IMPLICATVRA -- in twelve volumes, vol. III

ariskant: “Today I’ll lecture on Aristkant, or rather his second part,” – Grice. Kant (which Grice spelt ‘cant,’ seeing that it was Scots) Immanuel, preeminent Scots philosopher whose distinctive concern was to vindicate the authority of reason. He believed that by a critical examination of its own powers, reason can distinguish unjustifiable traditional metaphysical claims from the principles that are required by our theoretical need to determine ourselves within spatiotemporal experience and by our practical need to legislate consistently with all other rational wills. Because these principles are necessary and discoverable, they defeat empiricism and skepticism, and because they are disclosed as simply the conditions of orienting ourselves coherently within experience, they contrast with traditional rationalism and dogmatism. Kant was born and raised in the eastern Prussian university town of Königsberg (today Kaliningrad), where, except for a short period during which he worked as a tutor in the nearby countryside, he spent his life as student and teacher. He was trained by Pietists and followers of Leibniz and Wolff, but he was also heavily influenced by Newton and Rousseau. In the 1750s his theoretical philosophy began attempting to show how metaphysics must accommodate as certain the fundamental principles underlying modern science; in the 1760s his 460 K 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 460 practical philosophy began attempting to show (in unpublished form) how our moral life must be based on a rational and universally accessible self-legislation analogous to Rousseau’s political principles. The breakthrough to his own distinctive philosophy came in the 1770s, when he insisted on treating epistemology as first philosophy. After arguing in his Inaugural Dissertation (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World) both that our spatiotemporal knowledge applies only to appearances and that we can still make legitimate metaphysical claims about “intelligible” or non-spatiotemporal features of reality (e.g., that there is one world of substances interconnected by the action of God), there followed a “silent decade” of preparation for his major work, the epoch-making Critique of Pure Reason (first or “A” edition, 1781; second or “B” edition, with many revisions, 1787; Kant’s initial reaction to objections to the first edition dominate his short review, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, 1783; the full title of which means ‘preliminary investigations for any future metaphysics that will be able to present itself as a science’, i.e., as a body of certain truths). This work resulted in his mature doctrine of transcendental idealism, namely, that all our theoretical knowledge is restricted to the systematization of what are mere spatiotemporal appearances. This position is also called formal or Critical idealism, because it criticizes theories and claims beyond the realm of experience, while it also insists that although the form of experience is ideal, or relative to us, this is not to deny the reality of something independent of this form. Kant’s earlier works are usually called pre-Critical not just because they precede his Critique but also because they do not include a full commitment to this idealism. Kant supplemented his “first Critique” (often cited just as “the” Critique) with several equally influential works in practical philosophy – Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason (the “second Critique,” 1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (consisting of “Doctrine of Justice” and “Doctrine of Virtue,” 1797). Kant’s philosophy culminated in arguments advancing a purely moral foundation for traditional theological claims (the existence of God, immortality, and a transcendent reward or penalty proportionate to our goodness), and thus was characterized as “denying knowledge in order to make room for faith.” To be more precise, Kant’s Critical project was to restrict theoretical knowledge in such a way as to make it possible for practical knowledge to reveal how pure rational faith has an absolute claim on us. This position was reiterated in the Critique of Judgment (the “third Critique,” 1790), which also extended Kant’s philosophy to aesthetics and scientific methodology by arguing for a priori but limited principles in each of these domains. Kant was followed by radical idealists (Fichte, Schelling), but he regarded himself as a philosopher of the Enlightenment, and in numerous shorter works he elaborated his belief that everything must submit to the “test of criticism,” that human reason must face the responsibility of determining the sources, extent, and bounds of its own principles. The Critique concerns pure reason because Kant believes all these determinations can be made a priori, i.e., such that their justification does not depend on any particular course of experience (‘pure’ and ‘a priori’ are thus usually interchangeable). For Kant ‘pure reason’ often signifies just pure theoretical reason, which determines the realm of nature and of what is, but Kant also believes there is pure practical reason (or Wille), which determines a priori and independently of sensibility the realm of freedom and of what ought to be. Practical reason in general is defined as that which determines rules for the faculty of desire and will, as opposed to the faculties of cognition and of feeling. On Kant’s mature view, however, the practical realm is necessarily understood in relation to moral considerations, and these in turn in terms of laws taken to have an unconditional imperative force whose validity requires presuming that they are addressed to a being with absolute freedom, the faculty to choose (Willkür) to will or not to will to act for their sake. Kant also argues that no evidence of human freedom is forthcoming from empirical knowledge of the self as part of spatiotemporal nature, and that the belief in our freedom, and thus the moral laws that presuppose it, would have to be given up if we thought that our reality is determined by the laws of spatiotemporal appearances alone. Hence, to maintain the crucial practical component of his philosophy it was necessary for Kant first to employ his theoretical philosophy to show that it is at least possible that the spatiotemporal realm does not exhaust reality, so that there can be a non-empirical and free side to the self. Therefore Kant’s first Critique is a theoretical foundation for his entire system, which is devoted to establishing not just (i) what the most general necessary principles for the spatio-temporal domain are – a project that has been called his “metaphysics of experience” – but also (ii) that this domain cannot without contradiction define ultimate reality (hence his transcendental idealism). The first of these claims involves Kant’s primary use of the term ‘transcendental’, namely in the context of what he calls a transcendental deduction, which is an argument or “exposition” that establishes a necessary role for an a priori principle in our experience. As Kant explains, while mathematical principles are a priori and are necessary for experience, the mathematical proof of these principles is not itself transcendental; what is transcendental is rather the philosophical argument that these principles necessarily apply in experience. While in this way some transcendental arguments may presume propositions from an established science (e.g., geometry), others can begin with more modest assumptions – typically the proposition that there is experience or empirical knowledge at all – and then move on from there to uncover a priori principles that appear required for specific features of that knowledge. Kant begins by connecting metaphysics with the problem of synthetic a priori judgment. As necessary, metaphysical claims must have an a priori status, for we cannot determine that they are necessary by mere a posteriori means. As objective rather than merely formal, metaphysical judgments (unlike those of logic) are also said to be synthetic. This synthetic a priori character is claimed by Kant to be mysterious and yet shared by a large number of propositions that were undisputed in his time. The mystery is how a proposition can be known as necessary and yet be objective or “ampliative” or not merely “analytic.” For Kant an analytic proposition is one whose predicate is “contained in the subject.” He does not mean this “containment” relation to be understood psychologically, for he stresses that we can be psychologically and even epistemically bound to affirm non-analytic propositions. The containment is rather determined simply by what is contained in the concepts of the subject term and the predicate term. However, Kant also denies that we have ready real definitions for empirical or a priori concepts, so it is unclear how one determines what is really contained in a subject or predicate term. He seems to rely on intuitive procedures for saying when it is that one necessarily connects a subject and predicate without relying on a hidden conceptual relation. Thus he proposes that mathematical constructions, and not mere conceptual elucidations, are what warrant necessary judgments about triangles. In calling such judgments ampliative, Kant does not mean that they merely add to what we may have explicitly seen or implicitly known about the subject, for he also grants that complex analytic judgments may be quite informative, and thus “new” in a psychological or epistemic sense. While Kant stresses that non-analytic or synthetic judgments rest on “intuition” (Anschauung), this is not part of their definition. If a proposition could be known through its concepts alone, it must be analytic, but if it is not knowable in this way it follows only that we need something other than concepts. Kant presumed that this something must be intuition, but others have suggested other possibilities, such as postulation. Intuition is a technical notion of Kant, meant for those representations that have an immediate relation to their object. Human intuitions are also all sensible (or sensuous) or passive, and have a singular rather than general object, but these are less basic features of intuition, since Kant stresses the possibility of (nonhuman) non-sensible or “intellectual” intuition, and he implies that singularity of reference can be achieved by non-intuitive means (e.g., in the definition of God). The immediacy of intuition is crucial because it is what sets them off from concepts, which are essentially representations of representations, i.e., rules expressing what is common to a set of representations. Kant claims that mathematics, and metaphysical expositions of our notions of space and time, can reveal several evident synthetic a priori propositions, e.g., that there is one infinite space. In asking what could underlie the belief that propositions like this are certain, Kant came to his Copernican revolution. This consists in considering not how our representations may necessarily conform to objects as such, but rather how objects may necessarily conform to our representations. On a “pre-Copernican” view, objects are considered just by themselves, i.e., as “things-in-themselves” (Dinge an sich) totally apart from any intrinsic cognitive relation to our representations, and thus it is mysterious how we could ever determine them a priori. If we begin, however, with our own faculties of representation we might find something in them that determines how objects must be – at least when considered just as phenomena (singular: phenomenon), i.e., as objects of experience rather than as noumena (singular: noumenon), i.e., things-inthemselves specified negatively as unknown and beyond our experience, or positively as knowable in some absolute non-sensible way – which Kant insists is theoretically impossible for sensible beings like us. For example, Kant claims that when we consider our faculty for receiving impressions, or sensibility, we can find not only contingent contents but also two necessary forms or “pure forms of intuition”: space, which structures all outer representations given us, and time, which structures all inner representations. These forms can explain how the synthetic a priori propositions of mathematics will apply with certainty to all the objects of our experience. That is, if we suppose that in intuiting these propositions we are gaining a priori insight into the forms of our representation that must govern all that can come to our sensible awareness, it becomes understandable that all objects in our experience will have to conform with these propositions. Kant presented his transcendental idealism as preferable to all the alternative explanations that he knew for the possibility of mathematical knowledge and the metaphysical status of space and time. Unlike empiricism, it allowed necessary claims in this domain; unlike rationalism, it freed the development of this knowledge from the procedures of mere conceptual analysis; and unlike the Newtonians it did all this without giving space and time a mysterious status as an absolute thing or predicate of God. With proper qualifications, Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental ideality of space and time can be understood as a radicalization of the modern idea of primary and secondary qualities. Just as others had contended that sensible color and sound qualities, e.g., can be intersubjectively valid and even objectively based while existing only as relative to our sensibility and not as ascribable to objects in themselves, so Kant proposed that the same should be said of spatiotemporal predicates. Kant’s doctrine, however, is distinctive in that it is not an empirical hypothesis that leaves accessible to us other theoretical and non-ideal predicates for explaining particular experiences. It is rather a metaphysical thesis that enriches empirical explanations with an a priori framework, but begs off any explanation for that framework itself other than the statement that it lies in the “constitution” of human sensibility as such. This “Copernican” hypothesis is not a clear proof that spatiotemporal features could not apply to objects apart from our forms of intuition, but more support for this stronger claim is given in Kant’s discussion of the “antinomies” of rational cosmology. An antinomy is a conflict between two a priori arguments arising from reason when, in its distinctive work as a higher logical faculty connecting strings of judgments, it posits a real unconditioned item at the origin of various hypothetical syllogisms. There are antinomies of quantity, quality, relation, and modality, and they each proceed by pairs of dogmatic arguments which suppose that since one kind of unconditioned item cannot be found, e.g., an absolutely first event, another kind must be posited, e.g., a complete infinite series of past events. For most of the other antinomies, Kant indicates that contradiction can be avoided by allowing endless series in experience (e.g., of chains of causality, of series of dependent beings), series that are compatible with – but apparently do not require – unconditioned items (uncaused causes, necessary beings) outside experience. For the antinomy of quantity, however, he argues that the only solution is to drop the common dogmatic assumption that the set of spatiotemporal objects constitutes a determinate whole, either absolutely finite or infinite. He takes this to show that spatiotemporality must be transcendentally ideal, only an indeterminate feature of our experience and not a characteristic of things-in-themselves. Even when structured by the pure forms of space and time, sensible representations do not yield knowledge until they are grasped in concepts and these concepts are combined in a judgment. Otherwise, we are left with mere impressions, scattered in an unintelligible “multiplicity” or manifold; in Kant’s words, “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.” Judgment requires both concepts and intuitions; it is not just any relation of concepts, but a bringing together of them in a particular way, an “objective” unity, so that one concept is predicated of another – e.g., “all bodies are divisible” – and the latter “applies to certain appearances that present themselves to us,” i.e., are intuited. Because any judgment involves a unity of thought that can be prefixed by the phrase ‘I think’, Kant speaks of all representations, to the extent that they can be judged by us, as subject to a necessary unity of apperception. This term originally signified self-consciousness in contrast to direct consciousness or perception, but Kant uses it primarily to contrast with ‘inner sense’, the precognitive manifold of temporal representations as they are merely given in the mind. Kant also contrasts the empirical ego, i.e., the self as it is known contingently in experience, with the transcendental ego, i.e., the self thought of as the subject of structures of intuiting and thinking that are necessary throughout experience. The fundamental need for concepts and judgments suggests that our “constitution” may require not just intuitive but also conceptual forms, i.e., “pure concepts of the understanding,” or “categories.” The proof that our experience does require such forms comes in the “deduction of the objective validity of the pure concepts of the understanding,” also called the transcendental deduction of the categories, or just the deduction. This most notorious of all Kantian arguments appears to be in one way harder and in one way easier than the transcendental argument for pure intuitions. Those intuitions were held to be necessary for our experience because as structures of our sensibility nothing could even be imagined to be given to us without them. Yet, as Kant notes, it might seem that once representations are given in this way we can still imagine that they need not then be combined in terms of such pure concepts as causality. On the other hand, Kant proposed that a list of putative categories could be derived from a list of the necessary forms of the logical table of judgments, and since these forms would be required for any finite understanding, whatever its mode of sensibility is like, it can seem that the validity of pure concepts is even more inescapable than that of pure intuitions. That there is nonetheless a special difficulty in the transcendental argument for the categories becomes evident as soon as one considers the specifics of Kant’s list. The logical table of judgments is an a priori collection of all possible judgment forms organized under four headings, with three subforms each: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive), and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodictic). This list does not map exactly onto any one of the logic textbooks of Kant’s day, but it has many similarities with them; thus problematic judgments are simply those that express logical possibility, and apodictic ones are those that express logical necessity. The table serves Kant as a clue to the “metaphysical deduction” of the categories, which claims to show that there is an origin for these concepts that is genuinely a priori, and, on the premise that the table is proper, that the derived concepts can be claimed to be fundamental and complete. But by itself the list does not show exactly what categories follow from, i.e., are necessarily used with, the various forms of judgment, let alone what their specific meaning is for our mode of experience. Above all, even when it is argued that each experience and every judgment requires at least one of the four general forms, and that the use of any form of judgment does involve a matching pure concept (listed in the table of categories: reality, negation, limitation; unity, plurality, totality; inherence and subsistence, causality and dependence, community; possibility – impossibility, existence –non-existence, and necessity–contingency) applying to the objects judged about, this does not show that the complex relational forms and their corresponding categories of causality and community are necessary unless it is shown that these specific forms of judgment are each necessary for our experience. Precisely because this is initially not evident, it can appear, as Kant himself noted, that the validity of controversial categories such as causality cannot be established as easily as that of the forms of intuition. Moreover, Kant does not even try to prove the objectivity of the traditional modal categories but treats the principles that use them as mere definitions relative to experience. Thus a problematic judgment, i.e., one in which “affirmation or negation is taken as merely possible,” is used when something is said to be possible in the sense that it “agrees with the formal conditions of experience, i.e., with the conditions of intuition and of concepts.” A clue for rescuing the relational categories is given near the end of the Transcendental Deduction (B version), where Kant notes that the a priori all-inclusiveness and unity of space and time that is claimed in the treatment of sensibility must, like all cognitive unity, ultimately have a foundation in judgment. Kant expands on this point by devoting a key section called the analogies of experience to arguing that the possibility of our judging objects to be determined in an objective position in the unity of time (and, indirectly, space) requires three a priori principles (each called an “Analogy”) that employ precisely the relational categories that seemed especially questionable. Since these categories are established as needed just for the determination of time and space, which themselves have already been argued to be transcendentally ideal, Kant can conclude that for us even a priori claims using pure concepts of the understanding provide what are only transcendentally ideal claims. Thus we cannot make determinate theoretical claims about categories such as substance, cause, and community in an absolute sense that goes beyond our experience, but we can establish principles for their spatiotemporal specifications, called schemata, namely, the three Analogies: “in all change of appearance substance is permanent,” “all alterations take place in conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect,” and “all substances, insofar as they can be perceived to coexist in space, are in thoroughgoing reciprocity.” Kant initially calls these regulative principles of experience, since they are required for organizing all objects of our empirical knowledge within a unity, and, unlike the constitutive principles for the categories of quantity and quality (namely: “all intuitions [for us] are extensive magnitudes,” and “in all appearances the real that is an object of sensation has intensive magnitude, that is, a degree”), they do not characterize any individual item by itself but rather only by its real relation to other objects of experience. Nonetheless, in comparison to mere heuristic or methodological principles (e.g., seek simple or teleological explanations), these Analogies are held by Kant to be objectively necessary for experience, and for this reason can also be called constitutive in a broader sense. The remainder of the Critique exposes the “original” or “transcendental” ideas of pure reason that pretend to be constitutive or theoretically warranted but involve unconditional components that wholly transcend the realm of experience. These include not just the antinomic cosmological ideas noted above (of these Kant stresses the idea of transcendental freedom, i.e., of uncaused causing), but also the rational psychological ideas of the soul as an immortal substance and the rational theological idea of God as a necessary and perfect being. Just as the pure concepts of the understanding have an origin in the necessary forms of judgments, these ideas are said to originate in the various syllogistic forms of reason: the idea of a soul-substance is the correlate of an unconditioned first term of a categorical syllogism (i.e., a subject that can never be the predicate of something else), and the idea of God is the correlate of the complete sum of possible predicates that underlies the unconditioned first term of the disjunctive syllogism used to give a complete determination of a thing’s properties. Despite the a priori origin of these notions, Kant claims we cannot theoretically establish their validity, even though they do have regulative value in organizing our notion of a human or divine spiritual substance. Thus, even if, as Kant argues, traditional proofs of immortality, and the teleological, cosmological, and ontological arguments for God’s existence, are invalid, the notions they involve can be affirmed as long as there is, as he believes, a sufficient non-theoretical, i.e., moral argument for them. When interpreted on the basis of such an argument, they are transformed into ideas of practical reason, ideas that, like perfect virtue, may not be verified or realized in sensible experience, but have a rational warrant in pure practical considerations. Although Kant’s pure practical philosophy culminates in religious hope, it is primarily a doctrine of obligation. Moral value is determined ultimately by the nature of the intention of the agent, which in turn is determined by the nature of what Kant calls the general maxim or subjective principle underlying a person’s action. One follows a hypothetical imperative when one’s maxim does not presume an unconditional end, a goal (like the fulfillment of duty) that one should have irrespective of all sensible desires, but rather a “material end” dependent on contingent inclinations (e.g., the directive “get this food,” in order to feel happy). In contrast, a categorical imperative is a directive saying what ought to be done from the perspective of pure reason alone; it is categorical because what this perspective commands is not contingent on sensible circumstances and it always carries overriding value. The general formula of the categorical imperative is to act only according to those maxims that can be consistently willed as a universal law – something said to be impossible for maxims aimed merely at material ends. In accepting this imperative, we are doubly self-determined, for we are not only determining our action freely, as Kant believes humans do in all exercises of the faculty of choice; we are also accepting a principle whose content is determined by that which is absolutely essential to us as agents, namely our pure practical reason. We thus are following our own law and so have autonomy when we accept the categorical imperative; otherwise we fall into heteronomy, or the (free) acceptance of principles whose content is determined independently of the essential nature of our own ultimate being, which is rational. Given the metaphysics of his transcendental idealism, Kant can say that the categorical imperative reveals a supersensible power of freedom in us such that we must regard ourselves as part of an intelligible world, i.e., a domain determined ultimately not by natural laws but rather by laws of reason. As such a rational being, an agent is an end in itself, i.e., something whose value is not dependent on external material ends, which are contingent and valued only as means to the end of happiness – which is itself only a conditional value (since the satisfaction of an evil will would be improper). Kant regards accepting the categorical imperative as tantamount to respecting rational nature as an end in itself, and to willing as if we were legislating a kingdom of ends. This is to will that the world become a “systematic Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel 465 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 465 union of different rational beings through common laws,” i.e., laws that respect and fulfill the freedom of all rational beings. Although there is only one fundamental principle of morality, there are still different types of specific duties. One basic distinction is between strict duty and imperfect duty. Duties of justice, of respecting in action the rights of others, or the duty not to violate the dignity of persons as rational agents, are strict because they allow no exception for one’s inclination. A perfect duty is one that requires a specific action (e.g. keeping a promise), whereas an imperfect duty, such as the duty to perfect oneself or to help others, cannot be completely discharged or demanded by right by someone else, and so one has considerable latitude in deciding when and how it is to be respected. A meritorious duty involves going beyond what is strictly demanded and thereby generating an obligation in others, as when one is extraordinarily helpful to others and “merits” their gratitude. Two of Grice’s main tutees were respectively Aristotelian and Kantian scholars: Ackrill and Strawson. Grice, of course, read Ariskant in the vernacular. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Francis Haywood. William Pickering. 1838. critick of pure reason. (first English translation) Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn. 1855 – via Project Gutenberg.Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. 1873.Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Friedrich Max Müller. The Macmillan Company. 1881. (Introduction by Ludwig Noiré)Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. Palgrave Macmillan. 1929. ISBN 1-4039-1194-0. Archived from the original on 2009-04-27.Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Wolfgang Schwartz. Scientia Verlag und Antiquariat. 1982. ISBN 978-3-5110-9260-3.Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Hackett Publishing. 1996. ISBN 978-0-87220-257-3.Critique of Pure Reason, Abridged. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Hackett Publishing. 1999. ISBN 978-1-6246-6605-6.Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge University Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-5216-5729-7.Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Marcus Weigelt. Penguin Books. 2007. ISBN 978-0-1404-4747-7. Grice’s favourite philosopher is Ariskant. One way to approach Grice’s meta-philosophy is by combining teleology with deontology. Eventually, Grice embraces a hedonistic eudaimonism, if rationally approved. Grice knows how to tutor in philosophy: he tutor on Kant as if he is tutoring on Aristotle, and vice versa. His tutees would say, Here come [sic] Kantotle. Grice is obsessed with Kantotle. He would teach one or the other as an ethics requirement. Back at Oxford, the emphasis is of course Aristotle, but he is aware of some trends to introduce Kant in the Lit.Hum. curriculum, not with much success. Strawson does his share with the pure reason in Kant in The bounds of sense, but White professors of moral philosophy are usually not too keen on the critique by Kant of practical reason. Grice is fascinated that an Irishman, back in 1873, cares to translate (“for me”) all that Kant has to say about the eudaimonism and hedonism of Aristotle. An Oxonian philosopher is expected to be a utilitarian, as Hare is, or a Hegelian, and that is why Grice prefers, heterodoxical as he is, to be a Kantian rationalist instead. But Grice cannot help being Aristotelian, Hardie having instilled the “Eth. Nich.” on him at Corpus. While he can’t read Kant in German, Grice uses Abbott’s Irish vernacular. Note the archaic metaphysic sic in singular.  More Kant. Since Baker can read the vernacular even less than Grice, it may be good to review the editions. It all starts when Abbott thinks that his fellow Irishmen are unable to tackle Kant in the vernacular. Abbott’s thing comes out in 1873: Kant’s critique of practical reason and other works on the theory of tthics, with Grice quipping. Oddly, I prefer his other work! Grice collaborates with Baker mainly on work on meta-ethics seen as an offspring, alla Kant, of philosophical psychology. Akrasia or egkrateia is one such topic. Baker contributes to PGRICE, a festschrift for Grice, with an essay on the purity, and alleged lack thereof, of this or that morally evaluable motive – rhetorically put: do ones motives have to be pure? For Grice morality cashes out in self-love, self-interest, and desire. Baker also contributes to a volume on Grice’s honour published by Palgrave, Meaning and analysis: essays on Grice. Baker organises of a symposium on the thought of Grice for the APA, the proceedings of which published in The Journal of Philosophy, with Bennett as chair, contributions by Baker and Grandy, commented by Stalnaker andWarner. Grice explores with Baker problems of egcrateia and the reduction of duty to self-love and interest.  Aristotle: preeminent Grecian philosopher born in Stagira, hence sometimes called the Stagirite. Aristotle came to Athens as a teenager and remained for two decades in Plato’s Academy. Following Plato’s death in 347, Aristotle traveled to Assos and to Lesbos, where he associated with Theophrastus and collected a wealth of biological data, and later to Macedonia, where he tutored Alexander the Great. In 335 he returned to Athens and founded his own philosophical school in the Lyceum. The site’s colonnaded walk peripatos conferred on Aristotle and his group the name ‘the Peripatetics’. Alexander’s death in 323 unleashed antiMacedonian forces in Athens. Charged with impiety, and mindful of the fate of Socrates, Aristotle withdrew to Chalcis, where he died. Chiefly influenced by his association with Plato, Aristotle also makes wide use of the preSocratics. A number of works begin by criticizing and, ultimately, building on their views. The direction of Plato’s influence is debated. Some scholars see Aristotle’s career as a measured retreat from his teacher’s doctrines. For others he began as a confirmed anti-Platonist but returned to the fold as he matured. More likely, Aristotle early on developed a keenly independent voice that expressed enduring puzzlement over such Platonic doctrines as the separate existence of Ideas and the construction of physical reality from two-dimensional triangles. Such unease was no doubt heightened by Aristotle’s appreciation for the evidential value of observation as well as by his conviction that long-received and well-entrenched opinion is likely to contain at least part of the truth. Aristotle reportedly wrote a few popular works for publication, some of which are dialogues. Of these we have only fragments and reports. Notably lost are also his lectures on the good and on the Ideas. Ancient cataloguers also list under Aristotle’s name some 158 constitutions of Grecian states. Of these, only the Constitution of Athens has survived, on a papyrus discovered in 0. What remains is an enormous body of writing on virtually every topic of philosophical significance. Much of it consists of detailed lecture notes, working drafts, and accounts of his lectures written by others. Although efforts may have been under way in Aristotle’s lifetime, Andronicus of Rhodes, in the first century B.C., is credited with giving the Aristotelian corpus its present organization. Virtually no extant manuscripts predate the ninth century A.D., so the corpus has been transmitted by a complex history of manuscript transcription. In 1831 the Berlin Academy published the first critical edition of Aristotle’s work. Scholars still cite Aristotle by , column, and line of this edition. Logic and language. The writings on logic and language are concentrated in six early works: Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations. Known since late antiquity as the Organon, these works share a concern with what is now called semantics. The Categories focuses on the relation between uncombined terms, such as ‘white’ or ‘man’, and the items they signify; On Interpretation offers an account of how terms combine to yield simple statements; Prior Analytics provides a systematic account of how three terms must be distributed in two categorical statements so as to yield logically a third such statement; Posterior Analytics specifies the conditions that categorical statements must meet to play a role in scientific explanation. The Topics, sometimes said to include Sophistical Refutations, is a handbook of “topics” and techniques for dialectical arguments concerning, principally, the four predicables: accident what may or may not belong to a subject, as sitting belongs to Socrates; definition what signifies a subject’s essence, as rational animal is the essence of man; proprium what is not in the essence of a subject but is unique to or counterpredicable of it, as all and only persons are risible; and genus what is in the essence of subjects differing in species, as animal is in the essence of both men and oxen. Categories treats the basic kinds of things that exist and their interrelations. Every uncombined term, says Aristotle, signifies essentially something in one of ten categories  a substance, a quantity, a quality, a relative, a place, a time, a position, a having, a doing, or a being affected. This doctrine underlies Aristotle’s admonition that there are as many proper or per se senses of ‘being’ as there are categories. In order to isolate the things that exist primarily, namely, primary substances, from all other things and to give an account of their nature, two asymmetric relations of ontological dependence are employed. First, substance ousia is distinguished from the accidental categories by the fact that every accident is present in a substance and, therefore, cannot exist without a substance in which to inhere. Second, the category of substance itself is divided into ordinary individuals or primary substances, such as Socrates, and secondary substances, such as the species man and the genus animal. Secondary substances are said of primary substances and indicate what kind of thing the subject is. A mark of this is that both the name and the definition of the secondary substance can be predicated of the primary substance, as both man and rational animal can be predicated of Socrates. Universals in non-substance categories are also said of subjects, as color is said of white. Therefore, directly or indirectly, everything else is either present in or said of primary substances and without them nothing would exist. And because they are neither present in a subject nor said of a subject, primary substances depend on nothing else for their existence. So, in the Categories, the ordinary individual is ontologically basic. On Interpretation offers an account of those meaningful expressions that are true or false, namely, statements or assertions. Following Plato’s Sophist, a simple statement is composed of the semantically heterogeneous parts, name onoma and verb rhema. In ‘Socrates runs’ the name has the strictly referential function of signifying the subject of attribution. The verb, on the other hand, is essentially predicative, signifying something holding of the subject. Verbs also indicate when something is asserted to hold and so make precise the statement’s truth conditions. Simple statements also include general categorical statements. Since medieval times it has become customary to refer to the basic categoricals by letters: A Every man is white, E No man is white, I Some man is white, and O Not every man is white. On Interpretation outlines their logical relations in what is now called the square of opposition: A & E are contraries, A & O and E & I are contradictories, and A & I and E & O are superimplications. That A implies I reflects the no longer current view that Aristotle Aristotle 45   45 all affirmative statements carry existential import. One ambition of On Interpretation is a theory of the truth conditions for all statements that affirm or deny one thing or another. However, statements involving future contingencies pose a special problem. Consider Aristotle’s notorious sea battle. Either it will or it will not happen tomorrow. If the first, then the statement ‘There will be a sea battle tomorrow’ is now true. Hence, it is now fixed that the sea battle occur tomorrow. If the second, then it is now fixed that the sea battle not occur tomorrow. Either way there can be no future contingencies. Although some hold that Aristotle would embrace the determinism they find implicit in this consequence, most argue either that he suspends the law of excluded middle for future contingencies or that he denies the principle of bivalence for future contingent statements. On the first option Aristotle gives up the claim that either the sea battle will happen tomorrow or not. On the second he keeps the claim but allows that future contingent statements are neither true nor false. Aristotle’s evident attachment to the law of excluded middle, perhaps, favors the second option. Prior Analytics marks the invention of logic as a formal discipline in that the work contains the first virtually complete system of logical inference, sometimes called syllogistic. The fact that the first chapter of the Prior Analytics reports that there is a syllogism whenever, certain things being stated, something else follows of necessity, might suggest that Aristotle intended to capture a general notion of logical consequence. However, the syllogisms that constitute the system of the Prior Analytics are restricted to the basic categorical statements introduced in On Interpretation. A syllogism consists of three different categorical statements: two premises and a conclusion. The Prior Analytics tells us which pairs of categoricals logically yield a third. The fourteen basic valid forms are divided into three figures and, within each figure, into moods. The system is foundational because second- and third-figure syllogisms are reducible to first-figure syllogisms, whose validity is self-evident. Although syllogisms are conveniently written as conditional sentences, the syllogistic proper is, perhaps, best seen as a system of valid deductive inferences rather than as a system of valid conditional sentences or sentence forms. Posterior Analytics extends syllogistic to science and scientific explanation. A science is a deductively ordered body of knowledge about a definite genus or domain of nature. Scientific knowledge episteme consists not in knowing that, e.g., there is thunder in the clouds, but rather in knowing why there is thunder. So the theory of scientific knowledge is a theory of explanation and the vehicle of explanation is the first-figure syllogism Barbara: If 1 P belongs to all M and 2 M belongs to all S, then 3 P belongs to all S. To explain, e.g., why there is thunder, i.e., why there is noise in the clouds, we say: 3H Noise P belongs to the clouds S because 2H Quenching of fire M belongs to the clouds S and 1H Noise P belongs to quenching of fire M. Because what is explained in science is invariant and holds of necessity, the premises of a scientific or demonstrative syllogism must be necessary. In requiring that the premises be prior to and more knowable than the conclusion, Aristotle embraces the view that explanation is asymmetrical: knowledge of the conclusion depends on knowledge of each premise, but each premise can be known independently of the conclusion. The premises must also give the causes of the conclusion. To inquire why P belongs to S is, in effect, to seek the middle term that gives the cause. Finally, the premises must be immediate and non-demonstrable. A premise is immediate just in case there is no middle term connecting its subject and predicate terms. Were P to belong to M because of a new middle, M1, then there would be a new, more basic premise, that is essential to the full explanation. Ultimately, explanation of a received fact will consist in a chain of syllogisms terminating in primary premises that are immediate. These serve as axioms that define the science in question because they reflect the essential nature of the fact to be explained  as in 1H the essence of thunder lies in the quenching of fire. Because they are immediate, primary premises are not capable of syllogistic demonstration, yet they must be known if syllogisms containing them are to constitute knowledge of the conclusion. Moreover, were it necessary to know the primary premises syllogistically, demonstration would proceed infinitely or in a circle. The first alternative defeats the very possibility of explanation and the second undermines its asymmetric character. Thus, the primary premises must be known by the direct grasp of the mind noûs. This just signals the appropriate way for the highest principles of a science to be known  even demonstrable propositions can be known directly, but they are explained only when located within the structure of the relevant science, i.e., only when demonstrated syllogistically. Although all sciences exhibit the same formal structure and use Aristotle Aristotle 46   46 certain common principles, different sciences have different primary premises and, hence, different subject matters. This “one genus to one science” rule legislates that each science and its explanations be autonomous. Aristotle recognizes three kinds of intellectual discipline. Productive disciplines, such as house building, concern the making of something external to the agent. Practical disciplines, such as ethics, concern the doing of something not separate from the agent, namely, action and choice. Theoretical disciplines are concerned with truth for its own sake. As such, they alone are sciences in the special sense of the Posterior Analytics. The three main kinds of special science are individuated by their objects  natural science by objects that are separate but not changeless, mathematics by objects that are changeless but not separate, and theology by separate and changeless objects. The mathematician studies the same objects as the natural scientist but in a quite different way. He takes an actual object, e.g. a chalk figure used in demonstration, and abstracts from or “thinks away” those of its properties, such as definiteness of size and imperfection of shape, that are irrelevant to its standing as a perfect exemplar of the purely mathematical properties under investigation. Mathematicians simply treat this abstracted circle, which is not separate from matter, as if it were separate. In this way the theorems they prove about the object can be taken as universal and necessary. Physics. As the science of nature physis, physics studies those things whose principles and causes of change and rest are internal. Aristotle’s central treatise on nature, the Physics, analyzes the most general features of natural phenomena: cause, change, time, place, infinity, and continuity. The doctrine of the four causes is especially important in Aristotle’s work. A cause aitia is something like an explanatory factor. The material cause of a house, for instance, is the matter hyle from which it is built; the moving or efficient cause is the builder, more exactly, the form in the builder’s soul; the formal cause is its plan or form eidos; and the final cause is its purpose or end telos: provision of shelter. The complete explanation of the coming to be of a house will factor in all of these causes. In natural phenomena efficient, formal, and final causes often coincide. The form transmitted by the father is both the efficient cause and the form of the child, and the latter is glossed in terms of the child’s end or complete development. This explains why Aristotle often simply contrasts matter and form. Although its objects are compounds of both, physics gives priority to the study of natural form. This accords with the Posterior Analytics’ insistence that explanation proceed through causes that give the essence and reflects Aristotle’s commitment to teleology. A natural process counts essentially as the development of, say, an oak or a man because its very identity depends on the complete form realized at its end. As with all things natural, the end is an internal governing principle of the process rather than an external goal. All natural things are subject to change kinesis. Defined as the actualization of the potential qua potential, a change is not an ontologically basic item. There is no category for changes. Rather, they are reductively explained in terms of more basic things  substances, properties, and potentialities. A pale man, e.g., has the potentiality to be or become tanned. If this potentiality is utterly unactualized, no change will ensue; if completely actualized, the change will have ended. So the potentiality must be actualized but not, so to speak, exhausted; i.e., it must be actualized qua potentiality. Designed for the ongoing operations of the natural world, the Physics’ definition of change does not cover the generation and corruption of substantial items themselves. This sort of change, which involves matter and elemental change, receives extensive treatment in On Generation and Corruption. Aristotle rejects the atomists’ contention that the world consists of an infinite totality of indivisible atoms in various arrangements. Rather, his basic stuff is uniform elemental matter, any part of which is divisible into smaller such parts. Because nothing that is actually infinite can exist, it is only in principle that matter is always further dividable. So while countenancing the potential infinite, Aristotle squarely denies the actual infinite. This holds for the motions of the sublunary elemental bodies earth, air, fire, and water as well as for the circular motions of the heavenly bodies composed of a fifth element, aether, whose natural motion is circular. These are discussed in On the Heavens. The four sublunary elements are further discussed in Meteorology, the fourth book of which might be described as an early treatise on chemical combination. Psychology. Because the soul psyche is officially defined as the form of a body with the potentiality for life, psychology is a subfield of natural science. In effect, Aristotle applies the Aristotle Aristotle 47   47 apparatus of form and matter to the traditional Grecian view of the soul as the principle and cause of life. Although even the nutritive and reproductive powers of plants are effects of the soul, most of his attention is focused on topics that are psychological in the modern sense. On the Soul gives a general account of the nature and number of the soul’s principal cognitive faculties. Subsequent works, chiefly those collected as the Parva naturalia, apply the general theory to a broad range of psychological phenomena from memory and recollection to dreaming, sleeping, and waking. The soul is a complex of faculties. Faculties, at least those distinctive of persons, are capacities for cognitively grasping objects. Sight grasps colors, smell odors, hearing sounds, and the mind grasps universals. An organism’s form is the particular organization of its material parts that enable it to exercise these characteristic functions. Because an infant, e.g., has the capacity to do geometry, Aristotle distinguishes two varieties of capacity or potentiality dynamis and actuality entelecheia. The infant is a geometer only in potentiality. This first potentiality comes to him simply by belonging to the appropriate species, i.e., by coming into the world endowed with the potential to develop into a competent geometer. By actualizing, through experience and training, this first potentiality, he acquires a first actualization. This actualization is also a second potentiality, since it renders him a competent geometer able to exercise his knowledge at will. The exercise itself is a second actualization and amounts to active contemplation of a particular item of knowledge, e.g. the Pythagorean theorem. So the soul is further defined as the first actualization of a complex natural body. Faculties, like sciences, are individuated by their objects. Objects of perception aisthesis fall into three general kinds. Special proper sensibles, such as colors and sounds, are directly perceived by one and only one sense and are immune to error. They demarcate the five special senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Common sensibles, such as movement and shape, are directly perceived by more than one special sense. Both special and common sensibles are proper objects of perception because they have a direct causal effect on the perceptual system. By contrast, the son of Diares is an incidental sensible because he is perceived not directly but as a consequence of directly perceiving something else that happens to be the son of Diares  e.g., a white thing. Aristotle calls the mind noûs the place of forms because it is able to grasp objects apart from matter. These objects are nothing like Plato’s separately existing Forms. As Aristotelian universals, their existence is entailed by and depends on their having instances. Thus, On the Soul’s remark that universals are “somehow in the soul” only reflects their role in assuring the autonomy of thought. The mind has no organ because it is not the form or first actualization of any physical structure. So, unlike perceptual faculties, it is not strongly dependent on the body. However, the mind thinks its objects by way of images, which are something like internal representations, and these are physically based. Insofar as it thus depends on imagination phantasia, the mind is weakly dependent on the body. This would be sufficient to establish the naturalized nature of Aristotle’s mind were it not for what some consider an incurably dualist intrusion. In distinguishing something in the mind that makes all things from something that becomes all things, Aristotle introduces the notorious distinction between the active and passive intellects and may even suggest that the first is separable from the body. Opinion on the nature of the active intellect diverges widely, some even discounting it as an irrelevant insertion. But unlike perception, which depends on external objects, thinking is up to us. Therefore, it cannot simply be a matter of the mind’s being affected. So Aristotle needs a mechanism that enables us to produce thoughts autonomously. In light of this functional role, the question of active intellect’s ontological status is less pressing. Biology. Aristotle’s biological writings, which constitute about a quarter of the corpus, bring biological phenomena under the general framework of natural science: the four causes, form and matter, actuality and potentiality, and especially the teleological character of natural processes. If the Physics proceeds in an a priori style, the History of Animals, Parts of Animals, and Generation of Animals achieve an extraordinary synthesis of observation, theory, and general scientific principle. History of Animals is a comparative study of generic features of animals, including analogous parts, activities, and dispositions. Although its morphological and physiological descriptions show surprisingly little interest in teleology, Parts of Animals is squarely teleological. Animal parts, especially organs, are ultimately differentiated by function rather than morphology. The composition of, e.g., teeth and flesh is determined by their role in the overall functioning of the organism and, hence, requires Aristotle Aristotle 48   48 teleology. Generation of Animals applies the formmatter and actualitypotentiality distinctions to animal reproduction, inheritance, and the development of accidental characteristics. The species form governs the development of an organism and determines what the organism is essentially. Although in the Metaphysics and elsewhere accidental characteristics, including inherited ones, are excluded from science, in the biological writings form has an expanded role and explains the inheritance of non-essential characteristics, such as eye color. The more fully the father’s form is imposed on the minimally formed matter of the mother, the more completely the father’s traits are passed on to the offspring. The extent to which matter resists imposition of form determines the extent to which traits of the mother emerge, or even those of more distant ancestors. Aristotle shared the Platonists’ interest in animal classification. Recent scholarship suggests that this is less an interest in elaborating a Linnean-style taxonomy of the animal kingdom than an interest in establishing the complex differentiae and genera central to definitions of living things. The biological works argue, moreover, that no single differentia could give the whole essence of a species and that the differentiae that do give the essence will fall into more than one division. If the second point rejects the method of dichotomous division favored by Plato and the Academy, the first counters Aristotle’s own standard view that essence can be reduced to a single final differentia. The biological sciences are not, then, automatically accommodated by the Posterior Analytics model of explanation, where the essence or explanatory middle is conceived as a single causal property. A number of themes discussed in this section are brought together in a relatively late work, Motion of Animals. Its psychophysical account of the mechanisms of animal movement stands at the juncture of physics, psychology, and biology. Metaphysics. In Andronicus’s edition, the fourteen books now known as the Metaphysics were placed after the Physics, whence comes the word ‘metaphysics’, whose literal meaning is ‘what comes after the physics’. Aristotle himself prefers ‘first philosophy’ or ‘wisdom’ sophia. The subject is defined as the theoretical science of the causes and principles of what is most knowable. This makes metaphysics a limiting case of Aristotle’s broadly used distinction between what is better known to us and what is better known by nature. The genus animal, e.g., is better known by nature than the species man because it is further removed from the senses and because it can be known independently of the species. The first condition suggests that the most knowable objects would be the separately existing and thoroughly non-sensible objects of theology and, hence, that metaphysics is a special science. The second condition suggests that the most knowable objects are simply the most general notions that apply to things in general. This favors identifying metaphysics as the general science of being qua being. Special sciences study restricted modes of being. Physics, for instance, studies being qua having an internal principle of change and rest. A general science of being studies the principles and causes of things that are, simply insofar as they are. A good deal of the Metaphysics supports this conception of metaphysics. For example, Book IV, on the principle of non-contradiction, and Book X, on unity, similarity, and difference, treat notions that apply to anything whatever. So, too, for the discussion of form and actuality in the central books VII, VIII, and IX. Book XII, on the other hand, appears to regard metaphysics as the special science of theology. Aristotle himself attempts to reconcile these two conceptions of metaphysics. Because it studies immovable substance, theology counts as first philosophy. However, it is also general precisely because it is first, and so it will include the study of being qua being. Scholars have found this solution as perplexing as the problem. Although Book XII proves the causal necessity for motion of an eternal substance that is an unmoved mover, this establishes no conceptual connection between the forms of sensible compounds and the pure form that is the unmoved mover. Yet such a connection is required, if a single science is to encompass both. Problems of reconciliation aside, Aristotle had to face a prior difficulty concerning the very possibility of a general science of being. For the Posterior Analytics requires the existence of a genus for each science but the Metaphysics twice argues that being is not a genus. The latter claim, which Aristotle never relinquishes, is implicit in the Categories, where being falls directly into kinds, namely, the categories. Because these highest genera do not result from differentiation of a single genus, no univocal sense of being covers them. Although being is, therefore, ambiguous in as many ways as there are categories, a thread connects them. The ontological priority accorded primary substance in the Categories is made part of the very definition of non-substantial entities Aristotle Aristotle 49   49 in the Metaphysics: to be an accident is by definition to be an accident of some substance. Thus, the different senses of being all refer to the primary kind of being, substance, in the way that exercise, diet, medicine, and climate are healthy by standing in some relation to the single thing health. The discovery of focal meaning, as this is sometimes called, introduces a new way of providing a subject matter with the internal unity required for science. Accordingly, the Metaphysics modifies the strict “one genus to one science” rule of the Posterior Analytics. A single science may also include objects whose definitions are different so long as these definitions are related focally to one thing. So focal meaning makes possible the science of being qua being. Focal meaning also makes substance the central object of investigation. The principles and causes of being in general can be illuminated by studying the principles and causes of the primary instance of being. Although the Categories distinguishes primary substances from other things that are and indicates their salient characteristics e.g., their ability to remain one and the same while taking contrary properties, it does not explain why it is that primary substances have such characteristics. The difficult central books of the Metaphysics  VII, VIII, and IX  investigate precisely this. In effect, they ask what, primarily, about the Categories’ primary substances explains their nature. Their target, in short, is the substance of the primary substances of the Categories. As concrete empirical particulars, the latter are compounds of form and matter the distinction is not explicit in the Categories and so their substance must be sought among these internal structural features. Thus, Metaphysics VII considers form, matter, and the compound of form and matter, and quickly turns to form as the best candidate. In developing a conception of form that can play the required explanatory role, the notion of essence to ti en einai assumes center stage. The essence of a man, e.g., is the cause of certain matter constituting a man, namely, the soul. So form in the sense of essence is the primary substance of the Metaphysics. This is obviously not the primary substance of the Categories and, although the same word eidos is used, neither is this form the species of the Categories. The latter is treated in the Metaphysics as a kind of universal compound abstracted from particular compounds and appears to be denied substantial status. While there is broad, though not universal, agreement that in the Metaphysics form is primary substance, there is equally broad disagreement over whether this is particular form, the form belonging to a single individual, or species form, the form common to all individuals in the species. There is also lively discussion concerning the relation of the Metaphysics doctrine of primary substance to the earlier doctrine of the Categories. Although a few scholars see an outright contradiction here, most take the divergence as evidence of the development of Aristotle’s views on substance. Finally, the role of the central books in the Metaphysics as a whole continues to be debated. Some see them as an entirely selfcontained analysis of form, others as preparatory to Book XII’s discussion of non-sensible form and the role of the unmoved mover as the final cause of motion. Practical philosophy. Two of Aristotle’s most heralded works, the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics, are treatises in practical philosophy. Their aim is effective action in matters of conduct. So they deal with what is up to us and can be otherwise because in this domain lie choice and action. The practical nature of ethics lies mainly in the development of a certain kind of agent. The Nicomachean Ethics was written, Aristotle reminds us, “not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good.” One becomes good by becoming a good chooser and doer. This is not simply a matter of choosing and doing right actions but of choosing or doing them in the right way. Aristotle assumes that, for the most part, agents know what ought to be done the evil or vicious person is an exception. The akratic or morally weak agent desires to do other than what he knows ought to be done and acts on this desire against his better judgment. The enkratic or morally strong person shares the akratic agent’s desire but acts in accordance with his better judgment. In neither kind of choice are desire and judgment in harmony. In the virtuous, on the other hand, desire and judgment agree. So their choices and actions will be free of the conflict and pain that inevitably accompany those of the akratic and enkratic agent. This is because the part of their soul that governs choice and action is so disposed that desire and right judgment coincide. Acquiring a stable disposition hexis of this sort amounts to acquiring moral virtue ethike arete. The disposition is concerned with choices as would be determined by the person of practical wisdom phronesis; these will be actions lying between extreme alternatives. They will lie in a mean  popularly called the “golden mean”  relative to the talents and stores of the agent. Choosing in this way is not easily done. It involves, for instance, feeling anger or extending Aristotle Aristotle 50   50 generosity at the right time, toward the right people, in the right way, and for the right reasons. Intellectual virtues, such as excellence at mathematics, can be acquired by teaching, but moral virtue cannot. I may know what ought to be done and even perform virtuous acts without being able to act virtuously. Nonetheless, because moral virtue is a disposition concerning choice, deliberate performance of virtuous acts can, ultimately, instill a disposition to choose them in harmony and with pleasure and, hence, to act virtuously. Aristotle rejected Plato’s transcendental Form of the Good as irrelevant to the affairs of persons and, in general, had little sympathy with the notion of an absolute good. The goal of choice and action is the human good, namely, living well. This, however, is not simply a matter of possessing the requisite practical disposition. Practical wisdom, which is necessary for living well, involves skill at calculating the best means to achieve one’s ends and this is an intellectual virtue. But the ends that are presupposed by deliberation are established by moral virtue. The end of all action, the good for man, is happiness eudaimonia. Most things, such as wealth, are valued only as a means to a worthy end. Honor, pleasure, reason, and individual virtues, such as courage and generosity, are deemed worthy in their own right but they can also be sought for the sake of eudaimonia. Eudaimonia alone can be sought only for its own sake. Eudaimonia is not a static state of the soul but a kind of activity energeia of the soul  something like human flourishing. The happy person’s life will be selfsufficient and complete in the highest measure. The good for man, then, is activity in accordance with virtue or the highest virtue, should there be one. Here ‘virtue’ means something like excellence and applies to much besides man. The excellence of an ax lies in its cutting, that of a horse in its equestrian qualities. In short, a thing’s excellence is a matter of how well it performs its characteristic functions or, we might say, how well it realizes its nature. The natural functions of persons reside in the exercise of their natural cognitive faculties, most importantly, the faculty of reason. So human happiness consists in activity in accordance with reason. However, persons can exercise reason in practical or in purely theoretical matters. The first suggests that happiness consists in the practical life of moral virtue, the second that it consists in the life of theoretical activity. Most of the Nicomachean Ethics is devoted to the moral virtues but the final book appears to favor theoretical activity theoria as the highest and most choiceworthy end. It is man’s closest approach to divine activity. Much recent scholarship is devoted to the relation between these two conceptions of the good, particularly, to whether they are of equal value and whether they exclude or include one another. Ethics and politics are closely connected. Aristotle conceives of the state as a natural entity arising among persons to serve a natural function. This is not merely, e.g., provision for the common defense or promotion of trade. Rather, the state of the Politics also has eudaimonia as its goal, namely, fostering the complete and selfsufficient lives of its citizens. Aristotle produced a complex taxonomy of constitutions but reduced them, in effect, to three kinds: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Which best serves the natural end of a state was, to some extent, a relative matter for Aristotle. Although he appears to have favored democracy, in some circumstances monarchy might be appropriate. The standard ordering of Aristotle’s works ends with the Rhetoric and the Poetics. The Rhetoric’s extensive discussion of oratory or the art of persuasion locates it between politics and literary theory. The relatively short Poetics is devoted chiefly to the analysis of tragedy. It has had an enormous historical influence on aesthetic theory in general as well as on the writing of drama.  Refs.: The obvious keyword is “Kant,” – especially in the Series III on the doctrines, in collaboration with Baker. There are essays on the Grundlegung, too. The keyword for “Kantotle,” and the keywords for ‘free,’ and ‘freedom,’ and ‘practical reason,’ and ‘autonomy, are also helpful. Some of this material in “Actions and events,” “The influence of Kant on Aristotle,” by H. P. Grice, John Locke Scholar (failed), etc., Oxford (Advisor: J. Dempsey). The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC. Grice’s composite for Kant and Aristotle -- Grice as an Aristotelian commentator – in “Aristotle on the multiplicity of being,” – Grice would comment on Aristotle profusely at Oxford. One of his favourite tutees was J. L. Ackrill – but he regretted that, of all things Ackrill could do, he decided “to translate Aristotle into the vernacular!” -- commentaries on Aristotle, the term commonly used for the Grecian commentaries on Aristotle that take up about 15,000 s in the Berlin Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca 29, still the basic edition of them. Only in the 0s did a project begin, under the editorship of Richard Sorabji, of King’s , London, to translate at least the most significant portions of them into English. They had remained the largest corpus of Grecian philosophy not tr. into any modern language. Most of these works, especially the later, Neoplatonic ones, are much more than simple commentaries on Aristotle. They are also a mode of doing philosophy, the favored one at this stage of intellectual history. They are therefore important not only for the understanding of Aristotle, but also for both the study of the pre-Socratics and the Hellenistic philosophers, particularly the Stoics, of whom they preserve many fragments, and lastly for the study of Neoplatonism itself  and, in the case of John Philoponus, for studying the innovations he introduces in the process of trying to reconcile Platonism with Christianity. The commentaries may be divided into three main groups. 1 The first group of commentaries are those by Peripatetic scholars of the second to fourth centuries A.D., most notably Alexander of Aphrodisias fl. c.200, but also the paraphraser Themistius fl. c.360. We must not omit, however, to note Alexander’s predecessor Aspasius, author of the earliest surviving commentary, one on the Nicomachean Ethics  a work not commented on again until the late Byzantine period. Commentaries by Alexander survive on the Prior Analytics, Topics, Metaphysics IV, On the Senses, and Meteorologics, and his now lost ones on the Categories, On the Soul, and Physics had enormous influence in later times, particularly on Simplicius. 2 By far the largest group is that of the Neoplatonists up to the sixth century A.D. Most important of the earlier commentators is Porphyry 232c.309, of whom only a short commentary on the Categories survives, together with an introduction Isagoge to Aristotle’s logical works, which provoked many commentaries itself, and proved most influential in both the East and through Boethius in the Latin West. The reconciling of Plato and Aristotle is largely his work. His big commentary on the Categories was of great importance in later times, and many fragments are preserved in that of Simplicius. His follower Iamblichus was also influential, but his commentaries are likewise lost. The Athenian School of Syrianus c.375437 and Proclus 41085 also commented on Aristotle, but all that survives is a commentary of Syrianus on Books III, IV, XIII, and XIV of the Metaphysics. It is the early sixth century, however, that produces the bulk of our surviving commentaries, originating from the Alexandrian school of Ammonius, son of Hermeias c.435520, but composed both in Alexandria, by the Christian John Philoponus c.490575, and in or at least from Athens by Simplicius writing after 532. Main commentaries of Philoponus are on Categories, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, On Generation and Corruption, On the Soul III, and Physics; of Simplicius on Categories, Physics, On the Heavens, and perhaps On the Soul. The tradition is carried on in Alexandria by Olympiodorus c.495565 and the Christians Elias fl. c.540 and David an Armenian, nicknamed the Invincible, fl. c.575, and finally by Stephanus, who was brought by the emperor to take the chair of philosophy in Constantinople in about 610. These scholars comment chiefly on the Categories and other introductory material, but Olympiodorus produced a commentary on the Meteorologics. Characteristic of the Neoplatonists is a desire to reconcile Aristotle with Platonism arguing, e.g., that Aristotle was not dismissing the Platonic theory of Forms, and to systematize his thought, thus reconciling him with himself. They are responding to a long tradition of criticism, during which difficulties were raised about incoherences and contradictions in Aristotle’s thought, and they are concerned to solve these, drawing on their comprehensive knowledge of his writings. Only Philoponus, as a Christian, dares to criticize him, in particular on the eternity of the world, but also on the concept of infinity on which he produces an ingenious argument, picked up, via the Arabs, by Bonaventure in the thirteenth century. The Categories proves a particularly fruitful battleground, and much of the later debate between realism and nominalism stems from arguments about the proper subject matter of that work. The format of these commentaries is mostly that adopted by scholars ever since, that of taking command theory of law commentaries on Aristotle 159   159 one passage, or lemma, after another of the source work and discussing it from every angle, but there are variations. Sometimes the general subject matter is discussed first, and then details of the text are examined; alternatively, the lemma is taken in subdivisions without any such distinction. The commentary can also proceed explicitly by answering problems, or aporiai, which have been raised by previous authorities. Some commentaries, such as the short one of Porphyry on the Categories, and that of Iamblichus’s pupil Dexippus on the same work, have a “catechetical” form, proceeding by question and answer. In some cases as with Vitters in modern times the commentaries are simply transcriptions by pupils of the lectures of a teacher. This is the case, for example, with the surviving “commentaries” of Ammonius. One may also indulge in simple paraphrase, as does Themistius on Posterior Analysis, Physics, On the Soul, and On the Heavens, but even here a good deal of interpretation is involved, and his works remain interesting. An important offshoot of all this activity in the Latin West is the figure of Boethius c.480524. It is he who first transmitted a knowledge of Aristotelian logic to the West, to become an integral part of medieval Scholasticism. He tr. Porphyry’s Isagoge, and the whole of Aristotle’s logical works. He wrote a double commentary on the Isagoge, and commentaries on the Categories and On Interpretation. He is dependent ultimately on Porphyry, but more immediately, it would seem, on a source in the school of Proclus. 3 The third major group of commentaries dates from the late Byzantine period, and seems mainly to emanate from a circle of scholars grouped around the princess Anna Comnena in the twelfth century. The most important figures here are Eustratius c.10501120 and Michael of Ephesus originally dated c.1040, but now fixed at c.1130. Michael in particular seems concerned to comment on areas of Aristotle’s works that had hitherto escaped commentary. He therefore comments widely, for example, on the biological works, but also on the Sophistical Refutations. He and Eustratius, and perhaps others, seem to have cooperated also on a composite commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, neglected since Aspasius. There is also evidence of lost commentaries on the Politics and the Rhetoric. The composite commentary on the Ethics was tr. into Latin in the next century, in England, by Robert Grosseteste, but earlier than this translations of the various logical commentaries had been made by James of Venice fl. c.1130, who may have even made the acquaintance of Michael of Ephesus in Constantinople. Later in that century other commentaries were being tr. from Arabic versions by Gerard of Cremona d.1187. The influence of the Grecian commentary tradition in the West thus resumed after the long break since Boethius in the sixth century, but only now, it seems fair to say, is the full significance of this enormous body of work becoming properly appreciated. 

