuitive leaps, and resist implausible conclusions are not weaknesses that AI strives to overcome but abilities integral to real intelligence that AI aspires to share. In what sense, then, is thought supposed to be languagelike? Three items are essential. First, thought tokens have a combinatorial syntactic structure; i.e., they are compounds of welldefined atomic constituents in well-defined recursively specifiable arrangements. So the constituents are analogous to words, and the arrangements are analogous to phrases and sentences; but there is no supposition that they should resemble any known words or grammar. Second, the contents of thought tokens, what they “mean,” are a systematic function of their composition: the constituents and forms of combination have determinate significances that together determine the content of any wellformed compound. So this is like the meaning of a sentence being determined by its grammar and the meanings of its words. Third, the intelligent progress or sequence of thought is specifiable by rules expressed syntactically  they can be carried out by processes sensitive only to syntactic properties. Here the analogy is to proof theory: the formal validity of an argument is a matter of its according with rules expressed formally. But this analogy is particularly treacherous, because it immediately suggests the rigor of logical inference; but, if intelligence is specifiable by formal rules, these must be far more permissive, context-sensitive, and so on, than those of formal logic. Syntax as such is perfectly neutral as to how the constituents are identified by sound, by artificial intelligence artificial intelligence 54   54 shape, by magnetic profile and arranged in time, in space, via address pointers. It is, in effect, a free parameter: whatever can serve as a bridge between the semantics and the processing. The account shares with many others the assumptions that thoughts are contentful meaningful and that the processes in which they occur can somehow be realized physically. It is distinguished by the two further theses that there must be some independent way of describing these thoughts that mediates between simultaneously determines their contents and how they are processed, and that, so described, they are combinatorially structured. Such a description is syntactical. We can distinguish two principal phases in language-oriented AI, each lasting about twenty years. Very roughly, the first phase emphasized processing search and reasoning, whereas the second has emphasized representation knowledge. To see how this went, it is important to appreciate the intellectual breakthrough required to conceive AI at all. A machine, such as a computer, is a deterministic system, except for random elements. That is fine for perfectly constrained domains, like numerical calculation, sorting, and parsing, or for domains that are constrained except for prescribed randomness, such as statistical modeling. But, in the general case, intelligent behavior is neither perfectly constrained nor perfectly constrained with a little random variation thrown in. Rather, it is generally focused and sensible, yet also fallible and somewhat variable. Consider, e.g., chess playing an early test bed for AI: listing all the legal moves for any given position is a perfectly constrained problem, and easy to program; but choosing the best move is not. Yet an intelligent player does not simply determine which moves would be legal and then choose one randomly; intelligence in chess play is to choose, if not always the best, at least usually a good move. This is something between perfect determinacy and randomness, a “between” that is not simply a mixture of the two. How is it achievable in a machine? The crucial innovation that first made AI concretely and realistically conceivable is that of a heuristic procedure. The term ‘heuristic’ derives from the Grecian word for discovery, as in Archimedes’ exclamation “Eureka!” The relevant point for AI is that discovery is a matter neither of following exact directions to a goal nor of dumb luck, but of looking around sensibly, being guided as much as possible by what you know in advance and what you find along the way. So a heuristic procedure is one for sensible discovery, a procedure for sensibly guided search. In chess, e.g., a player does well to bear in mind a number of rules of thumb: other things being equal, rooks are more valuable than knights, it is an asset to control the center of the board, and so on. Such guidelines, of course, are not valid in every situation; nor will they all be best satisfied by the same move. But, by following them while searching as far ahead through various scenarios as possible, a player can make generally sensible moves  much better than random  within the constraints of the game. This picture even accords fairly well with the introspective feel of choosing a move, particularly for less experienced players. The essential insight for AI is that such roughand-ready ceteris paribus rules can be deterministically programmed. It all depends on how you look at it. One and the same bit of computer program can be, from one point of view, a deterministic, infallible procedure for computing how a given move would change the relative balance of pieces, and from another, a generally sensible but fallible procedure for estimating how “good” that move would be. The substantive thesis about intelligence  human and artificial alike  then is that our powerful but fallible ability to form “intuitive” hunches, educated guesses, etc., is the result of largely unconscious search, guided by such heuristic rules. The second phase of language-inspired AI, dating roughly from the mid-0s, builds on the idea of heuristic procedure, but dramatically changes the emphasis. The earlier work was framed by a conception of intelligence as finding solutions to problems good moves, e.g.. From such a perspective, the specification of the problem the rules of the game plus the current position and the provision of some heuristic guides domain-specific rules of thumb are merely a setting of the parameters; the real work, the real exercise of intelligence, lies in the intensive guided search undertaken in the specified terms. The later phase, impressed not so much by our problem-solving prowess as by how well we get along with “simple” common sense, has shifted the emphasis from search and reasoning to knowledge. The motivation for this shift can be seen in the following two sentences: We gave the monkey the banana because it was ripe. We gave the monkey the banana because it was hungry. artificial intelligence artificial intelligence 55   55 The word ‘it’ is ambiguous, as the terminal adjectives make clear. Yet listeners effortlessly understand what is meant, to the point, usually, of not even noticing the ambiguity. The question is, how? Of course, it is “just common sense” that monkeys don’t get ripe and bananas don’t get hungry, so . . . But three further observations show that this is not so much an answer as a restatement of the issue. First, sentences that rely on common sense to avoid misunderstanding are anything but rare: conversation is rife with them. Second, just about any odd fact that “everybody knows” can be the bit of common sense that understanding the next sentence depends on; and the range of such knowledge is vast. Yet, third, dialogue proceeds in real time without a hitch, almost always. So the whole range of commonsense knowledge must be somehow at our mental fingertips all the time. The underlying difficulty is not with speed or quantity alone, but with relevance. How does a system, given all that it knows about aardvarks, Alabama, and ax handles, “home in on” the pertinent fact that bananas don’t get hungry, in the fraction of a second it can afford to spend on the pronoun ‘it’? The answer proposed is both simple and powerful: common sense is not just randomly stored information, but is instead highly organized by topics, with lots of indexes, cross-references, tables, hierarchies, and so on. The words in the sentence itself trigger the “articles” on monkeys, bananas, hunger, and so on, and these quickly reveal that monkeys are mammals, hence animals, that bananas are fruit, hence from plants, that hunger is what animals feel when they need to eat  and that settles it. The amount of search and reasoning is minimal; the issue of relevance is solved instead by the antecedent structure in the stored knowledge itself. While this requires larger and more elaborate systems, the hope is that it will make them faster and more flexible. The other main orientation toward artificial intelligence, the pattern-based approach  often called “connectionism” or “parallel distributed processing”  reemerged from the shadow of symbol processing only in the 0s, and remains in many ways less developed. The basic inspiration comes not from language or any other psychological phenomenon such as imagery or affect, but from the microstructure of the brain. The components of a connectionist system are relatively simple active nodes  lots of them  and relatively simple connections between those nodes  again, lots of them. One important type and the easiest to visualize has the nodes divided into layers, such that each node in layer A is connected to each node in layer B, each node in layer B is connected to each node in layer C, and so on. Each node has an activation level, which varies in response to the activations of other, connected nodes; and each connection has a weight, which determines how strongly and in what direction the activation of one node affects that of the other. The analogy with neurons and synapses, though imprecise, is intended. So imagine a layered network with finely tuned connection weights and random or zero activation levels. Now suppose the activations of all the nodes in layer A are set in some particular way  some pattern is imposed on the activation state of this layer. These activations will propagate out along all the connections from layer A to layer B, and activate some pattern there. The activation of each node in layer B is a function of the activations of all the nodes in layer A, and of the weights of all the connections to it from those nodes. But since each node in layer B has its own connections from the nodes in layer A, it will respond in its own unique way to this pattern of activations in layer A. Thus, the pattern that results in layer B is a joint function of the pattern that was imposed on layer A and of the pattern of connection weights between the two layers. And a similar story can be told about layer B’s influence on layer C, and so on, until some final pattern is induced in the last layer. What are these patterns? They might be any number of things; but two general possibilities can be distinguished. They might be tantamount to or substrata beneath representations of some familiar sort, such as sentencelike structures or images; or they might be a kind or kinds of representation previously unknown. Now, people certainly do sometimes think in sentences and probably images; so, to the extent that networks are taken as complete brain models, the first alternative must be at least partly right. But, to that extent, the models are also more physiological than psychological: it is rather the implemented sentences or images that directly model the mind. Thus, it is the possibility of a new genus of representation  sometimes called distributed representation  that is particularly exciting. On this alternative, the patterns in the mind represent in some way other than by mimetic imagery or articulate description. How? An important feature of all network models is that there are two quite different categories of pattern. On the one hand, there are the relatively ephemeral patterns of activation in various artificial intelligence artificial intelligence 56   56 groups of nodes; on the other, there are the relatively stable patterns of connection strength among the nodes. Since there are in general many more connections than nodes, the latter patterns are richer; and it is they that determine the capabilities of the network with regard to the former patterns. Many of the abilities most easily and “naturally” realized in networks can be subsumed under the heading pattern completion: the connection weights are adjusted  perhaps via a training regime  such that the network will complete any of the activation patterns from a predetermined group. So, suppose some fraction say half of the nodes in the net are clamped to the values they would have for one of those patterns say P while the remainder are given random or default activations. Then the network, when run, will reset the latter activations to the values belonging to P  thus “completing” it. If the unclamped activations are regarded as variations or deviations, pattern completion amounts to normalization, or grouping by similarity. If the initial or input nodes are always the same as in layered networks, then we have pattern association or transformation from input to output. If the input pattern is a memory probe, pattern completion becomes access by content. If the output pattern is an identifier, then it is pattern recognition. And so on. Note that, although the operands are activation patterns, the “knowledge” about them, the ability to complete them, is contained in the connection patterns; hence, that ability or know-how is what the network represents. There is no obvious upper bound on the possible refinement or intricacy of these pattern groupings and associations. If the input patterns are sensory stimuli and the output patterns are motor control, then we have a potential model of coordinated and even skillful behavior. In a system also capable of language, a network model or component might account for verbal recognition and content association, and even such “nonliteral” effects as trope and tone. Yet at least some sort of “symbol manipulation” seems essential for language use, regardless of how networklike the implementation is. One current speculation is that it might suffice to approximate a battery of symbolic processes as a special subsystem within a cognitive system that fundamentally works on quite different principles. The attraction of the pattern-based approach is, at this point, not so much actual achievement as it is promise  on two grounds. In the first place, the space of possible models, not only network topologies but also ways of construing the patterns, is vast. Those built and tested so far have been, for practical reasons, rather small; so it is possible to hope beyond their present limitations to systems of significantly greater capability. But second, and perhaps even more attractive, those directions in which patternbased systems show the most promise  skills, recognition, similarity, and the like  are among the areas of greatest frustration for languagebased AI. Hence it remains possible, for a while at least, to overlook the fact that, to date, no connectionist network can perform long division, let alone play chess or solve symbolic logic problems. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Intelligence: natural and non-natural.”