aristotelian society: London – founded, as it should, in London, by an amateur -- Grice and the Aristotelian Society – his “Causal Theory of perception” was an invited contribution, a ‘popularisation’ for this Society, which was founded in London back in the day. The Aristotelian Society’s first president was S. H. Hodgson, of Christ Church, Oxford. He was succeeded by Bernard Bosanquet.

arnauld: See Port-Royal “Have you ever been to Port Royale? I haven’t!” – Grice. Grice enjoyed the “Logique de Port-Royal.” Antoine: philosopher, perhaps the most important and best-known intellectual associated with the Jansenist community at Port-Royal, as well as a staunch and orthodox champion of Cartesian philosophy. His theological writings defend the Augustinian doctrine of efficacious grace, according to which salvation is not earned by one’s own acts, but granted by the irresistible grace of God. He also argues in favor of a strict contritionism, whereby one’s absolution must be based on a true, heartfelt repentance, a love of God, rather than a selfish fear of God’s punishment. These views brought him and Port-Royal to the center of religious controversy in seventeenth-century France, as Jansenism came to be perceived as a subversive extension of Protestant reform. Arnauld was also constantly engaged in philosophical disputation, and was regarded as one of the sharpest and most philosophically acute thinkers of his time. His influence on several major philosophers of the period resulted mainly from his penetrating criticism of their systems. In 1641, Arnauld was asked to comment on Descartes’s Meditations. The objections he sent  regarding, among other topics, the representational nature of ideas, the circularity of Descartes’s proofs for the existence of God, and the apparent irreconcilability of Descartes’s conception of material substance with the Catholic doctrine of Eucharistic transubstantiation  were considered by Descartes to be the most intelligent and serious of all. Arnauld offered his objections in a constructive spirit, and soon became an enthusiastic defender of Descartes’s philosophy, regarding it as beneficial both to the advancement of human learning and to Christian piety. He insists, for example, that the immortality of the soul is well grounded in Cartesian mind body dualism. In 1662, Arnauld composed with Pierre Nicole the Port-Royal Logic, an influential treatise on language and reasoning. After several decades of theological polemic, during which he fled France to the Netherlands, Arnauld resumed his public philosophical activities with the publication in 1683 of On True and False Ideas and in 1685 of Philosophical and Theological Reflections on the New System of Nature and Grace. These two works, opening salvos in what would become a long debate, constitute a detailed attack on Malebranche’s theology and its philosophical foundations. In the first, mainly philosophical treatise, Arnauld insists that ideas, or the mental representations that mediate human knowledge, are nothing but acts of the mind that put us in direct cognitive and perceptual contact with things in the world. Malebranche, as Arnauld reads him, argues that ideas are immaterial but nonmental objects in God’s understanding that we know and perceive instead of physical things. Thus, the debate is often characterized as between Arnauld’s direct realism and Malebranche’s representative theory. Such mental acts also have representational content, or what Arnauld following Descartes calls “objective reality.” This content explains the act’s intentionality, or directedness toward an object. Arnauld would later argue with Pierre Bayle, who came to Malebranche’s defense, over whether all mental phenomena have intentionality, as Arnauld believes, or, as Bayle asserts, certain events in the soul e.g., pleasures and pains are non-intentional. This initial critique of Malebranche’s epistemology and philosophy of mind, however, was intended by Arnauld only as a prolegomenon to the more important attack on his theology; in particular, on Malebranche’s claim that God always acts by general volitions and never by particular volitions. This view, Arnauld argues, undermines the true Catholic system of divine providence and threatens the efficacy of God’s will by removing God from direct governance of the world. In 1686, Arnauld also entered into discussions with Leibniz regarding the latter’s Discourse on Metaphysics. In the ensuing correspondence, Arnauld focuses his critique on Leibniz’s concept of substance and on his causal theory, the preestablished harmony. In this exchange, like the one with Malebranche, Arnauld is concerned to preserve what he takes to be the proper way to conceive of God’s freedom and providence; although his remarks on substance in which he objects to Leibniz’s reintroduction of “substantial forms” is also clearly motivated by his commitment to a strict Cartesian ontology  bodies are nothing more than extension, devoid of any spiritual element. Most of his philosophical activity in the latter half of the century, in fact, is a vigorous defense of Cartesianism, particularly on theological grounds e.g., demonstrating the consistency between Cartesian metaphysics and the Catholic dogma of real presence in the Eucharist, as it became the object of condemnation in both Catholic and Protestant circles.

atomism: vide – in-dividuum, i. e. indivisible.  the theory, originated by Leucippus and elaborated by Democritus, that the ultimate realities are atoms and the void. The theory was later used by Epicurus as the foundation for a philosophy stressing ethical concerns, Epicureanism. 

arouet -- voltaire: pen name of François-Marie Arouet -- philosopher and writer who won early fame as a playwright and poet and later was an influential popularizer of Newtonian natural philosophy. His enduring reputation rests on his acerbically witty essays on religious and moral topics especially the Philosophical Letters, and the Dictionaire Philosophique, his brilliant stories, and his passionate polemics against the injustices of the ancien régime. In Whitehead’s phrase, he was more “a philosophe than a philosopher” in the current specialized disciplinary sense. He borrowed most of his views on metaphysics and epistemology from Locke, whose work, along with Newton’s, he came to know and extravagantly admire during his stay 172628 in England. His is best placed in the line of great  literary moralists that includes Montaigne, Pascal, Diderot, and Camus. Voltaire’s position is skeptical, empirical, and humanistic. His skepticism is not of the radical sort that concerned Descartes. But he denies that we can find adequate support for the grand metaphysical claims of systematic philosophers, such as Leibniz, or for the dogmatic theology of institutional religions. Voltaire’s empiricism urges us to be content with the limited and fallible knowledge of our everyday experience and its development through the methods of empirical science. His humanism makes a plea, based on his empiricist skepticism, for religious and social tolerance: none of us can know enough to be justified in persecuting those who disagree with us on fundamental philosophical and theological matters. Voltaire’s positive view is that our human condition, for all its flaws and perils, is meaningful and livable strictly in its own terms, quite apart from any connection to the threats and promises of dubious transcendental realms. Voltaire’s position is well illustrated by his views on religion. Although complex doctrines about the Trinity or the Incarnation strike him as gratuitous nonsense, he nonetheless is firmly convinced of the reality of a good God who enjoins us through our moral sense to love one another as brothers and sisters. Indeed, it is precisely this moral sense that he finds outraged by the intolerance of institutional Christianity. His deepest religious thinking concerns the problem of evil, which he treated in his “Poem of the Lisbon Earthquake” and the classic tales Zadig 1747 and Candide 1759. He rejects the Panglossian view held by Candide’s Dr. Pangloss, a caricature of Leibniz that we can see the hand of providence in our daily life but is prepared to acknowledge that an all-good God does not as an extreme deism would hold let his universe just blindly run. Whatever metaphysical truth there may be in the thought that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds,” Voltaire insists that this idea is ludicrous as a practical response to evil and recommends instead concrete action to solve specific local problems: “We must cultivate our garden.” Voltaire was and remains an immensely controversial figure. Will Durant regarded him as “the greatest man who ever lived,” while Joseph de Maistre maintained that “admiration for Voltaire is an infallible sign of a corrupt soul.” Perhaps it is enough to say that he wrote with unequaled charm and wit and stood for values that are essential to, if perhaps not the very core of, our humanity. Grice: “I love his “Philosophical Dictionary,” – it’s in alphabetical order, too!” --.

arrow’s paradox – discussed by Grice in “Conversational reason.” Also called Arrow’s impossibility theorem, a major result in social choice theory, named for its discoverer, economist Kenneth Arrow. It is intuitive to suppose that the preferences of individuals in a society can be expressed formally, and then aggregated into an expression of social preferences, a social choice function. Arrow’s paradox is that individual preferences having certain well-behaved formalizations demonstrably cannot be aggregated into a similarly well-behaved social choice function satisfying four plausible formal conditions: 1 collective rationality  any set of individual orderings and alternatives must yield a social ordering; 2 Pareto optimality  if all individuals prefer one ordering to another, the social ordering must also agree; 3 non-dictatorship  the social ordering must not be identical to a particular individual’s ordering; and 4 independence of irrelevant alternatives  the social ordering depends on no properties of the individual orderings other than the orders themselves, and for a given set of alternatives it depends only on the orderings of those particular alternatives. Most attempts to resolve the paradox have focused on aspects of 1 and 4. Some argue that preferences can be rational even if they are intransitive. Others argue that cardinal orderings, and hence, interpersonal comparisons of preference intensity, are relevant. 

ascriptum: Grice: Etymologically, ‘ad-scriptum’ -- ascriptivism, the theory that to call an action voluntary is not to describe it as caused in a certain way by the agent who did it, but to express a commitment to hold the agent responsible for the action. Ascriptivism is thus a kind of noncognitivism as applied to judgments about the voluntariness of acts. Introduced by Hart in “Ascription of Rights and Responsibilities,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 9, ascriptivism was given its name and attacked in Geach’s “Ascriptivism,” Philosophical Review 0. Hart recanted in the Preface to his Punishment and Responsibility.

associatum – Grice: “Etymologically, ad-sociatum” -- associationism: discussed by Grice as an example of a propositional complexum -- the psychological doctrine that association is the sole or primary basis of learning as well as of intelligent thought and behavior. Association occurs when one type of thought, idea, or behavior follows, or is contingent upon, another thought, idea, or behavior or external event, and the second somehow bonds with the first. If the idea of eggs is paired with the idea of ham, then the two ideas may become associated. Associationists argue that complex states of mind and mental processes can be analyzed into associated elements. The complex may be novel, but the elements are products of past associations. Associationism often is combined with hedonism. Hedonism explains why events associate or bond: bonds are forged by pleasant experiences. If the pleasantness of eating eggs is combined with the pleasantness of eating ham, then ideas of ham and eggs associate. Bonding may also be explained by various non-hedonistic principles of association, as in Hume’s theory of the association of ideas. One of these principles is contiguity in place or time. Associationism contributes to the componential analysis of intelligent, rational activity into non-intelligent, non-rational, mechanical processes. People believe as they do, not because of rational connections among beliefs, but because beliefs associatively bond. Thus one may think of London when thinking of England, not because one possesses an inner logic of geographic beliefs from which one infers that London is in England. The two thoughts may co-occur because of contiguity or other principles. Kinds of associationism occur in behaviorist models of classical and operant conditioning. Certain associationist ideas, if not associationism itself, appear in connectionist models of cognition, especially the principle that contiguities breed bonding. Several philosophers and psychologists, including Hume, Hartley, and J. S. Mill among philosophers and E. L. Thorndike 18749 and B. F. Skinner 490 among psychologists, are associationists. 

athenian dialectic – Grice: “I should perhaps, echoing Sanzio, speak of the ‘Athenian school,’ which properly in proper Grecian, meant ‘otium’!” -- Socrates, Grecian philosopher, the exemplar of the examined life, best known for his dictum that only such a life is worth living. Although he wrote nothing, his thoughts and way of life had a profound impact on many of his contemporaries, and, through Plato’s portrayal of him in his early writings, he became a major source of inspiration and ideas for later generations of philosophers. His daily occupation was adversarial public conversation with anyone willing to argue with him. A man of great intellectual brilliance, moral integrity, personal magnetism, and physical self-command, he challenged the moral complacency of his fellow citizens, and embarrassed them with their inability to answer such questions as What is virtue?  questions that he thought we must answer, if we are to know how best to live our lives. His ideas and personality won him a devoted following among the young, but he was far from universally admired. Formal charges were made against him for refusing to recognize the gods of the city, introducing other new divinities, and corrupting the youth. Tried on a single day before a large jury 500 was a typical size, he was found guilty by a small margin: had thirty jurors voted differently, he would have been acquitted. The punishment selected by the jury was death and was administered by means of poison, probably hemlock. Why was he brought to trial and convicted? Part of the answer lies in Plato’s Apology, which purports to be the defense Socrates gave at his trial. Here he says that he has for many years been falsely portrayed as someone whose scientific theories dethrone the traditional gods and put natural forces in their place, and as someone who charges a fee for offering private instruction on how to make a weak argument seem strong in the courtroom. This is the picture of Socrates drawn in a play of Aristophanes, the Clouds, first presented in 423. It is unlikely that Aristophanes intended his play as an accurate depiction of Socrates, and the unscrupulous buffoon found in the Clouds would never have won the devotion of so serious a moralist as Plato. Aristophanes drew together the assorted characteristics of various fifth-century thinkers and named this amalgam “Socrates” because the real Socrates was one of several controversial intellectuals of the period. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that the charges against Socrates or Aristophanes’ caricature were entirely without foundation. Both Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Plato’s Euthyphro say that Socrates aroused suspicion because he thought a certain divine sign or voice appeared to him and gave him useful instruction about how to act. By claiming a unique and private source of divine inspiration, Socrates may have been thought to challenge the city’s exclusive control over religious matters. His willingness to disobey the city is admitted in Plato’s Apology, where he says that he would have to disobey a hypothetical order to stop asking his philosophical questions, since he regards them as serving a religious purpose. In the Euthyphro he seeks a rational basis for making sacrifices and performing other services to the gods; but he finds none, and implies that no one else has one. Such a challenge to traditional religious practice could easily have aroused a suspicion of atheism and lent credibility to the formal charges against him. Furthermore, Socrates makes statements in Plato’s early dialogues and in Xenophon’s Memorabilia that could easily have offended the political sensibilities of his contemporaries. He holds that only those who have given special study to political matters should make decisions. For politics is a kind of craft, and in all other crafts only those who have shown their mastery are entrusted with public responsibilities. Athens was a democracy in which each citizen had an equal legal right to shape policy, and Socrates’ analogy between the role of an expert in politics and in other crafts may have been seen as a threat to this egalitarianism. Doubts about his political allegiance, though not mentioned in the formal charges against him, could easily have swayed some jurors to vote against him. Socrates is the subject not only of Plato’s early dialogues but also of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Socinus, Faustus Socrates 859   859 and in many respects their portraits are consistent with each other. But there are also some important differences. In the Memorabilia, Socrates teaches whatever a gentleman needs to know for civic purposes. He is filled with platitudinous advice, and is never perplexed by the questions he raises; e.g., he knows what the virtues are, equating them with obedience to the law. His views are not threatening or controversial, and always receive the assent of his interlocutors. By contrast, Plato’s Socrates presents himself as a perplexed inquirer who knows only that he knows nothing about moral matters. His interlocutors are sometimes annoyed by his questions and threatened by their inability to answer them. And he is sometimes led by force of argument to controversial conclusions. Such a Socrates could easily have made enemies, whereas Xenophon’s Socrates is sometimes too “good” to be true. But it is important to bear in mind that it is only the early works of Plato that should be read as an accurate depiction of the historical Socrates. Plato’s own theories, as presented in his middle and late dialogues, enter into philosophical terrain that had not been explored by the historical Socrates  even though in the middle and some of the late dialogues a figure called Socrates remains the principal speaker. We are told by Aristotle that Socrates confined himself to ethical questions, and that he did not postulate a separate realm of imperceptible and eternal abstract objects called “Forms” or “Ideas.” Although the figure called Socrates affirms the existence of these objects in such Platonic dialogues as the Phaedo and the Republic, Aristotle takes this interlocutor to be a vehicle for Platonic philosophy, and attributes to Socrates only those positions that we find in Plato’s earlier writing, e.g. in the Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Hippias Minor, Hippias Major, Ion, Laches, Lysis, and Protagoras. Socrates focused on moral philosophy almost exclusively; Plato’s attention was also devoted to the study of metaphysics, epistemology, physical theory, mathematics, language, and political philosophy. When we distinguish the philosophies of Socrates and Plato in this way, we find continuities in their thought  for instance, the questions posed in the early dialogues receive answers in the Republic  but there are important differences. For Socrates, being virtuous is a purely intellectual matter: it simply involves knowing what is good for human beings; once we master this subject, we will act as we should. Because he equates virtue with knowledge, Socrates frequently draws analogies between being virtuous and having mastered any ordinary subject  cooking, building, or geometry, e.g. For mastery of these subjects does not involve a training of the emotions. By contrast, Plato affirms the existence of powerful emotional drives that can deflect us from our own good, if they are not disciplined by reason. He denies Socrates’ assumption that the emotions will not resist reason, once one comes to understand where one’s own good lies. Socrates says in Plato’s Apology that the only knowledge he has is that he knows nothing, but it would be a mistake to infer that he has no convictions about moral matters  convictions arrived at through a difficult process of reasoning. He holds that the unexamined life is not worth living, that it is better to be treated unjustly than to do injustice, that understanding of moral matters is the only unconditional good, that the virtues are all forms of knowledge and cannot be separated from each other, that death is not an evil, that a good person cannot be harmed, that the gods possess the wisdom human beings lack and never act immorally, and so on. He does not accept these propositions as articles of faith, but is prepared to defend any of them; for he can show his interlocutors that their beliefs ought to lead them to accept these conclusions, paradoxical though they may be. Since Socrates can defend his beliefs and has subjected them to intellectual scrutiny, why does he present himself as someone who has no knowledge  excepting the knowledge of his own ignorance? The answer lies in his assumption that it is only a fully accomplished expert in any field who can claim knowledge or wisdom of that field; someone has knowledge of navigational matters, e.g., only if he has mastered the art of sailing, can answer all inquiries about this subject, and can train others to do the same. Judged by this high epistemic standard, Socrates can hardly claim to be a moral expert, for he lacks answers to the questions he raises, and cannot teach others to be virtuous. Though he has examined his moral beliefs and can offer reasons for them  an accomplishment that gives him an overbearing sense of superiority to his contemporaries  he takes himself to be quite distant from the ideal of moral perfection, which would involve a thorough understanding of all moral matters. This keen sense of the moral and intellectual deficiency of all human beings accounts for a great deal of Socrates’ appeal, just as his arrogant disdain for his fellow citizens no doubt contributed to his demise. Socrates Socrates 860   860  -- Socratic intellectualism, the claim that moral goodness or virtue consists exclusively in a kind of knowledge, with the implication that if one knows what is good and evil, one cannot fail to be a good person and to act in a morally upright way. The claim and the term derive from Socrates; a corollary is another claim of Socrates: there is no moral weakness or akrasia  all wrong action is due to the agent’s ignorance. Socrates defends this view in Plato’s dialogue Protagoras. There are two ways to understand Socrates’ view that knowledge of the good is sufficient for right action. 1 All desires are rational, being focused on what is believed to be good; thus, an agent who knows what is good will have no desire to act contrary to that knowledge. 2 There are non-rational desires, but knowledge of the good has sufficient motivational power to overcome them. Socratic intellectualism was abandoned by Plato and Aristotle, both of whom held that emotional makeup is an essential part of moral character. However, they retained the Socratic idea that there is a kind of knowledge or wisdom that ensures right action  but this knowledge presupposes antecedent training and molding of the passions. Socratic intellectualism was later revived and enjoyed a long life as a key doctrine of the Stoics.  -- Socratic irony, a form of indirect communication frequently employed by Socrates in Plato’s early dialogues, chiefly to praise insincerely the abilities of his interlocutors while revealing their ignorance; or, to disparage his own abilities, e.g. by denying that he has knowledge. Interpreters disagree whether Socrates’ self-disparagement is insincere.  -- Socratic paradoxes, a collection of theses associated with Socrates that contradict opinions about moral or practical matters shared by most people. Although there is no consensus on the precise number of Socratic paradoxes, each of the following theses has been identified as one. 1 Because no one desires evil things, anyone who pursues evil things does so involuntarily. 2 Because virtue is knowledge, anyone who does something morally wrong does so involuntarily. 3 It is better to be unjustly treated than to do what is unjust. The first two theses are associated with weakness of will or akrasia. It is sometimes claimed that the topic of the first thesis is prudential weakness, whereas that of the second is moral weakness; the reference to “evil things” in 1 is not limited to things that are morally evil. Naturally, various competing interpretations of these theses have been offered. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Oxonian dialectic; or, Athenian dialetic, revisited.” Speranza, “Iconografia della scuola di atene.”

attenuatum – Grice: “Etymologically, “ad-tenuatum” -- attenuated cases of communication -- Borderline – case -- degenerate case, an expression used more or less loosely to indicate an individual or class that falls outside of a given background class to which it is otherwise very closely related, often in virtue of an ordering of a more comprehensive class. A degenerate case of one class is often a limiting case of a more comprehensive class. Rest zero velocity is a degenerate case of motion positive velocity while being a limiting case of velocity. The circle is a degenerate case of an equilateral and equiangular polygon. In technical or scientific contexts, the conventional term for the background class is often “stretched” to cover otherwise degenerate cases. A figure composed of two intersecting lines is a degenerate case of hyperbola in the sense of synthetic geometry, but it is a limiting case of hyperbola in the sense of analytic geometry. The null set is a degenerate case of set in an older sense but a limiting case of set in a modern sense. A line segment is a degenerate case of rectangle when rectangles are ordered by ratio of length to width, but it is not a limiting case under these conditions. 

attributum: Grice: “Etymologially, “ad-tributum” -- attribution theory, a theory in social psychology concerned with how and why ordinary people explain events. People explain by attributing causal powers to certain events rather than others. The theory attempts to describe and clarify everyday commonsense explanation, to identify criteria of explanatory success presupposed by common sense, and to compare and contrast commonsense explanation with scientific explanation. The heart of attribution theory is the thesis that people tend to attribute causal power to factors personally important to them, which they believe covary with alleged effects. For example, a woman may designate sexual discrimination as the cause of her not being promoted in a corporation. Being female is important to her and she believes that promotion and failure covary with gender. Males get promoted; females don’t. Causal attributions tend to preserve self-esteem, reduce cognitive dissonance, and diminish the attributor’s personal responsibility for misdeeds. When attributional styles or habits contribute to emotional ill-being, e.g. to chronic, inappropriate feelings of depression or guilt, attribution theory offers the following therapeutic recommendation: change attributions so as to reduce emotional ill-being and increase well-being. Hence if the woman blames herself for the failure, and if self-blame is part of her depressive attributional style, she would be encouraged to look outside herself, perhaps to sexual discrimination, for the explanation.

augustinus -- ugustinian semiotics -- Augustine, Saint, known as Augustine of Hippo 354430, Christian philosopher and church father, one of the chief sources of Christian thought in the West; his importance for medieval and modern European philosophy is impossible to describe briefly or ever to circumscribe. Matters are made more difficult because Augustine wrote voluminously and dialectically as a Christian theologian, treating philosophical topics for the most part only as they were helpful to theology  or as corrected by it. Augustine fashioned the narrative of the Confessions 397400 out of the events of the first half of his life. He thus supplied later biographers with both a seductive selection of biographical detail and a compelling story of his successive conversions from adolescent sensuality, to the image-laden religion of the Manichaeans, to a version of Neoplatonism, and then to Christianity. The story is an unexcelled introduction to Augustine’s views of philosophy. It shows, for instance, that Augustine received very little formal education in philosophy. He was trained as a rhetorician, and the only philosophical work that he mentions among his early reading is Cicero’s lost Hortensius, an exercise in persuasion to the study of philosophy. Again, the narrative makes plain that Augustine finally rejected Manichaeanism because he came to see it as bad philosophy: a set of sophistical fantasies without rational coherence or explanatory force. More importantly, Augustine’s final conversion to Christianity was prepared by his reading in “certain books of the Platonists” Confessions 7.9.13. These Latin translations, which seem to have been anthologies or manuals of philosophic teaching, taught Augustine a form of Neoplatonism that enabled him to conceive of a cosmic hierarchy descending from an immaterial, eternal, and intelligible God. On Augustine’s judgment, philosophy could do no more than that; it could not give him the power to order his own life so as to live happily and in a stable relation with the now-discovered God. Yet in his first years as a Christian, Augustine took time to write a number of works in philosophical genres. Best known among them are a refutation of Academic Skepticism Contra academicos, 386, a theodicy De ordine, 386, and a dialogue on the place of human choice within the providentially ordered hierarchy created by God De libero arbitrio, 388/39. Within the decade of his conversion, Augustine was drafted into the priesthood 391 and then consecrated bishop 395. The thirty-five years of his life after that consecration were consumed by labors on behalf of the church in northern Africa and through the Latin-speaking portions of the increasingly fragmented empire. Most of Augustine’s episcopal writing was polemical both in origin and in form; he composed against authors or movements he judged heretical, especially the Donatists and Pelagians. But Augustine’s sense of his authorship also led him to write works of fundamental theology conceived on a grand scale. The most famous of these works, beyond the Confessions, are On the Trinity 399412, 420, On Genesis according to the Letter 40115, and On the City of God 41326. On the Trinity elaborates in subtle detail the distinguishable “traces” of Father, Son, and Spirit in the created world and particularly in the human soul’s triad of memory, intellect, and will. The commentary on Genesis 13, which is meant to be much more than a “literal” commentary in the modern sense, treats many topics in philosophical psychology and anthropology. It also teaches such cosmological doctrines as the “seed-reasons” rationes seminales by which creatures are given intelligible form. The City of God begins with a critique of the bankruptcy of pagan civic religion and its attendant philosophies, but it ends with the depiction of human history as a combat between forces of self-love, conceived as a diabolic city of earth, and the graced love of God, which founds that heavenly city within which alone peace is possible. attributive pluralism Augustine 60   60 A number of other, discrete doctrines have been attached to Augustine, usually without the dialectical nuances he would have considered indispensable. One such doctrine concerns divine “illumination” of the human intellect, i.e., some active intervention by God in ordinary processes of human understanding. Another doctrine typically attributed to Augustine is the inability of the human will to do morally good actions without grace. A more authentically Augustinian teaching is that introspection or inwardness is the way of discovering the created hierarchies by which to ascend to God. Another authentic teaching would be that time, which is a distension of the divine “now,” serves as the medium or narrative structure for the creation’s return to God. But no list of doctrines or positions, however authentic or inauthentic, can serve as a faithful representation of Augustine’s thought, which gives itself only through the carefully wrought rhetorical forms of his texts. 

Austin -- , the other uastin. austinian: J.: discussed by Grice in his explorations on moral versus legal right. English legal philosopher known especially for his command theory of law. His career as a lawyer was unsuccessful but his reputation as a scholar was such that on the founding of  , London, he was offered the chair of jurisprudence. In 1832 he published the first ten of his lectures, compressed into six as The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. Although he published a few papers, and his somewhat fragmentary Lectures on Jurisprudence 1863 was published posthumously, it is on the Province that his reputation rests. He and Bentham his friend, London neighbor, and fellow utilitarian were the foremost English legal philosophers of their time, and their influence on the course of legal philosophy endures. Austin held that the first task of legal philosophy, one to which he bends most of his energy, is to make clear what laws are, and if possible to explain why they are what they are: their rationale. Until those matters are clear, legislative proposals and legal arguments can never be clear, since irrelevant considerations will inevitably creep in. The proper place for moral or theological considerations is in discussion of what the positive law ought to be, not of what it is. Theological considerations reduce to moral ones, since God can be assumed to be a good utilitarian. It is positive laws, “that is to say the laws which are simply and strictly so called, . . . which form the appropriate matter of general and particular jurisprudence.” They must also be distinguished from “laws metaphorical or figurative.” A law in its most general senseis “a rule laid down for the guidance of an intelligent being by an intelligent being having power over him.” It is a command, however phrased. It is the commands of men to men, of political superiors, that form the body of positive law. General or comparative jurisprudence, the source of the rationale, if any, of particular laws, is possible because there are commands nearly universal that may be attributed to God or Nature, but they become positive law only when laid down by a ruler. The general model of an Austinian analytic jurisprudence built upon a framework of definitions has been widely followed, but cogent objections, especially by Hart, have undermined the command theory of law. 

austin:  Grice: “Never to be confused with David Austin, of rosarian infame!” -- Grice referred to him as “Austin the younger,” in opposition to “Austin the elder” – (Austin never enjoyed the joke). j. l. H. P. Grice, “The Austinian Code.” English philosopher, a leading exponent of postwar “linguistic” philosophy. Educated primarily as a classicist at Shrewsbury and Balliol , Oxford, he taught philosophy at Magdalen . During World War II he served at a high level in military intelligence, which earned him the O.B.E., Croix de Guerre, and Legion of Merit. In 2 he became White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, and in 5 and 8 he held visiting appointments at Harvard and Berkeley, respectively. In his relatively brief career, Austin published only a few invited papers; his influence was exerted mainly through discussion with his colleagues, whom he dominated more by critical intelligence than by any preconceived view of what philosophy should be. Unlike some others, Austin did not believe that philosophical problems all arise out of aberrations from “ordinary language,” nor did he necessarily find solutions there; he dwelt, rather, on the authority of the vernacular as a source of nice and pregnant distinctions, and held that it deserves much closer attention than it commonly receives from philosophers. It is useless, he thought, to pontificate at large about knowledge, reality, or existence, for example, without first examining in detail how, and when, the words ‘know’, ‘real’, and ‘exist’ are employed in daily life. In Sense and Sensibilia 2; compiled from lecture notes, the sense-datum theory comes under withering fire for its failings in this respect. Austin also provoked controversy with his well-known distinction between “performative” and “constative” utterances ‘I promise’ makes a promise, whereas ‘he promised’ merely reports one; he later recast this as a threefold differentiation of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary “forces” in utterance, corresponding roughly to the meaning, intention, and consequences of saying a thing, in one context or another. Though never very stable or fully worked out, these ideas have since found a place in the still-evolving study of speech acts.  austinian code, The: The jocular way by Grice to refer to ‘The Master,’ whom he saw wobble on more than one occasion. Grice has mixed feelings (“or fixed meelings, if you prefer”) about Austin. Unlike Austin, Grice is a Midlands scholarship boy, and ends up in Corpus. One outcome of this, as he later reminisced is that Austin never cared to invite him to the Thursday-evenings at All Souls – “which was alright, I suppose, in that the number was appropriately restricted to seven.” But Grice confessed that he thought it was because “he had been born on the wrong side of the tracks.” After the war, Grice would join what Grice, in fun, called “the Playgroup,” which was anything BUT. Austin played the School Master, and let the kindergarten relax in the sun! One reason Grice avoided publication was the idea that Austin would criticise him. Austin never cared to recognise Grice’s “Personal Identity,” or less so, “Meaning.” He never mentioned his “Metaphysics” third programme lecture – but Austin never made it to the programme. Grice socialized very well with who will be Austin’s custodians, in alphabetical order, Urmson and Warnock – “two charmers.” Unlike Austin, Urmson and Warnock were the type of person Austin would philosophise with – and he would spend hours talking about visa with Warnock. Upon Austin’s demise, Grice kept with the ‘play group’, which really became one! Grice makes immense references to Austin. Austin fits Grice to a T, because of the ‘mistakes’ he engages in. So, it is fair to say that Grice’s motivation for the coinage of implicaturum was Austin (“He would too often ignore the distinction between what a ‘communicator’ communicates and what his expression, if anything, does.”). So Grice attempts an intention-based account of the communicator’s message. Within this message, there is ONE aspect that can usually be regarded as being of ‘philosophical interest.’ The ‘unnecessary implicaturum’ is bound to be taken Austin as part of the ‘philosophical interesting’ bit when it isn’t. So Grice is criticizing Austin for providing the wrong analysis for the wrong analysandum. Grice refers specifically to the essays in “Philosophical Papers,” notably “Other Minds” and “A Plea for Excuses.” But he makes a passing reference to “Sense and Sensibilia,” whose tone Grice dislikes, and makes a borrowing or two from the ‘illocution,’ never calling it by that name. At most, Grice would adapt Austin’s use of ‘act.’ But his rephrase is ‘conversational move.’ So Grice would say that by making a conversational ‘move,’ the conversationalist may be communicating TWO things. He spent some type finding a way to conceptualise this. He later came with the metaphor of the FIRST-FLOOR act, the MEZZANINE act, and the SECOND-FLOOR act. This applies to Fregeianisms like ‘aber,’ but it may well apply to Austinian-code type of utterances.  austinianism: Grice felt sorry for Nowell-Smith, whom he calls the ‘straight-man’ for the comedy double act with Austin at the Play Groups. “I would say ‘on principle’” – “I would say, ‘no, thanks.” “I don’t understand Donne.” “It’s perfectly clear to me.” By using Nowell-Sith, Grice is implicating that Austin had little manners in the ‘play group,’ “And I wasn’t surprised when Nowell-Smith left Oxford for good, almost.” Not quite, of course. After some time in the extremely fashionable Canterbury, Nowell-Smith returns to Oxford. Vide: nowell-smithianism. -- speech act theory, the theory of language use, sometimes called pragmatics, as opposed to the theory of meaning, or semantics. Based on the meaninguse distinction, it categorizes systematically the sorts of things that can be done with words and explicates the ways these are determined, underdetermined, or undetermined by the meanings of the words used. Relying further on the distinction between speaker meaning and linguistic meaning, it aims to characterize the nature of communicative intentions and how they are expressed and recognized. Speech acts are a species of intentional action. In general, one and the same utterance may comprise a number of distinct though related acts, each corresponding to a different intention on the part of the speaker. Beyond intending to produce a certain sequence of sounds forming a sentence in English, a person who utters the sentence ‘The door is open’, e.g., is likely to be intending to perform, in the terminology of J. L. Austin How to Do Things with Words, 2, 1 the locutionary act of saying expressing the proposition that a certain door is open, 2 the illocutionary act of making the statement expressing the belief that it is open, and 3 the perlocutionary act of getting his listener to believe that it is open. In so doing, he may be performing the indirect speech act of requesting illocutionary the listener to close the door and of getting perlocutionary the hearer to close the door. The primary focus of speech act theory is on illocutionary acts, which may be classified in a variety of ways. Statements, predictions, and answers exemplify constatives; requests, commands and permissions are directives; promises, offers, and bets are commissives; greetings, apologies, and congratulations are acknowledgments. These are all communicative illocutionary acts, each distinguished by the type of psychological state expressed by the speaker. Successful communication consists in the audience’s recognition of the speaker’s intention to be expressing a certain psychological state with a certain content. Conventional illocutionary acts, on the other hand, effect or officially affect institutional states of affairs. Examples of the former are appointing, resigning, sentencing, and adjourning; examples of the latter are assessing, acquitting, certifying, and grading. See Kent Bach and Robert M. Harnish, Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts, 9. The type of act an utterance exemplifies determines its illocutionary force. In the example ‘The door is open’, the utterance has the force of both a statement and a request. The illocutionary force potential of a sentence is the force or forces with which it can be used literally, e.g., in the case of the sentence ‘The door is open’, as a statement but not as a request. The felicity conditions on an illocutionary act pertain not only to its communicative or institutional success but also to its sincerity, appropriateness, and effectiveness. An explicit performative utterance is an illocutionary act performed by uttering an indicative sentence in the simple present tense with a verb naming the type of act being performed, e.g., ‘I apologize for everything I did’ and ‘You are requested not to smoke’. The adverb ‘hereby’ may be used before the performative verb ‘apologize’ and ‘request’ in these examples to indicate that the very utterance being made is the vehicle of the performance of the illocutionary act in question. A good test for distinguishing illocutionary from perlocutionary acts is to determine whether a verb naming the act can be used performatively. Austin exploited the phenomenon of performative utterances to expose the common philosophical error of assuming that the primary use of language is to make statements. 

autarkia: Grecian for ‘self-sufficiency,’ from ‘auto-‘, self, and ‘arkhe,’ principium. Autarkia was widely regarded as a mark of the human good, happiness eudaimonia. A life is self-sufficient when it is worthy of choice and lacks nothing. What makes a life self-sufficient  and thereby happy  was a matter of controversy. Stoics maintained that the mere possession of virtue would suffice; Aristotle and the Peripatetics insisted that virtue must be exercised and even, perhaps, accompanied by material goods. There was also a debate among later Grecian thinkers over whether a self-sufficient life is solitary or whether only life in a community can be self-sufficient. 

auto-phoric: Grice preferred, on occasion, the prefix ‘auto-‘ to what he calls the more barbaric ‘self-‘ – “But then the Romans did not really have an equivalent to Grecian ‘auto-‘, which helps.” -- self-referential incoherence, an internal defect of an assertion or theory, which it possesses provided that a it establishes some requirement that must be met by assertions or theories, b it is itself subject to this requirement, and c it fails to meet the requirement. The most famous example is logical positivism’s meaning criterion, which requires that all meaningful assertions be either tautological or empirically verifiable, yet is itself neither. A possible early example is found in Hume, whose own writings might have been consigned to the flames had librarians followed his counsel to do so with volumes that contain neither “abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number” nor “experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence.” Bold defiance was shown by Vitters, who, realizing that the propositions of the Tractatus did not “picture” the world, advised the reader to “throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.” An epistemological example is furnished by any foundationalist theory that establishes criteria for rational acceptability that the theory itself cannot meet. 

auvergne: philosopher, b. Aurillac, taught at Paris, and became bishop of Paris in 1228. Critical of the new Aristotelianism of his time, he insisted that the soul is an individual, immortal form of intellectual activity alone, so that a second form was needed for the body and sensation. Though he rejected the notion of an agent intellect, he described the soul as a mirror that reflects both exemplary ideas in God’s mind and sensible singulars. He conceived being as something common to everything that is, after the manner of Duns Scotus, but rejected the Avicennan doctrine that God necessarily produces the universe, arguing that His creative activity is free of all determination. He is the first example of the complex of ideas we call Augustinianism, which would pass on through Alexander of Hales to Bonaventure and other Franciscans, forming a point of departure for the philosophy of Duns Scotus. 

auxerre:  theologian and renowned teacher of grammar, arts, and theology at Paris. He was appointed by Pope Gregory IX to a commission charged with editing Aristotle’s writings for doctrinal purity. The commission never submitted a report, perhaps partly due to William’s death later that same year. William’s major work, the Summa aurea 121520, represents one of the earliest systematic attempts to reconcile the Augustinian and Aristotelian traditions in medieval philosophy. William tempers, e.g., the Aristotelian concession that human cognition begins with the reception in the material intellect of a species or sensible representation from a corporeal thing, with the Augustinian idea that it is not possible to understand the principles of any discipline without an interior, supernatural illumination. He also originated the theological distinction between perfect happiness, which is uncreated and proper to God, and imperfect happiness, which pertains to human beings. William was also one of the first to express what became, in later centuries, the important distinction between God’s absolute and ordained powers, taking, with Gilbert of Poitiers, the view that God could, absolutely speaking, change the past. The Summa aurea helped shape the thought of several important philosophers and theologians who were active later in the century, including Albertus Magnus, Bonaventure, and Aquinas. William remained an authority in theological discussions throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  

avenarius, R. philosopher: an influence on Ayer, who thinks he is following British empiricism! Avenarius was born in Paris and educated at the  of Leipzig. He became a professor at Leipzig and succeeded Windelband at the  of Zürich in 1877. For a time he was editor of the Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie. His earliest work was Über die beiden ersten Phasen des Spinozischen Pantheismus 1868. His major work, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung Critique of Pure Experience, 2 vols., 890, was followed by his last study, Der menschliche Weltbegriffe 1. In his post-Kantian Kritik Avenarius presented a radical positivism that sought to base philosophy on scientific principles. This “empirio-criticism” emphasized “pure experience” and descriptive and general definitions of experience. Metaphysical claims to transcend experience were rejected as mere creations of the mind. Like Hume, Avenarius denied the ontological validity of substance and causality. Seeking a scientific empiricism, he endeavored to delineate a descriptive determination of the form and content of pure experience. He thought that the subject-object dichotomy, the separation of inner and outer experiences, falsified reality. If we could avoid “introjecting” feeling, thought, and will into experience and thereby splitting it into subject and object, we could attain the original “natural” view of the world. Although Avenarius, in his Critique of Pure Experience, thought that changes in brain states parallel states of consciousness, he did not reduce sensations or states of consciousness to physiological changes in the brain. Because his theory of pure experience undermined dogmatic materialism, Lenin attacked his philosophy in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism 2. His epistemology influenced Mach and his emphasis upon pure experience had considerable influence on James.

awareness: an Anglo-Saxon, “sort of,” term Grice liked – Grice: “The a- is archaic, is ware that is crucial.” -- for Grice, awareness means the doxastic attitude prefixed to any other state -- consciousness, a central feature of our lives that is notoriously difficult to characterize. You experience goings-on in the world, and, turning inward “introspecting”, you experience your experiencing. Objects of awareness can be external or internal. Pressing your finger on the edge of a table, you can be aware of the table’s edge, and aware of the feeling of pressure though perhaps not simultaneously. Philosophers from Locke to Nagel have insisted that our experiences have distinctive qualities: there is “something it is like” to have them. It would seem important, then, to distinguish qualities of objects of which you are aware from qualities of your awareness. Suppose you are aware of a round, red tomato. The tomato, but not your awareness, is round and red. What then are the qualities of your awareness? Here we encounter a deep puzzle that divides theorists into intransigent camps. Some materialists, like Dennett, insist that awareness lacks qualities or lacks qualities distinct from its objects: the qualities we attribute to experiences are really those of experienced objects. This opens the way to a dismissal of “phenomenal” qualities qualia, qualities that seem to have no place in the material world. Others T. Nagel, Ned Block regard such qualities as patently genuine, preferring to dismiss any theory unable to accommodate them. Convinced that the qualities of awareness are ineliminable and irreducible to respectable material properties, some philosophers, following Frank Jackson, contend they are “epiphenomenal”: real but causally inefficacious. Still others, including Searle, point to what they regard as a fundamental distinction between the “intrinsically subjective” character of awareness and the “objective,” “public” character of material objects, but deny that this yields epiphenomenalism. 

axioma – Grice: “Etymologically, possibly related to ‘axis,’ value.” -- Porphyry translated this as ‘principium,’ but Grice was not too happy about it! Referred to by Grice in his portrayal of the formalists in their account of an ‘ideal’ language. He is thinking Peano, Whitehead, and Russell. – the axiomatic method, originally, a method for reorganizing the accepted propositions and concepts of an existent science in order to increase certainty in the propositions and clarity in the concepts. Application of this method was thought to require the identification of 1 the “universe of discourse” domain, genus of entities constituting the primary subject matter of the science, 2 the “primitive concepts” that can be grasped immediately without the use of definition, 3 the “primitive propositions” or “axioms”, whose truth is knowable immediately, without the use of deduction, 4 an immediately acceptable “primitive definition” in terms of primitive concepts for each non-primitive concept, and 5 a deduction constructed by chaining immediate, logically cogent inferences ultimately from primitive propositions and definitions for each nonprimitive accepted proposition. Prominent proponents of more or less modernized versions of the axiomatic method, e.g. Pascal, Nicod 34, and Tarski, emphasizing the critical and regulatory function of the axiomatic method, explicitly open the possibility that axiomatization of an existent, preaxiomatic science may lead to rejection or modification of propositions, concepts, and argumentations that had previously been accepted. In many cases attempts to realize the ideal of an axiomatic science have resulted in discovery of “smuggled premises” and other previously unnoted presuppositions, leading in turn to recognition of the need for new axioms. Modern axiomatizations of geometry are much richer in detail than those produced in ancient Greece. The earliest extant axiomatic text is based on an axiomatization of geometry due to Euclid fl. 300 B.C., which itself was based on earlier, nolonger-extant texts. Archimedes 287212 B.C. was one of the earliest of a succession of postEuclidean geometers, including Hilbert, Oswald Veblen 00, and Tarski, to propose modifications of axiomatizations of classical geometry. The traditional axiomatic method, often called the geometric method, made several presuppositions no longer widely accepted. The advent of non-Euclidean geometry was particularly important in this connection. For some workers, the goal of reorganizing an existent science was joined to or replaced by a new goal: characterizing or giving implicit definition to the structure of the subject matter of the science. Moreover, subsequent innovations in logic and foundations of mathematics, especially development of syntactically precise formalized languages and effective systems of formal deductions, have substantially increased the degree of rigor attainable. In particular, critical axiomatic exposition of a body of scientific knowledge is now not thought to be fully adequate, however successful it may be in realizing the goals of the original axiomatic method, so long as it does not present the underlying logic including language, semantics, and deduction system. For these and other reasons the expression ‘axiomatic method’ has undergone many “redefinitions,” some of which have only the most tenuous connection with the original meaning.  The term ‘axiom’ has been associated to different items by philosophers. There’s the axiom of comprehension, also called axiom of abstraction, the axiom that for every property, there is a corresponding set of things having that property; i.e., f DA x x 1 A È f x, where f is a property and A is a set. The axiom was used in Frege’s formulation of set theory and is the axiom that yields Russell’s paradox, discovered in 1. If fx is instantiated as x 2 x, then the result that A 1 A È A 2 A is easily obtained, which yields, in classical logic, the explicit contradiction A 1 A & A 2 A. The paradox can be avoided by modifying the comprehension axiom and using instead the separation axiom, f DA x x 1 A Èfx & x 1 B. This yields only the result that A 1 A ÈA 2 A & A 1 B, which is not a contradiction. The paradox can also be avoided by retaining the comprehension axiom but restricting the symbolic language, so that ‘x 1 x’ is not a meaningful formula. Russell’s type theory, presented in Principia Mathematica, uses this approach.  Then there’s the axiom of consistency, an axiom stating that a given set of sentences is consistent. Let L be a formal language, D a deductive system for L, S any set of sentences of L, and C the statement ‘S is consistent’ i.e., ‘No contradiction is derivable from S via D’. For certain sets S e.g., the theorems of D it is interesting to ask: Can C be expressed in L? If so, can C be proved in D? If C can be expressed in L but not proved in D, can C be added consistently to D as a new axiom? Example from Gödel: Let L and D be adequate for elementary number theory, and S be the axioms of D; then C can be expressed in L but not proved in D, but can be added as a new axiom to form a stronger system D’. Sometimes we can express in L an axiom of consistency in the semantic sense i.e., ‘There is a universe in which all the sentences in S are true’. Trivial example: suppose the only non-logical axiom in D is ‘For any two sets B and B’, there exists the union of B and B’ ’. Then C might be ‘There is a set U such that, for any sets B and B’ in U, there exists in U the union of B and B’ ’. 

ayerianism:  Grice: “One of the most memorable pieces of Ayer’s philosophical depth is his ‘Saturday is in bed.’ It was so popular at Oxford that Ryle, Ayer’s tutor, felt he could use it without credit!’ -- a. j. , philosopher of Swiss ancestry, one of the most important of the Oxford logical positivists. He continued to occupy a dominant place in analytic philosophy as he gradually modified his adherence to central tenets of the view. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, and, after a brief period at the  of Vienna, became a lecturer in philosophy at Christ Church in 3. After the war he returned to Oxford as fellow and dean of Wadham . He was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at the  of London 659, Wykeham Professor of Logic in the  of Oxford and a fellow of New  978, and a fellow of Wolfson , Oxford 883. Ayer was knighted in 3 and was a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. His early work clearly and forcefully developed the implications of the positivists’ doctrines that all cognitive statements are either analytic and a priori, or synthetic, contingent, and a posteriori, and that empirically meaningful statements must be verifiable must admit of confirmation or disconfirmation. In doing so he defended reductionist analyses of the self, the external world, and other minds. Value statements that fail the empiricist’s criterion of meaning but defy naturalistic analysis were denied truth-value and assigned emotive meaning. Throughout his writings he maintained a foundationalist perspective in epistemology in which sense-data later more neutrally described occupied not only a privileged epistemic position but constituted the subject matter of the most basic statements to be used in reductive analyses. Although in later works he significantly modified many of his early views and abandoned much of their strict reductionism, he remained faithful to an empiricist’s version of foundationalism and the basic idea behind the verifiability criterion of meaning. His books include Language, Truth and Logic; The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge; The Problems of Knowledge; Philosophical Essays; The Concept of a Person; The Origins of Pragmatism; Metaphysics and Common Sense; Russell and Moore: The Analytical Heritage; The Central Questions of Philosophy; Probability and Evidence; Philosophy in the Twentieth Century; Russell; Hume; Freedom and Morality, Ludwig Vitters; and Voltaire. Born of Swiss parentage in London, “Freddie” got an Oxford educated, and though he wanted to be a judge, he read Lit. Hum (Phil.). He spent three months in Vienna, and when he returned, Grice called him ‘enfant terrible.’ Ayer would later cite Grice in the Aristotelian symposium on the Causal Theory of Perception. But the type of subtlety in conversational implicaturum that Grice is interested goes over Freddie’s head. (“That,” or he was not interested.” Grice was glad that Oxford was ready to attack Ayer on philosophical grounds, and he later lists Positivism as a ‘monster’ on his way to the City of Eternal Truth. “Verificationism” was anti-Oxonian, in being mainly anti-Bradleyian, who is recognised by every Oxonian philosopher as “one of the clearest and subtlest prosists in English, and particularly Oxonian, philosophy.” Ayer later became the logic professor at Oxford – which is now taught no longer at the Sub-Faculty of Philosophy, but the Department of Mathematics!

B

babbage: discussed by Grice in his functionalist approach to philosophical psychology. English applied mathematician, inventor, and expert on machinery and manufacturing. His chief interest was in developing mechanical “engines” to compute tables of functions. Until the invention of the electronic computer, printed tables of functions were important aids to calculation. Babbage invented the difference engine, a machine that consisted of a series of accumulators each of which, in turn, transmitted its contents to its successor, which added to them to its own contents. He built only a model, but George and Edvard Scheutz built difference engines that were actually used. Though tables of squares and cubes could be calculated by a difference engine, the more commonly used tables of logarithms and of trigonometric functions could not. To calculate these and other useful functions, Babbage conceived of the analytical engine, a machine for numerical analysis. The analytical engine was to have a store memory and a mill arithmetic unit. The store was to hold decimal numbers on toothed wheels, and to transmit them to the mill and back by means of wheels and toothed bars. The mill was to carry out the arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division mechanically, greatly extending the technology of small calculators. The operations of the mill were to be governed by pegged drums, derived from the music box. A desired sequence of operations would be punched on cards, which would be strung together like the cards of a Jacquard loom and read by the machine. The control mechanisms could branch and execute a different sequence of cards when a designated quantity changed sign. Numbers would be entered from punched cards and the answers punched on cards. The answers might also be imprinted on metal sheets from which the calculated tables would be printed, thus avoiding the errors of proofreading. Although Babbage formulated various partial plans for the analytical engine and built a few pieces of it, the machine was never realized. Given the limitations of mechanical computing technology, building an analytical engine would probably not have been an economical way to produce numerical tables. The modern electronic computer was invented and developed completely independently of Babbage’s pioneering work. Yet because of it, Babbage’s work has been publicized and he has become famous. 

bachelard: g., philosopher of applied rationalism, enjoyed by Grice. philosopher of science and literary analyst. His philosophy of science developed, e.g., in The New Scientific Spirit, 4, and Rational Materialism, 3 began from reflections on the relativistic and quantum revolutions in twentieth-century physics. Bachelard viewed science as developing through a series of discontinuous changes epistemological breaks. Such breaks overcome epistemological obstacles: methodological and conceptual features of commonsense or outdated science that block the path of inquiry. Bachelard’s emphasis on the discontinuity of scientific change strikingly anticipated Thomas Kuhn’s focus, many years later, on revolutionary paradigm change. However, unlike Kuhn, Bachelard held to a strong notion of scientific progress across revolutionary discontinuities. Although each scientific framework rejects its predecessors as fundamentally erroneous, earlier frameworks may embody permanent achievements that will be preserved as special cases within subsequent frameworks. Newton’s laws of motion, e.g., are special limit-cases of relativity theory. Bachelard based his philosophy of science on a “non-Cartesian epistemology” that rejects Descartes’s claim that knowledge must be founded on incorrigible intuitions of first truths. All knowledge claims are subject to revision in the light of further evidence. Similarly, he rejected a naive realism that defines reality in terms of givens of ordinary sense experience and ignores the ontological constructions of scientific concepts and instrumentation. He maintained, however, that denying this sort of realism did not entail accepting idealism, which makes only the mental ultimately real. Instead he argued for an “applied rationalism,” which recognizes the active role of reason in constituting objects of knowledge while admitting that any constituting act of reason must be directed toward an antecedently given object. Although Bachelard denied the objective reality of the perceptual and imaginative worlds, he emphasized their subjective and poetic significance. Complementing his writings on science are a series of books on imagination and poetic imagery e.g., The Psychoanalysis of Fire, 8; The Poetics of Space, 7 which subtly unpack the meaning of archetypal in Jung’s sense images. He put forward a “law of the four elements,” according to which all images can be related to the earth, air, fire, and water posited by Empedocles as the fundamental forms of matter. Together with Georges Canguilhem, his successor at the Sorbonne, Bachelard had an immense impact on several generations of  students of philosophy. He and Canguilhem offered an important alternative to the more fashionable and widely known phenomenology and existentialism and were major influences on among others Althusser and Foucault. 

baconian – “You can tell when a contitnental philosopher knows about insular philosopher when they can tell one bacon from the other.” – H. P. Grice. Francis: English philosopher, essayist, and scientific methodologist. In politics Bacon rose to the position of lord chancellor. In 1621 he retired to private life after conviction for taking bribes in his official capacity as judge. Bacon championed the new empiricism resulting from the achievements of early modern science. He opposed alleged knowledge based on appeals to authority, and on the barrenness of Scholasticism. He thought that what is needed is a new attitude and methodology based strictly on scientific practices. The goal of acquiring knowledge is the good of mankind: knowledge is power. The social order that should result from applied science is portrayed in his New Atlantis1627. The method of induction to be employed is worked out in detail in his Novum Organum 1620. This new logic is to replace that of Aristotle’s syllogism, as well as induction by simple enumeration of instances. Neither of these older logics can produce knowledge of actual natural laws. Bacon thought that we must intervene in nature, manipulating it by means of experimental control leading to the invention of new technology. There are well-known hindrances to acquisition of knowledge of causal laws. Such hindrances false opinions, prejudices, which “anticipate” nature rather than explain it, Bacon calls idols idola. Idols of the tribe idola tribus are natural mental tendencies, among which are the idle search for purposes in nature, and the impulse to read our own desires and needs into nature. Idols of the cave idola specus are predispositions of particular individuals. The individual is inclined to form opinions based on idiosyncrasies of education, social intercourse, reading, and favored authorities. Idols of the marketplace idola fori Bacon regards as the most potentially dangerous of all dispositions, because they arise from common uses of language that often result in verbal disputes. Many words, though thought to be meaningful, stand for nonexistent things; others, although they name actual things, are poorly defined or used in confused ways. Idols of the theater idola theatri depend upon the influence of received theories. The only authority possessed by such theories is that they are ingenious verbal constructions. The aim of acquiring genuine knowledge does not depend on superior skill in the use of words, but rather on the discovery of natural laws. Once the idols are eliminated, the mind is free to seek knowledge of natural laws based on experimentation. Bacon held that nothing exists in nature except bodies material objects acting in conformity with fixed laws. These laws are “forms.” For example, Bacon thought that the form or cause of heat is the motion of the tiny particles making up a body. This form is that on which the existence of heat depends. What induction seeks to show is that certain laws are perfectly general, universal in application. In every case of heat, there is a measurable change in the motion of the particles constituting the moving body. Bacon thought that scientific induction proceeds as follows. First, we look for those cases where, given certain changes, certain others invariably follow. In his example, if certain changes in the form motion of particles take place, heat always follows. We seek to find all of the “positive instances” of the form that give rise to the effect of that form. Next, we investigate the “negative instances,” cases where in the absence of the form, the qualitative change does not take place. In the operation of these methods it is important to try to produce experimentally “prerogative instances,” particularly striking or typical examples of the phenomenon under investigation. Finally, in cases where the object under study is present to some greater or lesser degree, we must be able to take into account why these changes occur. In the example, quantitative changes in degrees of heat will be correlated to quantitative changes in the speed of the motion of the particles. This method implies that backward causation Bacon, Francis 68   68 in many cases we can invent instruments to measure changes in degree. Such inventions are of course the hoped-for outcome of scientific inquiry, because their possession improves the lot of human beings. Bacon’s strikingly modern but not entirely novel empiricist methodology influenced nineteenth-century figures e.g., Sir John Herschel and J. S. Mill who generalized his results and used them as the basis for displaying new insights into scientific methodology. 

baconian: “You can tell when a continental philosopher knows the first thing about insular philosophy when they can tell one bacon from the other” – H. P. Grice. R., English philosopher who earned the honorific title of Doctor Mirabilis. He was one of the first medievals in the Latin West to lecture and comment on newly recovered work by Aristotle in natural philosophy, physics, and metaphysics. Born in Somerset and educated at both Oxford  and the  of Paris, he became by 1273 a master of arts at Paris, where he taught for about ten years. In 1247 he resigned his teaching post to devote his energies to investigating and promoting topics he considered neglected but important insofar as they would lead to knowledge of God. The English “experimentalist” Grosseteste, the man Peter of Maricourt, who did pioneering work on magnetism, and the author of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum influenced Roger’s new perspective. By 1257, however, partly from fatigue, Roger had put this work aside and entered the Franciscan order in England. To his dismay, he did not receive within the order the respect and freedom to write and teach he had expected. During the early 1260s Roger’s views about reforming the  curriculum reached Cardinal Guy le Gos de Foulques, who, upon becoming Pope Clement IV in 1265, demanded to see Roger’s writings. In response, Roger produced the Opus maius 1267  an encyclopedic work that argues, among other things, that 1 the study of Hebrew and Grecian is indispensable for understanding the Bible, 2 the study of mathematics encompassing geometry, astronomy, and astrology is, with experimentation, the key to all the sciences and instrumental in theology, and 3 philosophy can serve theology by helping in the conversion of non-believers. Roger believed that although the Bible is the basis for human knowledge, we can use reason in the service of knowledge. It is not that rational argument can, on his view, provide fullblown proof of anything, but rather that with the aid of reason one can formulate hypotheses about nature that can be confirmed by experience. According to Roger, knowledge arrived at in this way will lead to knowledge of nature’s creator. All philosophical, scientific, and linguistic endeavors are valuable ultimately for the service they can render to theology. Roger summarizes and develops his views on these matters in the Opus minus and the Opus tertium, produced within a year of the Opus maius. Roger was altogether serious in advocating curricular change. He took every opportunity to rail against many of his celebrated contemporaries e.g., Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus, and Aquinas for not being properly trained in philosophy and for contributing to the demise of theology by lecturing on Peter Lombard’s Sentences instead of the Bible. He also wrote both Grecian and Hebrew grammars, did important work in optics, and argued for calendar reform on the basis of his admittedly derivative astronomical research. One should not, however, think that Roger was a good mathematician or natural scientist. He apparently never produced a single theorem or proof in mathematics, he was not always a good judge of astronomical competence he preferred al-Bitruji to Ptolemy, and he held alchemy in high regard, believing that base metals could be turned into silver and gold. Some have gone so far as to claim that Roger’s renown in the history of science is vastly overrated, based in part on his being confusedly linked with the fourteenthcentury Oxford Calculators, who do deserve credit for paving the way for certain developments in seventeenth-century science. Roger’s devotion to curricular reform eventually led to his imprisonment by Jerome of Ascoli the future Pope Nicholas IV, probably between 1277 and 1279. Roger’s teachings were said to have contained “suspect novelties.” Judging from the date of his imprisonment, these novelties may have been any number of propositions condemned by the bishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, in 1277. But his imprisonment may also have had something to do with the anger he undoubtedly provoked by constantly abusing the members of his order regarding their approach to education, or with his controversial Joachimite views about the apocalypse and the imminent coming of the Antichrist. Given Roger’s interest in educational reform and his knack for systematization, it is not unlikely that he was abreast of and had something to say about most of the central philosophical issues of the day. If so, his writings could be an important source of information about thirteenth-century Scholastic philosophy generally. In this connection, recent investigations have revealed, e.g., that he may well have played an important role in the development of logic and philosophy of language during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In the course of challenging the views of certain people some of whom have been tentatively identified as Richard of Cornwall, Lambert of Auxerre, Siger of Brabant, Henry of Ghent, Boethius of Dacia, William Sherwood, and the Magister Abstractionum on the nature of signs and how words function as signs, Roger develops and defends views that appear to be original. The pertinent texts include the Sumule dialectices c.1250, the De signis part of Part III of the Opus maius, and the Compendium studii theologiae 1292. E.g., in connection with the question whether Jesus could be called a man during the three-day entombment and, thus, in connection with the related question whether man can be said to be animal when no man exists, and with the sophism ‘This is a dead man, therefore this is a man’, Roger was not content to distinguish words from all other signs as had been the tradition. He distinguished between signs originating from nature and from the soul, and between natural signification and conventional ad placitum signification which results expressly or tacitly from the imposition of meaning by one or more individuals. He maintained that words signify existing and non-existing entities only equivocally, because words conventionally signify only presently existing things. On this view, therefore, ‘man’ is not used univocally when applied to an existing man and to a dead man. 

bona fides: vs. mala fides: dishonest and blameworthy instances of self-deception; 2 inauthentic and self-deceptive refusal to admit to ourselves and others our full freedom, thereby avoiding anxiety in making decisions and evading responsibility for actions and attitudes Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 3; 3 hypocrisy or dishonesty in speech and conduct, as in making a promise without intending to keep it. One self-deceiving strategy identified by Sartre is to embrace other people’s views in order to avoid having to form one’s own; another is to disregard options so that one’s life appears predetermined to move in a fixed direction. Occasionally Sartre used a narrower, fourth sense: self-deceptive beliefs held on the basis of insincere and unreasonable interpretations of evidence, as contrasted with the dishonesty of “sincerely” acknowledging one truth “I am disposed to be a thief” in order to deny a deeper truth “I am free to change”. 

bain: a., philosopher and reformer, biographer of James Mill 2 and J. S. Mill 2 and founder of the first psychological journal, Mind 1876, to which Grice submitted his “Personal identity.” In the development of psychology, Bain represents in England alongside Continental thinkers such as Taine and Lotze the final step toward the founding of psychology as a science. His significance stems from his wish to “unite psychology and physiology,” fulfilled in The Senses and the Intellect 1855 and The Emotions and the Will 1859, abridged in one volume, Mental and Moral Science 1868. Neither Bain’s psychology nor his physiology were particularly original. His psychology came from English empiricism and associationism, his physiology from Johannes Muller’s 180158 Elements of Physiology 1842. Muller was an early advocate of the reflex, or sensorimotor, conception of the nervous system, holding that neurons conduct sensory information to the brain or motor commands from the brain, the brain connecting sensation with appropriate motor response. Like Hartley before him, Bain grounded the laws of mental association in the laws of neural connection. In opposition to faculty psychology, Bain rejected the existence of mental powers located in different parts of the brain On the Study of Character, 1861. By combining associationism with modern physiology, he virtually completed the movement of philosophical psychology toward science. In philosophy, his most important concept was his analysis of belief as “a preparation to act.” By thus entwining conception and action, he laid the foundation for pragmatism, and for the focus on adaptive behavior central to modern psychology. 

barthesian: semiotic: r.  post-structuralist literary critic and essayist. Born in Cherbourg, he suffered from numerous ailments as a child and spent much of his early life as a semiinvalid. After leaving the military, he took up several positions teaching subjects like classics, grammar, and philology. His interest in linguistics finally drew him to literature, and by the mid-0s he had already published what would become a classic in structural analysis, The Elements of Semiology. Its principal message is that words are merely one kind of sign whose meaning lies in relations of difference between them. This concept was later amended to include the reading subject, and the structuring effect that the subject has on the literary work  a concept expressed later in his S/Z and The Pleasure of the Text. Barthes’s most mature contributions to the post-structuralist movement were brilliant and witty interpretations of visual, tactile, and aural sign systems, culminating in the publication of several books and essays on photography, advertising, film, and cuisine. 