Natura – natura-ars distinction -- natural life -- artificial life, an interdisciplinary science studying the most general character of the fundamental processes of life. These processes include self-organization, self-reproduction, learning, adaptation, and evolution. Artificial life or ALife is to theoretical biology roughly what artificial intelligence AI is to theoretical psychology  computer simulation is the methodology of choice. In fact, since the mind exhibits many of life’s fundamental properties, AI could be considered a subfield of ALife. However, whereas most traditional AI models are serial systems with complicated, centralized controllers making decisions based on global state information, most natural systems exhibiting complex autonomous behavior are parallel, distributed networks of simple entities making decisions based solely on their local state information, so typical ALife models have a corresponding distributed architecture. A computer simulation of evolving “bugs” can illustrate what ALife models are like. Moving around in a two-dimensional world periodically laden with heaps of “food,” these bugs eat, reproduce, and sometimes perish from starvation. Each bug’s movement is genetically determined by the quantities of food in its immediate neighborhood, and random mutations and crossovers modify these genomes during reproduction. Simulations started with random genes show spontaneous waves of highly adaptive genetic novelties continuously sweeping through the population at precisely quantifiable rates.C. Langston et al., eds., Artificial Life II 1. artificial language artificial life 57   57 ALife science raises and promises to inform many philosophical issues, such as: Is functionalism the right approach toward life? When, if ever, is a simulation of life really alive? When do systems exhibit the spontaneous emergence of properties?  Refs.: Grice: “Life: natural and non-natural.” naturalism, the twofold view that 1 everything is composed of natural entities  those studied in the sciences on some versions, the natural sciences  whose properties determine all the properties of things, persons included abstracta like possibilia and mathematical objects, if they exist, being constructed of such abstract entities as the sciences allow; and 2 acceptable methods of justification and explanation are continuous, in some sense, with those in science. Clause 1 is metaphysical or ontological, clause 2 methodological and/or epistemological. Often naturalism is formulated only for a specific subject matter or domain. Thus ethical naturalism holds that moral properties are equivalent to or at least determined by certain natural properties, so that moral judgments either form a subclass of, or are non-reductively determined by the factual or descriptive judgments, and the appropriate methods of moral justification and explanation are continuous with those in science. Aristotle and Spinoza sometimes are counted among the ancestors of naturalism, as are Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and Hobbes. But the major impetus to naturalism in the last two centuries comes from advances in science and the growing explanatory power they signify. By the 1850s, the synthesis of urea, reflections on the conservation of energy, work on “animal electricity,” and discoveries in physiology suggested to Feuerbach, L. Buchner, and others that all aspects of human beings are explainable in purely natural terms. Darwin’s theory had even greater impact, and by the end of the nineteenth century naturalist philosophies were making inroads where idealism once reigned unchallenged. Naturalism’s ranks now included H. Spencer, J. Tyndall, T. H. Huxley, W. K. Clifford, and E. Haeckel. Early in the twentieth century, Santayana’s naturalism strongly influenced a number of  philosophers, as did Dewey’s. Still other versions of naturalism flourished in America in the 0s and 0s, including those of R. W. Sellars and M. Cohen. Today most New-World philosophers of mind are naturalists of some stripe, largely because of what they see as the lessons of continuing scientific advances, some of them spectacular, particularly in the brain sciences. Nonetheless, twentieth-century philosophy has been largely anti-naturalist. Both phenomenology in the Husserlian tradition and analytic philosophy in the Fregean tradition, together with their descendants, have been united in rejecting psychologism, a species of naturalism according to which empirical discoveries about mental processes are crucial for understanding the nature of knowledge, language, and logic. In order to defend the autonomy of philosophy against inroads from descriptive science, many philosophers have tried to turn the tables by arguing for the priority of philosophy over science, hence over any of its alleged naturalist implications. Many continue to do so, often on the ground that philosophy alone can illuminate the normativity and intentionality involved in knowledge, language, and logic; or on the ground that philosophy can evaluate the normative and regulative presuppositions of scientific practice which science itself is either blind to or unequipped to analyze; or on the ground that phi- losophy understands how the language of science can no more be used to get outside itself than any other, hence can no more be known to be in touch with the world and ourselves than any other; or on the ground that would-be justifications of fundamental method, naturalist method certainly included, are necessarily circular because they must employ the very method at issue. Naturalists may reply by arguing that naturalism’s methodological clause 2 entails the opposite of dogmatism, requiring as it does an uncompromising fallibilism about philosophical matters that is continuous with the open, selfcritical spirit of science. If evidence were to accumulate against naturalism’s metaphysical clause 1, 1 would have to be revised or rejected, and there is no a priori reason such evidence could in principle never be found; indeed many naturalists reject the a priori altogether. Likewise, 2 itself might have to be revised or even rejected in light of adverse argument, so that in this respect 2 is self-referentially consistent. Until then, 2’s having survived rigorous criticism to date is justification enough, as is the case with hypotheses in science, which often are deployed without circularity in the course of their own evaluation, whether positive or negative H. I. Brown, “Circular Justifications,” 4. So too can language be used without circularity in expressing hypotheses about the relations between language and the prelinguistic world as illustrated by R. Millikan’s Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories, 4; cf. Post, “Epistemology,” 6. As for normativity and intentionality, naturalism does not entail materialism or physicalism, according to which everything is composed of the entities or processes studied in physics, and the properties of these basic physical affairs determine all the properties of things as in Quine. Some naturalists deny this, holding that more things than are dreamt of in physics are required to account for normativity and intentionality  and consciousness. Nor need naturalism be reductive, in the sense of equating every property with some natural property. Indeed many physicalists themselves explain how the physical, hence natural, properties of things might determine other, non-natural properties without being equivalent to them G. Hellman, T. Horgan, D. Lewis; see J. Post, The Faces of Existence, 7. Often the determining physical properties are not all properties of the thing x that has the non-natural properties, but include properties of items separated from x in space and time or in some cases bearing no physical relation to x that does any work in determining x’s properties Post, “ ‘Global’ Supervenient Determination: Too Permissive?” 5. Thus naturalism allows a high degree of holism and historicity, which opens the way for a non-reductive naturalist account of intentionality and normativity, such as Millikan’s, that is immune to the usual objections, which are mostly objections to reduction. The alternative psychosemantic theories of Dretske and Fodor, being largely reductive, remain vulnerable to such objections. In these and other ways non-reductive naturalism attempts to combine a monism of entities  the natural ones of which everything is composed  with a pluralism of properties, many of them irreducible or emergent. Not everything is nothing but a natural thing, nor need naturalism accord totalizing primacy to the natural face of existence. Indeed, some naturalists regard the universe as having religious and moral dimensions that enjoy a crucial kind of primacy; and some offer theologies that are more traditionally theist as do H. N. Wieman, C. Hardwick, J. Post. So far from exhibiting “reptilian indifference” to humans and their fate, the universe can be an enchanted place of belonging. Refs.: H. P. Grice: “My labour against Naturalism.” Natura – naturalism -- naturalistic epistemology, an approach to epistemology that views the human subject as a natural phenomenon and uses empirical science to study epistemic activity. The phrase was introduced by Quine “Epistemology Naturalized,” in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, 9, who proposed that epistemology should be a chapter of psychology. Quine construed classical epistemology as Cartesian epistemology, an attempt to ground all knowledge in a firmly logical way on immediate experience. In its twentieth-century embodiment, it hoped to give a translation of all discourse and a deductive validation of all science in terms of sense experience, logic, and set theory. Repudiating this dream as forlorn, Quine urged that epistemology be abandoned and replaced by psychology. It would be a scientific study of how the subject takes sensory stimulations as input and delivers as output a theory of the three-dimensional world. This formulation appears to eliminate the normative mission of epistemology. In later writing, however, Quine has suggested that normative epistemology can be naturalized as a chapter of engineering: the technology of predicting experience, or sensory stimulations. Some theories of knowledge are naturalistic in their depiction of knowers as physical systems in causal interaction with the environment. One such theory is the causal theory of knowing, which says that a person knows that p provided his belief that p has a suitable causal connection with a corresponding state of affairs. Another example is the information-theoretic approach developed by Dretske Knowledge and the Flow of Information, 1. This says that a person knows that p only if some signal “carries” this information that p to him, where information is construed as an objective commodity that can be processed and transmitted via instruments, gauges, neurons, and the like. Information is “carried” from one site to another when events located at those sites are connected by a suitable lawful dependence. The normative concept of justification has also been the subject of naturalistic construals. Whereas many theories of justified belief focus on logical or probabilistic relations between evidence and hypothesis, naturalistic theories focus on the psychological processes causally responsible for the belief. The logical status of a belief does not fix its justificational status. Belief in a tautology, for instance, is not justified if it is formed by blind trust in an ignorant guru. According to Goldman Epistemology and Cognition, 6, a belief qualifies as justified only if it is produced by reliable belief-forming processes, i.e., processes that generally have a high truth ratio. Goldman’s larger program for naturalistic epistemology is called “epistemics,” an interdisciplinary enterprise in which cognitive science would play a major role. Epistemics would seek to identify the subset of cognitive operations available to the human cognizer that are best from a truth-bearing standpoint. Relevant truth-linked properties include problem-solving power and speed, i.e., the abilities to obtain correct answers to questions of interest and to do so quickly. Close connections between epistemology and artificial intelligence have been proposed by Clark Glymour, Gilbert Harman, John Pollock, and Paul Thagard. Harman stresses that principles of good reasoning are not directly given by rules of logic. Modus ponens, e.g., does not tell you to infer q if you already believe p and ‘if p then q’. In some cases it is better to subtract a belief in one of the premises rather than add a belief in q. Belief revision also requires attention to the storage and computational limitations of the mind. Limits of memory capacity, e.g., suggest a principle of clutter avoidance: not filling one’s mind with vast numbers of useless beliefs Harman, Change in View, 6. Other conceptions of naturalistic epistemology focus on the history of science. Larry Laudan conceives of naturalistic epistemology as a scientific inquiry that gathers empirical evidence concerning the past track records of various scientific methodologies, with the aim of determining which of these methodologies can best advance the chosen cognitive ends. Naturalistic epistemology need not confine its attention to individual epistemic agents; it can also study communities of agents. This perspective invites contributions from sciences that address the social side of the knowledge-seeking enterprise. If naturalistic epistemology is a normative inquiry, however, it must not simply naturalism, biological naturalistic epistemology 598    598 describe social practices or social influences; it must analyze the impact of these factors on the attainment of cognitive ends. Philosophers such as David Hull, Nicholas Rescher, Philip Kitcher, and Alvin Goldman have sketched models inspired by population biology and economics to explore the epistemic consequences of alternative distributions of research activity and different ways that professional rewards might influence the course of research. 