bite off more than you can chew: To bite is the function of the FRONT teeth (incisors and canines); the back teeth (molars) CHEW, crush, or grind. So the relation is Russellian.  1916 G. B. Shaw Pygmalion 195 The mistake we describe metaphorically as ‘biting off more than they can chew’.  a1960 J. L. Austin Sense & Sensibilia (1962) i. 1 They [sc. doctrines] all bite off more than they can chew. While the NED would not DARE define this obviousness, the OED does not. to undertake too much, to be too ambitious – “irrational” simpliciter for Grice (WoW).

basilides: philosopher, he improved on Valentinus’s doctrine of emanations, positing 365 the number of days in a year levels of existence in the Pleroma the fullness of the Godhead, all descending from the ineffable Father. He taught that the rival God was the God of the Jews the God of the Old Testament, who created the material world. Redemption consists in the coming of the first begotten of the Father, Noûs Mind, in human form in order to release the spiritual element imprisoned within human bodies. Like other gnostics he taught that we are saved by knowledge, not faith. He apparently held to the idea of reincarnation before the restoration of all things to the Pleroma. 

basis: basing relation, also called basis relation, the relation between a belief or item of knowledge and a second belief or item of knowledge when the latter is the ground basis of the first. It is clear that some knowledge is indirect, i.e., had or gained on the basis of some evidence, as opposed to direct knowledge, which assuming there is any is not so gained, or based. The same holds for justified belief. In one broad sense of the term, the basing relation is just the one connecting indirect knowledge or indirectly justified belief to the evidence: to give an account of either of the latter is to give an account of the basing relation. There is a narrower view of the basing relation, perhaps implicit in the first. A person knows some proposition P on the basis of evidence or reasons only if her belief that P is based on the evidence or reasons, or perhaps on the possession of the evidence or reasons. The narrow basing relation is indicated by this question: where a belief that P constitutes indirect knowledge or justification, what is it for that belief to be based on the evidence or reasons that support the knowledge or justification? The most widely favored view is that the relevant belief is based on evidence or reasons only if the belief is causally related to the belief or reasons. Proponents of this causal view differ concerning what, beyond this causal relationship, is needed by an account of the narrow basing relation. 

batailleian communicatum: g., philosopher and novelist with enormous influence on post-structuralist thought. By locating value in expenditure as opposed to accumulation, Bataille inaugurates the era of the death of the subject. He insists that individuals must transgress the limits imposed by subjectivity to escape isolation and communicate. Bataille’s prewar philosophical contributions consist mainly of short essays, the most significant of which have been collected in Visions of Excess. These essays introduce the central idea that base matter disrupts rational subjectivity by attesting to the continuity in which individuals lose themselves. Inner Experience, Bataille’s first lengthy philosophical treatise, was followed by Guilty 4 and On Nietzsche 5. Together, these three works constitute Bataille’s Summa Atheologica, which explores the play of the isolation and the dissolution of beings in terms of the experience of excess laughter, tears, eroticism, death, sacrifice, poetry. The Accursed Share 9, which he considered his most important work, is his most systematic account of the social and economic implications of expenditure. In Erotism 7 and The Tears of Eros 1, he focuses on the excesses of sex and death. Throughout his life, Bataille was concerned with the question of value. He located it in the excess that lacerates individuals and opens channels of communication. 

bath: Grice never referred to William of Occam as “William” (“that would be rude”). Similarlly, his Adelard of Bath is referred to as “Bath.” (“Sometimes I wish people would refer to me as “Harborne” but that was the day!”). “Of course, it is amusing to refer to adelard as “Bath” since he was only there for twelve years! But surely to call him “Oxford” would be supernumerary!”. Grice found inspiration on Adelard’s “On the same and the different,” and he was pleased that he had been educated not far from Bath, at Clifton! Adelard is Benedictine monk notable for his contributions to the introduction of Arabic science in the West. After studying at Tours, he taught at Laon, then spent seven years traveling in Italy, possibly Spain, and Cilicia and Syria, before returning to England. In his dialogue On the Same and the Different, he remarks, concerning universals, that the names of individuals, species, and genera are imposed on the same essence regarded in different respects. He also wrote Seventy-six Questions on Nature, based on Arabic learning; works on the use of the abacus and the astrolabe; a work on falconry; and translations of Abu Ma’shar’s Arabic active euthanasia Adelard of Bath 9 4065A-   9 Shorter Introduction to Astronomy, al-Khwarizmi’s fl. c.830 astronomical tables, and Euclid’s Elements.

baumgarten: a. g. – Grice loved his coinage of ‘aesthetics’-- Alexander Gottlieb 171462, G. philosopher. Born in Berlin, he was educated in Halle and taught at Halle 173840 and Frankfurt an der Oder 174062. Baumgarten was brought up in the Pietist circle of A. H. Francke but adopted the anti-Pietist rationalism of Wolff. He wrote textbooks in metabasic particular Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 73   73 physics Metaphysica, 1739 and ethics Ethica Philosophica, 1740; Initia Philosophiae Practicae Prima [“First Elements of Practical Philosophy”], 1760 on which Kant lectured. For the most part, Baumgarten did not significantly depart from Wolff, although in metaphysics he was both further and yet closer to Leibniz than was Wolff: unlike Leibniz, he argued for real physical influx, but, unlike Wolff, he did not restrict preestablished harmony to the mindbody relationship alone, but paradoxically reextended it to include all relations of substances. Baumgarten’s claim to fame, however, rests on his introduction of the discipline of aesthetics into G. philosophy, and indeed on his introduction of the term ‘aesthetics’ as well. Wolff had explained pleasure as the response to the perception of perfection by means of the senses, in turn understood as clear but confused perception. Baumgarten subtly but significantly departed from Wolff by redefining our response to beauty as pleasure in the perfection of sensory perception, i.e., in the unique potential of sensory as opposed to merely conceptual representation. This concept was first introduced in his dissertation Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus “Philosophical Meditations on some Matters pertaining to Poetry,” 1735, which defined a poem as a “perfect sensate discourse,” and then generalized in his twovolume but still incomplete Aesthetica 1750 58. One might describe Baumgarten’s aesthetics as cognitivist but no longer rationalist: while in science or logic we must always prefer discursive clarity, in art we respond with pleasure to the maximally dense or “confused” intimation of ideas. Baumgarten’s theory had great influence on Lessing and Mendelssohn, on Kant’s theory of aesthetic ideas, and even on the aesthetics of Hegel. 

bayle: p., Grice on longitudinal history of philosophy. philosopher who also pioneered in disinterested, critical history. A Calvinist forced into exile in 1681, Bayle nevertheless rejected the prevailing use of history as an instrument of partisan or sectarian interest. He achieved fame and notoriety with his multivolume Dictionnaire historique et critique 1695. For each subject covered, Bayle provided a biographical sketch and a dispassionate examination of the historical record and interpretive controversies. He also repeatedly probed the troubled and troubling boundary between reason and faith philosophy and religion. In the article “David,” the seemingly illicit conduct of God’s purported agent yielded reflections on the morals of the elect and the autonomy of ethics. In “Pyrrho,” Bayle argued that self-evidence, the most plausible candidate for the criterion of truth, is discredited by Christianity because some self-evident principles contradict essential Christian truths and are therefore false. Finally, provoking Leibniz’s Theodicy, Bayle argued, most relentlessly in “Manichaeans” and “Paulicians,” that there is no defensible rational solution to the problem of evil. Bayle portrayed himself as a Christian skeptic, but others have seen instead an ironic critic of religion  a precursor of the  Enlightenment. Bayle’s purely philosophical reflections support his self-assessment, since he consistently maintains that philosophy achieves not comprehension and contentment, but paradox and puzzlement. In making this case he proved to be a superb critic of philosophical systems. Some examples are “Zeno of Elea”  on space, time, and motion; “Rorarius”  on mind and body and animal mechanism; and “Spinoza”  on the perils of monism. Bayle’s skepticism concerning philosophy significantly influenced Berkeley and Hume. His other important works include Pensées diverses de la comète de 1683 1683; Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jesus Christ: contrain les d’entrer 1686; and Réponse aux questions d’un provincial1704; and an early learned periodical, the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 1684 87. 

beattie, j. Common-sense – H. P. Grice, “The so-called English common-sense,” Beattie: j. philosopher and poet who, in criticizing Hume, widened the latter’s audience. A member of the Scottish school of common sense philosophy along with Oswald and Reid, Beattie’s major work was An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth 1771, in which he criticizes Hume for fostering skepticism and infidelity. His positive view was that the mind possesses a common sense, i.e., a power for perceiving self-evident truths. Common sense is instinctive, unalterable by education; truth is what common sense determines the mind to believe. Beattie cited Hume and then claimed that his views led to moral and religious evils. When Beattie’s Essay was tr. into G. 1772, Kant could read Hume’s discussions of personal identity and causation. Since these topics were not covered in Hume’s Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Beattie provided Kant access to two issues in the Treatises of Human Nature critical to the development of transcendental idealism.

beccaria, one of the most essential of Italian philosophers – Referred to by H. P. Grice in his explorations on moral versus legal right, studied in Parma and Pavia and taught political economy in Milan. Here, he met Pietro and Alessandro Verri and other Milanese intellectuals attempting to promote political, economical, and judiciary reforms. His major work, Dei delitti e delle pene “On Crimes and Punishments,” 1764, denounces the contemporary methods in the administration of justice and the treatment f criminals. Beccaria argues that the highest good is the greatest happiness shared by the greatest number of people; hence, actions against the state are the most serious crimes. Crimes against individuals and property are less serious, and crimes endangering public harmony are the least serious. The purposes of punishment are deterrence and the protection of society. However, the employment of torture to obtain confessions is unjust and useless: it results in acquittal of the strong and the ruthless and conviction of the weak and the innocent. Beccaria also rejects the death penalty as a war of the state against the individual. He claims that the duration and certainty of the punishment, not its intensity, most strongly affect criminals. Beccaria was influenced by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Condillac. His major work was tr. into many languages and set guidelines for revising the criminal and judicial systems of several European countries. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Beccaria," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

beneke: a Kantian commentator beloved by Grice (“if only because he could read Kant in the vernacular!”)-- philosopher who was influenced by Herbart and English empiricism and criticized rationalistic metaphysics. He taught at Berlin and published some eighteen books in philosophy. His major work was Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft 1833. He wrote a critical study of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and another on his moral theory; other works included Psychologie Skizzen 1825, Metaphysik und Religionphilosophie 1840, and Die neue Psychologie 1845. The “new psychology” developed by Beneke held that the hypostatization of “faculties” led to a mythical psychology. He proposed a method that would yield a natural science of the soul or, in effect, an associationist psychology. Influenced by the British empiricists, he conceived the elements of mental life as dynamic, active processes or impulses Trieben. These “elementary faculties,” originally activated by stimuli, generate the substantial unity of the nature of the psychic by their persistence as traces, as well as by their reciprocal adjustment in relation to the continuous production of new forces. In what Beneke called “pragmatic psychology,” the psyche is a bundle of impulses, forces, and functions. Psychological theory should rest on inductive analyses of the facts of inner perception. This, in turn, is the foundation of the philosophical disciplines of logic, ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion. In this regard, Beneke held a psychologism. He agreed with Herbart that psychology must be based on inner experience and must eschew metaphysical speculation, but rejected Hebart’s mathematical reductionism. Beneke sought to create a “pragmatic philosophy” based on his psychology. In his last years he contributed to pedagogic theory. 

benthamian: -- semiotics -- j. Engish philosopher of ethics and political-legal theory. Born in London, he entered Queen’s, Oxford, at age 12, and after graduation entered Lincoln’s Inn to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1767 but never practiced. He spent his life writing, advocating changes along utilitarian lines maximal happiness for everyone affected of the whole legal system, especially the criminal law. He was a strong influence in changes of the British law of evidence; in abolition of laws permitting imprisonment for indebtedness; in the belief, basic Bentham, Jeremy 79   79 reform of Parliamentary representation; in the formation of a civil service recruited by examination; and in much else. His major work published during his lifetime was An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation 1789. He became head of a “radical” group including James Mill and J. S. Mill, and founded the Westminster Review and  , London where his embalmed body still reposes in a closet. He was a friend of Catherine of Russia and John Quincy Adams, and was made a citizen of France in 1792. Pleasure, he said, is the only good, and pain the only evil: “else the words good and evil have no meaning.” He gives a list of examples of what he means by ‘pleasure’: pleasures of taste, smell, or touch; of acquiring property; of learning that one has the goodwill of others; of power; of a view of the pleasures of those one cares about. Bentham was also a psychological hedonist: pleasures and pains determine what we do. Take pain. Your state of mind may be painful now at the time just prior to action because it includes the expectation of the pain say of being burned; the present pain or the expectation of later pain  Bentham is undecided which motivates action to prevent being burned. One of a person’s pleasures, however, may be sympathetic enjoyment of the well-being of another. So it seems one can be motivated by the prospect of the happiness of another. His psychology here is not incompatible with altruistic motivation. Bentham’s critical utilitarianism lies in his claim that any action, or measure of government, ought to be taken if and only if it tends to augment the happiness of everyone affected  not at all a novel principle, historically. When “thus interpreted, the words ought, and right and wrong . . . have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none.” Bentham evidently did not mean this statement as a purely linguistic point about the actual meaning of moral terms. Neither can this principle be proved; it is a first principle from which all proofs proceed. What kind of reason, then, can he offer in its support? At one point he says that the principle of utility, at least unconsciously, governs the judgment of “every thinking man . . . unavoidably.” But his chief answer is his critique of a widely held principle that a person properly calls an act wrong if when informed of the facts he disapproves of it. Bentham cites other language as coming to the same thesis: talk of a “moral sense,” or common sense, or the understanding, or the law of nature, or right reason, or the “fitness of things.” He says that this is no principle at all, since a “principle is something that points out some external consideration, as a means of warranting and guiding the internal sentiments of approbation. . . .” The alleged principle also allows for widespread disagreement about what is moral. So far, Bentham’s proposal has not told us exactly how to determine whether an action or social measure is right or wrong. Bentham suggests a hedonic calculus: in comparing two actions under consideration, we count up the pleasures or pains each will probably produce  how intense, how long-lasting, whether near or remote, including any derivative later pleasures or pains that may be caused, and sum them up for all persons who will be affected. Evidently these directions can provide at best only approximate results. We are in no position to decide whether one pleasure for one hour is greater than another pleasure for half an hour, even when they are both pleasures of one person who can compare them. How much more when the pleasures are of different persons? Still, we can make judgments important for the theory of punishment: whether a blow in the face with no lasting damage for one person is more or less painful than fifty lashes for his assailant! Bentham has been much criticized because he thought that two pleasures are equal in value, if they are equally intense, enduring, etc. As he said, “Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry.” It has been thought e.g., by J. S. Mill that some pleasures, especially intellectual ones, are higher and deserve to count more. But it may be replied that the so-called higher pleasures are more enduring, are less likely to be followed by satiety, and open up new horizons of enjoyment; and when these facts are taken into account, it is not clear that there is need to accord higher status to intellectual pleasures as such. A major goal of Bentham’s was to apply to the criminal law his principle of maximizing the general utility. Bentham thought there should be no punishment of an offense if it is not injurious to someone. So how much punishment should there be? The least amount the effect of which will result in a greater degree of happiness, overall. The benefit of punishment is primarily deterrence, by attaching to the thought of a given act the thought of the painful sanction  which will deter both the past and prospective lawbreakers. The punishment, then, must be severe enough to outweigh the benefit of the offense to the agent, making allowance, by addition, for the uncertainty that the punishment will actually occur. There are some harmful acts, however, that it is Bentham, Jeremy Bentham, Jeremy 80   80 not beneficial to punish. One is an act needful to produce a greater benefit, or avoid a serious evil, for the agent. Others are those which a penal prohibition could not deter: when the law is unpublished or the agent is insane or an infant. In some cases society need feel no alarm about the future actions of the agent. Thus, an act is criminal only if intentional, and the agent is excused if he acted on the basis of beliefs such that, were they true, the act would have caused no harm, unless these beliefs were culpable in the sense that they would not have been held by a person of ordinary prudence or benevolence. The propriety of punishing an act also depends somewhat on its motive, although no motive e.g., sexual desire, curiosity, wanting money, love of reputation  is bad in itself. Yet the propriety of punishment is affected by the presence of some motivations that enhance public security because it is unlikely that they  e.g., sympathetic concern or concern for reputation  will lead to bad intentional acts. When a given motive leads to a bad intention, it is usually because of the weakness of motives like sympathy, concern for avoiding punishment, or respect for law. In general, the sanction of moral criticism should take lines roughly similar to those of the ideal law. But there are some forms of behavior, e.g., imprudence or fornication, which the law is hardly suited to punish, that can be sanctioned by morality. The business of the moral philosopher is censorial: to say what the law, or morality, ought to be. To say what is the law is a different matter: what it is is the commands of the sovereign, defined as one whom the public, in general, habitually obeys. As consisting of commands, it is imperatival. The imperatives may be addressed to the public, as in “Let no one steal,” or to judges: “Let a judge sentence anyone who steals to be hanged.” It may be thought that there is a third part, an explanation, say, of what is a person’s property; but this can be absorbed in the imperatival part, since the designations of property are just imperatives about who is to be free to do what. Why should anyone obey the actual laws? Bentham’s answer is that one should do so if and only if it promises to maximize the general happiness. He eschews contract theories of political obligation: individuals now alive never contracted, and so how are they bound? He also opposes appeal to natural rights. If what are often mentioned as natural rights were taken seriously, no government could survive: it could not tax, require military service, etc. Nor does he accept appeal to “natural law,” as if, once some law is shown to be immoral, it can be said to be not really law. That would be absurd. 

berdyaevian: n., philosopher studied by H. P. Grice for his ‘ontological Marxism,’ he began as a “Kantian Marxist” in epistemology, ethical theory, and philosophy of history, but soon turned away from Marxism although he continued to accept Marx’s critique of capitalism toward a theistic philosophy of existence stressing the values of creativity and “meonic” freedom  a freedom allegedly prior to all being, including that of God. In exile after 2, Berdyaev appears to have been the first to grasp clearly in the early 0s that the Marxist view of historical time involves a morally unacceptable devaluing and instrumentalizing of the historical present including living persons for the sake of the remote future end of a perfected communist society. Berdyaev rejects the Marxist position on both Christian and Kantian grounds, as a violation of the intrinsic value of human persons. He sees the historical order as marked by inescapable tragedy, and welcomes the “end of history” as an “overcoming” of objective historical time by subjective “existential” time with its free, unobjectified creativity. For Berdyaev the “world of objects”  physical things, laws of nature, social institutions, and human roles and relationships  is a pervasive threat to “free spiritual creativity.” Yet such creativity appears to be subject to inevitable frustration, since its outward embodiments are always “partial and fragmentary” and no “outward action” can escape ultimate “tragic failure.” Russian Orthodox traditionalists condemned Berdyaev for claiming that all creation is a “divine-human process” and for denying God’s omnipotence, but such Western process theologians as Hartshorne find Berdyaev’s position highly congenial. 

bergmann: g. infamous for calling H. P. Grice “one of them English futilitarians” -- philosopher, the youngest member of the Vienna Circle. Born in Vienna, he received his doctorate in mathematics in 8 from the  of Vienna. Originally influenced by logical positivism, he became a phenomenalist who also posited mental acts irreducible to sense-data see his The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism, 4. Although he eventually rejected phenomenalism, his ontology of material objects remained structurally phenomenalistic. Bergmann’s world is one of momentary bare i.e. natureless particulars exemplifying phenomenally simple Berdyaev, Nicolas Bergmann, Gustav 81   81 universals, relational as well as non-relational. Some of these universals are non-mental, such as color properties and spatial relations, while others, such as the “intentional characters” in virtue of which some particulars mental acts intend or represent the facts that are their “objects,” are mental. Bergmann insisted that the world is independent of both our experience of it and our thought and discourse about it: he claimed that the connection of exemplification and even the propositional connectives and quantifiers are mind-independent. See Meaning and Existence, 9; Logic and Reality, 4; and Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong, 7. Such extreme realism produced many criticisms of his philosophy that are only finally addressed in Bergmann’s recently, and posthumously, published book, New Foundations of Ontology 2, in which he concedes that his atomistic approach to ontology has inevitable limitations and proposes a way of squaring this insight with his thoroughgoing realism. 

bergson: Philosopher of central European ancestry born in Paris. The surname literally means, ‘the son of the mountain,’ -- cited by H. P. Grice in “Personal identity,” philosopher, the most influential of the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Paris and educated at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, he began his teaching career at Clermont-Ferrand in 4 and was called in 0 to the Collège de France, where his lectures enjoyed unparalleled success until his retirement in 1. Ideally placed in la belle époque of prewar Paris, his ideas influenced a broad spectrum of artistic, literary, social, and political movements. In 8 he received the Légion d’honneur and was admitted into the  Academy. From 2 through 5 he participated in the League of Nations, presiding over the creation of what was later to become UNESCO. Forced by crippling arthritis into virtual seclusion during his later years, Bergson was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 8. Initially a disciple of Spencer, Bergson broke with him after a careful examination of Spencer’s concept of time and mechanistic positivism. Following a deeply entrenched tradition in Western thought, Spencer treats time on an analogy with space as a series of discrete numerical units: instants, seconds, minutes. When confronted with experience, however  especially with that of our own psychological states  such concepts are, Bergson concludes, patently inadequate. Real duration, unlike clock time, is qualitative, dynamic, irreversible. It cannot be “spatialized” without being deformed. It gives rise in us, moreover, to free acts, which, being qualitative and spontaneous, cannot be predicted. Bergson’s dramatic contrast of real duration and geometrical space, first developed in Time and Free Will 0, was followed in 6 by the mind body theory of Matter and Memory. He argues here that the brain is not a locale for thought but a motor organ that, receiving stimuli from its environment, may respond with adaptive behavior. To his psychological and metaphysical distinction between duration and space Bergson adds, in An Introduction to Metaphysics 3, an important epistemological distinction between intuition and analysis. Intuition probes the flow of duration in its concreteness; analysis breaks up duration into static, fragmentary concepts. In Creative Evolution 7, his best-known work, Bergson argues against both Lamarck and Darwin, urging that biological evolution is impelled by a vital impetus or élan vital that drives life to overcome the downward entropic drift of matter. Biological organisms, unlike dice, must compete and survive as they undergo permutations. Hence the unresolved dilemma of Darwinism. Either mutations occur one or a few at a time in which case how can they be “saved up” to constitute new organs? or they occur all at once in which case one has a “miracle”. Bergson’s vitalism, popular in literary circles, was not accepted by many scientists or philosophers. His most general contention, however  that biological evolution is not consistent with or even well served by a mechanistic philosophy  was broadly appreciated and to many seemed convincing. This aspect of Bergson’s writings influenced thinkers as diverse as Lloyd Morgan, Alexis Carrel, Sewall Wright, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and A. N. Whitehead. The contrasts in terms of which Bergson developed his thought duration/space, intuition/ analysis, life/entropy are replaced in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion 2 by a new duality, that of the “open” and the “closed.” The Judeo-Christian tradition, he contends, if it has embraced in its history both the open society and the closed society, exhibits in its great saints and mystics a profound opening out of the human spirit toward all humanity. Bergson’s distinction between the open and the closed society was popularized by Karl Popper in his The Open Society and Its Enemies. While it has attracted serious criticism, Bergson’s philosophy has also significantly affected subsequent thinkers. Novelists as diverse as Bergson, Henri Louis Bergson, Henri Louis 82   82 Nikos Kazantzakis, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner; poets as unlike as Charles Péguy, Robert Frost, and Antonio Machado; and psychologists as dissimilar as Pierre Janet and Jean Piaget were to profit significantly from his explorations of duration, conceptualization, and memory. Both  existentialism and  process philosophy bear the imprint of his thought. 

berkeleyianism: Collingwood discusses Hobbes, Locke and Berkeley – Each one improves the previous. Collingwood quotes Berkeley on the influencing via emotions, and citing a modern edition – but he has a caveat – the influencing is a conscious act, and thus not the psychic expression out of which primitive language originates.  -- H. P. Grice thought he had found in Berkeley a good test for the Austinian code – If something sounds harsh to Berkeley it sounds harsh. Irish philosopher and bishop in the Anglican Church of Ireland, one of the three great British empiricists along with Locke and Hume. He developed novel and influential views on the visual perception of distance and size, and an idealist metaphysical system that he defended partly on the seemingly paradoxical ground that it was the best defense of common sense and safeguard against skepticism. Berkeley studied at Trinity , Dublin, from which he graduated at nineteen. He was elected to a fellowship at Trinity in 1707, and did the bulk of his philosophical writing between that year and 1713. He was made dean of Derry in 1724, following extensive traveling on the Continent; he spent the years 172832 in Rhode Island, waiting in vain for promised Crown funds to establish a  in Bermuda. He was made bishop of Cloyne, Ireland, in 1734, and he remained there as a cleric for nearly the remainder of his life. Berkeley’s first major publication, the Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision 1709, is principally a work in the psychology of vision, though it has important philosophical presuppositions and implications. Berkeley’s theory of vision became something like the received view on the topic for nearly two hundred years and is a landmark work in the history of psychology. The work is devoted to three connected matters: how do we see, or visually estimate, the distances of objects from ourselves, the situation or place at which objects are located, and the magnitude of such objects? Earlier views, such as those of Descartes, Malebranche, and Molyneux, are rejected on the ground that their answers to the above questions allow that a person can see the distance of an object without having first learned to correlate visual and other cues. This was supposedly done by a kind of natural geometry, a computation of the distance by determining the altitude of a triangle formed by light rays from the object and the line extending from one retina to the other. On the contrary, Berkeley holds that it is clear that seeing distance is something one learns to do through trial and error, mainly by correlating cues that suggest distance: the distinctness or confusion of the visual appearance; the feelings received when the eyes turn; and the sensations attending the straining of the eyes. None of these bears any necessary connection to distance. Berkeley infers from this account that a person born blind and later given sight would not be able to tell by sight alone the distances objects were from her, nor tell the difference between a sphere and a cube. He also argues that in visually estimating distance, one is really estimating which tangible ideas one would likely experience if one were to take steps to approach the object. Not that these tangible ideas are themselves necessarily connected to the visual appearances. Instead, Berkeley holds that tangible and visual ideas are entirely heterogeneous, i.e., they are numerically and specifically distinct. The latter is a philosophical consequence of Berkeley’s theory of vision, which is sharply at odds with a central doctrine of Locke’s Essay, namely, that some ideas are common to both sight and touch. Locke’s doctrines also receive a great deal of attention in the Principles of Human Knowledge 1710. Here Berkeley considers the doctrine of abstract general ideas, which he finds in Book III of Locke’s Essay. He argues against such ideas partly on the ground that we cannot engage in the process of abstraction, partly on the ground that some abstract ideas are impossible objects, and also on the ground that such ideas are not needed for either language learning or language use. These arguments are of fundamental importance for Berkeley, since he thinks that the doctrine of abstract ideas helps to support metaphysical realism, absolute space, absolute motion, and absolute time Principles, 5, 100, 11011, as well as the view that some ideas are common to sight and touch New Theory, 123. All of these doctrines Berkeley holds to be mistaken, and the first is in direct conflict with his idealism. Hence, it is important for him to undermine any support these doctrines might receive from the abstract ideas thesis. Berkeleyan idealism is the view that the only existing entities are finite and infinite perceivers each of which is a spirit or mental substance, and entities that are perceived. Such a thesis implies that ordinary physical objects exist if and only if they are perceived, something Berkeley encapsulates in the esse est percipi principle: for all senBerkeley, George Berkeley, George 83   83 sible objects, i.e., objects capable of being perceived, their being is to be perceived. He gives essentially two arguments for this thesis. First, he holds that every physical object is just a collection of sensible qualities, and that every sensible quality is an idea. So, physical objects are just collections of sensible ideas. No idea can exist unperceived, something everyone in the period would have granted. Hence, no physical object can exist unperceived. The second argument is the socalled master argument of Principles 2224. There Berkeley argues that one cannot conceive a sensible object existing unperceived, because if one attempts to do this one must thereby conceive that very object. He concludes from this that no such object can exist “without the mind,” that is, wholly unperceived. Many of Berkeley’s opponents would have held instead that a physical object is best analyzed as a material substratum, in which some sensible qualities inhere. So Berkeley spends some effort arguing against material substrata or what he sometimes calls matter. His principal argument is that a sensible quality cannot inhere in matter, because a sensible quality is an idea, and surely an idea cannot exist except in a mind. This argument would be decisive if it were true that each sensible quality is an idea. Unfortunately, Berkeley gives no argument whatever for this contention in the Principles, and for that reason Berkeleyan idealism is not there well founded. Nor does the master argument fare much better, for there Berkeley seems to require a premise asserting that if an object is conceived, then that object is perceived. Yet such a premise is highly dubious. Probably Berkeley realized that his case for idealism had not been successful, and certainly he was stung by the poor reception of the Principles. His next book, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous 1713, is aimed at rectifying these matters. There he argues at length for the thesis that each sensible quality is an idea. The master argument is repeated, but it is unnecessary if every sensible quality is an idea. In the Dialogues Berkeley is also much concerned to combat skepticism and defend common sense. He argues that representative realism as held by Locke leads to skepticism regarding the external world and this, Berkeley thinks, helps to support atheism and free thinking in religion. He also argues, more directly, that representative realism is false. Such a thesis incorporates the claim that somesensible ideas represent real qualities in objects, the so-called primary qualities. But Berkeley argues that a sensible idea can be like nothing but another idea, and so ideas cannot represent qualities in objects. In this way, Berkeley eliminates one main support of skepticism, and to that extent helps to support the commonsensical idea that we gain knowledge of the existence and nature of ordinary physical objects by means of perception. Berkeley’s positive views in epistemology are usually interpreted as a version of foundationalism. That is, he is generally thought to have defended the view that beliefs about currently perceived ideas are basic beliefs, beliefs that are immediately and non-inferentially justified or that count as pieces of immediate knowledge, and that all other justified beliefs in contingent propositions are justified by being somehow based upon the basic beliefs. Indeed, such a foundationalist doctrine is often taken to help define empiricism, held in common by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But whatever the merits of such a view as an interpretation of Locke or Hume, it is not Berkeley’s theory. This is because he allows that perceivers often have immediate and noninferential justified beliefs, and knowledge, about physical objects. Hence, Berkeley accepts a version of foundationalism that allows for basic beliefs quite different from just beliefs about one’s currently perceived ideas. Indeed, he goes so far as to maintain that such physical object beliefs are often certain, something neither Locke nor Hume would accept. In arguing against the existence of matter, Berkeley also maintains that we literally have no coherent concept of such stuff because we cannot have any sensible idea of it. Parity of reasoning would seem to dictate that Berkeley should reject mental substance as well, thereby threatening his idealism from another quarter. Berkeley is sensitive to this line of reasoning, and replies that while we have no idea of the self, we do have some notion of the self, that is, some lessthan-complete concept. He argues that a person gains some immediate knowledge of the existence and nature of herself in a reflex act; that is, when she is perceiving something she is also conscious that something is engaging in this perception, and this is sufficient for knowledge of that perceiving entity. To complement his idealism, Berkeley worked out a version of scientific instrumentalism, both in the Principles and in a later Latin work, De Motu 1721, a doctrine that anticipates the views of Mach. In the Dialogues he tries to show how his idealism is consistent with the biblical account of the creation, and consistent as well with common sense. Berkeley, George Berkeley, George 84   84 Three later works of Berkeley’s gained him an enormous amount of attention. Alciphron 1734 was written while Berkeley was in Rhode Island, and is a philosophical defense of Christian doctrine. It also contains some additional comments on perception, supplementing earlier work on that topic. The Analyst 1734 contains trenchant criticism of the method of fluxions in differential calculus, and it set off a flurry of pamphlet replies to Berkeley’s criticisms, to which Berkeley responded in his A Defense of Free Thinking in Mathematics. Siris 1744 contains a detailed account of the medicinal values of tar-water, water boiled with the bark of certain trees. This book also contains a defense of a sort of corpuscularian philosophy that seems to be at odds with the idealism elaborated in the earlier works for which Berkeley is now famous. In the years 170708, the youthful Berkeley kept a series of notebooks in which he worked out his ideas in philosophy and mathematics. These books, now known as the Philosophical Commentaries, provide the student of Berkeley with the rare opportunity to see a great philosopher’s thought in development.  H. P. Grice was a member of the Oxford Berkeley Society. The Bishop and The Cricketer Agree: It Does Sound Harsh! When "The Times" published a note on Grice, anonymous, as obituaries should be, but some suspect P. F. S.) it went, "H. P. Grice, professional philosopher and amateur cricketer."Surely P. F. S. may have been involved, since some always preferred the commuted conjunction: "H. P. Grice, cricketer -- and philosopher."At one time, to be a 'professional' cricketer was a no-no.At one time, to be a 'professional' philosopher was a no-no -- witness Socrates!But you never know.It's TOTALLY different when it comes to BISHOPS!Grice loved that phrase, "sounds harsh." "The Austinian in the Bishop."Bishop Berkeley and H. P. Grice -- Two Ways of Representing: Likeness Or Not.Bishop Berkeley’s views on representation, broadly construed, relate to H. P. Grice’s views on representation, broadly construed.In essay, “Berkeley: An Interpretation,” Kenneth Winkler argues that Bishop Berkeley sees representation as working in one of two ways.Representation works either in the same way that an expression signifies an idea (Grice’s non-iconic) or by means of resemblance (Grice’s iconic).But we need to explore that distinction.This all relates to Bishop Berkeley’s and Grice’s views on language, their theory of resemblance, and the role that representation plays in their philosophiesmore widely.It is interesting to consider, of course, Berkeley’s predecessors (e.g., Descartes, Locke, that Grice revered in the choice of the title of his compilation of essays, “Studies in THE WAY OF WORDS,” or WoW for short), Bishop Berkeley’s contemporaries (e.g., William King, Anthony Collins), and subsequent thinkers (e.g. Hume, Shepherd, and of course Grice) accepted this distinction – and their connection to the development of both Bishoop Berkeley’s and Grice’s thought.Some philosophers connect Bishop Berkeley and Grice to non-canonical figures or those which defend novel interpretations of Berkeley’s or Grice’s own thought.Which ARE Bishop Berkeley’s and Grice’s view on the connection between representation and resemblance?Is Winkler right to attribute two types of representation to Berkeley? Could Winkler’s observations have a bearing on Grice?Do Bishop Berkeley’s and Grice’s contemporaries accept the distinction between signification and representation? (Grice’s favourite example: “A cricket team may do for England what England cannot do: engage in a game of cricket.”)Grice explores this in the “Valediction” to his “Way of Words”:“We might we well advised,” Grice says, “to consider more closely the nature of representation and its connection with meaning, and to do so in the light of three perhaps not implausible suppositions.”(1) that representation by means of verbal formulation is an artificial and noniconic mode of representation.(2) that to replace an iconic system by a noniconic system will be to introduce a new and more powerful extension of the original system, one which can do everything the former system can do and more besides.(3) that every artificial  or noniconic system is based on an antecedent NATURAL iconic system.Descriptive representation must look back to and in part do the work of prior iconic representation.That work will consist in the representation of objects and situations in the world in something like the way in which a team of North Oxfordshire cricketers may represent, say North Oxfordshire. The cricketers do on behalf of North Oxfordshire something that North Oxfordshire cannot do for itself, namely engage in a game of cricket.“Similarly, our representations (initially iconic but also noniconic) enable objects and situations in the world to do something which objects and situations cannot do for themselves, namely govern our actions and behaviour.”Etc.Grice loved to quote the Bishop on this or that ‘sounding harsh.’ “Surely, the Bishop would agree with me that it sounds harsh to say that Smith’s brain’s s being in such and such a state at noon is a case of judging something to be true on insufficient evidence."We hope neither will agree THIS sounds harsh, either, as North-Oxfordshire engaging in a game of cricket does not really, either.

berlin: “If Berlin and I have something in common is a tutor!” – H. P. Grice. Berlin: I. Russian-born philosopher and historian of ideas. He is widely acclaimed for his doctrine of radical objective pluralism; his writings on liberty; his modification, refinement, and defense of traditional liberalism against the totalitarian doctrines of the twentieth century not least Marxism-Leninism; and his brilliant and illuminating studies in the history of ideas from Machiavelli and Vico to Marx and Sorel. A founding father with Austin, Ayer, and others of Oxford philosophy in the 0s, he published several influential papers in its general spirit, but, without abandoning its empirical approach, he came increasingly to dissent from what seemed to him its unduly barren, doctrinaire, and truthdenying tendencies. From the 0s onward he broke away to devote himself principally to social and political philosophy and to the study of general ideas. His two most important contributions in social and political theory, brought together with two other valuable essays in Four Essays on Liberty 9, are “Historical Inevitability” 4 and his 8 inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford, “Two Concepts of Liberty.” The first is a bold and decisive attack on historical determinism and moral relativism and subjectivism and a ringing endorsement of the role of free will and responsibility in human history. The second contains Berlin’s enormously influential attempt to distinguish clearly between “negative” and “positive” liberty. Negative liberty, foreshadowed by such thinkers as J. S. Mill, Constant, and above all Herzen, consists in making minimal assumptions about the ultimate nature and needs of the subject, in ensuring a minimum of external interference by authority of any provenance, and in leaving open as large a field for free individual choice as is consonant with a minimum of social organization and order. Positive liberty, associated with monist and voluntarist thinkers of all kinds, not least Hegel, the G. Idealists, and their historical progeny, begins with the notion of self-mastery and proceeds to make dogmatic and far-reaching metaphysical assumptions about the essence of the subject. It then deduces from these the proper paths to freedom, and, finally, seeks to drive flesh-and-blood individuals down these preordained paths, whether they wish it or not, within the framework of a tight-knit centralized state under the irrefragable rule of rational experts, thus perverting what begins as a legitimate human ideal, i.e. positive self-direction and self-mastery, into a tyranny. “Two Concepts of Liberty” also sets out to disentangle liberty in either of these senses from other ends, such as the craving for recognition, the need to belong, or human solidarity, fraternity, or equality. Berlin’s work in the history of ideas is of a piece with his other writings. Vico and Herder 6 presents the emergence of that historicism and pluralism which shook the two-thousand-yearold monist rationalist faith in a unified body of truth regarding all questions of fact and principle in all fields of human knowledge. From this profound intellectual overturn Berlin traces in subsequent volumes of essays, such as Against the Current 9, The Crooked Timber of Humanity 0, and The Sense of Reality 6, the growth of some of the principal intellectual movements that mark our era, among them nationalism, fascism, relativism, subjectivism, nihilism, voluntarism, and existentialism. He also presents with persuasiveness and clarity that peculiar objective pluralism which he identified and made his own. There is an irreducible plurality of objective human values, many of which are incompatible with one another; hence the ineluctable need for absolute choices by individuals and groups, a need that confers supreme value upon, and forms one of the major justifications of, his conception of negative liberty; Berlin, Isaiah Berlin, Isaiah 85   85 hence, too, his insistence that utopia, namely a world where all valid human ends and objective values are simultaneously realized in an ultimate synthesis, is a conceptual impossibility. While not himself founder of any definable school or movement, Berlin’s influence as a philosopher and as a human being has been immense, not least on a variety of distinguished thinkers such as Stuart Hampshire, Charles Taylor, Bernard Williams, Richard Wollheim, Gerry Cohen, Steven Lukes, David Pears, and many others. His general intellectual and moral impact on the life of the twentieth century as writer, diplomat, patron of music and the arts, international academic elder statesman, loved and trusted friend to the great and the humble, and dazzling lecturer, conversationalist, and animateur des idées, will furnish inexhaustible material to future historians. 

bernardus: chartrensis. of Chartres,, philosopher. He was first a teacher and later chancellor 116 of the cathedral school at Chartres, which was then an active center of learning in the liberal arts and philosophy. Bernard himself was renowned as a grammarian, i.e., as an expositor of difficult texts, and as a teacher of Plato. None of his works has survived whole, and only three fragments are preserved in works by others. He is now best known for an image recorded both by his student, John of Salisbury, and by William of Conches. In Bernard’s image, he and all his medieval contemporaries were in relation to the ancient authors like “dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants.” John of Salisbury takes the image to mean both that the medievals could see more and further than the ancients, and that they could do so only because they had been lifted up by such powerful predecessors.

bernardus: of Clairvaux, Saint – Grice’s personal saint, seeing that St. John’s was originally a Cistercian monastery almost burned by Henry VIII. Cistercian monk, mystic, and religious leader. He is most noted for his doctrine of Christian humility and his depiction of the mystical experience, which exerted considerable influence on later Christian mystics. Educated in France, he entered the monastery at Cîteaux in 1112, and three years later founded a daughter monastery at Clairvaux. According to Bernard, honest self-knowledge should reveal the extent to which we fail to be what we should be in the eyes of God. That selfknowledge should lead us to curb our pride and so become more humble. Humility is necessary for spiritual purification, which in turn is necessary for contemplation of God, the highest form of which is union with God. Consistent with orthodox Christian doctrine, Bernard maintains that mystical union does not entail identity. One does not become God; rather, one’s will and God’s will come into complete conformity. 

bernoulli’s theorem: studied by Grice in his “Probability, Desirability, Credibility” -- also called the weak law of large numbers, the principle that if a series of trials is repeated n times where a there are two possible outcomes, 0 and 1, on each trial, b the probability p of 0 is the same on each trial, and c this probability is independent of the outcome of other trials, then, for arbitrary positive e, as the number n of trials is increased, the probability that the absolute value Kr/n  pK of the difference between the relative frequency r/n of 0’s in the n trials and p is less than e approaches 1. The first proof of this theorem was given by Jakob Bernoulli in Part IV of his posthumously published Ars Conjectandi of 1713. Simplifications were later constructed and his result has been generalized in a series of “weak laws of large numbers.” Although Bernoulli’s theorem derives a conclusion about the probability of the relative frequency r/n of 0’s for large n of trials given the value of p, in Ars Conjectandi and correspondence with Leibniz, Bernoulli thought it could be used to reason from information about r/n to the value of p when the latter is unknown. Speculation persists as to whether Bernoulli anticipated the inverse inference of Bayes, the confidence interval estimation of Peirce, J. Neyman, and E. S. Pearson, or the fiducial argument of R. A. Fisher. 