Lockeian ‘sort’ -- natural kind, a category of entities classically conceived as having modal implications; e.g., if Socrates is a member of the natural kind human being, then he is necessarily a human being. The idea that nature fixes certain sortals, such as ‘water’ and ‘human being’, as correct classifications that appear to designate kinds of entities has roots going back at least to Plato and Aristotle. Anil Gupta has argued that sortals are to be distinguished from properties designated by such predicates as ‘red’ by including criteria for individuating the particulars bits or amounts for mass nouns that fall under them as well as criteria for sorting those particulars into the class. Quine is salient among those who find the modal implications of natural kinds objectionable. He has argued that the idea of natural kinds is rooted in prescientific intuitive judgments of comparative similarity, and he has suggested that as these intuitive classifications are replaced by classifications based on scientific theories these modal implications drop away. Kripke and Putnam have argued that science in fact uses natural kind terms having the modal implications Quine finds so objectionable. They see an important role in scientific methodology for the capacity to refer demonstratively to such natural kinds by pointing out particulars that fall under them. Certain inferences within science  such as the inference to the charge for electrons generally from the measurement of the charge on one or a few electrons  seem to be additional aspects of a role for natural kind terms in scientific practice. Other roles in the methodology of science for natural kind concepts have been discussed in recent work by Ian Hacking and Thomas Kuhn. H. P. Grice: “Lockeian sorts: natural and non-natural.”

Ligatum, lex, -- the natural/non-natural distinction -- natural law, also called law of nature, in moral and political philosophy, an objective norm or set of objective norms governing human behavior, similar to the positive laws of a human ruler, but binding on all people alike and usually understood as involving a superhuman legislator. Ancient Grecian and Roman thought, particularly Stoicism, introduced ideas of eternal laws directing the actions of all rational beings and built into the very structure of the universe. Roman lawyers developed a doctrine of a law that all civilized peoples would recognize, and made some effort to explain it in terms of a natural law common to animals and humans. The most influential forms of natural law theory, however, arose from later efforts to use Stoic and legal language to work out a Christian theory of morality and politics. The aim was to show that the principles of morals could be known by reason alone, without revelation, so that the whole human race could know how to live properly. The law of nature applies, on this understanding, only to rational beings, who can obey or disobey it deliberately and freely. It is thus different in kind from the laws God laid down for the inanimate and irrational parts of creation. Natural law theorists often saw continuities and analogies between natural laws for humans and those for the rest of creation but did not confuse them. The most enduringly influential natural law writer was Aquinas. On his view God’s eternal reason ordains laws directing all things to act for the good of the community of the universe, the declaration of His own glory. Human reason can participate sufficiently in God’s eternal reason to show us the good of the human community. The natural law is thus our sharing in the eternal law in a way appropriate to our human nature. God lays down certain other laws through revelation; these divine laws point us toward our eternal goal. The natural law concerns our earthly good, and needs to be supplemented by human laws. Such laws can vary from community to community, but to be binding they must always stay within the limits of the law of nature. God engraved the most basic principles of the natural law in the minds of all people alike, but their detailed application takes reasoning powers that not everyone may have. Opponents of Aquinas  called voluntarists  argued that God’s will, not his intellect, is the source of law, and that God could have laid down different natural laws for us. Hugo Grotius rejected their position, but unlike Aquinas he conceived of natural law as meant not to direct us to bring about some definite common good but to set the limits on the ways in which each of us could properly pursue our own personal aims. This Grotian outlook was developed by Hobbes, Pufendorf, and Locke along voluntarist lines. Thomistic views continued to be expounded by Protestant as well as Roman Catholic writers until the end of the seventeenth century. Thereafter, while natural law theory remained central to Catholic teaching, it ceased to attract major new non-Catholic proponents. Natural law doctrine in both Thomistic and Grotian versions treats morality as basically a matter of compliance with law. Obligation and duty, obedience and disobedience, merit and guilt, reward and punishment, are central notions. Virtues are simply habits of following laws. Though the law is suited to our distinctive human nature and can be discovered by the proper use of reason, it is not a self-imposed law. In following it we are obeying God. Since the early eighteenth century, philosophical discussions of whether or not there is an objective morality have largely ceased to center on natural law. The idea remains alive, however, in jurisprudence. Natural law theories are opposed to legal positivism, the view that the only binding laws are those imposed by human sovereigns, who cannot be subject to higher legal constraints. Legal theorists arguing that there are rational objective limits to the legislative power of rulers often think of these limits in terms of natural law, even when their theories do not invoke or imply any of the religious aspects of earlier natural law positions. Refs.: N. Cartwright-Hampshire, “How the laws of phyiscs lie,” in P. G. R. I. C. E., without a response by H. P. Grice. (“That will not be feasible.”)

natura – the natural/transnatural distinction -- natural philosophy – Grice: “It’s funny: there are only three or four chairs of philosophy at Oxford and one had to be on ‘the trans-natural’ philosophy! Back in the day, I might just as well have to have attended the ‘natural’ philosophy lectures!” --  the study of nature or of the spatiotemporal world. This was regarded as a task for philosophy before the emergence of modern science, especially physics and astronomy, and the term is now only used with reference to premodern times. Philosophical questions about nature still remain, e.g., whether materialism is true, but they would usually be placed in metaphysics or in a branch of it that may be called philosophy of nature. Natural philosophy is not to be confused with metaphysical naturalism, which is the metaphysical view no part of science itself that all that there is is the spatiotemporal world and that the only way to study it is that of the empirical sciences. It is also not to be confused with natural theology, which also may be considered part of metaphysics. The Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy is the name of a chair at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford.  The Sedleian Chair was founded by Sir William Sedley who, by his will dated 20 October 1618, left the sum of £2,000 to the University of Oxford for purchase of lands for its endowment. Sedley's bequest took effect in 1621 with the purchase of an estate at Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire to produce the necessary income.  It is regarded as the oldest of Oxford's scientific chairs. Holders of the Sedleian Professorship have, since the mid 19th Century, worked in a range of areas of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Physics. They are simultaneously elected to fellowships at Queen's College, Oxford.  The Sedleian Professors in the past century have been Augustus Love (1899-1940), who was distinguished for his work in the mathematical theory of elasticity, Sydney Chapman (1946-1953), who is renowned for his contributions to the kinetic theory of gases and solar-terrestrial physics, George Temple (1953-1968), who made significant contributions to mathematical physics and the theory of generalized functions, Brooke Benjamin (1979-1995), who did highly influential work in the areas of mathematical analysis and fluid mechanics, and Sir John Ball (1996-2019), who is distinguished for his work in the mathematical theory of elasticity, materials science, the calculus of variations, and infinite-dimensional dynamical systems. Refs.: H. P. Grice: “Oxford and the four Ws: Waynflete, White, Wykeham, and Wilde.”

Natura – nautralism -- natural religion, a term first occurring in the second half of the seventeenth century, used in three related senses, the most common being 1 a body of truths about God and our duty that can be discovered by natural reason. These truths are sufficient for salvation or according to some orthodox Christians would have been sufficient if Adam had not sinned. Natural religion in this sense should be distinguished from natural theology, which does not imply this. A natural religion may also be 2 one that has a human, as distinct from a divine, origin. It may also be 3 a religion of human nature as such, as distinguished from religious beliefs and practices that have been determined by local circumstances. Natural religion in the third sense is identified with humanity’s original religion. In all three senses, natural religion includes a belief in God’s existence, justice, benevolence, and providential government; in immortality; and in the dictates of common morality. While the concept is associated with deism, it is also sympathetically treated by Christian writers like Clarke, who argues that revealed religion simply restores natural religion to its original purity and adds inducements to compliance. The  Faculty of Medicine appoints an elector for the professorship of Human Anatomy and for the professorship of Pathology. The Board of Natural Science appoints one elector for the professorship of Pathology and two for the Lee's Readerships. The Board of Modern History appoints two electors for the Beit professorship and lectureship, and three for the Ford lectureship. The Board of Theology appoints three of the seven electors for the Speaker's lectureship in Biblical Studies. Three different Boards of Faculty appoint electors for the Wilde lectureship in Natural Religion.  Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Natural religion at Oxford – the Wilde and the Wilde.”

Modus – necessitas -- Necessitarianism: “An ugly word once used by Strawson in a tutorial!” – Grice. -- the doctrine that necessity is an objective feature of the world. Natural language permits speakers to express modalities: a state of affairs can be actual Paris’s being in France, merely possible chlorophyll’s making things blue, or necessary 2 ! 2 % 4. Anti-necessitarians believe that these distinctions are not grounded in the nature of the world. Some of them claim that the distinctions are merely verbal. Others, e.g., Hume, believed that psychological facts, like our expectations of future events, explain the idea of necessity. Yet others contend that the modalities reflect epistemic considerations; necessity reflects the highest level of an inquirer’s commitment. Some necessitarians believe there are different modes of metaphysical necessity, e.g., causal and logical necessity. Certain proponents of idealism believe that each fact is necessarily connected with every other fact so that the ultimate goal of scientific inquiry is the discovery of a completely rigorous mathematical system of the world.

modus -- necessitas – necessarium -- necessity, a modal property attributable to a whole proposition dictum just when it is not possible that the proposition be false the proposition being de dicto necessary. Narrowly construed, a proposition P is logically necessary provided P satisfies certain syntactic conditions, namely, that P’s denial is formally self-contradictory. More broadly, P is logically necessary just when P satisfies certain semantic conditions, namely, that P’s denial is false, and P true, in all possible worlds. These semantic conditions were first suggested by Leibniz, refined by Vitters and Carnap, and fully developed as the possible worlds semantics of Kripke, Hintikka, et al., in the 0s. Previously, philosophers had to rely largely on intuition to determine the acceptability or otherwise of formulas involving the necessity operator, A, and were at a loss as to which of various axiomatic systems for modal logic, as developed in the 0s by C. I. Lewis, best captured the notion of logical necessity. There was much debate, for instance, over the characteristic NN thesis of Lewis’s system S4, namely, AP / A AP if P is necessary then it is necessarily necessary. But given a Leibnizian account of the truth conditions for a statement of the form Aa namely R1 that Aa is true provided a is true in all possible worlds, and R2 that Aa is false provided there is at least one possible world in which a is false, a proof can be constructed by reductio ad absurdum. For suppose that AP / AAP is false in some arbitrarily chosen world W. Then its antecedent will be true in W, and hence by R1 it follows a that P will be true in all possible worlds. But equally its consequent will be false in W, and hence by R2 AP will be false in at least one possible world, from which again by R2 it follows b that P will be false in at least one possible world, thus contradicting a. A similar proof can be constructed for the characteristic thesis of S5, namely, -A-P / A-A-P if P is possibly true then it is necessarily possible. Necessity is also attributable to a property F of an object O provided it is not possible that there is no possible world in which O exists and lacks F  F being de re necessary, internal or essential to O. For instance, the non-repeatable haecceitist property of being identical to O is de re necessary essential to O, and arguably the repeatable property of being extended is de re necessary to all colored objects. nĕcesse (arch. nĕcessum , I.v. infra: NECESVS, S. C. de Bacch. l. 4: necessus , Ter. Heaut. 2, 3, 119 Wagn. ad loc.; id. Eun. 5, 5, 28; Gell. 16, 8, 1; v. Lachm. ad Lucr. 6, 815), neutr. adj. (gen. necessis, Lucr. 6, 815 ex conj. Lachm.; cf. Munro ad loc.; elsewhere only nom. and acc. sing., and with esse or habere) [perh. Sanscr. naç, obtain; Gr. root ἐνεκ-; cf. ἀνάγκη; v. Georg Curtius Gr. Etym. 424]. I. Form necesse. A. Unavoidable, inevitable, indispensable, necessary (class.; cf.: opus, usus est) 1. With esse. a. With subject.-clause: “edocet quanto detrimento...necesse sit constare victoriam,” Caes. B. G. 7, 19: “necesse est eam, quae ... timere permultos,” Auct. Her. 4, 16, 23: emas, non quod opus est, sed quod necesse est, Cato ap. Sen. Ep. 94, 28: “nihil fit, quod necesse non fuerit,” Cic. Fat. 9, 17: “necesse est igitur legem haberi in rebus optimis,” id. Leg. 2, 5, 12; id. Verr 2, 3, 29, § 70. — b. With dat. (of the person, emphatic): nihil necesse est mihi de me ipso dicere, Cic. Sen. 9, 30: “de homine enim dicitur, cui necesse est mori,” id. Fat. 9, 17.— c. With ut and subj.: “eos necesse est ut petat,” Auct. Her. 4, 16, 23: “sed ita necesse fuisse, cum Demosthenes dicturus esset, ut concursus ex totā Graeciā fierent,” Cic. Brut. 84, 289; Sen. Ep. 78, 15: “hoc necesse est, ut, etc.,” Cic. de Or. 2, 29, 129; Sen. Q. N. 2, 14, 2: “neque necesse est, uti vos auferam,” Gell. 2, 29, 9: “necesse est semper, ut id ... per se significet,” Quint. 8, 6, 43.— d. With subj. alone: “haec autem oratio ... aut nulla sit necesse est, aut omnium irrisione ludatur,” Cic. de Or. 1, 12, 50: “istum condemnetis necesse est,” Cic. Verr. 2, 2, 18, § 45: “vel concidat omne caelum necesse est,” id. Tusc. 1, 23, 54: “si necesse est aliquid ex se magni boni pariat,” Lact. 3, 12, 7.— 2. With habere (class. only with inf.): “non habebimus necesse semper concludere,” Cic. Part. Or. 13, 47: “eo minus habeo necesse scribere,” id. Att. 10, 1, 4: “Oppio scripsi ne necesse habueris reddere,” id. ib. 16, 2, 5: “non verbum pro verbo necesse habui reddere,” id. Opt. Gen. Or. 5, 14: “non necesse habeo omnia pro meo jure agere,” Ter. Ad. 1, 1, 26; Quint. 11, 1, 74; Vulg. Matt. 14, 16: necesse habere with abl. (= egere; “late Lat.): non necesse habent sani medico,” Vulg. Marc. 2, 17.—In agreement with object of habere: “non habet rex sponsalia necesse,” Vulg. 1 Reg. 18, 25.— B. Needful, requisite, indispensable, necessary: “id quod tibi necesse minime fuit, facetus esse voluisti,” Cic. Sull. 7, 22.— II. Form necessum (mostly ante-class.). A. With subject.-clause: “foras necessum est, quicquid habeo, vendere,” Plaut. Stich. 1, 3, 66: quod sit necessum scire, Afran. ap. Charis. p. 186 P.: “nec tamen haec retineri hamata necessumst,” Lucr. 2, 468: “externa corpus de parte necessumst tundier,” id. 4, 933: “necessum est vorsis gladiis depugnarier,” Plaut. Cas. 2, 5, 36: “necessum est paucis respondere,” Liv. 34, 5: “num omne id aurum in ludos consumi necessum esset?” id. 39, 5: “tonsorem capiti non est adhibere necessum,” Mart. 6, 57, 3.— B. With dat.: “dicas uxorem tibi necessum esse ducere,” Plaut. Mil. 4, 3, 25.— C. With subj.: “unde anima, atque animi constet natura necessum est,” Lucr. 4, 120: “quare etiam nativa necessum est confiteare Haec eadem,” id. 5, 377. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “The may and the must,” “Ichthyological necessity.”