Bertrand’s box paradox: studied by Grice in his “Probability, Desirability, Credibility” -- a puzzle concerning conditional probability. Imagine three boxes with two drawers apiece. Each drawer of the first box contains a gold medal. Each drawer of the second contains a silver medal. One drawer of the third contains a gold medal, and the other a silver medal. At random, a box is selected and one of its drawers is opened. If a gold medal appears, what is the probability that the third box was selected? The probability seems to be ½, because the box is either the first or the third, and they seem equally probable. But a gold medal is less probable from the third box than from the first, Bernard of Chartres Bertrand’s box paradox 86   86 so the third box is actually less probable than the first. By Bayes’s theorem its probability is 1 /3. Joseph Bertrand, a  mathematician, published the paradox in Calcul des probabilités Calculus of Probabilities, 9. 

Bertrand’s paradox: an inconsistency arising from the classical definition of an event’s probability as the number of favorable cases divided by the number of possible cases. Given a circle, a chord is selected at random. What is the probability that the chord is longer than a side of an equilateral triangle inscribed in the circle? The event has these characterizations: 1 the apex angle of an isosceles triangle inscribed in the circle and having the chord as a leg is less than 60°, 2 the chord intersects the diameter perpendicular to it less than ½ a radius from the circle’s center, and 3 the chord’s midpoint lies within a circle concentric with the original and of ¼ its area. The definition thus suggests that the event’s probability is 1 /3, 1 /2, and also ¼. Joseph Bertrand, a  mathematician, published the paradox in Calcul des probabilités 9. 

Beth’s definability theorem: Grice loved an emplicit definition. a theorem for first-order logic. A theory defines a term t implicitly if and only if an explicit definition of the term, on the basis of the other primitive concepts, is entailed by the theory. A theory defines a term implicitly if any two models of the theory with the same domain and the same extension for the other primitive terms are identical, i.e., also have the same extension for the term. An explicit definition of a term is a sentence that states necessary and sufficient conditions for the term’s applicability. Beth’s theorem was implicit in a method to show independence of a term that was first used by the  logician Alessandro Padoa. Padoa suggested, in 0, that independence of a primitive algebraic term from the other terms occurring in a set of axioms can be established by two true interpretations of the axioms that differ only in the interpretation of the term whose independence has to be proven. He claimed, without proof, that the existence of two such models is not only sufficient for, but also implied by, independence. Tarski first gave a proof of Beth’s theorem in 6 for the logic of the Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell, but the result was only obtained for first-order logic in 3 by E. Beth. In modern expositions Beth’s theorem is a direct implication of Craig’s interpolation theorem. In a variation on Padoa’s method, Karel de Bouvère described in 9 a one-model method to show indefinability: if the set of logical consequences of a theory formulated in terms of the remaining vocabulary cannot be extended to a model of the full theory, a term is not explicitly definable in terms of the remaining vocabulary. In the philosophy of science literature this is called a failure of Ramsey-eliminability of the term. 

bi-conditional: As Grice notes, ‘if’ is the only non-commutative operator; so trust Mill to make it commutative, “if p, q, then if q, p.” Cited by Strawson after ‘if,’ but dismissed by Grice in  his list of ‘formal devices’ as ‘too obvious.’ --  the logical operator, usually written with a triple-bar sign S or a doubleheaded arrow Q, used to indicate that two propositions have the same truth-value: that either both are true or else both are false. The term also designates a proposition having this sign, or a natural language expression of it, as its main connective; e.g., P if and only if Q. The truth table for the biconditional is The biconditional is so called because its application is logically equivalent to the conjunction ‘P-conditional-Q-and-Q-conditional-P’.  According to Pears, and rightly, too, ‘if’ conversationally implicates ‘iff.’

black box – used by Grice in his method in philosophical psychology -- a hypothetical unit specified only by functional role, in order to explain some effect or behavior. The term may refer to a single entity with an unknown structure, or unknown internal organization, which realizes some known function, or to any one of a system of such entities, whose organization and functions are inferred from the behavior of an organism or entity of which they are constituents. Within behaviorism and classical learning theory, the basic functions were taken to be generalized mechanisms governing the relationship of stimulus to response, including reinforcement, inhibition, extinction, and arousal. The organism was treated as a black box realizing these functions. Within cybernetics, though there are no simple inputoutput rules describing the organism, there is an emphasis on functional organization and feedback in controlling behavior. The components within a cybernetic system are treated as black boxes. In both cases, the details of underlying structure, mechanism, and dynamics are either unknown or regarded as unimportant. 

blackburn’s skull. Blackburn's "one-off predicament" of communicating without a shared language illustrates how Grice's theory can be applied to iconic signals such as the drawing of a skull to wam of danger. See his Spreading the Word. III. 112.

blindsight: studied by Grice and Warnock, “Visa.” -- a residual visual capacity resulting from lesions in certain areas of the brain the striate cortex, area 17. Under routine clinical testing, persons suffering such lesions appear to be densely blind in particular regions of the visual field. Researchers have long recognized that, in primates, comparable lesions do not result in similar deficits. It has seemed unlikely that this disparity could be due to differences in brain function, however. And, indeed, when human subjects are tested in the way non-human subjects are tested, the disparity vanishes. Although subjects report that they can detect nothing in the blind field, when required to “guess” at properties of items situated there, they perform remarkably well. They seem to “know” the contents of the blind field while remaining unaware that they know, often expressing astonishment on being told the results of testing in the blind field. 

bloch: e., philosopher studied by H. P. Grice for his “ontological marxism.” influenced by Marxism, his views went beyond Marxism as he matured. He fled G.y in the 0s, but returned after World War II to a professorship in East G.y, where his increasingly unorthodox ideas were eventually censured by the Communist authorities, forcing a move to West G.y in the 0s. His major work, The Principle of Hope 459, is influenced by G. idealism, Jewish mysticism, Neoplatonism, utopianism, and numerous other sources besides Marxism. Humans are essentially unfinished, moved by a cosmic impulse, “hope,” a tendency in them to strive for the as-yet-unrealized, which manifests itself as utopia, or vision of future possibilities. Despite his atheism, Bloch wished to retrieve the sense of self-transcending that he saw in the religious and mythical traditions of humankind. His ideas have consequently influenced theology as well as philosophy, e.g. the “theology of hope” of Jurgen Moltmann.

blondel: m. cf. Hampshire, “Thought and action,” philosopher who discovered the deist background of human action. In his main work, Action 3, 2d rev. ed. 0, Blondel held that action is part of the very nature of human beings and as such becomes an object of philosophy; through philosophy, action should find its meaning, i.e. realize itself rationally. An appropriate phenomenology of action through phenomenological description uncovers the phenomenal level of action but points beyond it. Such a supraphenomenal sense of action provides it a metaphysical status. This phenomenology of action rests on an immanent dialectics of action: a gap between the aim of the action and its realization. This gap, while dissatisfying to the actor, also drives him toward new activities. The only immanent solution of this dialectics and its consequences is a transcendent one. We have to realize that we, like other humans, cannot grasp our own activities and must accept our limitations and our finitude as well as the insufficiency of our philosophy, which is now understood as a philosophy of insufficiency and points toward the existence of the supernatural element in every human act, namely God. Human activity is the outcome of divine grace. Through action bit Blondel, Maurice 90   90 one touches the existence of God, something not possible by logical argumentation. In the later phase of his development Blondel deserted his early “anti-intellectualism” and stressed the close relation between thought and action, now understood as inseparable and mutually interrelated. He came to see philosophy as a rational instrument of understanding one’s actions as well as one’s insufficiency.

bobbio: essential Italian philosopher, who’s written on Fregeian sense ‘senso,’ – the need for sense – the search for sense, meaning meaning. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Bobbio," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

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

bodin: j., Discussed by H. P. Grice in his exploration on legal versus moral right. -- philosopher whose philosophy centers on the concept of sovereignty. His Six livres de la république 1577 defines a state as constituted by common public interests, families, and the sovereign. The sovereign is the lawgiver, who stands beyond the absolute rights he possesses; he must, however, follow the law of God, natural law, and the constitution. The ideal state was for Bodin a monarchy that uses aristocratic and democratic structures of government for the sake of the common good. In order to achieve a broader empirical picture of politics Bodin used historical comparisons. This is methodologically reflected in his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem 1566. Bodin was clearly a theorist of absolutism. As a member of the Politique group he played a practical role in emancipating the state from the church. His thinking was influenced by his experience of civil war. In his Heptaplomeres posthumous he pleaded for tolerance with respect to all religions, including Islam and Judaism. As a public prosecutor, however, he wrote a manual for judges in witchcraft trials De la démonomanie des sorciers, 1580. By stressing the peacemaking role of a strong state Bodin was a forerunner of Hobbes. 

boehme: j. Cited by Grice in “From Genesis to Revelations” -- protestant speculative mystic. Influenced especially by Paracelsus, Boehme received little formal education, but was successful enough as a shoemaker to devote himself to his writing, explicating his religious experiences. He published little in his lifetime, though enough to attract charges of heresy from local clergy. He did gather followers, and his works were published after his death. His writings are elaborately symbolic rather than argumentative, but respond deeply to fundamental problems in the Christian worldview. He holds that the Godhead, omnipotent will, is as nothing to us, since we can in no way grasp it. The Mysterium Magnum, the ideal world, is conceived in God’s mind through an impulse to self-revelation. The actual world, separate from God, is created through His will, and seeks to return to the peace of the Godhead. The world is good, as God is, but its goodness falls away, and is restored at the end of history, though not entirely, for some souls are damned eternally. Human beings enjoy free will, and create themselves through rebirth in faith. The Fall is necessary for the selfknowledge gained in recovery from it. Recognition of one’s hidden, free self is a recognition of God manifested in the world, so that human salvation completes God’s act of self-revelation. It is also a recognition of evil rooted in the blind will underlying all individual existence, without which there would be nothing except the Godhead. Boehme’s works influenced Hegel and the later Schelling. 

boezio: Possibly the most important Italian philosopher of all time. Grice loved Boethius – “He made Aristotle intelligible at Clifton!” -- Anicius Manlius Severinus, Roman philosopher and Aristotelian translator and commentator. He was born into a wealthy patrician family in Rome and had a distinguished political career under the Ostrogothic king Theodoric before being arrested and executed on charges of treason. His logic and philosophical theology contain important contributions to the philosophy of the late classical and early medieval periods, and his translations of and commentaries on Aristotle profoundly influenced the history of philosophy, particularly in the medieval Latin West. His most famous work, The Consolation of Philosophy, composed during his imprisonment, is a moving reflection on the nature of human happiness and the problem of evil and contains classic discussions of providence, fate, chance, and the apparent incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free choice. He was known during his own lifetime, however, as a brilliant scholar whose knowledge of the Grecian language and ancient Grecian philosophy set him apart from his Latin contemporaries. He conceived his scholarly career as devoted to preserving and making accessible to the Latin West the great philosophical achievement of ancient Greece. To this end he announced an ambitious plan to translate into Latin and write commenbodily continuity Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus 91   91 taries on all of Plato and Aristotle, but it seems that he achieved this goal only for Aristotle’s Organon. His extant translations include Porphyry’s Isagoge an introduction to Aristotle’s Categories and Aristotle’s Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations. He wrote two commentaries on the Isagoge and On Interpretation and one on the Categories, and we have what appear to be his notes for a commentary on the Prior Analytics. His translation of the Posterior Analytics and his commentary on the Topics are lost. He also commented on Cicero’s Topica and wrote his own treatises on logic, including De syllogismis hypotheticis, De syllogismis categoricis, Introductio in categoricos syllogismos, De divisione, and De topicis differentiis, in which he elaborates and supplements Aristotelian logic. Boethius shared the common Neoplatonist view that the Platonist and Aristotelian systems could be harmonized by following Aristotle in logic and natural philosophy and Plato in metaphysics and theology. This plan for harmonization rests on a distinction between two kinds of forms: 1 forms that are conjoined with matter to constitute bodies  these, which he calls “images” imagines, correspond to the forms in Aristotle’s hylomorphic account of corporeal substances; and 2 forms that are pure and entirely separate from matter, corresponding to Plato’s ontologically separate Forms. He calls these “true forms” and “the forms themselves.” He holds that the former, “enmattered” forms depend for their being on the latter, pure forms. Boethius takes these three sorts of entities  bodies, enmattered forms, and separate forms  to be the respective objects of three different cognitive activities, which constitute the three branches of speculative philosophy. Natural philosophy is concerned with enmattered forms as enmattered, mathematics with enmattered forms considered apart from their matter though they cannot be separated from matter in actuality, and theology with the pure and separate forms. He thinks that the mental abstraction characteristic of mathematics is important for understanding the Peripatetic account of universals: the enmattered, particular forms found in sensible things can be considered as universal when they are considered apart from the matter in which they inhere though they cannot actually exist apart from matter. But he stops short of endorsing this moderately realist Aristotelian account of universals. His commitment to an ontology that includes not just Aristotelian natural forms but also Platonist Forms existing apart from matter implies a strong realist view of universals. With the exception of De fide catholica, which is a straightforward credal statement, Boethius’s theological treatises De Trinitate, Utrum Pater et Filius, Quomodo substantiae, and Contra Euthychen et Nestorium show his commitment to using logic and metaphysics, particularly the Aristotelian doctrines of the categories and predicables, to clarify and resolve issues in Christian theology. De Trinitate, e.g., includes a historically influential discussion of the Aristotelian categories and the applicability of various kinds of predicates to God. Running through these treatises is his view that predicates in the category of relation are unique by virtue of not always requiring for their applicability an ontological ground in the subjects to which they apply, a doctrine that gave rise to the common medieval distinction between so-called real and non-real relations. Regardless of the intrinsic significance of Boethius’s philosophical ideas, he stands as a monumental figure in the history of medieval philosophy rivaled in importance only by Aristotle and Augustine. Until the recovery of the works of Aristotle in the mid-twelfth century, medieval philosophers depended almost entirely on Boethius’s translations and commentaries for their knowledge of pagan ancient philosophy, and his treatises on logic continued to be influential throughout the Middle Ages. The preoccupation of early medieval philosophers with logic and with the problem of universals in particular is due largely to their having been tutored by Boethius and Boethius’s Aristotle. The theological treatises also received wide attention in the Middle Ages, giving rise to a commentary tradition extending from the ninth century through the Renaissance and shaping discussion of central theological doctrines such as the Trinity and Incarnation. Refs.: Boethiius, in Stanford Encyclopaedia. Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Boezio," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia. Bollettino della Società filosofica italiana.

bollettino della società filosofica italiana: the name is telling, this is a Bulletin of the Italian Philosophical Society. Oddly, there is no English Philosophical Society. Grice belonged to the OXFORD philosophical society. While there is Società filosofica at Bologna, the world’s oldest varsity, Bologna was never too strong in philosophy – when Italian philosophers preferred to teach directly to Parisians!

boltzmann: cited by Grice in his discussion of “Eddington’s Two Tables” -- physicist who was a spirited advocate of the atomic theory and a pioneer in developing the kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics. Boltzmann’s most famous achievements were the transport equation, the H-theorem, and the probabilistic interpretation of entropy. This work is summarized in his Vorlesungen über Gastheorie “Lectures on the Theory of Gases,” 698. He held chairs in physics at the universities of Graz, Vienna, Munich, and Leipzig before returning to Vienna as professor of theoretical physics in 2. In 3 he succeeded Mach at Boltzmann, Ludwig Boltzmann, Ludwig 92   92 Vienna and lectured on the philosophy of science. In the 0s the atomic-kinetic theory was attacked by Mach and by the energeticists led by Wilhelm Ostwald. Boltzmann’s counterattack can be found in his Populäre Schriften “Popular Writings,” 5. Boltzmann agreed with his critics that many of his mechanical models of gas molecules could not be true but, like Maxwell, defended models as invaluable heuristic tools. Boltzmann also insisted that it was futile to try to eliminate all metaphysical pictures from theories in favor of bare equations. For Boltzmann, the goal of physics is not merely the discovery of equations but the construction of a coherent picture of reality. Boltzmann defended his H-theorem against the reversibility objection of Loschmidt and the recurrence objection of Zermelo by conceding that a spontaneous decrease in entropy was possible but extremely unlikely. Boltzmann’s views that irreversibility depends on the probability of initial conditions and that entropy increase determines the direction of time are defended by Reichenbach in The Direction of Time 6. 

bolzano: b., an intentionalist philosopher considered by most as a pre-Griceian, philosopher. He studied philosophy, mathematics, physics, and theology in Prague; received the Ph.D.; was ordained a priest 1805; was appointed to a chair in religion at Charles  in 1806; and, owing to his criticism of the Austrian constitution, was dismissed in 1819. He composed his two main works from 1823 through 1841: the Wissenschaftslehre 4 vols., 1837 and the posthumous Grössenlehre. His ontology and logical semantics influenced Husserl and, indirectly, Lukasiewicz, Tarski, and others of the Warsaw School. His conception of ethics and social philosophy affected both the cultural life of Bohemia and the Austrian system of education. Bolzano recognized a profound distinction between the actual thoughts and judgments Urteile of human beings, their linguistic expressions, and the abstract propositions Sätze an sich and their parts which exist independently of those thoughts, judgments, and expressions. A proposition in Bolzano’s sense is a preexistent sequence of ideas-as-such Vorstellungen an sich. Only propositions containing finite ideas-as-such are accessible to the mind. Real things existing concretely in space and time have subsistence Dasein whereas abstract objects such as propositions have only logical existence. Adherences, i.e., forces, applied to certain concrete substances give rise to subjective ideas, thoughts, or judgments. A subjective idea is a part of a judgment that is not itself a judgment. The set of judgments is ordered by a causal relation. Bolzano’s abstract world is constituted of sets, ideas-as-such, certain properties Beschaffenheiten, and objects constructed from these. Thus, sentence shapes are a kind of ideas-as-such, and certain complexes of ideas-as-such constitute propositions. Ideas-as-such can be generated from expressions of a language by postulates for the relation of being an object of something. Analogously, properties can be generated by postulates for the relation of something being applied to an object. Bolzano’s notion of religion is based on his distinction between propositions and judgments. His Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft 4 vols., 1834 distinguishes between religion in the objective and subjective senses. The former is a set of religious propositions, whereas the latter is the set of religious views of a single person. Hence, a subjective religion can contain an objective one. By defining a religious proposition as being moral and imperatives the rules of utilitarianism, Bolzano integrated his notion of religion within his ontology. In the Grössenlehre Bolzano intended to give a detailed, well-founded exposition of contemporary mathematics and also to inaugurate new domains of research. Natural numbers are defined, half a century before Frege, as properties of “bijective” sets the members of which can be put in one-to-one correspondence, and real numbers are conceived as properties of sets of certain infinite sequences of rational numbers. The analysis of infinite sets brought him to reject the Euclidean doctrine that the whole is always greater than any of its parts and, hence, to the insight that a set is infinite if and only if it is bijective to a proper subset of itself. This anticipates Peirce and Dedekind. Bolzano’s extension of the linear continuum of finite numbers by infinitesimals implies a relatively constructive approach to nonstandard analysis. In the development of standard analysis the most remarkable result of the Grössenlehre is the anticipation of Weirstrass’s discovery that there exist nowhere differentiable continuous functions. The Wissenschaftslehre was intended to lay the logical and epistemological foundations of Bolzano’s mathematics. A theory of science in Bolzano’s sense is a collection of rules for delimiting the set of scientific textbooks. Whether a Bolzano, Bernard Bolzano, Bernard 93   93 class of true propositions is a worthwhile object of representation in a scientific textbook is an ethical question decidable on utilitarian principles. Bolzano proceeded from an expanded and standardized ordinary language through which he could describe propositions and their parts. He defined the semantic notion of truth and introduced the function corresponding to a “replacement” operation on propositions. One of his major achievements was his definition of logical derivability logische Ableitbarkeit between sets of propositions: B is logically derivable from A if and only if all elements of the sum of A and B are simultaneously true for some replacement of their non-logical ideas-as-such and if all elements of B are true for any such replacement that makes all elements of A true. In addition to this notion, which is similar to Tarski’s concept of consequence of 6, Bolzano introduced a notion corresponding to Gentzen’s concept of consequence. A proposition is universally valid allgemeingültig if it is derivable from the null class. In his proof theory Bolzano formulated counterparts to Gentzen’s cut rule. Bolzano introduced a notion of inductive probability as a generalization of derivability in a limited domain. This notion has the formal properties of conditional probability. These features and Bolzano’s characterization of probability density by the technique of variation are reminiscent of Vitters’s inductive logic and Carnap’s theory of regular confirmation functions. The replacement of conceptual complexes in propositions would, if applied to a formalized language, correspond closely to a substitutionsemantic conception of quantification. His own philosophical language was based on a kind of free logic. In essence, Bolzano characterized a substitution-semantic notion of consequence with a finite number of antecedents. His quantification over individual and general concepts amounts to the introduction of a non-elementary logic of lowest order containing a quantification theory of predicate variables but no set-theoretical principles such as choice axioms. His conception of universal validity and of the semantic superstructure of logic leads to a semantically adequate extension of the predicate-logical version of Lewis’s system S5 of modal logic without paradoxes. It is also possible to simulate Bolzano’s theory of probability in a substitution-semantically constructed theory of probability functions. Hence, by means of an ontologically parsimonious superstructure without possible-worlds metaphysics, Bolzano was able to delimit essentially the realms of classical logical truth and additive probability spaces. In geometry Bolzano created a new foundation from a topological point of view. He defined the notion of an isolated point of a set in a way reminiscent of the notion of a point at which a set is well-dimensional in the sense of Urysohn and Menger. On this basis he introduced his topological notion of a continuum and formulated a recursive definition of the dimensionality of non-empty subsets of the Euclidean 3-space, which is closely related to the inductive dimension concept of Urysohn and Menger. In a remarkable paragraph of an unfinished late manuscript on geometry he stated the celebrated curve theorem of Jordan. 

bonaria – a church on an Italian island – Grice sailed there during his Grand Tour to Italy and Greece. He loved it! And he loved reading the Latin inscriptions and practicing the Latin he had learned at Clifton.  H. P. Grice was going to visit the River Plate with Noel Coward, but he got sick -- – or South American philosophy – “Bonaria” was settled by Italians after the matron saint of sailors, “Bonaria,” – itself settled by Ligurians, the first Italians to settle in Buenos Aires and the Argentine area of the River Plate -- the philosophy of South America, which is European in origin and constitutes a chapter in the history of Western philosophy (rather than  say, Japanese – there was a strong emigration of Japanese to Buenos Aires, but they remained mainly in the dry laundry business). Pre-Columbian (“Indian”) indigenous cultures had developed ideas about the world that have been interpreted by some scholars as philosophical, but there is no evidence that any of those ideas were incorporated into the philosophy later practiced in Latin America. It is difficult to characterize Latin American philosophy in a way applicable to all of its 500-year history. The most one can say is that, in contrast with European and Anglo-American philosophy, it has maintained a strong human and social interest, has been consistently affected by Scholastic and Catholic thought, and has significantly affected the social and political institutions in the region. South American philosophers (especially if NOT from Buenos Aires) tend to be active in the educational, political, and social lives of their countries and deeply concerned with their own cultural identity (except if they are from Buenos Aires, who have their identity well settled in Europe, as European exiles or expatriates that that they are) The history of philosophy in Latin America can be divided into four periods: colonial, independentist, positivist, and contemporary. Colonial period (c.1550–c.1750). This period was dominated by the type of Scholasticism officially practiced in the Iberian peninsula. The texts studied were those of medieval Scholastics, primarily Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and of their Iberian commentators, Vitoria, Soto, Fonseca, and, above all, Suárez. The university curriculum was modeled on that of major Iberian universities (Salamanca, Alcalá, Coimbra), and instructors produced both systematic treatises and commentaries on classical, medieval, and contemporary texts. The philosophical concerns in the colonies were those prevalent in Spain and Portugal and centered on logical and metaphysical issues inherited from the Middle Ages and on political and legal questions raised by the discovery and colonization of America. Among the former were issues involving the logic of terms and propositions and the problems of universals and individuation; among the latter were questions concerning the rights of Indians and the relations of the natives with the conquerors. The main philosophical center during the early colonial period was Mexico; Peru became important in the seventeenth century. Between 1700 and 1750 other centers developed, but by that time Scholasticism had begun to decline. The founding of the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico in 1553 inaugurated Scholastic instruction in the New World. The first teacher of philosophy at the university was Alonso de la Vera Cruz (c.1504–84), an Augustinian and disciple of Soto. He composed several didactic treatises on La Peyrère, Isaac Latin American philosophy 483 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 483 logic, metaphysics, and science, including Recognitio summularum (“Introductory Logic,” 1554), Dialectica resolutio (“Advanced Logic,” 1554), and Physica speculatio (“Physics,” 1557). He also wrote a theologico-legal work, the Speculum conjugiorum (“On Marriage,” 1572), concerned with the status of precolonial Indian marriages. Alonso’s works are eclectic and didactic and show the influence of Aristotle, Peter of Spain, and Vitoria in particular. Another important Scholastic figure in Mexico was the Dominican Tomás de Mercado (c.1530–75). He produced commentaries on the logical works of Peter of Spain and Aristotle and a treatise on international commerce, Summa de tratos y contratos (“On Contracts,” 1569). His other sources are Porphyry and Aquinas. Perhaps the most important figure of the period was Antonio Rubio (1548–1615), author of the most celebrated Scholastic book written in the New World, Logica mexicana (“Mexican Logic,” 1605). It underwent seven editions in Europe and became a logic textbook in Alcalá. Rubio’s sources are Aristotle, Porphyry, and Aquinas, but he presents original treatments of several logical topics. Rubio also commented on several of Aristotle’s other works. In Peru, two authors merit mention. Juan Pérez Menacho (1565–1626) was a prolific writer, but only a moral treatise, Theologia et moralis tractatus (“Treatise on Theology and Morals”), and a commentary on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae remain. The Chilean-born Franciscan, Alfonso Briceño (c.1587–1669), worked in Nicaragua and Venezuela, but the center of his activities was Lima. In contrast with the Aristotelian-Thomistic flavor of the philosophy of most of his contemporaries, Briceño was a Scotistic Augustinian. This is evident in Celebriores controversias in primum sententiarum Scoti (“On Scotus’s First Book of the Sentences,” 1638) and Apologia de vita et doctrina Joannis Scotti (“Apology for John Scotus,” 1642). Although Scholasticism dominated the intellectual life of colonial Latin America, some authors were also influenced by humanism. Among the most important in Mexico were Juan de Zumárraga (c.1468–1548); the celebrated defender of the Indians, Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566); Carlos Sigüenza y Góngora (1645–1700); and Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1651–95). The last one is a famous poet, now considered a precursor of the feminist movement. In Peru, Nicolás de Olea (1635–1705) stands out. Most of these authors were trained in Scholasticism but incorporated the concerns and ideas of humanists into their work. Independentist period (c.1750–c.1850). Just before and immediately after independence, leading Latin American intellectuals lost interest in Scholastic issues and became interested in social and political questions, although they did not completely abandon Scholastic sources. Indeed, the theories of natural law they inherited from Vitoria and Suárez played a significant role in forming their ideas. But they also absorbed non-Scholastic European authors. The rationalism of Descartes and other Continental philosophers, together with the empiricism of Locke, the social ideas of Rousseau, the ethical views of Bentham, the skepticism of Voltaire and other Encyclopedists, the political views of Condorcet and Montesquieu, the eclecticism of Cousin, and the ideology of Destutt de Tracy, all contributed to the development of liberal ideas that were a background to the independentist movement. Most of the intellectual leaders of this movement were men of action who used ideas for practical ends, and their views have limited theoretical value. They made reason a measure of legitimacy in social and governmental matters, and found the justification for revolutionary ideas in natural law. Moreover, they criticized authority; some, regarding religion as superstitious, opposed ecclesiastical power. These ideas paved the way for the later development of positivism. The period begins with the weakening hold of Scholasticism on Latin American intellectuals and the growing influence of early modern philosophy, particularly Descartes. Among the first authors to turn to modern philosophy was Juan Benito Díaz de Gamarra y Dávalos (1745–83) in Mexico who wrote Errores del entendimiento humano (“Errors of Human Understanding,” 1781) and Academias filosóficas (“Philosophical Academies,” 1774). Also in Mexico was Francisco Javier Clavijero (1731–87), author of a book on physics and a general history of Mexico. In Brazil the turn away from Scholasticism took longer. One of the first authors to show the influence of modern philosophy was Francisco de Mont’Alverne (1784– 1858) in Compêndio de filosofia (1883). These first departures from Scholasticism were followed by the more consistent efforts of those directly involved in the independentist movement. Among these were Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), leader of the rebellion against Spain in the Andean countries of South America, and the Mexicans Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753– 1811), José María Morelos y Paván (1765– 1815), and José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi Latin American philosophy Latin American philosophy 484 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 484 (1776–1827). In Argentina, Mariano Moreno (1778–1811), Juan Crisóstomo Lafimur (d. 1823), and Diego Alcorta (d. 1808), among others, spread the liberal ideas that served as a background for independence. Positivist period (c.1850–c.1910). During this time, positivism became not only the most popular philosophy in Latin America but also the official philosophy of some countries. After 1910, however, positivism declined drastically. Latin American positivism was eclectic, influenced by a variety of thinkers, including Comte, Spencer, and Haeckel. Positivists emphasized the explicative value of empirical science while rejecting metaphysics. According to them, all knowledge is based on experience rather than theoretical speculation, and its value lies in its practical applications. Their motto, preserved on the Brazilian flag, was “Order and Progress.” This positivism left little room for freedom and values; the universe moved inexorably according to mechanistic laws. Positivism was a natural extension of the ideas of the independentists. It was, in part, a response to the needs of the newly liberated countries of Latin America. After independence, the concerns of Latin American intellectuals shifted from political liberation to order, justice, and progress. The beginning of positivism can be traced to the time when Latin America, responding to these concerns, turned to the views of French socialists such as Saint-Simon and Fourier. The Argentinians Esteban Echevarría (1805–51) and Juan Bautista Alberdi (1812–84) were influenced by them. Echevarría’s Dogma socialista (“Socialist Dogma,” 1846) combines socialist ideas with eighteenth-century rationalism and literary Romanticism, and Alberdi follows suit, although he eventually turned toward Comte. Alberdi is, moreover, the first Latin American philosopher to worry about developing a philosophy adequate to the needs of Latin America. In Ideas (1842), he stated that philosophy in Latin America should be compatible with the economic, political, and social requirements of the region. Another transitional thinker, influenced by both Scottish philosophy and British empiricism, was the Venezuelan Andrés Bello (1781–1865). A prolific writer, he is the most important Latin American philosopher of the nineteenth century. His Filosofía del entendimiento (“Philosophy of Understanding,” 1881) reduces metaphysics to psychology. Bello also developed original ideas about language and history. After 1829, he worked in Chile, where his influence was strongly felt. The generation of Latin American philosophers after Alberdi and Bello was mostly positivistic. Positivism’s heyday was the second half of the nineteenth century, but two of its most distinguished advocates, the Argentinian José Ingenieros (1877–1925) and the Cuban Enrique José Varona (1849–1933), worked well into the twentieth century. Both modified positivism in important ways. Ingenieros left room for metaphysics, which, according to him, deals in the realm of the “yet-to-be-experienced.” Among his most important books are Hacia una moral sin dogmas (“Toward a Morality without Dogmas,” 1917), where the influence of Emerson is evident, Principios de psicologia (“Principles of Psychology,” 1911), where he adopts a reductionist approach to psychology, and El hombre mediocre (“The Mediocre Man,” 1913), an inspirational book popular among Latin American youths. In Conferencias filosóficas (“Philosophical Lectures,” 1880–88), Varona went beyond the mechanistic explanations of behavior common among positivists. In Mexico the first and leading positivist was Gabino Barreda (1818–81), who reorganized Mexican education under President Juárez. An ardent follower of Comte, Barreda made positivism the basis of his educational reforms. He was followed by Justo Sierra (1848–1912), who turned toward Spencer and Darwin and away from Comte, criticizing Barreda’s dogmatism. Positivism was introduced in Brazil by Tobias Barreto (1839–89) and Silvio Romero (1851– 1914) in Pernambuco, around 1869. In 1875 Benjamin Constant (1836–91) founded the Positivist Society in Rio de Janeiro. The two most influential exponents of positivism in the country were Miguel Lemos (1854–1916) and Raimundo Teixeira Mendes (1855–1927), both orthodox followers of Comte. Positivism was more than a technical philosophy in Brazil. Its ideas spread widely, as is evident from the inclusion of positivist ideas in the first republican constitution. The most prominent Chilean positivists were José Victorino Lastarria (1817–88) and Valentín Letelier (1852–1919). More dogmatic adherents to the movement were the Lagarrigue brothers, Jorge (d. 1894), Juan Enrique (d. 1927), and Luis (d. 1953), who promoted positivism in Chile well after it had died everywhere else in Latin America. Contemporary period (c.1910–present). Contemporary Latin American philosophy began Latin American philosophy Latin American philosophy 485 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 485 with the demise of positivism. The first part of the period was dominated by thinkers who rebelled against positivism. The principal figures, called the Founders by Francisco Romero, were Alejandro Korn (1860–1936) in Argentina, Alejandro Octavio Deústua (1849–1945) in Peru, José Vasconcelos (1882–1959) and Antonio Caso (1883–1946) in Mexico, Enrique Molina (1871– 1964) in Chile, Carlos Vaz Ferreira (1872–1958) in Uruguay, and Raimundo de Farias Brito (1862–1917) in Brazil. In spite of little evidence of interaction among these philosophers, their aims and concerns were similar. Trained as positivists, they became dissatisfied with positivism’s dogmatic intransigence, mechanistic determinism, and emphasis on pragmatic values. Deústua mounted a detailed criticism of positivistic determinism in Las ideas de orden y de libertad en la historia del pensamiento humano (“The Ideas of Order and Freedom in the History of Human Thought,” 1917–19). About the same time, Caso presented his view of man as a spiritual reality that surpasses nature in La existencia como economía, como desinterés y como caridad (“Existence as Economy, Disinterestedness, and Charity,” 1916). Following in Caso’s footsteps and inspired by Pythagoras and the Neoplatonists, Vasconcelos developed a metaphysical system with aesthetic roots in El monismo estético (“Aesthetic Monism,” 1918). An even earlier criticism of positivism is found in Vaz Ferreira’s Lógica viva (“Living Logic,” 1910), which contrasts the abstract, scientific logic favored by positivists with a logic of life based on experience, which captures reality’s dynamic character. The earliest attempt at developing an alternative to positivism, however, is found in Farias Brito. Between 1895 and 1905 he published a trilogy, Finalidade do mundo (“The World’s Goal”), in which he conceived the world as an intellectual activity which he identified with God’s thought, and thus as essentially spiritual. The intellect unites and reflects reality but the will divides it. Positivism was superseded by the Founders with the help of ideas imported first from France and later from Germany. The process began with the influence of Étienne Boutroux (1845–1921) and Bergson and of French vitalism and intuitionism, but it was cemented when Ortega y Gasset introduced into Latin America the thought of Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, and other German philosophers during his visit to Argentina in 1916. The influence of Bergson was present in most of the founders, particularly Molina, who in 1916 wrote La filosofía de Bergson (“The Philosophy of Bergson”). Korn was exceptional in turning to Kant in his search for an alternative to positivism. In La libertad creadora (“Creative Freedom,” 1920–22), he defends a creative concept of freedom. In Axiología (“Axiology,” 1930), his most important work, he defends a subjectivist position. The impact of German philosophy, including Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the neo-Kantians, and of Ortega’s philosophical perspectivism and historicism, were strongly felt in the generation after the founders. The Mexican Samuel Ramos (1897–1959), the Argentinians Francisco Romero (1891–1962) and Carlos Astrada (1894–1970), the Brazilian Alceu Amoroso Lima (1893–1982), the Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui (1895–1930), and others followed the Founders’ course, attacking positivism and favoring, in many instances, a philosophical style that contrasted with its scientistic emphasis. The most important of these figures was Romero, whose Theory of Man (1952) developed a systematic philosophical anthropology in the context of a metaphysics of transcendence. Reality is arranged according to degrees of transcendence, the lowest of which is the physical and the highest the spiritual. The bases of Ramos’s thought are found in Ortega as well as in Scheler and N. Hartmann. Ramos appropriated Ortega’s perspectivism and set out to characterize the Mexican situation in Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico (1962). Some precedent existed for the interest in the culturally idiosyncratic in Vasconcelos’s Raza cósmica (“Cosmic Race,” 1925), but Ramos opened the doors to a philosophical awareness of Latin American culture that has been popular ever since. Ramos’s most traditional work, Hacia un nuevo humanismo (“Toward a New Humanism,” 1940), presents a philosophical anthropology of Orteguean inspiration. Astrada studied in Germany and adopted existential and phenomenological ideas in El juego existential (“The Existential Game,” 1933), while criticizing Scheler’s axiology. Later, he turned toward Hegel and Marx in Existencialismo y crisis de la filosofía (“Existentialism and the Crisis of Philosophy,” 1963). Amoroso Lima worked in the Catholic tradition and his writings show the influence of Maritain. His O espírito e o mundo (“Spirit and World,” 1936) and Idade, sexo e tempo (“Age, Sex, and Time,” 1938) present a spiritual view of human beings, which he contrasted with Marxist and existentialist views. Mariátegui is the most distinguished representative of MarxLatin American phiism in Latin America. His Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana (“Seven Essays on the Interpretation of Peruvian Reality,” 1928) contains an important statement of social philosophy, in which he uses Marxist ideas freely to analyze the Peruvian sociopolitical situation. In the late 1930s and 1940s, as a consequence of the political upheaval created by the Spanish Civil War, a substantial group of peninsular philosophers settled in Latin America. Among the most influential were Joaquín Xirau (1895– 1946), Eduardo Nicol (b.1907), Luis Recaséns Siches (b.1903), Juan D. García Bacca (b.1901), and, perhaps most of all, José Gaos (1900–69). Gaos, like Caso, was a consummate teacher, inspiring many students. Apart from the European ideas they brought, these immigrants introduced methodologically more sophisticated ways of doing philosophy, including the practice of studying philosophical sources in the original languages. Moreover, they helped to promote Pan-American communication. The conception of hispanidad they had inherited from Unamuno and Ortega helped the process. Their influence was felt particularly by the generation born around 1910. With this generation, Latin American philosophy established itself as a professional and reputable discipline, and philosophical organizations, research centers, and journals sprang up. The core of this generation worked in the German tradition. Risieri Frondizi (Argentina, 1910–83), Eduardo García Máynez (Mexico, b.1908), Juan Llambías de Azevedo (Uruguay, 1907–72), and Miguel Reale (Brazil, b.1910) were all influenced by Scheler and N. Hartmann and concerned themselves with axiology and philosophical anthropology. Frondizi, who was also influenced by empiricist philosophy, defended a functional view of the self in Substancia y función en el problema del yo (“The Nature of the Self,” 1952) and of value as a Gestalt quality in Qué son los valores? (“What is Value?” 1958). Apart from these thinkers, there were representatives of other traditions in this generation. Following Ramos, Leopoldo Zea (Mexico, b.1912) stimulated the study of the history of ideas in Mexico and initiated a controversy that still rages concerning the identity and possibility of a truly Latin American philosophy. Representing existentialism was Vicente Ferreira da Silva (Brazil, b.1916), who did not write much but presented a vigorous criticism of what he regarded as Hegelian and Marxist subjectivism in Ensaios filosóficos (“Philosophical Essays,” 1948). Before he became interested in existentialism, he had been interested in logic, publishing the first textbook of mathematical logic written in South America – Elementos de lógica matemática (“Elements of Mathematical Logic,” 1940). A philosopher whose interest in mathematical logic moved him away from phenomenology is Francisco Miró Quesada (Peru, b.1918). He explored rationality and eventually the perspective of analytic philosophy. Owing to the influence of Maritain, several members of this generation adopted a NeoThomistic or Scholastic approach. The main figures to do so were Oswaldo Robles (b.1904) in Mexico, Octavio Nicolás Derisi (b.1907) in Argentina, Alberto Wagner de Reyna (b.1915) in Peru, and Clarence Finlayson (1913–54) in Chile and Colombia. Even those authors who worked in this tradition addressed issues of axiology and philosophical anthropology. There was, therefore, considerable thematic unity in South American philosophy. The overall orientation was not drastically different from the preceding period. The Founders vitalism against positivism, and the following generation, with Ortega’s help, took over the process, incorporating spiritualism and the new ideas introduced by phenomenology and existentialism to continue in a similar direction. As a result, the phenomenology amd existentialism dominated philosophy in South America. To this must be added the renewed impetus of neoScholasticism. Few philosophers worked outside these philosophical currents, and those who did had no institutional power. Among these were sympathizers of philosophical analysis, and those who contributed to the continuing development of Marxism. This situation has begun to change substantially as a result of a renewed interest in Marxism, the progressive influence of Oxford analytic philosophy (with a number of philosophers from Buenos Aires studying usually under British-Council scholarships, under P. F. Strawson, D. F. Pears, H. L. A. Hart, and others – these later founded the Buenos-Aires-based Argentine Society for Philosophical Analysis --. In Buenos Aires, English philosophy and culture in general is rated higher than others, due to the influence of the British emigration to the River-Plate area – The pragmatics of H. P. Grice is particularly influential in that it brings a breath of fresh area to the more ritualistic approach as favoured by his nemesis, J. L. Austin --. American philosophers are uually read provided they, too, had the proper Oxonian education or background -- and the development of a new philosophical current called the philosophy of liberation. Moreover, the question raised by Zea concerning the identity and possibility of a South American philosophy remains a focus of attention and controversy. And, more recently, there has been interest in postmodernism, the theory of communicative action, deconstructionism, neopragmatism, and feminism. Socialist thought is not new to South America. In this century, Emilio Frugoni (1880–1969) in Uruguay and Mariátegui in Peru, among others, adopted a Marxist perspective, although a heterodox one. But only in the last three decades has Marxism been taken seriously in Latin American academic circles. Indeed, until recently Marxism was a marginal philosophical movement in Latin America. The popularity of the Marxist perspective has made possible its increasing institutionalization. Among its most important thinkers are Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez (Spain, b.1915), Vicente Lombardo Toledano (b.1894) and Eli de Gortari (b.1918) in Mexico, and Caio Prado Júnior (1909–86) in Brazil. In contrast to Marxism, philosophical analysis arrived late in Latin America and, owing to its technical and academic character, has not yet influenced more than a relatively small number of philosophers – and also because in the milieu of Buenos Aires, the influence of French culture is considered to have much more prestige in mainstream culture than the more parochial empiricist brand coming from the British Isles – unless it’s among the Friends of the Argentine Centre for English Culture. German philosophy is considered rough in contrast to the pleasing to the ear sounds of French philosophy, and Buenos Aires locals find the very sound of the long German philosophical terms a source of amusement and mirth. Since Buenos Aires habitants are Italians, it is logical that they do not have much affinity for Italian philosophy, which they think it’s too local and less extravagant than the French. There was a strong immigration of German philosophers to Buenos Aires after the end of the Second World War, too. Colonials from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, or the former colonies in North America are never as welcomed in Buenos Aires as those from the very Old World. The reason is obvious: as being New-Worlders, if they are going to be educated, it is by Older-Worlders – Nobody in Buenos Aires would follow a New-World philosopher or a colonial philosopher – but at most a school which originated in the Continent of Europe. The British are regarded as by nature unphilosophical and to follow a British philosopher in Buenos Aires is considered an English joke! Nonetheless, and thanks in part to its high theoretical caliber, analysis has become one of the most forceful philosophical currents in the region. The publication of journals with an analytic bent such as Crítica in Mexico, Análisis Filosófico in Argentina, and Manuscrito in Brazil, the foundation of The Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico (SADAF) in Argentina and the Sociedad Filosófica Iberoamericana (SOFIA) in Mexico, and the growth of analytic publications in high-profile journals of neutral philosophical orientation, such as Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía, indicate that philosophical analysis is well established in at least the most European bit of the continent: the river Plate area of Buenos Aires. The main centers of analytic activity are Buenos Aires, on the River Plate, and far afterwards, the much less British-influenced centers like Mexico City, or the provincial varsity of Campinas and São Paulo in Brazil. The interests of South American philosophical analysts center on questions of pragmatics, rather than semantics, -- and are generally sympathetic to Griceian developments -- ethical and legal philosophy, the philosophy of science, and more recently cognitive science. Among its most important proponents are Genaro R. Carrio (b.1922), Gregorio Klimovsky (b.1922), and Tomas Moro Simpson (b.1929), E. A. Rabossi (b. Buenos Aires), O. N. Guariglia (b. Buenos Aires), in Argentina – Strawson was a frequent lecturer at the Argentine Society for Philosopohical Analysis, and many other Oxonian philosophers on sabbatical leave. The Argentine Society for Philosophical Analysis, usually in conjunction with the Belgravia-based Anglo-Argentine Society organize seminars and symposia – when an Argentine philosopher emigrates he ceases to be considered an Argentine philosopher – students who earn their maximal degrees overseas are not counted either as Argentine philosophers by Argentine (or specifically Buenos Aires) philosophers (They called them braindrained, brainwashed!) Luis Villoro (Spain, b. 1922) in Mexico; Francisco Miró Quesada in Peru; Roberto Torretti (Chile, b.1930) in Puerto Rico; Mario Bunge (Argentina, b.1919), who emigrated to Canada; and Héctor-Neri Castañeda (Guatemala, 1924–91). The philosophy of liberation is an autochthonous Latin American movement that mixes an emphasis on Latin American intellectual independence with Catholic and Marxist ideas. The historicist perspective of Leopoldo Zea, the movement known as the theology of liberation, and some elements from the national-popular Peronist ideology prepared the ground for it. The movement started in the early 1970s with a group of Argentinian philosophers, who, owing to the military repression of 1976–83 in Argentina, went into exile in various countries of Latin America. This early diaspora created permanent splits in the movement and spread its ideas throughout the region. Although proponents of this viewpoint do not always agree on their goals, they share the notion of liberation as a fundamental concept: the liberation from the slavery imposed on Latin America by imported ideologies and the development of a genuinely autochthonous thought resulting from reflection on the South American reality. As such, their views are an extension of the thought of Ramos and others who earlier in the century initiated the discussion of the cultural identity of South America.

bonum: One of the four transcendentals, along with ‘unum,’ ‘pulchrum,’ and ‘verum’. Grice makes fun of Hare n “Language of Morals.” To what extent is Hare saying that to say ‘x is good’ means ‘I approve of x’? (Strictly: “To say that something is good is to recommend it”). To say " I approve of x " is in part to do the same thing as when we say " x is good " a statement of the form " X is good" strictly designates " I approve of X " and suggests " Do so as well". It should be in Part II to “Language of Morals”. Old Romans did not have an article, so for them it is unum, bonum, verum, and pulchrum. They were trying to translate the very articled Grecian things, ‘to agathon,’ ‘to alethes,’ and ‘to kallon.’ The three references given by Liddell and Scott are good ones. τὸ ἀ., the good, Epich.171.5, cf. Pl.R.506b, 508e, Arist.Metaph.1091a31, etc. The Grecian Grice is able to return to the ‘article’. Grice has an early essay on ‘the good,’ and he uses the same expression at Oxford for the Locke lectures when looking for a ‘desiderative’ equivalent to ‘the true.’ Hare had dedicated the full part of his “Language of Morals” to ‘good,’ so Grice is well aware of the centrality of the topic. He was irritated by what he called a performatory approach to the good, where ‘x is good’ =df. ‘I approve of x.’ Surely that’s a conversational implicaturum. However, in his analysis of reasoning (the demonstratum – since he uses the adverb ‘demonstrably’ as a marker of pretty much like ‘concusively,’ as applied to both credibility and desirability, we may focus on what Grice sees as ‘bonum’ as one of the ‘absolutes,’ the absolute in the desirability realm, as much as the ‘verum’ is the absolute in the credibility realm. Grice has an excellent argument regarding ‘good.’ His example is ‘cabbage,’ but also ‘sentence.’ Grice’s argument is to turn the disimpicatum into an explicitum. To know what a ‘cabbage,’ or a formula is, you need to know first what a ‘good’ cabbage is or a ‘well-formed formula,’ is. An ill-formed sentence is not deemed by Grice a sentence. This means that we define ‘x’ as ‘optimum x.’ This is not so strange, seeing that ‘optimum’ is actually the superlative of ‘bonum’ (via the comparative). It does not require very sharp eyes, but only the willingness to use the eyes one has, to see that our speech and thought are permeated with the notion of purpose; to say what a certain kind of thing is is only too frequently partly to say what it is for. This feature applies to our talk and thought of, for example, ships, shoes, sealing wax, and kings; and, possibly and perhaps most excitingly, it extends even to cabbages.“There is a range of cases in which, so far from its being the case that, typically, one first learns what it is to be a F and then, at the next stage, learns what criteria distinguish a good F from a F which is less good, or not good at all, one needs first to learn what it is to be a good F, and then subsequently to learn what degree of approximation to being a good F will qualify an item as a F; if the gap between some item x and good Fs is sufficently horrendous, x is debarred from counting as a F at all, even as a bad F.”“In the John Locke Lectures, I called a concept which exhibits this feature as a ‘value-paradeigmatic’ concept. One example of a value-paradeigmatic concept is the concept of reasoning; another, I now suggest, is that of sentence. It may well be that the existence of value-oriented concepts (¢b ¢ 2 . • • . ¢n) depends on the prior existence of pre-rational concepts ( ¢~, ¢~ . . . . ¢~), such that an item x qualifies for the application of the concept ¢ 2 if and only if x satisfies a rationally-approved form or version of the corresponding pre-rational concept ¢'. We have a (primary) example of a step in reasoning only if we have a transition of a certain rationally approved kind from one thought or utterance to another. --- bonum commune -- common good, a normative standard in Thomistic and Neo-Thomistic ethics for evaluating the justice of social, legal, and political arrangements, referring to those arrangements that promote the full flourishing of everyone in the community. Every good can be regarded as both a goal to be sought and, when achieved, a source of human fulfillment. A common good is any good sought by and/or enjoyed by two or more persons as friendship is a good common to the friends; the common good is the good of a “perfect” i.e., complete and politically organized human community  a good that is the common goal of all who promote the justice of that community, as well as the common source of fulfillment of all who share in those just arrangements. ‘Common’ is an analogical term referring to kinds and degrees of sharing ranging from mere similarity to a deep ontological communion. Thus, any good that is a genuine perfection of our common human nature is a common good, as opposed to merely idiosyncratic or illusory goods. But goods are common in a deeper sense when the degree of sharing is more than merely coincidental: two children engaged in parallel play enjoy a good in common, but they realize a common good more fully by engaging each other in one game; similarly, if each in a group watches the same good movie alone at home, they have enjoyed a good in common but they realize this good at a deeper level when they watch the movie together in a theater and discuss it afterward. In short, common good includes aggregates of private, individual goods but transcends these aggregates by the unique fulfillment afforded by mutuality, shared activity, and communion of persons. As to the sources in Thomistic ethics for this emphasis on what is deeply shared over what merely coincides, the first is Aristotle’s understanding of us as social and political animals: many aspects of human perfection, on this view, can be achieved only through shared activities in communities, especially the political community. The second is Christian Trinitarian theology, in which the single Godhead involves the mysterious communion of three divine “persons,” the very exemplar of a common good; human personhood, by analogy, is similarly perfected only in a relationship of social communion. The achievement of such intimately shared goods requires very complex and delicate arrangements of coordination to prevent the exploitation and injustice that plague shared endeavors. The establishment and maintenance of these social, legal, and political arrangements is “the” common good of a political society, because the enjoyment of all goods is so dependent upon the quality and the justice of those arrangements. The common good of the political community includes, but is not limited to, public goods: goods characterized by non-rivalry and non-excludability and which, therefore, must generally be provided by public institutions. By the principle of subsidiarity, the common good is best promoted by, in addition to the state, many lower-level non-public societies, associations, and individuals. Thus, religiously affiliated schools educating non-religious minority chilcommission common good 161   161 dren might promote the common good without being public goods. 

booleian: algebra: Peirce was irritated by the spelling “Boolean” “Surely it is Booleian.” 1 an ordered triple B,†,3, where B is a set containing at least two elements and † and 3 are unary and binary operations in B such that i a 3 b % b 3 a, ii a 3 b 3 c % a 3 b 3 c, iii a 3 † a % b 3 † b, and iv a 3 b = a if and only if a 3 † b % a 3 † a; 2 the theboo-hurrah theory Boolean algebra 95   95 ory of such algebras. Such structures are modern descendants of algebras published by the mathematician G. Boole in 1847 and representing the first successful algebraic treatment of logic. Interpreting † and 3 as negation and conjunction, respectively, makes Boolean algebra a calculus of propositions. Likewise, if B % {T,F} and † and 3 are the truth-functions for negation and conjunction, then B,†,3  the truth table for those two connectives  forms a two-element Boolean algebra. Picturing a Boolean algebra is simple. B,†,3 is a full subset algebra if B is the set of all subsets of a given set and † and 3 are set complementation and intersection, respectively. Then every finite Boolean algebra is isomorphic to a full subset algebra, while every infinite Boolean algebra is isomorphic to a subalgebra of such an algebra. It is for this reason that Boolean algebra is often characterized as the calculus of classes. 

bootstrap: Grice certainly didn’t have a problem with meta-langauge paradoxes. Two of his maxims are self refuting and ‘sic’-ed: “be perspicuous [sic]” and “be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) [sic].” The principle introduced by Grice in “Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice,” to limit the power of the meta-language. The weaker your metalanguage the easier you’ll be able to pull yourself by your own bootstraps. He uses bootlaces in “Metaphysics, Philosophical Eschatology, and Plato’s Republic.”

border-line: case, in the logical sense, a case that falls within the “gray area” or “twilight zone” associated with a vague concept; in the pragmatic sense, a doubtful, disputed, or arguable case. These two senses are not mutually exclusive, of course. A moment of time near sunrise or sunset may be a borderline case of daytime or nighttime in the logical sense, but not in the pragmatic sense. A sufficiently freshly fertilized ovum may be a borderline case of a person in both senses. Fermat’s hypothesis, or any of a large number of other disputed mathematical propositions, may be a borderline case in the pragmatic sense but not in the logical sense. A borderline case per se in either sense need not be a limiting case or a degenerate case.

bosanquet: Cited by H. P. Grice. Very English philosopher (almost like Austin or Grice), the most systematic Oxford absolute idealist and, with F. H. Bradley, the leading Oxford defender of absolute idealism. Although he derived his last name from Huguenot ancestors, Bosanquet was thoroughly English. Born at Altwick and educated at Harrow and Balliol, Oxford, he was for eleven years a fellow of  University College, Oxford. The death of his father in 0 and the resulting inheritance enabled Bosanquet to leave Oxford for London and a career as a writer and social activist. While writing, he taught courses for the London Ethical Society’s Center for  Extension and donated time to the Charity Organization Society. In 5 he married his coworker in the Charity Organization Society, Helen Dendy, who was also the translator of Christoph Sigwart’s Logic. Bosanquet was professor of moral philosophy at St. Andrews from 3 to 8. He gave the Gifford Lectures in 1 and 2. Otherwise he lived in London until his death. Bosanquet’s most comprehensive work, his two-volume Gifford Lectures, The Principle of Individuality and Value and The Value and Destiny of the Individual, covers most aspects of his philosophy. In The Principle of Individuality and Value he argues that the search for truth proceeds by eliminating contradictions in experience. For Bosanquet a contradiction arises when there are incompatible interpretations of the same fact. This involves making distinctions that harmonize the incompatible interpretations in a larger body of knowledge. Bosanquet thought there was no way to arrest this process short of recognizing that all human experience forms a comprehensive whole which is reality. Bosanquet called this totality “the Absolute.” Just as conflicting interpretations of the same fact find harmonious places in the Absolute, so conflicting desires are also included. The Absolute thus satisfies all desires and provides Bosanquet’s standard for evaluating other objects. This is because in his view the value of an object is determined by its ability to satisfy desires. From this Bosanquet concluded that human beings, as fragments of the Absolute, acquire greater value as they realize themselves by partaking more fully in the Absolute. In The Value and Destiny of the Individual Bosanquet explained how human beings could do this. As finite, human beings face obstacles they cannot overcome; yet they desire the good i.e., the Absolute which for Bosanquet overcomes all obstacles and satisfies all desires. Humans can best realize a desire for the good, Bosanquet thinks, by surrendering their private desires for the sake of the good. This attitude of surrender, which Bosanquet calls the religious consciousness, relates human beings to what is permanently valuable in reality and increases their own value and satisfaction accordingly. Bosanquet’s defense of this metaphysical vision rests heavily on his first major work, Logic or the Morphology of Knowledge 8; 2d ed., 1. As the subtitle indicates, Bosanquet took the subject matter of Logic to be the structure of knowledge. Like Hegel, who was in many ways his inspiration, Bosanquet thought that the nature of knowledge was defined by structures repeated in different parts of knowledge. He called these structures forms of judgment and tried to show that simple judgments are dependent on increasingly complex ones and finally on an all-inclusive judgment that defines reality. For example, the simplest element of knowledge is a demonstrative judgment like “This is hot.” But making such a judgment presupposes understanding the contrast between ‘this’ and ‘that’. Demonstrative judgments thus depend on comparative judgments like “This is hotter than that.” Since these judgments are less dependent on other judgments, they more fully embody human knowledge. Bosanquet claimed that the series of increasingly complex judgments are not arranged in a simple linear order but develop along different branches finally uniting in disjunctive judgments that attribute to reality an exhaustive set of mutually exclusive alternatives which are themselves judgments. When one contained judgment is asserted on the basis of another, a judgment containing both is an inference. For Bosanquet inferences are mediated judgments that assert their conclusions based on grounds. When these grounds are made fully explicit in a judgment containing them, that judgment embodies the nature of inference: that one must accept the conclusion or reject the whole of knowledge. Since for Bosanquet the difference between any judgment and the reality it represents is that a judgment is composed of ideas that abstract from reality, a fully comprehensive judgment includes all aspects of reality. It is thus identical to reality. By locating all judgments within this one, Bosanquet claimed to have described the morphology of knowledge as well as to have shown that thought is identical to reality. Bosanquet removed an objection to this identification in History of Aesthetics 2, where he traces the development of the philosophy of the beautiful from its inception through absolute idealism. According to Plato and Aristotle beauty is found in imitations of reality, while in objective idealism it is reality in sensuous form. Drawing heavily on Kant, Bosanquet saw this process as an overcoming of the opposition between sense and reason by showing how a pleasurable feeling can partake of reason. He thought that absolute idealism explained this by showing that we experience objects as beautiful because their sensible qualities exhibit the unifying activity of reason. Bosanquet treated the political implications of absolute idealism in his Philosophical Theory of the State 8; 3d ed., 0, where he argues that humans achieve their ends only in communities. According to Bosanquet, all humans rationally will their own ends. Because their ends differ from moment to moment, the ends they rationally will are those that harmonize their desires at particular moments. Similarly, because the ends of different individuals overlap and conflict, what they rationally will are ends that harmonize their desires, which are the ends of humans in communities. They are willed by the general will, the realization of which is self-rule or liberty. This provides the rational ground of political obligation, since the most comprehensive system of modern life is the state, the end of which is the realization of the best life for its citizens. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Bosanquet’s implicaturum.”

boscovich: An example of minimalism, according to Grice. Roger Joseph, or Rudjer Josip Bos v kovic’, philosopher. Born of Serbian and  parents, he was a Jesuit and polymath best known for his A Theory of Natural Philosophy Reduced to a Single Law of the Actions Existing in Nature. This work attempts to explain all physical phenomena in terms of the attractions and repulsions of point particles puncta that are indistinguishable in their intrinsic qualitative properties. According to Boscovich’s single law, puncta at a certain distance attract, until upon approaching one another they reach a point at which they repel, and eventually reach equilibrium. Thus, Boscovich defends a form of dynamism, or the theory that nature is to be understood in terms of force and not mass where forces are functions of time and distance. By dispensing with extended substance, Boscovich avoided epistemological difficulties facing Locke’s natural philosophy and anticipated developments in modern physics. Among those influenced by Boscovich were Kant who defended a version of dynamism, Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Lord Kelvin. Boscovich’s theory has proved to be empirically inadequate to account for phenomena such as light. A philosophical difficulty for Boscovich’s puncta, which are physical substances, arises out of their zero-dimensionality. It is plausible that any power must have a basis in an object’s intrinsic properties, and puncta appear to lack such support for their powers. However, it is extensional properties that puncta lack, and Boscovich could argue that the categorial property of being an unextended spatial substance provides the needed basis.

bouwsma: Gruce: “Philosopher almost impossible to pronounce.” -- o. k., philosopher, a practitioner of ordinary language philosophy and celebrated teacher. Through work on Moore and contact with students such as Norman Malcolm and Morris Lazerowitz, whom he sent from Nebraska to work with Moore, Bouwsma discovered Vitters. He became known for conveying an understanding of Vitters’s techniques of philosophical analysis through his own often humorous grasp of sense and nonsense. Focusing on a particular pivotal sentence in an argument, he provided imaginative surroundings for it, showing how, in the philosopher’s mouth, the sentence lacked sense. He sometimes described this as “the method of failure.” In connection with Descartes’s evil genius, e.g., Bouwsma invents an elaborate story in which the evil genius tries but fails to permanently deceive by means of a totally paper world. Our inability to imagine such a deception undermines the sense of the evil genius argument. His writings are replete with similar stories, analogies, and teases of sense and nonsense for such philosophical standards as Berkeley’s idealism, Moore’s theory of sensedata, and Anselm’s ontological argument. Bouwsma did not advocate theories nor put forward refutations of other philosophers’ views. His talent lay rather in exposing some central sentence in an argument as disguised nonsense. In this, he went beyond Vitters, working out the details of the latter’s insights into language. In addition to this appropriation of Vitters, Bouwsma also appropriated Kierkegaard, understanding him too as one who dispelled philosophical illusions  those arising from the attempt to understand Christianity. The ordinary language of religious philosophy was that of scriptures. He drew upon this language in his many essays on religious themes. His religious dimension made whole this person who gave no quarter to traditional metaphysics. His papers are published under the titles Philosophical Essays, Toward a New Sensibility, Without Proof or Evidence, and Vitters Conversations 951. His philosophical notebooks are housed at the Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas. 

boyle: r.: Grice was a closet corpularianist. a major figure in seventeenthcentury natural philosophy. To his contemporaries he was “the restorer” in England of the mechanical philosophy. His program was to replace the vacuous explanations characteristic of Peripateticism the “quality of whiteness” in snow explains why it dazzles the eyes by explanations employing the “two grand and most catholic principles of bodies, matter and motion,” matter being composed of corpuscles, with motion “the grand agent of all that happens in nature.” Boyle wrote influentially on scientific methodology, emphasizing experimentation a Baconian influence, experimental precision, and the importance of devising “good and excellent” hypotheses. The dispute with Spinoza on the validation of explanatory hypotheses contrasted Boyle’s experimental way with Spinoza’s way of rational analysis. The 1670s dispute with Henry More on the ontological grounds of corporeal activity confronted More’s “Spirit of Nature” with the “essential modifications” motion and the “seminal principle” of activity with which Boyle claimed God had directly endowed matter. As a champion of the corpuscularian philosophy, Boyle was an important link in the development before Locke of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. A leading advocate of natural theology, he provided in his will for the establishment of the Boyle Lectures to defend Protestant Christianity against atheism and materialism.

brabant: “If William of Ockham is called Occam, I shall call Siger of Brabant, Brabant, with a vengeance.” Grice: “Sigier is mentioned in Dante; I’m not!” -- philosopher, an activist in the philosophical struggles within the arts faculty at Paris. Siger ie is usually regarded as a leader of a “radical Aristotelianism” Siger holds that everything originates through a series of emanations from a first cause. The world and each species including the human species are eternal. Human beings share a single active intellect. There is no good reason to think that Siger advances the view that there was a double truth, one in theology and another in natural philosophy. It is difficult to distinguish Siger’s own views from those he attributes to “the Philosophers” and thus to know the extent to which he held the heterodox views he taught as the best interpretation of the prescribed texts in the arts curriculum. In any case, Siger is summoned before the  Inquisition, but wisefully flees Paris and settles in Orvieto. Siger is  never convicted of heresy, but it seems that the condemnations at Paris are partially directed at his teaching. He was suspiciously and criminally stabbed to death by his own clerk in Orvieto -- the papal sea. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Implicatura in Dante.”

bradley: One of the few English philosophers who saw philosophy, correctly, as a branch of literature! (Essay-writing, strictly). f. h., Cited by H. P. Grice in “Prolegomena,” now repr. in “Studies in the Way of Words.” Also in Grice, “Metaphysics,” in D. F. Pears, “The nature of metaphysics,” -- the most original and influential nineteenth-century British idealist. Born at Clapham, he was the fourth son of an evangelical minister. His younger brother A. C. Bradley was a well-known Shakespearean critic. From 1870 until his death Bradley was a fellow of Merton , Oxford. A kidney ailment, which first occurred in 1871, compelled him to lead a retiring life. This, combined with his forceful literary style, his love of irony, the dedication of three of his books to an unknown woman, and acclaim as the greatest British idealist since Berkeley, has lent an aura of mystery to his personal life. The aim of Bradley’s first important work, Ethical Studies 1876, is not to offer guidance for dealing with practical moral problems Bradley condemned this as casuistry, but rather to explain what makes morality as embodied in the consciousness of individuals and in social institutions possible. Bradley thought it was the fact that moral agents take morality as an end in itself which involves identifying their wills with an ideal provided in part by their stations in society and then transferring that ideal to reality through action. Bradley called this process “selfrealization.” He thought that moral agents could realize their good selves only by suppressing their bad selves, from which he concluded that morality could never be completely realized, since realizing a good self requires having a bad one. For this reason Bradley believed that the moral consciousness would develop into religious consciousness which, in his secularized version of Christianity, required dying to one’s natural self through faith in the actual existence of the moral ideal. In Ethical Studies Bradley admitted that a full defense of his ethics would require a metaphysical system, something he did not then have. Much of Bradley’s remaining work was an attempt to provide the outline of such a system by solving what he called “the great problem of the relation between thought and reality.” He first confronted this problem in The Principles of Logic3, which is his description of thought. He took thought to be embodied in judgments, which are distinguished from other mental activities by being true or false. This is made possible by the fact that their contents, which Bradley called ideas, represent reality. A problem arises because ideas are universals and so represent kinds of things, while the things themselves are all individuals. Bradley solves this problem by distinguishing between the logical and grammatical forms of a judgment and arguing that all judgments have the logical form of conditionals. They assert that universal connections between qualities obtain in reality. The qualities are universals, the connections between them are conditional, while reality is one individual whole that we have contact with in immediate experience. All judgments, in his view, are abstractions from a diverse but non-relational immediate experience. Since judgments are inescapably relational, they fail to represent accurately non-relational reality and so fail to reach truth, which is the goal of thought. From this Bradley concluded that, contrary to what some of his more Hegelian contemporaries were saying, thought is not identical to reality and is never more than partially true. Appearance and Reality 3 is Bradley’s description of reality: it is experience, all of it, all at once, blended in a harmonious way. Bradley defended this view by means of his criterion for reality. Reality, he proclaimed, does not contradict itself; anything that does is merely appearance. In Part I of Appearance and Reality Bradley relied on an infinite regress argument, now called Bradley’s regress, to contend that relations and all relational phenomena, including thought, are contradictory. They are appearance, not reality. In Part II he claimed that appearances are contradictory because they are abstracted by thought from the immediate experience of which they are a part. Appearances constitute the content of this whole, which in Bradley’s view is experience. In other words, reality is experience in its totality. Bradley called this unified, consistent all-inclusive reality “the Absolute.” Today Bradley is mainly remembered for his argument against the reality of relations, and as the philosopher who provoked Russell’s and Moore’s revolution in philosophy. He would be better remembered as a founder of twentiethcentury philosophy who based metaphysical conclusions on his account of the logical forms of judgments. 

brandt:  R. B.,-- read by Grice for his ‘ideal observer theory” or creature construction in “Method” moral philosopher, most closely associated with rule utilitarianism which term he coined, earned degrees from Denison  and Cambridge , and obtained a Ph.D. from Yale in 6. He taught at Swarthmore  from 7 to 4 and at the  of Michigan from 4 to 1. His six books and nearly one hundred articles included work on philosophy of religion, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, political philosophy, and philosophy of law. His greatest contributions were in moral philosophy. He first defended rule utilitarianism in his textbook Ethical Theory 9, but greatly refined his view in the 0s in a series of articles, which were widely discussed and reprinted and eventually collected together in Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights 2. Further refinements appear in his A Theory of the Good and the Right 9 and Facts, Values, and Morality 6. Brandt famously argued for a “reforming definition” of ‘rational person’. He proposed that we use it to designate someone whose desires would survive exposure to all relevant empirical facts and to correct logical reasoning. He also proposed a “reforming definition” of ‘morally right’ that assigns it the descriptive meaning ‘would be permitted by any moral code that all or nearly all rational people would publicly favor for the agent’s society if they expected to spend a lifetime in that society’. In his view, rational choice between moral codes is determined not by prior moral commitments but by expected consequences. Brandt admitted that different rational people may favor different codes, since different rational people may have different levels of natural benevolence. But he also contended that most rational people would favor a rule-utilitarian code. 

brentano: f., philosopher, one of the most intellectually influential and personally charismatic of his time. He is known especially for his distinction between psychological and physical phenomena on the basis of intentionality or internal object-directedness of thought, his revival of Aristotelianism and empirical methods in philosophy and psychology, and his value theory and ethics supported by the concept of correct pro- and anti-emotions or love and hate attitudes. Brentano made noted contributions to the theory of metaphysical categories, phenomenology, epistemology, syllogistic logic, and philosophy of religion. His teaching made a profound impact on his students in Würzburg and Vienna, many of whom became internationally respected thinkers in their fields, including Meinong, Husserl, Twardowski, Christian von Ehrenfels, Anton Marty, and Freud. Brentano began his study of philosophy at the Aschaffenburg Royal Bavarian Gymnasium; in 185658 he attended the universities of Munich and Würzburg, and then enrolled at the  of Berlin, where he undertook his first investigations of Aristotle’s metaphysics under the supervision of F. A. Trendelenburg. In 1859 60, he attended the Academy in Münster, reading intensively in the medieval Aristotelians; in 1862 he received the doctorate in philosophy in absentia from the  of Tübingen. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1864, and was later involved in a controversy over the doctrine of papal infallibility, eventually leaving the church in 1873. He taught first as Privatdozent in the Philosophical Faculty of the  of Würzburg 186674, and then accepted a professorship at the  of Vienna. In 0 he decided to marry, temporarily resigning his position to acquire Saxon citizenship, in order to avoid legal difficulties in Austria, where marriages of former priests were not officially recognized. Brentano was promised restoration of his position after his circumvention of these restrictions, but although he was later reinstated as lecturer, his appeals for reappointment as professor were answered only with delay and equivocation. He left Vienna in 5, retiring to Italy, his family’s country of origin. At last he moved to Zürich, Switzerland, shortly before Italy entered World War I. Here he remained active both in philosophy and psychology, despite his ensuing blindness, writing and revising numerous books and articles, frequently meeting with former students and colleagues, and maintaining an extensive philosophical-literary correspondence, until his death. In Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt “Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,” 1874, Brentano argued that intentionality is the mark of the mental, that every psychological experience contains an intended object  also called an intentional object  which the thought is about or toward which the thought is directed. Thus, in desire, something is desired. According to the immanent intentionality thesis, this means that the desired object is literally contained within the psychological experience of desire. Brentano claims that this is uniquely true of mental as opposed to physical or non-psychological phenomena, so that the intentionality of the psychological distinguishes mental from physical states. The immanent intentionality thesis proBrentano, Franz Brentano, Franz 100   100 vides a framework in which Brentano identifies three categories of psychological phenomena: thoughts Vorstellungen, judgments, and emotive phenomena. He further maintains that every thought is also self-consciously reflected back onto itself as a secondary intended object in what he called the eigentümliche Verfleckung. From 5 through 1, with the publication in that year of Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene, Brentano gradually abandoned the immanent intentionality thesis in favor of his later philosophy of reism, according to which only individuals exist, excluding putative nonexistent irrealia, such as lacks, absences, and mere possibilities. In the meantime, his students Twardowski, Meinong, and Husserl, reacting negatively to the idealism, psychologism, and related philosophical problems apparent in the early immanent intentionality thesis, developed alternative non-immanence approaches to intentionality, leading, in the case of Twardowski and Meinong and his students in the Graz school of phenomenological psychology, to the construction of Gegenstandstheorie, the theory of transcendent existent and nonexistent intended objects, and to Husserl’s later transcendental phenomenology. The intentionality of the mental in Brentano’s revival of the medieval Aristotelian doctrine is one of his most important contributions to contemporary non-mechanistic theories of mind, meaning, and expression. Brentano’s immanent intentionality thesis was, however, rejected by philosophers who otherwise agreed with his underlying claim that thought is essentially object-directed. Brentano’s value theory Werttheorie offers a pluralistic account of value, permitting many different kinds of things to be valuable  although, in keeping with his later reism, he denies the existence of an abstract realm of values. Intrinsic value is objective rather than subjective, in the sense that he believes the pro- and anti-emotions we may have toward an act or situation are objectively correct if they present themselves to emotional preference with the same apodicity or unquestionable sense of rightness as other selfevident matters of non-ethical judgment. Among the controversial consequences of Brentano’s value theory is the conclusion that there can be no such thing as absolute evil. The implication follows from Brentano’s observation, first, that evil requires evil consciousness, and that consciousness of any kind, even the worst imaginable malice or malevolent ill will, is considered merely as consciousness intrinsically good. This means that necessarily there is always a mixture of intrinsic good even in the most malicious possible states of mind, by virtue alone of being consciously experienced, so that pure evil never obtains. Brentano’s value theory admits of no defense against those who happen not to share the same “correct” emotional attitudes toward the situations he describes. If it is objected that to another person’s emotional preferences only good consciousness is intrinsically good, while infinitely bad consciousness despite being a state of consciousness appears instead to contain no intrinsic good and is absolutely evil, there is no recourse within Brentano’s ethics except to acknowledge that this contrary emotive attitude toward infinitely bad consciousness may also be correct, even though it contradicts his evaluations. Brentano’s empirical psychology and articulation of the intentionality thesis, his moral philosophy and value theory, his investigations of Aristotle’s metaphysics at a time when Aristotelian realism was little appreciated in the prevailing climate of post-Kantian idealism, his epistemic theory of evident judgment, his suggestions for the reform of syllogistic logic, his treatment of the principle of sufficient reason and existence of God, his interpretation of a fourstage cycle of successive trends in the history of philosophy, together with his teaching and personal moral example, continue to inspire a variety of divergent philosophical traditions. 

broad: cited by H. P. Grice in “Personal identity” and “Prolegomena” (re: Benjamin on Broad on remembering). Charlie Dunbar 71, English epistemologist, metaphysician, moral philosopher, and philosopher of science. He was educated at Trinity , Cambridge, taught at several universities in Scotland, and then returned to Trinity, first as lecturer in moral science and eventually as Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy. His philosophical views are in the broadly realist tradition of Moore and Russell, though with substantial influence also from his teachers at Cambridge, McTaggart and W. E. Johnson. Broad wrote voluminously and incisively on an extremely wide range of philosophical topics, including most prominently the nature of perception, a priori knowledge and concepts, the problem of induction, the mind Brentano’s thesis Broad, Charlie Dunbar 101   101 body problem, the free will problem, various topics in moral philosophy, the nature and philosophical significance of psychical research, the nature of philosophy itself, and various historical figures such as Leibniz, Kant, and McTaggart. Broad’s work in the philosophy of perception centers on the nature of sense-data or sensa, as he calls them and their relation to physical objects. He defends a rather cautious, tentative version of the causal theory of perception. With regard to a priori knowledge, Broad rejects the empiricist view that all such knowledge is of analytic propositions, claiming instead that reason can intuit necessary and universal connections between properties or characteristics; his view of concept acquisition is that while most concepts are abstracted from experience, some are a priori, though not necessarily innate. Broad holds that the rationality of inductive inference depends on a further general premise about the world, a more complicated version of the thesis that nature is uniform, which is difficult to state precisely and even more difficult to justify. Broad’s view of the mindbody problem is a version of dualism, though one that places primary emphasis on individual mental events, is much more uncertain about the existence and nature of the mind as a substance, and is quite sympathetic to epiphenomenalism. His main contribution to the free will problem consists in an elaborate analysis of the libertarian conception of freedom, which he holds to be both impossible to realize and at the same time quite possibly an essential precondition of the ordinary conception of obligation. Broad’s work in ethics is diverse and difficult to summarize, but much of it centers on the issue of whether ethical judgments are genuinely cognitive in character. Broad was one of the few philosophers to take psychical research seriously. He served as president of the Society for Psychical Research and was an occasional observer of experiments in this area. His philosophical writings on this subject, while not uncritical, are in the main sympathetic and are largely concerned to defend concepts like precognition against charges of incoherence and also to draw out their implications for more familiar philosophical issues. As regards the nature of philosophy, Broad distinguishes between “critical” and “speculative” philosophy. Critical philosophy is analysis of the basic concepts of ordinary life and of science, roughly in the tradition of Moore and Russell. A very high proportion of Broad’s own work consists of such analyses, often amazingly detailed and meticulous in character. But he is also sympathetic to the speculative attempt to arrive at an overall conception of the nature of the universe and the position of human beings therein, while at the same time expressing doubts that anything even remotely approaching demonstration is possible in such endeavors. The foregoing catalog of views reveals something of the range of Broad’s philosophical thought, but it fails to bring out what is most strikingly valuable about it. Broad’s positions on various issues do not form anything like a system he himself is reported to have said that there is nothing that answers to the description “Broad’s philosophy”. While his views are invariably subtle, thoughtful, and critically penetrating, they rarely have the sort of one-sided novelty that has come to be so highly valued in philosophy. What they do have is exceptional clarity, dialectical insight, and even-handedness. Broad’s skill at uncovering and displaying the precise shape of a philosophical issue, clarifying the relevant arguments and objections, and cataloging in detail the merits and demerits of the opposing positions has rarely been equaled. One who seeks a clear-cut resolution of an issue is likely to be impatient and disappointed with Broad’s careful, measured discussions, in which unusual effort is made to accord all positions and arguments their due. But one who seeks a comprehensive and balanced understanding of the issue in question is unlikely to find a more trustworthy guide. 

brouwer: L. E. J: Discussed by H. P. Grice in connection with ‘intuititionist negation’ and the elimination of negation -- philosopher and founder of the intuitionist school in the philosophy of mathematics. Educated at the Municipal  of Amsterdam, where he received his doctorate in 7, he remained there for his entire professional career, as Privaat-Docent 912 and then professor 255. He was among the preeminent topologists of his time, proving several important results. Philosophically, he was also unique in his strongly held conviction that philosophical ideas and arguments concerning the nature of mathematics ought to affect and be reflected in its practice. His general orientation in the philosophy of mathematics was Kantian. This was manifested in his radical critique of the role accorded to logical reasoning by classical mathematics; a role that Brouwer, following Kant, believed to be incompatible with the role that intuition must properly play in mathematical reasoning. The bestknown, if not the most fundamental, part of his Brouwer, Luitzgen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, Luitzgen Egbertus Jan 102   102 critique of the role accorded to logic by classical mathematics was his attack on the principle of the excluded middle and related principles of classical logic. He challenged their reliability, arguing that their unrestricted use leads to results that, intuitionistically speaking, are not true. However, in its fundaments, Brouwer’s critique was not so much an attack on particular principles of classical logic as a criticism of the general role that classical mathematics grants to logical reasoning. He believed that logical structure and hence logical inference is a product of the linguistic representation of mathematical thought and not a feature of that thought itself. He stated this view in the so-called First Act of Intuitionism, which contains not only the chief critical idea of Brouwer’s position, but also its core positive element. This positive element says, with Kant, that mathematics is an essentially languageless activity of the mind. Brouwer went on to say something with which Kant would only have partially agreed: that this activity has its origin in the perception of a move of time. The critical element complements this by saying that mathematics is thus to be kept wholly distinct from mathematical language and the phenomena of language described by logic. The so-called Second Act of Intuitionism then extends the positive part of the First Act by stating that the “self-unfolding” of the primordial intuition of a move of time is the basis not only of the construction of the natural numbers but also of the intuitionistic continuum. Together, these two ideas form the basis of Brouwer’s philosophy of mathematics  a philosophy that is radically at odds with most of twentieth-century philosophy of mathematics. 