need – H. P. Grice, “Need,” cf. D. Wiggins, “Need.” “What Toby needs” Grice was also interested in the modal use of ‘need’. “You need to do it.” “ ‘Need,’ like ‘ought’ takes ‘to.’” “It’s very Anglo-Saxon.” “Or, rather non-Indo-European substratum!” As it is attested only in Germanic, Celtic, and Balto-Slavic, it might be non-PIE, from a regional substrate language.

negri: a crucial Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Negri," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

abdicatum: negation: H. P. Grice, “Negation.” the logical operation on propositions that is indicated, e.g., by the prefatory clause ‘It is not the case that . . .’. Negation is standardly distinguished sharply from the operation on predicates that is called complementation and that is indicated by the prefix ‘non-’. Because negation can also be indicated by the adverb ‘not’, a distinction is often drawn between external negation, which is indicated by attaching the prefatory ‘It is not the case that . . .’ to an assertion, and internal negation, which is indicated by inserting the adverb ‘not’ along with, perhaps, nature, right of negation 601    601 grammatically necessary words like ‘do’ or ‘does’ into the assertion in such a way as to indicate that the adverb ‘not’ modifies the verb. In a number of cases, the question arises as to whether external and internal negation yield logically equivalent results. For example, ‘It is not the case that Santa Claus exists’ would seem obviously to be true, whereas ‘Santa Claus does not exist’ seems to some philosophers to presuppose what it denies, on the ground that nothing could be truly asserted of Santa Claus unless he existed.  Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Negation and privation;” H. P. Grice, “Lectures on negation.”

Nemesius: Grecian philosopher. His treatise on the soul, On the Nature of Man, tr. from Grecian into Latin by Alphanus of Salerno and Burgundio of Pisa  was attributed to Gregory of Nyssa, and enjoyed some authority. The treatise rejects Plato for underplaying the unity of soul and body, and Aristotle for making the soul essentially corporeal. The soul is self-subsistent, incorporeal, and by nature immortal, but naturally suited for union with the body. Nemesius draws on Ammonius Saccas and Porphyry to explain the incorruptible soul’s perfect union with the corruptible body. His review of the powers of the soul (“what I will call ‘the power structure of the soul,’” – Grice). draws especially on Galen on the brain. His view that rational creatures possess free will in virtue of their rationality influenced Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus.

Ariskant – Kantianism, palaeo-Kantianism, neo-Kantianism, Ariskantianism! -- neo-Kantianism – as opposed to ‘palaeo-Kantianism’ -- the diverse Kantian movement that emerged within G. philosophy in the 1860s, gained a strong academic foothold in the 1870s, reached its height during the three decades prior to World War I, and disappeared with the rise of Nazism. The movement was initially focused on renewed study and elaboration of Kant’s epistemology in response to the growing epistemic authority of the natural sciences and as an alternative to both Hegelian and speculative idealism and the emerging materialism of, among others, Ludwig Büchner 182499. Later neo-Kantianism explored Kant’s whole philosophy, applied his critical method to disciplines other than the natural sciences, and developed its own philosophical systems. Some originators and/or early contributors were Kuno Fischer 18247, Hermann von Helmholtz 182, Friedrich Albert Lange 182875, Eduard Zeller 18148, and Otto Liebmann 18402, whose Kant und die Epigonen 1865 repeatedly stated what became a neoKantian motto, “Back to Kant!” Several forms of neo-Kantianism are to be distinguished. T. K. Oesterreich 09, in Friedrich Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie “F.U.’s Compendium of the History of Philosophy,” 3, developed the standard, somewhat chronological, classification: 1 The physiological neo-Kantianism of Helmholtz and Lange, who claimed that physiology is “developed or corrected Kantianism.” 2 The metaphysical neo-Kantianism of the later Liebmann, who argued for a Kantian “critical metaphysics” beyond epistemology in the form of “hypotheses” about the essence of things. 3 The realist neo-Kantianism of Alois Riehl 18444, who emphasized the real existence of Kant’s thing-in-itself. 4 The logistic-methodological neo-Kantianism of the Marburg School of Hermann Cohen 18428 and Paul Natorp 18544. 5 The axiological neo-Kantianism of the Baden or Southwest G. School of Windelband 18485 and Heinrich Rickert 18636. 6 The relativistic neo-Kantianism of Georg Simmel 18588, who argued for Kantian categories relative to individuals and cultures. 7 The psychological neo-Kantianism of Leonard Nelson 27, originator of the Göttingen School; also known as the neo-Friesian School, after Jakob Friedrich Fries 17731843, Nelson’s self-proclaimed precursor. Like Fries, Nelson held that Kantian a priori principles cannot be transcendentally justified, but can be discovered only through introspection. Oesterreich’s classification has been narrowed or modified, partly because of conflicting views on how distinctly “Kantian” a philosopher must have been to be called “neo-Kantian.” The very term ‘neo-Kantianism’ has even been called into question, as suggesting real intellectual commonality where little or none is to be found. There is, however, growing consensus that Marneo-Euclidean geometry neo-Kantianism 603    603 burg and Baden neo-Kantianism were the most important and influential. Marburg School. Its founder, Cohen, developed its characteristic Kantian idealism of the natural sciences by arguing that physical objects are truly known only through the laws of these sciences and that these laws presuppose the application of Kantian a priori principles and concepts. Cohen elaborated this idealism by eliminating Kant’s dualism of sensibility and understanding, claiming that space and time are construction methods of “pure thought” rather than a priori forms of perception and that the notion of any “given” perceptual data prior to the “activity” of “pure thought” is meaningless. Accordingly, Cohen reformulated Kant’s thing-in-itself as the regulative idea that the mathematical description of the world can always be improved. Cohen also emphasized that “pure thought” refers not to individual consciousess  on his account Kant had not yet sufficiently left behind a “subjectobject” epistemology  but rather to the content of his own system of a priori principles, which he saw as subject to change with the progress of science. Just as Cohen held that epistemology must be based on the “fact of science,” he argued, in a decisive step beyond Kant, that ethics must transcendentally deduce both the moral law and the ideal moral subject from a humanistic science  more specifically, from jurisprudence’s notion of the legal person. This analysis led to the view that the moral law demands that all institutions, including economic enterprises, become democratic  so that they display unified wills and intentions as transcendental conditions of the legal person  and that all individuals become colegislators. Thus Cohen arrived at his frequently cited claim that Kant “is the true and real originator of G. socialism.” Other important Marburg Kantians were Cohen’s colleague Natorp, best known for his studies on Plato and philosophy of education, and their students Karl Vorländer 18608, who focused on Kantian socialist ethics as a corrective of orthodox Marxism, and Ernst Cassirer 18745. Baden School. The basic task of philosophy and its transcendental method is seen as identifying universal values that make possible culture in its varied expressions. This focus is evident in Windelband’s influential insight that the natural sciences seek to formulate general laws  nomothetic knowledge  while the historical sciences seek to describe unique events  idiographic knowledge. This distinction is based on the values interests of mastery of nature and understanding and reliving the unique past in order to affirm our individuality. Windelband’s view of the historical sciences as idiographic raised the problem of selection central to his successor Rickert’s writings: How can historians objectively determine which individual events are historically significant? Rickert argued that this selection must be based on the values that are generally recognized within the cultures under investigation, not on the values of historians themselves. Rickert also developed the transcendental argument that the objectivity of the historical sciences necessitates the assumption that the generally recognized values of different cultures approximate in various degrees universally valid values. This argument was rejected by Weber, whose methodological work was greatly indebted to Rickert. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Kantianism: old and new.”

Platone – Platonism – Walter Pater -- Neo-platonism – as opposed to ‘palaeo-Platonism’ -- that period of Platonism following on the new impetus provided by the philosophical speculations of Plotinus A.D. 20469. It extends, as a minimum, to the closing of the Platonic School in Athens by Justinian in 529, but maximally through Byzantium, with such figures as Michael Psellus 101878 and Pletho c.13601452, the Renaissance Ficino, Pico, and the Florentine Academy, and the early modern period the Cambridge Platonists, Thomas Taylor, to the advent of the “scientific” study of the works of Plato with Schleiermacher 17681834 at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The term was formerly also used to characterize the whole period from the Old Academy of Plato’s immediate successors, Speusippus and Xenocrates, through what is now termed Middle Platonism c.80 B.C.A.D. 220, down to Plotinus. This account confines itself to the “minimum” interpretation. Neoplatonism proper may be divided into three main periods: that of Plotinus and his immediate followers third century; the “Syrian” School of Iamblichus and his followers fourth century; and the “Athenian” School begun by Plutarch of Athens, and including Syrianus, Proclus, and their successors, down to Damascius fifthsixth centuries. Plotinus and his school. Plotinus’s innovations in Platonism developed in his essays, the Enneads, collected and edited by his pupil Porphyry after his death, are mainly two: a above the traditional supreme principle of earlier Platonism and Aristotelianism, a self-thinking intellect, which was also regarded as true being, he postulated a principle superior to intellect and being, totally unitary and simple “the One”; b he saw reality as a series of levels One, Intelligence, Soul, each higher one outflowing or radiating into the next lower, while still remaining unaffected in itself, and the lower ones fixing themselves in being by somehow “reflecting back” upon their priors. This eternal process gives the universe its existence and character. Intelligence operates in a state of non-temporal simultaneity, holding within itself the “forms” of all things. Soul, in turn, generates time, and receives the forms into itself as “reason principles” logoi. Our physical three-dimensional world is the result of the lower aspect of Soul nature projecting itself upon a kind of negative field of force, which Plotinus calls “matter.” Matter has no positive existence, but is simply the receptacle for the unfolding of Soul in its lowest aspect, which projects the forms in three-dimensional space. Plotinus often speaks of matter as “evil” e.g. Enneads II.8, and of the Soul as suffering a “fall” e.g. Enneads V.1, 1, but in fact he sees the whole cosmic process as an inevitable result of the superabundant productivity of the One, and thus “the best of all possible worlds.” Plotinus was himself a mystic, but he arrived at his philosophical conclusions by perfectly logical means, and he had not much use for either traditional religion or any of the more recent superstitions. His immediate pupils, Amelius c.22590 and Porphyry 234c.305, while somewhat more hospitable to these, remained largely true to his philosophy though Amelius had a weakness for triadic elaborations in metaphysics. Porphyry was to have wide influence, both in the Latin West through such men as Marius Victorinus, Augustine, and Boethius, and in the Grecian East and even, through translations, on medieval Islam, as the founder of the Neoplatonic tradition of commentary on both Plato and Aristotle, but it is mainly as an expounder of Plotinus’s philosophy that he is known. He added little that is distinctive, though that little is currently becoming better appreciated. Iamblichus and the Syrian School. Iamblichus c.245325, descendant of an old Syrian noble family, was a pupil of Porphyry’s, but dissented from him on various important issues. He set up his own school in Apamea in Syria, and attracted many pupils. One chief point of dissent was the role of theurgy really just magic, with philosophical underpinnings, but not unlike Christian sacramental theology. Iamblichus claimed, as against Porphyry, that philosophical reasoning alone could not attain the highest degree of enlightenment, without the aid of theurgic rites, and his view on this was followed by all later Platonists. He also produced a metaphysical scheme far more elaborate than Plotinus’s, by a Scholastic filling in, normally with systems of triads, of gaps in the “chain of being” left by Plotinus’s more fluid and dynamic approach to philosophy. For instance, he postulated two Ones, one completely transcendent, the other the source of all creation, thus “resolving” a tension in Plotinus’s metaphysics. Iamblichus was also concerned to fit as many of the traditional gods as possible into his system, which later attracted the attention of the Emperor Julian, who based himself on Iamblichus when attempting to set up a Hellenic religion to rival Christianity, a project which, however, died with him in 363. The Athenian School. The precise links between the pupils of Iamblichus and Plutarch d.432, founder of the Athenian School, remain obscure, but the Athenians always retained a great respect for the Syrian. Plutarch himself is a dim figure, but Syrianus c.370437, though little of his writings survives, can be seen from constant references to him by his pupil Proclus 412 85 to be a major figure, and the source of most of Proclus’s metaphysical elaborations. The Athenians essentially developed and systematized further the doctrines of Iamblichus, creating new levels of divinity e.g. intelligibleintellectual gods, and “henads” in the realm of the One  though they rejected the two Ones, this process reaching its culmination in the thought of the last head of the Athenian Academy, Damascius c.456540. The drive to systematize reality and to objectivize concepts, exhibited most dramatically in Proclus’s Elements of Theology, is a lasting legacy of the later Neoplatonists, and had a significant influence on the thought, among others, of Hegel. Grice: “The implicaturum of ‘everything old is new again’ is that everything new is old again.” “It’s the older generation, knock-knock-knocking at the door!” -- Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Everything old is new again – and vice versa.”

Otiumm -- Schole –scholasticism -- neo-scholasticism: as opposed to palaeo-scholasticism – Grice: “The original name of Oxford was ‘studium generale’! The mascot was the ox!” --. the movement given impetus Neoplatonism, Islamic neo-Scholasticism 605    605 by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris 1879, which, while stressing Aquinas, was a general recommendation of the study of medieval Scholasticism as a source for the solution of vexing modern problems. Leo assumed that there was a doctrine common to Aquinas, Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus, and Duns Scotus, and that Aquinas was a preeminent spokesman of the common view. Maurice De Wulf employed the phrase ‘perennial philosophy’ to designate this common medieval core as well as what of Scholasticism is relevant to later times. Historians like Mandonnet, Grabmann, and Gilson soon contested the idea that there was a single medieval doctrine and drew attention to the profound differences between the great medieval masters. The discussion of Christian philosophy precipitated by Brehier in 1 generated a variety of suggestions as to what medieval thinkers and later Christian philosophers have in common, but this was quite different from the assumption of Aeterni Patris. The pedagogical directives of this and later encyclicals brought about a revival of Thomism rather than of Scholasticism, generally in seminaries, ecclesiastical s, and Catholic universities. Louvain’s Higher Institute of Philosophy under the direction of Cardinal Mercier and its Revue de Philosophie Néoscolastique were among the first fruits of the Thomistic revival. The studia generalia of the Dominican order continued at a new pace, the Saulchoir publishing the Revue thomiste. In graduate centers in Milan, Madrid, Latin America, Paris, and Rome, men were trained for the task of teaching in s and seminaries, and scholarly research began to flourish as well. The Leonine edition of the writings of Aquinas was soon joined by new critical editions of Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and Ockham, as well as Albertus Magnus. Medieval studies in the broader sense gained from the quest for manuscripts and the growth of paleography and codicology. Besides the historians mentioned above, Jacques Maritain 23, a layman and convert to Catholicism, did much both in his native France and in the United States to promote the study of Aquinas. The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at Toronto, with Gilson regularly and Maritain frequently in residence, became a source of  and  teachers in Canada and the United States, as Louvain and, in Rome, the Jesuit Gregorianum and the Dominican Angelicum already were. In the 0s s took doctorates in theology and philosophy at Laval in Quebec and soon the influence of Charles De Koninck was felt. Jesuits at St. Louis  began to publish The Modern Schoolman, Dominicans in Washington The Thomist, and the  Catholic Philosophical Association The New Scholasticism. The School of Philosophy at Catholic , long the primary domestic source of professors and scholars, was complemented by graduate programs at St. Louis, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Fordham, and Marquette. In the golden period of the Thomistic revival in the United States, from the 0s until the end of the Vatican Council II in 5, there were varieties of Thomism based on the variety of views on the relation between philosophy and science. By the 0s Thomistic philosophy was a prominent part of the curriculum of all Catholic s and universities. By 0, it had all but disappeared under the mistaken notion that this was the intent of Vatican II. This had the effect of releasing Aquinas into the wider philosophical world. 