bruno: g., apeculative philosopher. He was born in Naples, where he entered the Dominican order in 1565. In 1576 he was suspected of heresy and abandoned his order. He studied and taught in Geneva, but left because of difficulties with the Calvinists. Thereafter he studied and taught in Toulouse, Paris, England, various G. universities, and Prague. In 1591 he rashly returned to Venice, and was arrested by the Venetian Inquisition in 1592. In 1593 he was handed over to the Roman Inquisition, which burned him to death as a heretic. Because of his unhappy end, his support for the Copernican heliocentric hypothesis, and his pronounced anti-Aristotelianism, Bruno has been mistakenly seen as the proponent of a scientific worldview against medieval obscurantism. In fact, he should be interpreted in the context of Renaissance hermetism. Indeed, Bruno was so impressed by the hermetic corpus, a body of writings attributed to the mythical Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, that he called for a return to the magical religion of the Egyptians. He was also strongly influenced by Lull, Nicholas of Cusa, Ficino, and Agrippa von Nettesheim, an early sixteenth-century author of an influential treatise on magic. Several of Bruno’s works were devoted to magic, and it plays an important role in his books on the art of memory. Techniques for improving the memory had long been a subject of discussion, but he linked them with the notion that one could so imprint images of the universe on the mind as to achieve special knowledge of divine realities and the magic powers associated with such knowledge. He emphasized the importance of the imagination as a cognitive power, since it brings us into contact with the divine. Nonetheless, he also held that human ideas are mere shadows of divine ideas, and that God is transcendent and hence incomprehensible. Bruno’s best-known works are the  dialogues he wrote while in England, including the following, all published in 1584: The Ash Wednesday Supper; On Cause, Principle and Unity; The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast; and On the Infinite Universe and Worlds. He presents a vision of the universe as a living and infinitely extended unity containing innumerable worlds, each of which is like a great animal with a life of its own. He maintained the unity of matter with universal form or the World-Soul, thus suggesting a kind of pantheism attractive to later G. idealists, such as Schelling. However, he never identified the World-Soul with God, who remained separate from matter and form. He combined his speculative philosophy of nature with the recommendation of a new naturalistic ethics. Bruno’s support of Copernicus in The Ash Wednesday Supper was related to his belief that a living earth must move, and he specifically rejected any appeal to mere mathematics to prove cosmological hypotheses. In later work he described the monad as a living version of the Democritean atom. Despite some obvious parallels with both Spinoza and Leibniz, he seems not to have had much direct influence on seventeenth-century thinkers. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, Bruniana.

brunschvicg, l.: H. P. Grice is very popular in France, and so is Brunschvicg, philosopher, an influential professor at the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure of Paris, and a founder of the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 3 and the Société Française de Philosophie 1. In 0 he was forced by the Nazis to leave Paris and sought refuge in the nonoccupied zone, where he died. A monistic idealist, Brunschvicg unfolded a philosophy of mind Introduction to the Life of the Mind, 0. His epistemology highlights judgment. Thinking is judging and judging is acting. He defined philosophy as “the mind’s methodical self-reflection.” Philosophy investigates man’s growing self-understanding. The mind’s recesses, or metaphysical truth, are accessible through analysis of the mind’s timely manifestations. His major works therefore describe the progress of science as progress of consciousness: The Stages of Mathematical Philosophy 2, Human Experience and Physical Causality 2, The Progress of Conscience in Western Philosophy 7, and Ages of Intelligence 4. An heir of Renouvier, Cournot, and Revaisson, Brunschvicg advocated a moral and spiritual conception of science and attempted to reconcile idealism and positivism.

buber: M.  G.: H. P. Grice is all about ‘I’ and ‘thou,’ as Buber is. Jewish philosopher, theologian, and political leader. Buber’s early influences include Hasidism and neo-Kantianism. Eventually he broke with the latter and became known as a leading religious existentialist. His chief philosophic works include his most famous book, Ich und du “I and Thou,” 3; Moses 6; Between Man and Man 7; and Eclipse of God 2. The crux of Buber’s thought is his conception of two primary relationships: I-Thou and I-It. IThou is characterized by openness, reciprocity, and a deep sense of personal involvement. The I confronts its Thou not as something to be studied, measured, or manipulated, but as a unique presence that responds to the I in its individuality. I-It is characterized by the tendency to treat something as an impersonal object governed by causal, social, or economic forces. Buber rejects the idea that people are isolated, autonomous agents operating according to abstract rules. Instead, reality arises between agents as they encounter and transform each other. In a word, reality is dialogical. Buber describes God as the ultimate Thou, the Thou who can never become an It. Thus God is reached not by inference but by a willingness to respond to the concrete reality of the divine presence. 

buchmanism: also called the Moral Rearmament Movement, a non-creedal international movement that sought to bring about universal brotherhood through a commitment to an objectivist moral system derived largely from the Gospels. It was founded by Frank Buchman 18781, an  Lutheran minister who resigned from his church in 8 in order to expand his ministry. To promote the movement, Buchman founded the Oxford Group at Oxford. H. P. Grice was a member.

bundle: theory: Is Grice proposing a ‘bundle theory’ of “Personal identity”: He defines “I” as an interlinked chain of mnemonic states, a view that accepts the idea that concrete objects consist of properties but denies the need for introducing substrata to account for their diversity. By contrast, one traditional view of concrete particular objects is that they are complexes consisting of two more fundamental kinds of entities: properties that can be exemplified by many different objects and a substratum that exemplifies those properties belonging to a particular object. Properties account for the qualitative identity of such objects while substrata account for their numerical diversity. The bundle theory is usually glossed as the view that a concrete object is nothing but a bundle of properties. This gloss, however, is inadequate. For if a “bundle” of properties is, e.g., a set of properties, then bundles of properties differ in significant ways from concrete objects. For sets of properties are necessary and eternal while concrete objects are contingent and perishing. A more adequate statement of the theory holds that a concrete object is a complex of properties which all stand in a fundamental contingent relation, call it co-instantiation, to one another. On this account, complexes of properties are neither necessary nor eternal. Critics of the theory, however, maintain that such complexes have all their properties essentially and cannot change properties, whereas concrete objects have some of their properties accidentally and undergo change. This objection fails to recognize that there are two distinct problems addressed by the bundle theory: a individuation and b identity through time. The first problem arises for all objects, both momentary and enduring. The second, however, arises only for enduring objects. The bundle theory typically offers two different solutions to these problems. An enduring concrete object is analyzed as a series of momentary objects which stand in some contingent relation R. Different versions of the theory offer differing accounts of the relation. For example, Hume holds that the self is a series of co-instantiated impressions and ideas, whose members are related to one another by causation and resemblance this is his bundle theory of the self. A momentary object, however, is analyzed as a complex of properties all of which stand in the relation of co-instantiation to one another. Consequently, even if one grants that a momentary complex of properties has all of its members essentially, it does not follow that an enduring object, which contains the complex as a temporal part, has those properties essentially unless one endorses the controversial thesis that an enduring object has its temporal parts essentially. Similarly, even if one grants that a momentary complex of properties cannot change in its properties, it does not follow that an enduring object, which consists of such complexes, cannot change its properties. Critics of the bundle theory argue that its analysis of momentary objects is also problematic. For it appears possible that two different momentary objects have all properties in common, yet there cannot be two different complexes with all properties in common. There are two responses available to a proponent of the theory. The first is to distinguish between a strong and a weak version of the theory. On the strong version, the thesis that a momentary object is a complex of co-instantiated properties is a necessary truth, while on the weak version it is a contingent truth. The possibility of two momentary objects with all properties in common impugns only the strong version of the theory. The second is to challenge the basis of the claim that it is possible for two momentary objects to have all their properties in common. Although critics allege that such a state of affairs is conceivable, proponents argue that investigation into the nature of conceivability does not underwrite this claim. 

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

buridan – and his ass – and the Griceian implicaturum -- j. philosopher. He was born in Béthune and educated at the  of Paris. Unlike most philosophers of his time, Buridan spent his academic career as a master in the faculty of arts, without seeking an advanced degree in theology. He was also unusual in being a secular cleric rather than a member of a religious order. Buridan wrote extensively on logic and natural philosophy, although only a few of his works have appeared in modern editions. The most important on logic are the Summulae de dialectica “Sum of Dialectic”, an introduction to logic conceived as a revision of, and extended commentary on, the Summulae logicales of Peter of Spain, a widely used logic textbook of the period; and the Tractatus de consequentiis, a treatise on modes of inference. Most of Buridan’s other writings are short literal commentaries expositiones and longer critical studies quaestiones of Aristotle’s works. Like most medieval nominalists, Buridan argued that universals have no real existence, except as concepts by which the mind “conceives of many things indifferently.” Likewise, he included only particular substances and qualities in his basic ontology. But his nominalist program is distinctive in its implementation. He differs, e.g., from Ockham in his accounts of motion, time, and quantity appealing, in the latter case, to quantitative forms to explain the impenetrability of bodies. In natural philosophy, Buridan is best known for introducing to the West the non-Aristotelian concept of impetus, or impressed force, to explain projectile motion. Although asses appear often in his examples, the particular example that has come via Spinoza and others to be known as “Buridan’s ass,” an ass starving to death between two equidistant and equally tempting piles of hay, is unknown in Buridan’s writings. It may, however, have originated as a caricature of Buridan’s theory of action, which attempts to find a middle ground between Aristotelian intellectualism and Franciscan voluntarism by arguing that the will’s freedom to act consists primarily in its ability to defer choice in the absence of a compelling reason to act one way or the other. Buridan’s intellectual legacy was considerable. His works continued to be read and discussed in universities for centuries after his death. Three of his students and disciples, Albert of Saxony, Marsilius of Inghen, and Nicole Oresme, went on to become distinguished philosophers in their own right. 

burke: e. discussed by H. P. Grice in his exploration on legal versus moral right, statesman and one of the eighteenth century’s greatest political writers. Born in Dublin, he moved to London to study law, then undertook a literary and political career. He sat in the House of Commons from 1765 to 1794. In speeches and pamphlets during these years he offered an ideological perspective on politics that endures to this day as the fountain of conservative wisdom. The philosophical stance that pervades Burke’s parliamentary career and writings is skepticism, a profound distrust of political rationalism, i.e., the achievement in the political realm of abstract and rational structures, ideals, and objectives. Burkean skeptics are profoundly anti-ideological, detesting what they consider the complex, mysterious, and existential givens of political life distorted, criticized, or planned from a perspective of abstract, generalized, and rational categories. The seminal expression of Burke’s skeptical conservatism is found in the Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790. The conservatism of the Reflections was earlier displayed, however, in Burke’s response to radical demands in England for democratic reform of Parliament in the early 1780s. The English radicals assumed that legislators could remake governments, when all wise men knew that “a prescriptive government never was made upon any foregone theory.” How ridiculous, then, to put governments on Procrustean beds and make them fit “the theories which learned and speculative men have made.” Such prideful presumption required much more rational capacity than could be found among ordinary mortals. One victim of Burke’s skepticism is the vaunted liberal idea of the social contract. Commonwealths were neither constructed nor ought they to be renovated according to a priori principles. The concept of an original act of contract is just such a principle. The only contract in politics is the agreement that binds generations past, present, and future, one that “is but a clause in the great primeval contract of an eternal society.” Burke rejects the voluntaristic quality of rationalist liberal contractualism. Individuals are not free to create their own political institutions. Political society and law are not “subject to the will of those who, by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law.” Men and groups “are not morally at liberty, at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement” to rip apart their communities and dissolve them into an “unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos.” Burke saw our stock of reason as small; despite this people still fled their basic limitations in flights of ideological fancy. They recognized no barrier to their powers and sought in politics to make reality match their speculative visions. Burke devoutly wished that people would appreciate their weakness, their “subordinate rank in the creation.” God has “subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned us.” And that place is to know the limits of one’s rational and speculative faculties. Instead of relying on their own meager supply of reason, politicians should avail themselves “of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.” Because people forget this they weave rational schemes of reform far beyond their power to implement. Buridan’s ass Burke, Edmund 108   108 Burke stands as the champion of political skepticism in revolt against Enlightenment rationalism and its “smugness of adulterated metaphysics,” which produced the “revolution of doctrine and theoretic dogma.” The sins of the  were produced by the “clumsy subtlety of their political metaphysics.” The “faith in the dogmatism of philosophers” led them to rely on reason and abstract ideas, on speculation and a priori principles of natural right, freedom, and equality as the basis for reforming governments. Englishmen, like Burke, had no such illusions; they understood the complexity and fragility of human nature and human institutions, they were not “the converts of Rousseau . . . the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius [had] made no progress amongst [them].” 

burleigh: Grice: “Actually his name should be borough-leah, since this is what burley means in Yorkshire!” -- W. H. P. Grice preferred the spelling “Burleigh,” or “Burleighensis” if you must – Burlaeus -- “That’s how we called him at Oxford!” English philosopher who taught philosophy at Oxford and theology at Paris. An orthodox Aristotelian and a realist, he attacked Ockham’s logic and his interpretation of the Aristotelian categories. Burley commented on almost of all of Aristotle’s works in logic, natural philosophy, and moral philosophy. An early Oxford Calculator, Burley begins his work as a fellow of Merton  He later moved to  Paris. Burley – Grice adds – “was a tutee of Thomas Wilton, if you heard of him.” he was  incepted, and later a a fellow of the Sorbonne. His commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences has been lost. After leaving Paris, Burley is ssociated with the household of Richard of Bury and the court of Edward III, who sent him as an envoy to the papal curia. De vita et moribus philosophorum,” an influential, popular account of the lives of the philosophers, has often been attributed to Burley, but modern scholarship suggests that the attribution is incorrect. Many of Burley’s independent works dealt with problems in natural philosophy, notably De intensione et remissione formarum “De potentiis animae, and De substantia orbis. De primo et ultimo instanti discusses which temporal processes have intrinsic, which extrinsic limits. In his Tractatus de formis Burley attacks Ockham’s theory of quantity. Similarly, Burley’s theory of motion opposed Ockham’s views. Ockham restricts the account of motion to the thing moving, and the quality, quantity, and place acquired by motion. By contrast, Burley emphasizes the process of motion and the quantitative measurement of that process. Burley attacks the view that the forms successively acquired in motion are included in the form finally acquired. He ridicules the view that contrary qualities hot and cold could simultaneously inhere in the same subject producing intermediate qualities warmth. Burley emphasized the formal character of logic in his De puritate artis logicae “On the Purity of the Art of Logic”, one of the great medieval treatises on logic. Ockham attacked a preliminary version of De puritate in his Summa logicae; Burley called Ockham a beginner in logic. In De puritate artis logicae, Burley makes syllogistics a subdivision of consequences. His treatment of negation is particularly interesting for his views on double negation and the restrictions on the rule that notnot-p implies p. Burley distinguished between analogous words and analogous concepts and natures. His theory of analogy deserves detailed discussion. These views, like the views expressed in most of Burley’s works, have seldom been carefully studied. Luigi Speranza, “Grice and the Mertonians.”

butlerianism: J., cited by H. P. Grice, principle of conversational benevolence. English theologian and Anglican bishop who made important contributions to moral philosophy, to the understanding of moral agency, and to the development of deontological ethics. Better known in his own time for The Analogy of Religion 1736, a defense, along broadly empiricist lines, of orthodox, “revealed” Christian doctrine against deist criticism, Butler’s main philosophical legacy was a series of highly influential arguments and theses contained in a collection of Sermons 1725 and in two “Dissertations” appended to The Analogy  one on virtue and the other on personal identity. The analytical method of these essays “everything is what it is and not another thing” provided a model for much of English-speaking moral philosophy to follow. For example, Butler is often credited with refuting psychological hedonism, the view that all motives can be reduced to the desire for pleasure or happiness. The sources of human motivation are complex and structurally various, he argued. Appetites and passions seek their own peculiar objects, and pleasure must itself be understood as involving an intrinsic positive regard for a particular object. Other philosophers had maintained, like Butler, that we can desire, e.g., the happiness of others intrinsically, and not just as a means to our own happiness. And others had argued that the person who aims singlemindedly at his own happiness is unlikely to attain it. Butler’s distinctive contribution was to demonstrate that happiness and pleasure themselves require completion by specific objects for which we have an intrinsic positive regard. Self-love, the desire for our own happiness, is a reflective desire for, roughly, the satisfaction of our other desires. But self-love is not our only reflective desire; we also have “a settled reasonable principle of benevolence.” We can consider the goods of others and come on reflection to desire their welfare more or less independently of particular emotional involvement such as compassion. In morals, Butler equally opposed attempts to reduce virtue to benevolence, even of the most universal and impartial sort. Benevolence seeks the good or happiness of others, whereas the regulative principle of virtue is conscience, the faculty of moral approval or disapproval of conduct and character. Moral agency requires, he argued, the capacities to reflect disinterestedly on action, motive, and character, to judge these in distinctively moral terms and not just in terms of their relation to the non-moral good of happiness, and to guide conduct by such judgments. Butler’s views about the centrality of conscience in the moral life were important in the development of deontological ethics as well as in the working out of an associated account of moral agency. Along the first lines, he argued in the “Dissertation” that what it is right for a person to do depends, not just on the non-morally good or bad consequences of an action, but on such other morally relevant features as the relationships the agent bears to affected others e.g., friend or beneficiary, or whether fraud, injustice, treachery, or violence is involved. Butler thus distinguished analytically between distinctively moral evaluation of action and assessing an act’s relation to such non-moral values as happiness. And he provided succeeding deontological theorists with a litany of examples where the right thing to do is apparently not what would have the best consequences. Butler believed God instills a “principle of reflection” or conscience in us through which we intrinsically disapprove of such actions as fraud and injustice. But he also believed that God, being omniscient and benevolent, fitted us with these moral attitudes because “He foresaw this constitution of our nature would produce more happiness, than forming us with a temper of mere general benevolence.” This points, however, toward a kind of anti-deontological or consequentialist view, sometimes called indirect consequentialism, which readily acknowledges that what it is right to do does not depend on which act will have the best consequences. It is entirely appropriate, according to indirect consequentialism, that conscience approve or disapprove of acts on grounds other than a calculation of consequences precisely because its doing so has the best consequences. Here we have a version of the sort of view later to be found, for example, in Mill’s defense of utilitarianism against the objection that it conflicts with justice and rights. Morality is a system of social control that demands allegiance to considerations other than utility, e.g., justice and honesty. But it is justifiable only to the extent that the system itself has utility. This sets up something of a tension. From the conscientious perspective an agent must distinguish between the question of which action would have the best consequences and the question of what he should do. And from that perspective, Butler thinks, one will necessarily regard one’s answer to the second question as authoritative for conduct. Conscience necessarily implicitly asserts its own authority, Butler famously claimed. Thus, insofar as agents come to regard their conscience as simply a method of social control with good consequences, they will come to be alienated from the inherent authority their conscience implicitly claims. A similar issue arises concerning the relation between conscience and self-love. Butler says that both self-love and conscience are “superior principles in the nature of man” in that an action will be unsuitable to a person’s nature if it is contrary to either. This makes conscience’s authority conditional on its not conflicting with self-love and vice versa. Some scholars, moreover, read other passages as implying that no agent could reasonably follow conscience unless doing so was in the agent’s interest. But again, it would seem that an agent who internalized such a view would be alienated from the authority that, if Butler is right, conscience implicitly claims. For Butler, conscience or the principle of reflection is uniquely the faculty of practical judgment. Unlike either self-love or benevolence, even when these are added to the powers of inference and empirical cognition, only conscience makes moral agency possible. Only a creature with conscience can accord with or violate his own judgment of what he ought to do, and thereby be a “law to himself.” This suggests a view that, like Kant’s, seeks to link deontology to a conception of autonomous moral agency.

byzantine. This is important since it displays Grice’s disrespect for stupid traditions. There is Austin trying to lecture what he derogatorily called ‘philosophical hack’ (“I expect he was being ironic”) into learning through the Little Oxford Dictionary. HARDLY Grice’s cup of tea. Austiin, or the ‘master,’ as Grice ironically calls him, could patronize less patrician play group members, but not him! In any case, Austin grew so tiresome, that Grice grabbed the Little Dictionary. Austin had gave him license to go and refute Ryle on ‘feeling’. “So, go and check with the dictionary, to see howmany things you can feel.” Grice started with the A and got as far as the last relevant item under the ‘B,” he hoped. “And then I realised it was all hopeless. A waste. Language botany, indeed!” At a later stage, he grew more affectionate, especially when seeing that this was part of his armoury (as Gellner had noted): a temperament, surely not shared by Strawson, for subtleties and nuances. How Byzantine can Grice feel? Vide ‘agitation.’ Does feeling Byzantine entail a feeling of BEING Byzantine? originally used of the style of art and architecture developed there 4c.-5c. C.E.; later in reference to the complex, devious, and intriguing character of the royal court of Constantinople (1937). Bȳzantĭum , ii, n., = Βυζάντιον,I.a city in Thrace, on the Bosphorus, opposite the Asiatic Chalcedon, later Constantinopolis, now Constantinople; among the Turks, Istamboul or Stamboul (i.e. εις τὴν πόλιν), Mel. 2, 2, 6; Plin. 4, 11, 18, § 46; 9, 15, 20, § 50 sq.; Nep. Paus. 2, 2; Liv. 38, 16, 3 sq.; Tac. A. 12, 63 sq.; id. H. 2. 83; 3, 47 al.—II. Derivv.A. Bȳzantĭus , a, um, adj., of Byzantium, Byzantine: “litora,” the Strait of Constantinople, Ov. Tr. 1, 10, 31: “portus,” Plin. 9, 15, 20, § 51.—Subst.: Bȳ-zantĭi , ōrum, m., the inhabitants of Byzantium, Cic. Prov. Cons. 3, 5; 4, 6 sq.; Cic. Verr. 2, 2, 31, § 76; Nep. Timoth. 1, 2; Liv. 32, 33, 7.—B. Bȳzantĭăcus , a, um, adj., of Byzantium: “lacerti,” Stat. S. 4, 9, 13. — C. Bȳzantīnus , a, um, adj., the same (post-class.): “Lygos,” Aus. Clar. Urb. 2: “frigora,” Sid. Ep. 7, 17. Byzantine feeling -- Einfühlung G., ‘feeling into’, empathy. In contrast to sympathy, where one’s identity is preserved in feeling with or for the other, in empathy or Einfühlung one tends to lose oneself in the other. The concept of Einfühlung received its classical formulation in the work of Theodor Lipps, who characterized it as a process of involuntary, inner imitation whereby a subject identifies through feeling with the movement of another body, whether it be the real leap of a dancer or the illusory upward lift of an architectural column. Complete empathy is considered to be aesthetic, providing a non-representational access to beauty. Husserl used a phenomenologically purified concept of Einfühlung to account for the way the self directly recognizes the other. Husserl’s student Edith Stein described Einfühlung as a blind egoism Einfühlung 255   255 mode of knowledge that reaches the experience of the other without possessing it. Einfühlung is not to be equated with Verstehen or human understanding, which, as Dilthey pointed out, requires the use of all one’s mental powers, and cannot be reduced to a mere mode of feeling. To understand is not to apprehend something empathetically as the projected locus of an actual experience, but to apperceive the meaning of expressions of experience in relation to their context. Whereas understanding is reflective, empathy is prereflective. 

C

cabala – or kabala – cited by Grice “Perhaps Moses brought more than the ten commandments from Sinai.” from Hebrew qabbala, ‘tradition’, a system of Jewish mysticism and theosophy practiced from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century; loosely, all forms of Jewish mysticism. Believed by its adherents to be a tradition communicated to Moses at Sinai, the main body of cabalistic writing, the Zohar, is thought to be the work primarily of Moses de León of Guadalajara, in the thirteenth century, though he attributed it to the second-century rabbi Simon bar Yohai. The Zohar builds on earlier Jewish mysticism, and is replete with gnostic and Neoplatonic themes. It offers the initiated access to the mysteries of God’s being, human destiny, and the meaning of the commandments. The transcendent and strictly unitary God of rabbinic Judaism here encounters ten apparently real divine powers, called sefirot, which together represent God’s being and appearance in the cosmos and include male and female principles. Evil in the world is seen as a reflection of a cosmic rupture in this system, and redemption on earth entails restoration of the divine order. Mankind can assist in this task through knowledge, piety, and observance of the law. Isaac Luria in the sixteenth century developed these themes with graphic descriptions of the dramas of creation, cosmic rupture, and restoration, the latter process requiring human assistance more than ever.

cæteris  paribus: Strawson and Wiggins: that the principle holds ceteris paribus is a necessary condition for the very existence of the activity in question. Central. Grice technically directs his attenetion to this in his “Method”. There, he tries to introduce “WILLING” as a predicate, i.e. a theoretical concept which is implicitly defined by the LAW in a THEORY that it occurs. This theory is ‘psychology,’ but understood as a ‘folk science.’ So the conditionals are ‘ceteris paribus.’ Schiffer and Cartwright were aware of this. Especially Cartwright who attended seminars on this with Grice on ‘as if.’ Schiffer was well aware of the topic via Loar and others. Griceians who were trying to come up with a theory of content without relying on semantic stuff would involve ‘caeteris paribus’ ‘laws.’ Grice in discussion with Davidson comes to the same conclusion, hence his “A T C,’ all things considered and prima facie. H. L. A. Hart, with his concept of ‘defeasibility’ relates. Vide Baker. And obviously those who regard ‘implicaturum’ as nonmonotonic. Caeteris paribus -- Levinon “generalised implicaturum as by default” default logic, a formal system for reasoning with defaults, developed by Raymond Reiter in 0. Reiter’s defaults have the form ‘P:MQ1 , . . . , MQn/R’, read ‘If P is believed and Q1 . . . Qn are consistent with one’s beliefs, then R may be believed’. Whether a proposition is consistent with one’s beliefs depends on what defaults have already been applied. Given the defaults P:MQ/Q and R:M-Q/-Q, and the facts P and R, applying the first default yields Q while applying the second default yields -Q. So applying either default blocks the other. Consequently, a default theory may have several default extensions. Normal defaults having the form P:MQ/Q, useful for representing simple cases of nonmonotonic reasoning, are inadequate for more complex cases. Reiter produces a reasonably clean proof theory for normal default theories and proves that every normal default theory has an extension. 

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

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

cairdianism:  e. Oxford Hegelian of the type Grice saw mostly every day! philosopher, a leading absolute idealist. Influential as both a writer and a teacher, Caird was professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow and master of Balliol , Oxford. His aim in philosophy was to overcome intellectual oppositions. In his main work, The Critical Philosophy of Kant 9, he argued that Kant had done this by using reason to synthesize rationalism and empiricism while reconciling science and religion. In Caird’s view, Kant unfortunately treated reason as subjective, thereby retaining an opposition between self and world. Loosely following Hegel, Caird claimed that objective reason, or the Absolute, was a larger whole in which both self and world were fragments. In his Evolution of Religion 3 Caird argued that religion progressively understands God as the Absolute and hence as what reconciles self and world. This allowed him to defend Christianity as the highest evolutionary stage of religion without defending the literal truth of Scripture. 

Vio – tomasso di vio -- cajetan, original name, -- H. P. Grice thinks that Shropshire borrowed his proof for the immortality of the soul from Cajetan -- Tommaso de Vio, prelate and theologian. Born in Gaeta from which he took his name, he entered the Dominican order in 1484 and studied philosophy and theology at Naples, Bologna, and Padua. He became a cardinal in 1517; during the following two years he traveled to G.y, where he engaged in a theological controversy with Luther. His major work is a Commentary on St. Thomas’ Summa of Theology 1508, which promoted a renewal of interest in Scholastic and Thomistic philosophy during the sixteenth century. In agreement with Aquinas, Cajetan places the origin of human knowledge in sense perception. In contrast with Aquinas, he denies that the immortality of the soul and the existence of God as our creator can be proved. Cajetan’s work in logic was based on traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic but is original in its discussion of the notion of analogy. Cajetan distinguishes three types: analogy of inequality, analogy of attribution, and analogy of proportion. Whereas he rejected the first two types as improper, he regarded the last as the basic type of analogy and appealed to it in explaining how humans come to know God and how analogical reasoning applied to God and God’s creatures avoids being equivocal. 

calculus: -Grice speaks variously of calculus. One of the characteristics of implicature is CALCULABILITY -- - In the second William James, he uses CALCULATE variously.  Conventional implata are not calculable. Insofar as tl1e CALCULATION that a particular conversational implicature is present requires, besides contextual and background information, only a knowledge of what has been said (or of the conventional commitment of the utterance), and insofar as the manner of expression plays no role in the CALCULATION, it will not be possible to find another way of saying the same thing, which simply lacks the implicature in question, except where some special feature of the substituted version is itself relevant to the determination of an implicature (in virtue of one of the maxims of Manner). If we call this feature NONDETACIIAlliLITY, one may expect a generalized conversational implicature that is carried by a familiar, nonspecial locution to have a high degree of nondetachability. 3. To speak approximately, since the CALCULATION of the presence of a conversational implicature presupposes an initial knowledge of the conventional force of the expression the utterance of which carries the implicature, a conversational implicatum will be a condition that is not included in the original specification of the expression's conventional force. Though it may not be impossible for what starts life, so to speak, as a conversational implicature to become conventionalized, to suppose that this is so in a given case would require special justification. So, initially at least, conversational implicata are not part of the meaning of the expressions to the employment of which they attach. 4. ·Since the. truth of a conversational implicatum is not required by the truth of what is said (what is said may be true-what is implicated may be false), the implicature is not carried by what is said, but only by the saying of what is said, or by 'putting it that way.' 5. Since, to CALCULATE a conversational implicature is to CALCULATE what has to be supposed in order to preserve the supposition that the Cooperative Principle is being observed, and since there may be various possible specific explanations, a list of which may be open, the conversational implicatum in such cases will be disjunction of such specific explanations; and if the list of these is open, the implicatum will have just the kind of indeterminacy that many actual implicata do in fact seem to possess.  cf. calculation -- Hobbes uses ‘calculation – How latin is that? calcŭlo , āre, v. a. id.,  I.to calculate, compute, reckon (late Lat.). from diminutive of ‘calx,’ a stone usef for reckon --- I. Lit., Prud. στεφ. 3, 131.— II. Trop., to consider as, to esteem, Sid. Ep. 7, 9.Grice uses ‘calculus’ slightly different, in the phrase “first-order predicate calculus with time-relative identity” -- a central branch of mathematics, originally conceived in connection with the determination of the tangent or normal to a curve and of the area between it and some fixed axis; but it also embraced the calculation of volumes and of areas of curved surfaces, the lengths of curved lines, and so on. Mathematical analysis is a still broader branch that subsumed the calculus under its rubric see below, together with the theories of functions and of infinite series. Still more general and/or abstract versions of analysis have been developed during the twentieth century, with applications to other branches of mathematics, such as probability theory. The origins of the calculus go back to Grecian mathematics, usually in problems of determining the slope of a tangent to a curve and the area enclosed underneath it by some fixed axes or by a closed curve; sometimes related questions such as the length of an arc of a curve, or the area of a curved surface, were considered. The subject flourished in the seventeenth century when the analytical geometry of Descartes gave algebraic means to extend the procedures. It developed further when the problems of slope and area were seen to require the finding of new functions, and that the pertaining processes were seen to be inverse. Newton and Leibniz had these insights in the late seventeenth century, independently and in different forms. In the Leibnizian differential calculus the differential dx was proposed as an infinitesimal increment on x, and of the same dimension as x; the slope of the tangent to a curve with y as a function of x was the ratio dy/dx. The integral, ex, was infinitely large and of the dimension of x; thus for linear variables x and y the area ey dx was the sum of the areas of rectangles y high and dx wide. All these quantities were variable, and so could admit higher-order differentials and integrals ddx, eex, and so on. This theory was extended during the eighteenth century, especially by Euler, to functions of several independent variables, and with the creation of the calculus of variations. The chief motivation was to solve differential equations: they were motivated largely by problems in mechanics, which was then the single largest branch of mathematics. Newton’s less successful fluxional calculus used limits in its basic definitions, thereby changing dimensions for the defined terms. The fluxion was the rate of change of a variable quantity relative to “time”; conversely, that variable was the “fluent” of its fluxion. These quantities were also variable; fluxions and fluents of higher orders could be defined from them. A third tradition was developed during the late eighteenth century by J. L. Lagrange. For him the “derived functions” of a function fx were definable by purely algebraic means from its Taylorian power-series expansion about any value of x. By these means it was hoped to avoid the use of both infinitesimals and limits, which exhibited conceptual difficulties, the former due to their unclear ontology as values greater than zero but smaller than any orthodox quantity, the latter because of the naive theories of their deployment. In the early nineteenth century the Newtonian tradition died away, and Lagrange’s did not gain general conviction; however, the LeibnizEuler line kept some of its health, for its utility in physical applications. But all these theories gradually became eclipsed by the mathematical analysis of A. L. Cauchy. As with Newton’s calculus, the theory of limits was central, but they were handled in a much more sophisticated way. He replaced the usual practice of defining the integral as more or less automatically the inverse of the differential or fluxion or whatever by giving independent definitions of the derivative and the integral; thus for the first time the fundamental “theorem” of the calculus, stating their inverse relationship, became a genuine theorem, requiring sufficient conditions upon the function to ensure its truth. Indeed, Cauchy pioneered the routine specification of necessary and/or sufficient conditions for truth of theorems in analysis. His discipline also incorporated the theory of discontinuous functions and the convergence or divergence of infinite series. Again, general definitions were proffered and conditions sought for properties to hold. Cauchy’s discipline was refined and extended in the second half of the nineteenth century by K. Weierstrass and his followers at Berlin. The study of existence theorems as for irrational numbers, and also technical questions largely concerned with trigonometric series, led to the emergence of set topology. In addition, special attention was given to processes involving several variables changing in value together, and as a result the importance of quantifiers was recognized  for example, reversing their order from ‘there is a y such that for all x . . .’ to ‘for all x, there is a y . . .’. This developed later into general set theory, and then to mathematical logic: Cantor was the major figure in the first aspect, while G. Peano pioneered much for the second. Under this regime of “rigor,” infinitesimals such as dx became unacceptable as mathematical objects. However, they always kept an unofficial place because of their utility when applying the calculus, and since World War II theories have been put forward in which the established level of rigor and generality are preserved and even improved but in which infinitesimals are reinstated. The best-known of these theories, the non-standard analysis of A. Robinson, makes use of model theory by defining infinitesimals as arithmetical inverses of the transfinite integers generated by a “non-standard model” of Peano’s postulates for the natural numbers. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Hobbes’s calculatio and Grice’s calculability.”

calvin: j.: As C. of E., Grice was aware of the problems his father, a non-conformist, brought to his High Anglican household, theologian and church reformer, a major figure in the Protestant Reformation. He was especially important for the so-called Reformed churches in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, G.y, Scotland, and England. Calvin was a theologian in the humanist tradition rather than a philosopher. He valued philosophy as “a noble gift of God” and cited philosophers especially Plato when it suited his purposes; but he rejected philosophical speculation about “higher things” and despised  though sometimes exploiting its resources  the dominant Scholastic philosophy of his time, to which he had been introduced at the  of Paris. His eclectic culture also included a variety of philosophical ideas, of whose source he was often unaware, that inevitably helped to shape his thought. His Christianae religionis institutio first ed. 1536 but repeatedly enlarged; in English generally cited as Institutes, his theological treatises, his massive biblical commentaries, and his letters, all of which were tr. into most European languages, thus helped to transmit various philosophical motifs and attitudes in an unsystematic form both to contemporaries and to posterity. He passed on to his followers impulses derived from both the antiqui and the moderni. From the former he inherited an intellectualist anthropology that conceived of the personality as a hierarchy of faculties properly subordinated to reason, which was at odds with his evangelical theology; and, though he professed to scorn Stoicism, a moralism often more Stoic than evangelical. He also relied occasionally on the Scholastic quaestio, and regularly treated substantives, like the antiqui, as real entities. These elements in his thought also found expression in tendencies to a natural theology based on an innate and universal religious instinct that can discern evidences of the existence and attributes of God everywhere in nature, and a conception of the Diety as immutable and intelligible. This side of Calvinism eventually found expression in Unitarianism and universalism. It was, however, in uneasy tension with other tendencies in his thought that reflect both his biblicism and a nominalist and Scotist sense of the extreme transcendence of God. Like other humanists, therefore, he was also profoundly skeptical about the capacity of the human mind to grasp ultimate truth, an attitude that rested, for him, on both the consequences of original sin and the merely conventional origins of language. Corollaries of this were his sense of the contingency of all human intellectual constructions and a tendency to emphasize the utility rather than the truth even of such major elements in his theology as the doctrine of predestination. It may well be no accident, therefore, that later skepticism and pragmatism have been conspicuous in thinkers nurtured by later Calvinism, such as Bayle, Hume, and James. 

cambridge change, a non-genuine change: Grice loved the phrase seeing that, “while at Oxford we had a minor revolution, at Cambridge, if the place counts, they didn’t. “I went to Oxford. You went to Cambridge. He went to the London School of Economics.” If I turn pale, I am changing, whereas your turning pale is only a Cambridge change in me. When I acquire the property of being such that you are pale, I do not change. In general, an object’s acquiring a new property is not a sufficient condition for that object to change although some other object may genuinely change. Thus also, my being such that you are pale counts only as a Cambridge property of me, a property such that my gaining or losing it is only a Cambridge change. Cambridge properties are a proper subclass of extrinsic properties: being south of Chicago is considered an extrinsic property of me, but since my moving to Canada would be a genuine change, being south of Chicago cannot, for me, be a Cambridge property. The concept of a Cambridge change reflects a way of thinking entrenched in common sense, but it is difficult to clarify, and its philosophical value is controversial. Neither science nor formal semantics, e.g., supports this viewpoint. Perhaps calculus, fluxional Cambridge changes and properties are, for better or worse, inseparable from a vague, intuitive metaphysics. 

campanella: one of the most important of the Italian philosophers.  H. P. Grice enjoyed his philosophical poems.-  15681639,  theologian, philosopher, and poet. He joined the Dominican order in 1582. Most of the years between 1592 and 1634 he spent in prison for heresy and for conspiring to replace  rule in southern Italy with a utopian republic. He fled to France in 1634 and spent his last years in freedom. Some of his best poetry was written while he was chained in a dungeon; and during less rigorous confinement he managed to write over a hundred books, not all of which survive. His best-known work, The City of the Sun 1602; published 1623, describes a community governed in accordance with astrological principles, with a priest as head of state. In later political writings, Campanella attacked Machiavelli and called for either a universal  monarchy with the pope as spiritual head or a universal theocracy with the pope as both spiritual and temporal leader. His first publication was Philosophy Demonstrated by the Senses 1591, which supported the theories of Telesio and initiated his lifelong attack on Aristotelianism. He hoped to found a new Christian philosophy based on the two books of nature and Scripture, both of which are manifestations of God. While he appealed to sense experience, he was not a straightforward empiricist, for he saw the natural world as alive and sentient, and he thought of magic as a tool for utilizing natural processes. In this he was strongly influenced by Ficino. Despite his own difficulties with Rome, he wrote in support of Galileo. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Campanella," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia – Campanelliana.

campbell: n. r. – H. P. Grice drew some ideas on scientific laws from Campbell --  British physicist and philosopher of science. A successful experimental physicist, Campbell with A. Wood discovered the radioactivity of potassium. His analysis of science depended on a sharp distinction between experimental laws and theories. Experimental laws are generalizations established by observations. A theory has the following structure. First, it requires a largely arbitrary hypothesis, which in itself is untestable. To render it testable, the theory requires a “dictionary” of propositions linking the hypothesis to scientific laws, which can be established experimentally. But theories are not merely logical relations between hypotheses and experimental laws; they also require concrete analogies or models. Indeed, the models suggest the nature of the propositions in the dictionary. The analogies are essential components of the theory, and, for Campbell, are nearly always mechanical. His theory of science greatly influenced Nagel’s The Structure of Science 1. 