Aquino -- Aquinismo – “If followers of William are called Occamists, followers of a Saint should surely call themselves “Aquinistae”! -- neo-Thomism – as opposed to palaeo-Thomism --, a philosophical-theological movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries manifesting a revival of interest in Aquinas. It was stimulated by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris 1879 calling for a renewed emphasis on the teaching of Thomistic principles to meet the intellectual and social challenges of modernity. The movement reached its peak in the 0s, though its influence continues to be seen in organizations such as the  Catholic Philosophical Association. Among its major figures are Joseph Kleutgen, Désiré Mercier, Joseph Maréchal, Pierre Rousselot, Réginald Garrigou-LaGrange, Martin Grabmann, M.-D. Chenu, Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, Yves R. Simon, Josef Pieper, Karl Rahner, Cornelio Fabro, Emerich Coreth, Bernard Lonergan, and W. Norris Clarke. Few, if any, of these figures have described themselves as NeoThomists; some explicitly rejected the designation. Neo-Thomists have little in common except their commitment to Aquinas and his relevance to the contemporary world. Their interest produced a more historically accurate understanding of Aquinas and his contribution to medieval thought Grabmann, Gilson, Chenu, including a previously ignored use of the Platonic metaphysics of participation Fabro. This richer understanding of Aquinas, as forging a creative synthesis in the midst of competing traditions, has made arguing for his relevance easier. Those Neo-Thomists who were suspicious of modernity produced fresh readings of Aquinas’s texts applied to contemporary problems Pieper, Gilson. Their influence can be seen in the revival of virtue theory and the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. Others sought to develop Aquinas’s thought with the aid of later Thomists Maritain, Simon and incorporated the interpretations of Counter-Reformation Thomists, such as Cajetan and Jean Poinsot, to produce more sophisticated, and controversial, accounts of the intelligence, intentionality, semiotics, and practical knowledge. Those Neo-Thomists willing to engage modern thought on its own terms interpreted modern philosophy sympathetically using the principles of Aquinas Maréchal, Lonergan, Clarke, seeking dialogue rather than confrontation. However, some readings of Aquinas are so thoroughly integrated into modern philosophy that they can seem assimilated Rahner, Coreth; their highly individualized metaphysics inspired as much by other philosophical influences, especially Heidegger, as Aquinas. Some of the labels currently used among Neo-Thomists suggest a division in the movement over critical, postKantian methodology. ‘Existential Thomism’ is used for those who emphasize both the real distinction between essence and existence and the role of the sensible in the mind’s first grasp of being. ‘Transcendental Thomism’ applies to figures like Maréchal, Rousselot, Rahner, and Coreth who rely upon the inherent dynamism of the mind toward the real, rooted in Aquinas’s theory of the active intellect, from which to deduce their metaphysics of being. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Aquino: grammatici speculative, per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

Grecian: Grice: “Much as in London The Royal Opera only staged operas in Italian, and call itself, The Italian Royal Opera, at Rome, they only philosophised in Grecian! That is the elite’s way to separate from the riff raff.” – Grice. Grice: “Similarly, at Oxford, I came with a knowledge of Grecian and Roman far superior than English – and we always looked down on those who came down to Oxford just to do what we insultingly called “Eng. Lit.”!” --.

Academia: academia vecchia/academia nuova -- accademia nuova – v. Grice, “Carneades at Rome, and the beginning of Western philosophy.” New Academy, the name given the Academy, the school founded by Plato in the Athenian suburs, during the time it was controlled by Academic Skeptics. Its principal leaders in this period were Arcesilaus and Carneades; our most accessible source for the New Academy is Cicero’s “Academica.” A master of logical techniques such as sorites which he learned from Diodorus, Arcesilaus attempted to revive the dialectic of Plato, using it to achieve the suspension of belief he learned to value from Pyrrho. Later, and especially under the leadership of Carneades, the New Academy developed a special relationship with Stoicism: as the Stoics found new ways to defend their doctrine of the criterion, Carneades found new ways to refute it in the Stoics’ own terms. Carneades’ visit to Rome in 155 B.C. with a Stoic and a Peripatetic marks the beginning of Rome’s interest, especially with the elite, just to be different and to speak in a tongue that the vulgus would not understand, in what the Romans called “philosophia hellenistica” – Cicero, “Since I cannot think of a vernacular Roman term for ‘philosophia.’” An Englishman had the same problem with logic, which he rendered as ‘witcraft.’ – and ‘witlove.’ His anti-Stoic arguments were recorded by his successor Clitomachus d. c.110 B.C., whose work is known to us through summaries in Cicero. Clitomachus was succeeded by Philo of Larisa c.16079 B.C., who was the teacher of Antiochus of Ascalon c.130c.67 B.C.. Philo later attempted to reconcile the Old and the New Academy by softening the Skepticism of the New and by fostering a Skeptical reading of Plato. Angered by this, Antiochus broke away in about 87 B.C. to found what he called the Old Academy, which is now considered to be the beginning of Middle Platonism. Probably about the same time, Aenesidemus dates unknown revived the strict Skepticism of Pyrrho and founded the school that is known to us through the work of Sextus Empiricus. Academic Skepticism differed from Pyrrhonism in its sharp focus on Stoic positions, and possibly in allowing for a weak assent as opposed to belief, which they suspended in what is probable; and Pyrrhonians accused Academic Skeptics of being dogmatic in their rejection of the possibility of knowledge. The New Academy had a major influence on the development of modern philosophy, most conspicuously through Hume, who considered that his brand of mitigated skepticism belonged to this school. Grice: “Western philosophy begins with Carneades lecturing the rough Romans some philosophy; because Greece is EAST!” – Refs.: H. P. Grice, “The longitudinal history of philosophy from Carneades’s sojourn at Rome to my British Academy lecture at London.”

Newcomb’s paradox: a conflict, which Grice finds fascinating, between two widely accepted principles of rational decision, arising in the following decision problem, known as Newcomb’s problem. Two boxes are before you. The first contains either $1,000,000 or nothing. The second contains $1,000. You may take the first box alone or both boxes. Someone with uncanny foresight has predicted your choice and fixed the content of the first box according to his prediction. If he has predicted that you will take only the first box, he has put $1,000,000 in that box; and if he has predicted that you will take both boxes, he has left the first box empty. The expected utility of an option is commonly obtained by multiplying the utility of its possible outcomes by their probabilities given the option, and then adding the products. Because the predictor is reliable, the probability that you receive $1,000,000 given that you take only the first box is high, whereas the probability that you receive $1,001,000 given that you take both boxes is low. Accordingly, the expected utility of taking only the first box is greater than the expected utility of taking both boxes. Therefore the principle of maximizing expected utility says to take only the first box. However, the principle of dominance says that if the states determining the outcomes of options are causally independent of the options, and there is one option that is better than the others in each state, then you should adopt it. Since your choice does not causally influence the contents of the first box, and since choosing both boxes yields $1,000 in addition to the contents of the first box whatever they are, the principle says to take both boxes. Newcomb’s paradox is named after its formulator, William Newcomb. Nozick publicized it in “Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice” 9. Many theorists have responded to the paradox by changing the definition of the expected utility of an option so that it is sensitive to the causal influence of the option on the states that determine its outcome, but is insensitive to the evidential bearing of the option on those states. Refs: H. P. Grice, “Why I love Newcomb.”

Grice, “Oxford’s kindly light” -- Newman (“Lead Kindly light”) -- English prelate and philosopher of religion. As fellow at Oriel , Oxford, he was a prominent member of the Anglican Oxford Movement. He became a Roman Catholic in 1845, took holy orders in 1847, and was made a cardinal in 1879. His most important philosophical work is the Grammar of Assent 1870. Here Newman explored the difference between formal reasoning and the informal or natural movement of the mind in discerning the truth about the concrete and historical. Concrete reasoning in the mode of natural inference is implicit and unreflective; it deals not with general principles as such but with their employment in particular circumstances. Thus a scientist must judge whether the phenomenon he confronts is a novel significant datum, a coincidence, or merely an insignificant variation in the data. The acquired capacity to make judgments of this sort Newman called the illative sense, an intellectual skill shaped by experience and personal insight and generally limited for individuals to particular fields of endeavor. The illative sense makes possible a judgment of certitude about the matter considered, even though the formal argument that partially outlines the process possesses only objective probability for the novice. Hence probability is not necessarily opposed to certitude. In becoming aware of its tacit dimension, Newman spoke of recognizing a mode of informal inference. He distinguished such reasoning, which, by virtue of the illative sense, culminates in a judgment of certitude about the way things are real assent, from formal reasoning conditioned by the certainty or probability of the premises, which assents to the conclusion thus conditioned notional assent. In real assent, the proposition functions to “image” the reality, to make its reality present. In the Development of Christian Doctrine 1845, Newman analyzed the ways in which some ideas unfold themselves only through historical development, within a tradition of inquiry. He sought to delineate the common pattern of such development in politics, science, philosophy, and religion. Although his focal interest was in how religious doctrines develop, he emphasizes the general character of such a pattern of progressive articulation. H. P. Grice, “Oxford’s kindly light.”

Res – realism – neo-relaism, New Realism – or neo-realism – as opposed to “palaeo-realism” -- an early twentieth-century revival in England of various forms of realism in reaction to the dominant idealisms inherited from the nineteenth century. In America this revival took a cooperative form when six philosophers Ralph Barton Perry, Edwin Holt, William Pepperell Montague, Walter Pitkin, Edward Spaulding, and Walter Marvin published “A Program and First Platform of Six Realists” 0, followed two years later by the cooperative volume The New Realism, in which each authored an essay. This volume gave rise to the designation ‘New Realists’ for these six philosophers. Although they clearly disagreed on many particulars, they concurred on several matters of philosophical style and epistemological substance. Procedurally they endorsed a cooperative and piecemeal approach to philosophical problems, and they were constitutionally inclined to a closeness of analysis that would prepare the way for later philosophical tendencies. Substantively they agreed on several epistemological stances central to the refutation of idealism. Among the doctrines in the New Realist platform were the rejection of the fundamental character of epistemology; the view that the entities investigated in logic, mathematics, and science are not “mental” in any ordinary sense; the view that the things known are not the products of the knowing relation nor in any fundamental sense conditioned by their being known; and the view that the objects known are immediately and directly present to consciousness while being independent of that relation. New Realism was a version of direct realism, which viewed the notions of mediation and representation in knowledge as opening gambits on the slippery slope to idealism. Their refutation of idealism focused on pointing out the fallacy of moving from the truism that every object of knowledge is known to the claim that its being consists in its being known. That we are obviously at the center of what we know entails nothing about the nature of what we know. Perry dubbed this fact “the egocentric predicament,” and supplemented this observation with arguments to the effect that the objects of knowledge are in fact independent of the knowing relation. New Realism as a version of direct realism had as its primary conceptual obstacle “the facts of relativity,” i.e., error, illusion, perceptual variation, and valuation. Dealing with these phenomena without invoking “mental intermediaries” proved to be the stumbling block, and New Realism soon gave way to a second cooperative venture by another group of  philosophers that came to be known as Critical Realism. The term ‘new realism’ is also occasionally used with regard to those British philosophers principal among them Moore and Russell similarly involved in refuting idealism. Although individually more significant than the  group, theirs was not a cooperative effort, so the group term came to have primarily an  referent. 

newton, -- “Hypotheses non fingo.” Grice: “His surname is a toponymic: it literally means ‘new-town,’ but it implicates, “FROM new-town.” – “We never knew what ‘old’ town Sir Isaac is implicating, possibly Oldton, in Cumbria.” -- English physicist and mathematician, one of the greatest scientists of all time. Born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, he attended Cambridge , receiving the B.A. in 1665; he became a fellow of Trinity in New Realism Newton, Sir Isaac 610    610 1667 and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1671 and served as its president from 1703 until his death. In 1696 he was appointed warden of the mint. In his later years he was involved in political and governmental affairs rather than in active scientific work. A sensitive, secretive person, he was prone to irascibility  most notably in a dispute with Leibniz over priority of invention of the calculus. His unparalleled scientific accomplishments overshadow a deep and sustained interest in ancient chronology, biblical study, theology, and alchemy. In his early twenties Newton’s genius asserted itself in an astonishing period of mathematical and experimental creativity. In the years 1664 67, he discovered the binomial theorem; the “method of fluxions” calculus; the principle of the composition of light; and fundamentals of his theory of universal gravitation. Newton’s masterpiece, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, appeared in 1687. This work sets forth the mathematical laws of physics and “the system of the world.” Its exposition is modeled on Euclidean geometry: propositions are demonstrated mathematically from definitions and mathematical axioms. The world system consists of material bodies masses composed of hard particles at rest or in motion and interacting according to three axioms or laws of motion: 1 Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. 2 The change of motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and is made in the direction of the straight line in which that force is impressed. [Here, the impressed force equals mass times the rate of change of velocity, i.e., acceleration. Hence the familiar formula, F % ma.] 3 To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual action of two bodies upon each other is always equal and directed to contrary parts. Newton’s general law of gravitation in modern restatement is: Every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force varying directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square of the distance between them. The statement of the laws of motion is preceded by an equally famous scholium in which Newton enunciates the ultimate conditions of his universal system: absolute time, space, place, and motion. He speaks of these as independently existing “quantities” according to which true measurements of bodies and motions can be made as distinct from relative “sensible measures” and apparent observations. Newton seems to have thought that his system of mathematical principles presupposed and is validated by the absolute framework. The scholium has been the subject of much critical discussion. The main problem concerns the justification of the absolute framework. Newton commends adherence to experimental observation and induction for advancing scientific knowledge, and he rejects speculative hypotheses. But absolute time and space are not observable. In the scholium Newton did offer a renowned experiment using a rotating pail of water as evidence for distinguishing true and apparent motions and proof of absolute motion. It has been remarked that conflicting strains of a rationalism anticipating Kant and empiricism anticipating Hume are present in Newton’s conception of science. Some of these issues are also evident in Newton’s Optics 1704, especially the fourth edition, 1730, which includes a series of suggestive “Queries” on the nature of light, gravity, matter, scientific method, and God. The triumphant reception given to Newton’s Principia in England and on the Continent led to idealization of the man and his work. Thus Alexander Pope’s famous epitaph: Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light. The term ‘Newtonian’, then, denoted the view of nature as a universal system of mathematical reason and order divinely created and administered. The metaphor of a “universal machine” was frequently applied. The view is central in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, inspiring a religion of reason and the scientific study of society and the human mind. More narrowly, ‘Newtonian’ suggests a reduction of any subject matter to an ontology of individual particles and the laws and basic terms of mechanics: mass, length, and time. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Hypotheses non fingo: Newton e la sua mela,” Luigi Speranza, per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

Autrecourt, philosopher, unimaginatively born in Autrecourt, he was educated at Paris (“but I kept Autrecourt as my surname, Paris being so common” – “Letter to Matthew Parris” --) and earned bachelor’s degrees in theology and law and a master’s degree in arts. After a list of propositions from his writings was condemned in 1346, he was sentenced to burn his works publicly and recant, which he did in Paris the following year. He was appointed dean of Metz cathedral in 1350. Nicholas’s ecclesiastical troubles arose partly from nine letters two of which survive which reduce to absurdity the view that appearances provide a sufficient basis for certain and evident knowledge. On the contrary, except for “certitude of the faith,” we can be certain only of what is equivalent or reducible to the principle of noncontradiction. He accepts as a consequence of this that we can never validly infer the existence of one distinct thing from another, including the existence of substances from qualities, or causes from effects. Indeed, he finds that “in the whole of his natural philosophy and metaphysics, Aristotle had such [evident] certainty of scarcely two conclusions, and perhaps not even of one.” Nicholas devotes another work, the Exigit ordo executionis also known as The Universal Treatise, to an extended critique of Aristotelianism. It attacks what seemed to him the blind adherence given by his contemporaries to Aristotle and Averroes, showing that the opposite of many conclusions alleged to have been demonstrated by the Philosopher  e.g., on the divisibility of continua, the reality of motion, and the truth of appearances  are just as evident or apparent as those conclusions themselves. Because so few of his writings are extant, however, it is difficult to ascertain just what Nicholas’s own views were. Likewise, the reasons for his condemnation are not well understood, although recent studies have suggested that his troubles might have been due to a reaction to certain ideas that he appropriated from English theologians, such as Adam de Wodeham. Nicholas’s views elicited comment not only from church authorities, but also from other philosophers, including Buridan, Marsilius of Inghen, Albert of Saxony, and Nicholas of Oresme. Despite a few surface similarities, however, there is no evidence that his teachings on certainty or causality had any influence on modern philosophers, such as Descartes or Hume. 

Intellectus: The sensus-intellectus distinction, the: Grice: “Occam’s adage presupposes a bi-partite philosophical psychology for the credibility realm: the ‘sensus,’ or perceptual level, and the ‘intellectus,’ or the realm of intellect. 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.”

Activum/passivum distinction: used by Grice, ‘nous poietikos’ ‘nous – intellectus activus, intellectus passivus --. Grice thought ‘active’ was misused there, “unless there is a hint that Aquinas means that the self-conscious soul is the site of personal identity, which ‘does’ things.” --.

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.

Noce: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e del Noce," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

Nous – Grice’s favourite formation from nous is ‘noetic’, 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. 

euclidean/non-euclideeian distinction, the: – as applied to 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. 

monotonic/non-monotonice distinction, the: Grice: “It may be argued that we do not need ‘polytonic,’ just a concept that NEGATES monotone – but since at Clifton I learned about Grecian polytonicity, I like the idea!” -- “On occasion, the semantics of implicatura is non-monotonic, i. e. 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 what Grice calls a “weak” non-monotonic system G-w-n-m. In contrast, 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.: Luigi Speranza, “Monotonicity, and Polytonicity.” 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/non-normal distinction, the: Grice: I shall refer to the ‘normal form’ as a formula equivalent to a given  formula, but having special properties. The main varieties follow. A Conjunctive normal form. If D1 . . . Dn are disjunctions of sentential variables or their negations, such as p 7 -q 7 r, a formula F is in  what I shall call “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 Grice’s predicate calculus – System G, Gricese --  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,  a formula F is in what I shall call “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 Grice’s predicate calculus – system G, Gricese -- is in what Grice calls “prenex normal form” if 1 every quantifier occurs 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 what I shall call “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 Grice’s predicate calculus – System G, Gricese -- has an equivalent formula in prenex normal form. A formula F in predicate logic is in what Grice, as a tribute to Skolem, calls the “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 lack of completeness of my predicate calculus – but do I worry?”. Refs.: Grice, “Normal and abnormal forms: a logical introduction.” 

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.’”

conventional/non-conventional distinction, the: “If I were to rename all my taxonomies, I would say I have always been unconventional, and that it was not convention I’m interested, but unconventionality --. Grice: “Philosophers and the unconventional.” “Implicature and the unconventional philosopher.” -- “If I have to chose, I chose non-conventional, but I don’t have to, so I shall use ‘unconventional.’” -- 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.” 

stuff and nonsense: cf. Grice: “P. M. S. Hacker and the nonsense of sense.’ 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 – the ‘gnotus’ -- 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.