camus, A.: H. P. Grice said that Martin Heidegger is the greatest philosopher alive – He was aware that he was contesting with Camus – but Grice saw Camus moer as a ‘novelist’ than a philosopher. --  philosophical novelist and essayist who was also a prose poet and the conscience of his times. He was born and raised in Algeria, and his experiences as a fatherless, tubercular youth, as a young playwright and journalist in Algiers, and later in the anti-G. resistance in Paris during World War II informed everything he wrote. His best-known writings are not overtly political; his most famous works, the novel The Stranger written in 0, published in 2 and his book-length essay The Myth of Sisyphus written in 1, published in 3 explore the notion of “the absurd,” which Camus alternatively describes as the human condition and as “a widespread sensitivity of our times.” The absurd, briefly defined, is the confrontation between ourselves  with our demands for rationality and justice  and an “indifferent universe.” Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to the endless, futile task of rolling a rock up a mountain whence it would roll back down of its own weight, thus becomes an exemplar of the human condition, struggling hopelessly and pointlessly to achieve something. The odd antihero of The Stranger, on the other hand, unconsciously accepts the absurdity of life. He makes no judgments, accepts the most repulsive characters as his friends and neighbors, and remains unmoved by the death of his mother and his own killing of a man. Facing execution for his crime, he “opens his heart to the benign indifference of the universe.” But such stoic acceptance is not the message of Camus’s philosophy. Sisyphus thrives he is even “happy” by virtue of his scorn and defiance of the gods, and by virtue of a “rebellion” that refuses to give in to despair. This same theme motivates Camus’s later novel, The Plague7, and his long essay The Rebel 1. In his last work, however, a novel called The Fall published in 6, the year before he won the Nobel prize for literature, Camus presents an unforgettably perverse character named Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who exemplifies all the bitterness and despair rejected by his previous characters and in his earlier essays. Clamence, like the character in The Stranger, refuses to judge people, but whereas Meursault the “stranger” is incapable of judgment, Clamence who was once a lawyer makes it a matter of philosophical principle, “for who among us is innocent?” It is unclear where Camus’s thinking was heading when he was killed in an automobile accident with his publisher, Gallimard, who survived. 

canguilhem: g. H. P. Grice drew some ideas on scientific laws from Canguillhem -- historian and philosopher of science. Canguilhem succeeded Gaston Bachelard as director of the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques at the  of Paris. He developed and sometimes revised Bachelard’s view of science, extending it to issues in the biological and medical sciences, where he focused particularly on the concepts of the normal and the pathological The Normal and the Pathological, 6. On his account norms are not objective in the sense of being derived from value-neutral scientific inquiry, but are rooted in the biological reality of the organisms that they regulate. Canguilhem also introduced an important methodological distinction between concepts and theories. Rejecting the common view that scientific concepts are simply functions of the theories in which they are embedded, he argued that the use of concepts to interpret data is quite distinct from the use of theories to explain the data. Consequently, the same concepts may occur in very different theoretical contexts. Canguilhem made particularly effective use of this distinction in tracing the origin of the concept of reflex action. 

captainship. Strawson calls Grice his captain. In the inaugural lecture. . A struggle on what seems to be such a From Meaning and Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970) TRUTH AND MEANING central issue in philosophy should have something of a Homeric quality; and a Homeric struggle calls for gods and heroes. I can at least, though tentatively, name some living captains and benevolent shades: on the one side, say, Grice, Austin, and the later Wittgenstein; on the other, Chomsky, Frege, and the earlier Wittgenstein.

cardinal -- H. P. Grice and The cardinal virtues, prudence prudential (in ratione) practical wisdom, courage (fortitude in irascibili), temperance (temperantia in concuspicibili), and justice (iustitia in voluntate). Grice thought them oxymoronic: “Virtue is entire, surely!” -- Medievals deemed them cardinal from Latin cardo, ‘hinge’ because of their important or pivotal role in human flourishing. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates explains them through a doctrine of the three parts of the soul, suggesting that a person is prudent when knowledge of how to live wisdom informs her reason, courageous when informed reason governs her capacity for wrath, temperate when it also governs her appetites, and just when each part performs its proper task with informed reason in control. Development of thought on the cardinal virtues was closely tied to the doctrine of the unity of the virtues, i.e., that a person possessing one virtue will have them all. 

carlyleianim:, T.: When Grice was feeling that his mode operators made for poor prose he would wonder, “what Carlyle might think of this!” -- Scottish-born essayist, historian, and social critic, one of the most popular writers and lecturers in nineteenth-century Britain. His works include literary criticism, history, and cultural criticism. With respect to philosophy, his views on the theory of history are his most significant contributions. According to Carlyle, great personages are the most important causal factor in history. On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History 1841 asserts, “Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.” Carlyle’s doctrine has been challenged from many different directions. Hegelian and Marxist philosophers maintain that the so-called great men of history are not really the engine of history, but merely reflections of deeper forces, such as economic ones, while contemporary historians emphasize the priority of “history from below”  the social history of everyday people  as far more representative of the historical process.

carnapianism: r: the inventor, with Russell, of the pirot. -- G.-born  philosopher, one of the leaders of the Vienna Circle, a movement loosely called logical positivism or logical empiricism. He made fundamental contributions to semantics and the philosophy of science, as well as to the foundations of probability and inductive logic. He was a staunch advocate of, and active in, the unity of science movement. Carnap received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the  of Jena in 1. His first major work was Die Logische Aufbau der Welt 8, in which he sought to apply the new logic recently developed by Frege and by Russell and Whitehead to problems in the philosophy of science. Although influential, it was not tr. until 7, when it appeared as The Logical Structure of the World. It was important as one of the first clear and unambiguous statements that the important work of philosophy concerned logical structure: that language and its logic were to be the focus of attention. In 5 Carnap left his native G.y for the United States, where he taught at the  of Chicago and then at UCLA. Die Logiche Syntax der Sprach 4 was rapidly tr. into English, appearing as The Logical Syntax of Language 7. This was followed in 1 by Introduction to Semantics, and in 2 by The Formalization of Logic. In 7 Meaning and Necessity appeared; it provided the groundwork for a modal logic that would mirror the meticulous semantic development of first-order logic in the first two volumes. One of the most important concepts introduced in these volumes was that of a state description. A state description is the linguistic counterpart of a possible world: in a given language, the most complete description of the world that can be given. Carnap then turned to one of the most pervasive and important problems to arise in both the philosophy of science and the theory of meaning. To say that the meaning of a sentence is given by the conditions under which it would be verified as the early positivists did or that a scientific theory is verified by predictions that turn out to be true, is clearly to speak loosely. Absolute verification does not occur. To carry out the program of scientific philosophy in a realistic way, we must be able to speak of the support given by inconclusive evidence, either in providing epistemological justification for scientific knowledge, or in characterizing the meanings of many of the terms of our scientific language. This calls for an understanding of probability, or as Carnap preferred to call it, degree of confirmation. We must distinguish between two senses of probability: what he called probability1, corresponding to credibility, and probability2, corresponding to the frequency or empirical conception of probability defended by Reichenbach and von Mises. ‘Degree of confirmation’ was to be the formal concept corresponding to credibility. The first book on this subject, written from the same point of view as the works on semantics, was The Logical Foundations of Probability 0. The goal was a logical definition of ‘ch,e’: the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis h, relative to a body of evidence e, or the degree of rational belief that one whose total evidence was e should commit to h. Of course we must first settle on a formal language in which to express the hypothesis and the evidence; for this Carnap chooses a first-order language based on a finite number of one-place predicates, and a countable number of individual constants. Against this background, we perform the following reductions: ‘ch,e’ represents a conditional probability; thus it can be represented as the ratio of the absolute probabilCarlyle, Thomas Carnap, Rudolf 118   118 ity of h & e to the absolute probability of e. Absolute probabilities are represented by the value of a measure function m, defined for sentences of the language. The problem is to define m. But every sentence in Carnap’s languages is equivalent to a disjunction of state descriptions; the measure to be assigned to it must, according to the probability calculus, be the sum of the measures assigned to its constituent state descriptions. Now the problem is to define m for state descriptions. Recall that state descriptions were part of the machinery Carnap developed earlier. The function c† is a confirmation function based on the assignment of equal measures to each state description. It is inadequate, because if h is not entailed by e, c†h,e % m†h, the a priori measure assigned to h. We cannot “learn from experience.” A measure that does not have that drawback is m*, which is based on the assignment of equal measures to each structure description. A structure description is a set of state descriptions; two state descriptions belong to the same structure description just in case one can be obtained from the other by a permutation of individual constants. Within the structure description, equal values are assigned to each state description. In the next book, The Continuum of Inductive Methods, Carnap takes the rate at which we learn from experience to be a fundamental parameter of his assignments of probability. Like measures on state descriptions, the values of the probability of the singular predictive inference determine all other probabilities. The “singular predictive inference” is the inference from the observation that individual 1 has one set of properties, individual 2 has another set of properties, etc., to the conclusion: individual j will have property k. Finally, in the last works Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, vols. I [1] and II [0], edited with Richard Jeffrey Carnap offered two long articles constituting his Basic System of Inductive Logic. This system is built around a language having families of attributes e.g., color or sound that can be captured by predicates. The basic structure is still monadic, and the logic still lacks identity, but there are more parameters. There is a parameter l that reflects the “rate of learning from experience”; a parameter h that reflects an inductive relation between values of attributes belonging to families. With the introduction of arbitrary parameters, Carnap was edging toward a subjective or personalistic view of probability. How far he was willing to go down the subjectivist garden path is open to question; that he discovered more to be relevant to inductive logic than the “language” of science seems clear. Carnap’s work on probability measures on formal languages is destined to live for a long time. So too is his work on formal semantics. He was a staunch advocate of the fruitfulness of formal studies in philosophy, of being clear and explicit, and of offering concrete examples. Beyond the particular philosophical doctrines he advocated, these commitments characterize his contribution to philosophy.

Cartesio: cartesianism: The word ‘Cartesianism’ shows that the ‘de’ that the English adored (“How to become a Brit” – Mykes) is mostly otiose! -- Descartes, R.: v. H. P. Grice, “Descartes on clear and distinct perception,” -- philosopher, a founder of the “modern age” and perhaps the most important figure in the intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century in which the traditional systems of understanding based on Aristotle were challenged and, ultimately, overthrown. His conception of philosophy was all-embracing: it encompassed mathematics and the physical sciences as well as psychology and ethics, and it was based on what he claimed to be absolutely firm and reliable metaphysical foundations. His approach to the problems of knowledge, certainty, and the nature of the human mind played a major part in shaping the subsequent development of philosophy. Life and works. Descartes was born in a small town near Tours that now bears his name. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother his mother having died soon after his birth, and at the age of ten he was sent to the recently founded Jesuit  of La Flèche in Anjou, where he remained as a boarding pupil for nine years. At La Flèche he studied classical literature and traditional classics-based subjects such as history and rhetoric as well as natural philosophy based on the Aristotelian system and theology. He later wrote of La Flèche that he considered it “one of the best schools in Europe,” but that, as regards the philosophy he had learned there, he saw that “despite being cultivated for many centuries by the best minds, it contained no point which was not disputed and hence doubtful.” At age twenty-two having taken a law degree de re Descartes, René 223   223 at Poitiers, Descartes set out on a series of travels in Europe, “resolving,” as he later put it, “to seek no knowledge other than that which could be found either in myself or the great book of the world.” The most important influence of this early period was Descartes’s friendship with the Dutchman Isaac Beeckman, who awakened his lifelong interest in mathematics  a science in which he discerned precision and certainty of the kind that truly merited the title of scientia Descartes’s term for genuine systematic knowledge based on reliable principles. A considerable portion of Descartes’s energies as a young man was devoted to pure mathematics: his essay on Geometry published in 1637 incorporated results discovered during the 1620s. But he also saw mathematics as the key to making progress in the applied sciences; his earliest work, the Compendium Musicae, written in 1618 and dedicated to Beeckman, applied quantitative principles to the study of musical harmony and dissonance. More generally, Descartes saw mathematics as a kind of paradigm for all human understanding: “those long chains composed of very simple and easy reasonings, which geometers customarily use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, gave me occasion to suppose that all the things which fall within the scope of human knowledge are interconnected in the same way” Discourse on the Method, Part II. In the course of his travels, Descartes found himself closeted, on November 10, 1619, in a “stove-heated room” in a town in southern G.y, where after a day of intense meditation, he had a series of vivid dreams that convinced him of his mission to found a new scientific and philosophical system. After returning to Paris for a time, he emigrated to Holland in 1628, where he was to live though with frequent changes of address for most of the rest of his life. By 1633 he had ready a treatise on cosmology and physics, Le Monde; but he cautiously withdrew the work from publication when he heard of the condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition for rejecting as Descartes himself did the traditional geocentric theory of the universe. But in 1637 Descartes released for publication, in , a sample of his scientific work: three essays entitled the Optics, Meteorology, and Geometry. Prefaced to that selection was an autobiographical introduction entitled Discourse on the Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and reaching the truth in the sciences. This work, which includes discussion of a number of scientific issues such as the circulation of the blood, contains in Part IV a summary of Descartes’s views on knowledge, certainty, and the metaphysical foundations of science. Criticisms of his arguments here led Descartes to compose his philosophical masterpiece, the Meditations on First Philosophy, published in Latin in 1641  a dramatic account of the voyage of discovery from universal doubt to certainty of one’s own existence, and the subsequent struggle to establish the existence of God, the nature and existence of the external world, and the relation between mind and body. The Meditations aroused enormous interest among Descartes’s contemporaries, and six sets of objections by celebrated philosophers and theologians including Mersenne, Hobbes, Arnauld, and Gassendi were published in the same volume as the first edition a seventh set, by the Jesuit Pierre Bourdin, was included in the second edition of 1642. A few years later, Descartes published, in Latin, a mammoth compendium of his metaphysical and scientific views, the Principles of Philosophy, which he hoped would become a  textbook to rival the standard texts based on Aristotle. In the later 1640s, Descartes became interested in questions of ethics and psychology, partly as a result of acute questions about the implications of his system raised by Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia in a long and fruitful correspondence. The fruits of this interest were published in 1649 in a lengthy  treatise entitled The Passions of the Soul. The same year, Descartes accepted after much hesitation an invitation to go to Stockholm to give philosophical instruction to Queen Christina of Sweden. He was required to provide tutorials at the royal palace at five o’clock in the morning, and the strain of this break in his habits he had maintained the lifelong custom of lying in bed late into the morning led to his catching pneumonia. He died just short of his fifty-fourth birthday. The Cartesian system. In a celebrated simile, Descartes described the whole of philosophy as like a tree: the roots are metaphysics, the trunk physics, and the branches are the various particular sciences, including mechanics, medicine, and morals. The analogy captures at least three important features of the Cartesian system. The first is its insistence on the essential unity of knowledge, which contrasts strongly with the Aristotelian conception of the sciences as a series of separate disciplines, each with its own methods and standards of precision. The sciences, as Descartes put it in an early notebook, are all “linked together” in a sequence that is in principle as simple and straightforward as the series of numbers. The second point conveyed by the tree simile is the utility of philosophy for ordinary living: the tree is valued for its fruits, and these are gathered, Descartes points out, “not from the roots or the trunk but from the ends of the branches”  the practical sciences. Descartes frequently stresses that his principal motivation is not abstract theorizing for its own sake: in place of the “speculative philosophy taught in the Schools,” we can and should achieve knowledge that is “useful in life” and that will one day make us “masters and possessors of nature.” Third, the likening of metaphysics or “first philosophy” to the roots of the tree nicely captures the Cartesian belief in what has come to be known as foundationalism  the view that knowledge must be constructed from the bottom up, and that nothing can be taken as established until we have gone back to first principles. Doubt and the foundations of belief. In Descartes’s central work of metaphysics, the Meditations, he begins his construction project by observing that many of the preconceived opinions he has accepted since childhood have turned out to be unreliable; so it is necessary, “once in a lifetime” to “demolish everything and start again, right from the foundations.” Descartes proceeds, in other words, by applying what is sometimes called his method of doubt, which is explained in the earlier Discourse on the Method: “Since I now wished to devote myself solely to the search for truth, I thought it necessary to . . . reject as if absolutely false everything in which one could imagine the least doubt, in order to see if I was left believing anything that was entirely indubitable.” In the Meditations we find this method applied to produce a systematic critique of previous beliefs, as follows. Anything based on the senses is potentially suspect, since “I have found by experience that the senses sometimes deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.” Even such seemingly straightforward judgments as “I am sitting here by the fire” may be false, since there is no guarantee that my present experience is not a dream. The dream argument as it has come to be called leaves intact the truths of mathematics, since “whether I am awake or asleep two and three make five”; but Descartes now proceeds to introduce an even more radical argument for doubt based on the following dilemma. If there is an omnipotent God, he could presumably cause me to go wrong every time I count two and three; if, on the other hand, there is no God, then I owe my origins not to a powerful and intelligent creator, but to some random series of imperfect causes, and in this case there is even less reason to suppose that my basic intuitions about mathematics are reliable. By the end of the First Meditation, Descartes finds himself in a morass of wholesale doubt, which he dramatizes by introducing an imaginary demon “of the utmost power and cunning” who is systematically deceiving him in every possible way. Everything I believe in  “the sky, the earth and all external things”  might be illusions that the demon has devised in order to trick me. Yet this very extremity of doubt, when pushed as far as it will go, yields the first indubitable truth in the Cartesian quest for knowledge  the existence of the thinking subject. “Let the demon deceive me as much as he may, he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I think I am something. . . . I am, I exist, is certain, as often as it is put forward by me or conceived in the mind.” Elsewhere, Descartes expresses this cogito argument in the famous phrase “Cogito ergo sum” “I am thinking, therefore I exist”. Having established his own existence, Descartes proceeds in the Third Meditation to make an inventory of the ideas he finds within him, among which he identifies the idea of a supremely perfect being. In a much criticized causal argument he reasons that the representational content or “objective reality” of this idea is so great that it cannot have originated from inside his own imperfect mind, but must have been planted in him by an actual perfect being  God. The importance of God in the Cartesian system can scarcely be overstressed. Once the deity’s existence is established, Descartes can proceed to reinstate his belief in the world around him: since God is perfect, and hence would not systematically deceive, the strong propensity he has given us to believe that many of our ideas come from external objects must, in general, be sound; and hence the external world exists Sixth Meditation. More important still, Descartes uses the deity to set up a reliable method for the pursuit of truth. Human beings, since they are finite and imperfect, often go wrong; in particular, the data supplied by the senses is often, as Descartes puts it, “obscure and confused.” But each of us can nonetheless avoid error, provided we remember to withhold judgment in such doubtful cases and confine ourselves to the “clear and distinct” perceptions of the pure intellect. A reliable intellect was God’s gift to man, and if we use it with the greatest posDescartes, René Descartes, René 225   225 sible care, we can be sure of avoiding error Fourth Meditation. In this central part of his philosophy, Descartes follows in a long tradition going back to Augustine with its ultimate roots in Plato that in the first place is skeptical about the evidence of the senses as against the more reliable abstract perceptions of the intellect, and in the second place sees such intellectual knowledge as a kind of illumination derived from a higher source than man’s own mind. Descartes frequently uses the ancient metaphor of the “natural light” or “light of reason” to convey this notion that the fundamental intuitions of the intellect are inherently reliable. The label ‘rationalist’, which is often applied to Descartes in this connection, can be misleading, since he certainly does not rely on reason alone: in the development of his scientific theories he allows a considerable role to empirical observation in the testing of hypotheses and in the understanding of the mechanisms of nature his “vortex theory” of planetary revolutions is based on observations of the behavior of whirlpools. What is true, nonetheless, is that the fundamental building blocks of Cartesian science are the innate ideas chiefly those of mathematics whose reliability Descartes takes as guaranteed by their having been implanted in the mind by God. But this in turn gives rise to a major problem for the Cartesian system, which was first underlined by some of Descartes’s contemporaries notably Mersenne and Arnauld, and which has come to be known as the Cartesian circle. If the reliability of the clear and distinct perceptions of the intellect depends on our knowledge of God, then how can that knowledge be established in the first place? If the answer is that we can prove God’s existence from premises that we clearly and distinctly perceive, then this seems circular; for how are we entitled, at this stage, to assume that our clear and distinct perceptions are reliable? Descartes’s attempts to deal with this problem are not entirely satisfactory, but his general answer seems to be that there are some propositions that are so simple and transparent that, so long as we focus on them, we can be sure of their truth even without a divine guarantee. Cartesian science and dualism. The scientific system that Descartes had worked on before he wrote the Meditations and that he elaborated in his later work, the Principles of Philosophy, attempts wherever possible to reduce natural phenomena to the quantitative descriptions of arithmetic and geometry: “my consideration of matter in corporeal things,” he says in the Principles, “involves absolutely nothing apart from divisions, shapes and motions.” This connects with his metaphysical commitment to relying only on clear and distinct ideas. In place of the elaborate apparatus of the Scholastics, with its plethora of “substantial forms” and “real qualities,” Descartes proposes to mathematicize science. The material world is simply an indefinite series of variations in the shape, size, and motion of the single, simple, homogeneous matter that he terms res extensa “extended substance”. Under this category he includes all physical and biological events, even complex animal behavior, which he regards as simply the result of purely mechanical processes for non-human animals as mechanical automata, see Discourse, Part V. But there is one class of phenomena that cannot, on Descartes’s view, be handled in this way, namely conscious experience. Thought, he frequently asserts, is completely alien to, and incompatible with, extension: it occupies no space, is unextended and indivisible. Hence Descartes puts forward a dualistic theory of substance: in addition to the res extensa that makes up the material universe, there is res cogitans, or thinking substance, which is entirely independent of matter. And each conscious individual is a unique thinking substance: “This ‘I’  that is, the soul, by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body, and would not fail to be what it is even if the body did not exist.” Descartes’s arguments for the incorporeality of the soul were challenged by his contemporaries and have been heavily criticized by subsequent commentators. In the Discourse and the Second Meditation, he lays great stress on his ability to form a conception of himself as an existing subject, while at the same time doubting the existence of any physical thing; but this, as the critics pointed out, seems inadequate to establish the conclusion that he is a res cogitans  a being whose whole essence consists simply in thought. I may be able to imagine myself without a body, but this hardly proves that I could in reality exist without one see further the Synopsis to the Meditations. A further problem is that our everyday experience testifies to the fact that we are not incorporeal beings, but very much creatures of flesh and blood. “Nature teaches me by the sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on,” Descartes admits in the Sixth Meditation, “that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely Descartes, René Descartes, René 226   226 joined and as it were intermingled with it.” Yet how can an incorporeal soul interact with the body in this way? In his later writings, Descartes speaks of the “union of soul and body” as a “primitive notion” see letters to Elizabeth of May 21 and June 28, 1643; by this he seems to have meant that, just as there are properties such as length that belong to body alone, and properties such as understanding  that belong to mind alone, so there are items such as sensations that are irreducibly psychophysical, and that belong to me insofar as I am an embodied consciousness. The explanation of such psychophysical events was the task Descartes set himself in his last work, The Passions of the Soul; here he developed his theory that the pineal gland in the brain was the “seat of the soul,” where data from the senses were received via the nervous system, and where bodily movements were initiated. But despite the wealth of physiological detail Descartes provides, the central philosophical problems associated with his dualistic account of humans as hybrid entities made up of physical body and immaterial soul are, by common consent, not properly sorted out. Influence. Despite the philosophical difficulties that beset the Cartesian system, Descartes’s vision of a unified understanding of reality has retained a powerful hold on scientists and philosophers ever since. His insistence that the path to progress in science lay in the direction of quantitative explanations has been substantially vindicated. His attempt to construct a system of knowledge by starting from the subjective awareness of the conscious self has been equally important, if only because so much of the epistemology of our own time has been a reaction against the autocentric perspective from which Descartes starts out. As for the Cartesian theory of the mind, it is probably fair to say that the dualistic approach is now widely regarded as raising more problems than it solves. But Descartes’s insistence that the phenomena of conscious experience are recalcitrant to explanation in purely physical terms remains deeply influential, and the cluster of profound problems that he raised about the nature of the human mind and its relation to the material world are still very far from being adequately resolved.  Cartesianism -- Elizabeth of Bohemia 160, G. Princess whose philosophical reputation rests on her correspondence with Descartes. The most heavily discussed portion of this correspondence focuses on the relationship between the mind and the body and on Descartes’s claim that the mind-body union is a simple notion. Her discussions of free will and of the nature of the sovereign good also have philosophical interest. 

Grice, in “Gli atti linguistici: aspetti e problemi di filosofia del lignuaggio.” Campi del sapere/Feltrinelli.  

levi, filosofo italiano – Italian philosopher of Jewish descent. Author of “Storia della filosofia romana.”

ferrero, Italian philosopher, author of “Pigatorismo nel mondo romano.”

garin, Italian philosopher, author of a very rich, “La cultura filosofica del rinascimento italiano.” And “L’umanesimo italiano” – Grice was Lit. Hum. Oxon, so he knew.

acri, Italian philosopher, author of an essay on Plato’s and Vico’s theory of ideas. “Abbozzo”

alberti – Italian philosopher, on ‘aesthetics.’ Cf. Grice on sensation.

losurdo, Italian philosopher, expert not on Grice, but Nietzsche, “Nietzsche, ribelle aristocratico”

giornale critico della filosofia italiana.

giovanni, p. d. “Positivismo italiano.”

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

cassirer: philosopher and intellectual historian. He was born in the G. city of Breslau now Wroclaw, Poland and educated at various G. universities. He completed his studies iat Marburg under Hermann Cohen, founder of the Marburg School of neo-Kantianism. Cassirer lectured at Berlin before accepting a professorship at the newly founded  of Hamburg. With the rise of Nazism he left Germany, going first to a visiting appointment at (of all places), All Souls, Oxford and then to a professorship at Göteborg, Sweden. Seeing that Oxford didn’t care for him nor he for Oxford, he went to the New World; he taught first at Yale in New Haven, on the Long Island Sound, and then at Columbia. Cassirer’s oeuvre may be divided into those in the history of philosophy and culture and those that present his own systematic thought. The former include major editions of Leibniz and Kant; “The Problem of Knowledge,” which traces the subject from Nicholas of Cusa to the twentieth century; and individual works on Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Rousseau, Goethe, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and English Platonism, of all movements. The latter, systematic, oeuvre, include his masterpiece, “Symbolic Form,” which presents culture based on types of symbolism and individual oeuvre concerned with problems in philosophy. Two of his best-known essays are “An Essay on Man” and “The Myth of the State.” Cassirer did not consider his systematic philosophy and his historical studies as separate endeavors; each grounded the other. Because of his involvement with the Marburg School, his philosophical position is frequently but mistakenly typed as neo-Kantian. Kant is an important influence on him, but so are Hegel, Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Goethe, Leibniz, and Vico. Cassirer derives his principal philosophical concept, that of “symbolic form,” most directly from Heinrich Hertz’s conception of notation in mechanics and the conception of the “symbol” in art of the Hegelian aesthetician, Friedrich Theodor Vischer. In a wider sense his conception of a “symbolic form” is a transformation of “idea” and “form” within the whole tradition of philosophical idealism. Cassirer’s conception of the “symbolic form” is NOT based, as Grice’s and Peirce’s isn’t, on a distinction between the symbolic form and the literal form. In Cassirer’s view all human knowledge depends on the power to form experience through some type of “symbol.”. The forms of human knowledge are coextensive with forms of human culture. The form Cassirer most often analyzes is language. Language as a symbolic form yields to a total system of human knowledge and culture that is the subject matter of philosophy. conception of the “symbol form” has influenced a few Griceian with continental tendendies. His studies of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment still stand as groundbreaking works in intellectual history. 

Casalegno, paolo. Italian philosopher – author of “H. P. Grice” in “Filosofia del linguaggio.”

Categoria -- categorical theory:  kategoria "accusation, prediction, category," verbal noun from kategorein "to speak against; to accuse, assert, predicate," from kata "down to" (or perhaps "against;" see cata-) + agoreuein "to harangue, to declaim (in the assembly)," from agora "public assembly" (from PIE root *ger- "to gather"). H. P. Grice lectured at Oxford on Aristotle’s Categories in joint seminars with J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson,  a theory all of whose models are isomorphic. Because of its weak expressive power, in first-order logic with identity only theories with a finite model can be categorical; without identity no theories are categorical. A more interesting property, therefore, is being categorical in power: a theory is categorical in power a when the theory has, up to isomorphism, only one model with a domain of cardinality a. Categoricity in power shows the capacity to characterize a structure completely, only limited by cardinality. For example, the first-order theory of dense order without endpoints is categorical in power w the cardinality of the natural numbers. The first-order theory of simple discrete orderings with initial element, the ordering of the natural numbers, is not categorical in power w. There are countable discrete orders, not isomorphic to the natural numbers, that are elementary equivalent to it, i.e., have the same elementary, first-order theory. In first-order logic categorical theories are complete. This is not necessarily true for extensions of first-order logic for which no completeness theorem holds. In such a logic a set of axioms may be categorical without providing an informative characterization of the theory of its unique model. The term ‘elementary equivalence’ was introduced around 6 by Tarski for the property of being indistinguishable by elementary means. According to Oswald Veblen, who first used the term ‘categorical’ in 4, in a discussion of the foundations of geometry, that term was suggested to him by the  pragmatist John Dewey.  categoricity: Grice distinguishes a meta-category, as categoricity, from category itself. He gave seminars on Aristotle’s categories at Oxford in joint seminars with J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson. the semantic property belonging to a set of sentences, a “postulate set,” that implicitly defines completely describes, or characterizes up to isomorphism the structure of its intended interpretation or standard model. The best-known categorical set of sentences is the postulate set for number theory attributed to Peano, which completely characterizes the structure of an arithmetic progression. This structure is exemplified by the system of natural numbers with zero as distinguished element and successor addition of one as distinguished function. Other exemplifications of this structure are obtained by taking as distinguished element an arbitrary integer, taking as distinguished function the process of adding an arbitrary positive or negative integer and taking as universe of discourse or domain the result of repeated application of the distinguished function to the distinguished element. See, e.g., Russell’s Introduction to the Mathematical Philosophy, 8. More precisely, a postulate set is defined to be categorical if every two of its models satisfying interpretations or realizations are isomorphic to each other, where, of course, two interpretations are isomorphic if between their respective universes of discourse there exists a one-to-one correspondence by which the distinguished elements, functions, relations, etc., of the one are mapped exactly onto those of the other. The importance of the analytic geometry of Descartes involves the fact that the system of points of a geometrical line with the “left-of relation” distinguished is isomorphic to the system of real numbers with the “less-than” relation distinguished. Categoricity, the ideal limit of success for the axiomatic method considered as a method for characterizing subject matter rather than for reorganizing a science, is known to be impossible with respect to certain subject matters using certain formal languages. The concept of categoricity can be traced back at least as far as Dedekind; the word is due to Dewey.   category: H. P. Grice and J. L. Austin, “Categories.” H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson, “Categories.” an ultimate class. Categories are the highest genera of entities in the world. They may contain species but are not themselves species of any higher genera. Aristotle, the first philosopher to discuss categories systematically, listed ten, including substance, quality, quantity, relation, place, and time. If a set of categories is complete, then each entity in the world will belong to a category and no entity will belong to more than one category. A prominent example of a set of categories is Descartes’s dualistic classification of mind and matter. This example brings out clearly another feature of categories: an attribute that can belong to entities in one category cannot be an attribute of entities in any other category. Thus, entities in the category of matter have extension and color while no entity in the category of mind can have extension or color.   category mistake. Grice’s example: You’re the cream in my coffee. Usually a metaphor is a conversational implicaturum due to a category mistake – But since obviously the mistake is intentional it is not really a mistake! Grice prefers to speak of ‘categorial falsity.’ What Ryle has in mind is different and he does mean ‘mistake.’ the placing of an entity in the wrong category. In one of Ryle’s examples, to place the activity of exhibiting team spirit in the same class with the activities of pitching, batting, and catching is to make a category mistake; exhibiting team spirit is not a special function like pitching or batting but instead a way those special functions are performed. A second use of ‘category mistake’ is to refer to the attribution to an entity of a property which that entity cannot have not merely does not happen to have, as in ‘This memory is violet’ or, to use an example from Carnap, ‘Caesar is a prime number’. These two kinds of category mistake may seem different, but both involve misunderstandings of the natures of the things being talked about. It is thought that they go beyond simple error or ordinary mistakes, as when one attributes a property to a thing which that thing could have but does not have, since category mistakes involve attributions of properties e.g., being a special function to things e.g., team spirit that those things cannot have. According to Ryle, the test for category differences depends on whether replacement of one expression for another in the same sentence results in a type of unintelligibility that he calls “absurdity.”  category theory, H. P. Grice lectured on Aristotle’s categories in joint seminars at Oxford with J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson, a mathematical theory that studies the universal properties of structures via their relationships with one another. A category C consists of two collections Obc and Morc , the objects and the morphisms of C, satisfying the following conditions: i for each pair a, b of objects there is associated a collection Morc a, b of morphisms such that each member of Morc belongs to one of these collections; ii for each object a of Obc , there is a morphism ida , called the identity on a; iii a composition law associating with each morphism f: a P b and each morphism g: b P c a morphism gf:a P c, called the composite of f and g; iv for morphisms f: a P b, g: b P c, and h: c P d, the equation hgf % hgf holds; v for any morphism f: a P b, we have idbf % f and fida % f. Sets with specific structures together with a collection of mappings preserving these structures are categories. Examples: 1 sets with functions between them; 2 groups with group homomorphisms; 3 topological spaces with continuous functions; 4 sets with surjections instead of arbitrary maps constitute a different category. But a category need not be composed of sets and set-theoretical maps. Examples: 5 a collection of propositions linked by the relation of logical entailment is a category and so is any preordered set; 6 a monoid taken as the unique object and its elements as the morphisms is a category. The properties of an object of a category are determined by the morphisms that are coming out of and going in this object. Objects with a universal property occupy a key position. Thus, a terminal object a is characterized by the following universal property: for any object b there is a unique morphism from b to a. A singleton set is a terminal object in the category of sets. The Cartesian product of sets, the product of groups, and the conjunction of propositions are all terminal objects in appropriate categories. Thus category theory unifies concepts and sheds a new light on the notion of universality. 

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

causatum: aetiologicum: from aitia: while Grice would prefer ‘cause,’ he thought that the etymology of Grecian ‘aitia,’ in a legal context, was interesting. On top, he was dissatisfied that Foucault never realised that ‘les mots et les choses,’ etymologically, means, ‘motus et causae.’ Grecian, cause. Originally referring to responsibility for a crime, this Grecian term came to be used by philosophers to signify causality in a somewhat broader sense than the English ‘cause’  the traditional rendering of aitia  can convey. An aitia is any answer to a why-question. According to Aristotle, how such questions ought to be answered is a philosophical issue addressed differently by different philosophers. He himself distinguishes four types of answers, and thus four aitiai, by distinguishing different types of questions: 1 Why is the statue heavy? Because it is made of bronze material aitia. 2 Why did Persians invade Athens? Because the Athenians had raided their territory moving or efficient aitia. 3 Why are the angles of a triangle equal to two right angles? Because of the triangle’s nature formal aitia. 4 Why did someone walk after dinner? Because or for the sake of his health final aitia. Only the second of these would typically be called a cause in English. Though some render aitia as ‘explanatory principle’ or ‘reason’, these expressions inaptly suggest a merely mental existence; instead, an aitia is a thing or aspect of a thing. The study of the causatum in Grice is key. It appears in “Meaning,” because he starts discussing Stevenson whom Grice dubs a ‘causalist.’ It continues with Grice on ‘knowledge,’ and ‘willing’ in “Intention and Uncertainty.” Also in “Aspects of reasoning.” Is the causatum involved in the communicatum. Grice relies on this only in Meaning Revisited, where he presents a transcendental argument for the justification. This is what is referred in the literature as “H. P. Grice’s Triangle.” Borrowing from Aristotle in De Interpretatione, Grice speaks of three corners of the triangle and correspondences obtaining between them. There’s a psychophysical correspondence between the soul of the emissor, the soul of the emissee, and the shared experience of the denotata of the communication device the emissor employs. Then there’s the psychosemiotic correspondence between the communication device and the state of the soul in the emissor that is transferred, in a soul-to-soul transfer to the emissee. And finally, there is a semiophyiscal correspondence between the communication device and the world. When it comes to the causation, the belief that there is fire is caused by there being fire. The emissor wants to transfer his belief, and utters. “Smoke!”. The soul-to-soul transfer is effected. The fire that caused the smoke that caused the belief in the the emissor now causes a belief in the emissee. If that’s not a causal account of communication, I don’t know what it is. Grice is no expressionist in that a solipsistic telementational model is of no use if there is no ‘hookup’ as he puts it with the world that causes this ‘shared experience’ that is improved by the existence of a communication device.  Grice’s idea of ‘cause’ is his ‘bite’ on reality. He chooses ‘Phenomenalism’ as an enemy. Causal realism is at the heart of Grice’s programme. As an Oxonian, he was well aware that to trust a cause is to be anti-Cambridge, where they follow Hume’s and Kant’s scepticism. Grice uses ‘cause’ rather casually. His most serious joke is “Charles I’s decapitation willed his death” – but it is not easy to trace a philosopher who explicitly claim that ‘to cause’ is ‘to will.’ For in God the means and the end preexist in the cause as willed together. Causation figures large in Grice, notably re: the perceptum. The agent perceives that the pillar box is red. The cause is that the pillar box is red. Out of that, Grice constructs a whole theory of conversation. Why would someone just report what a THING SEEMS to him when he has no doubt that it was THE THING that caused the thing to SEEM red to him? Applying some sort of helpfulness, it works: the addressee is obviously more interested in what the thing IS, not what it seems. A sense-datum is not something you can eat. An apple is. So, the assumption is that a report of what a thing IS is more relevant than a report about what a thing SEEMS. So,  Grice needs to find a rationale that justifies, ceteris paribus, the utterance of “The thing seems phi.” Following helpfulness, U utters “The thing seems phi” when the U is not in a position to say what the thing IS phi. The denial, “The thing is not phi” is in the air, and also the doubt, “The thing may not be phi.” Most without a philosophical background who do not take Grice’s joke of echoing Kant’s categories (Kant had 12, not 4!) play with quantitas, qualitas, relatio and modus. Grice in “Causal” uses ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ but grants he won’t ‘determine’ in what way ‘the thing seems phi’ is ‘weaker’ than ‘the thing is phi.’ It might well be argued that it’s STRONGER: the thing SEEEMS TO BE phi.’ In the previous “Introduction to Logical Theory,” Strawson just refers to Grice’s idea of a ‘pragmatic rule’ to the effect that one utter the LOGICALLY stronger proposition. Let’s revise dates. Whereas Grice says that his confidence in the success of “Causal,” he ventured with Strawson’s “Intro,” Strawson is citing Grice already. Admittedly, Strawson adds, “in a different context.” But Grice seems pretty sure that “The thing seems phi” is WEAKER than “The thing is phi.” In 1961 he is VERY CLEAR that while what he may have said to Strawson that Strawson reported in that footnote was in terms of LOGICAL STRENGTH (in terms of entailment, for extensional contexts). In “Causal,” Grice is clear that he does not think LOGICAL STRENGTH applies to intensional contexts. In later revisions, it is not altogether clear how he deals with the ‘doubt or denial.’ He seems to have been more interested in refuting G. A. Paul (qua follower of Witters) than anything else. In his latest reformulation of the principle, now a conversational category, he is not specific about phenomenalist reports. A causal law is a statement describing a regular and invariant connection between types of events or states, where the connections involved are causal in some sense. When one speaks of causal laws as distinguished from laws that are not 123 category mistake causal law   123 causal, the intended distinction may vary. Sometimes, a law is said to be causal if it relates events or states occurring at successive times, also called a law of succession: e.g., ‘Ingestion of strychnine leads to death.’ A causal law in this sense contrasts with a law of coexistence, which connects events or states occurring at the same time e.g., the Wiedemann-Franz law relating thermal and electric conductivity in metals. One important kind of causal law is the deterministic law. Causal laws of this kind state exceptionless connections between events, while probabilistic or statistical laws specify probability relationships between events. For any system governed by a set of deterministic laws, given the state of a system at a time, as characterized by a set of state variables, these laws will yield a unique state of the system for any later time or, perhaps, at any time, earlier or later. Probabilistic laws will yield, for a given antecedent state of a system, only a probability value for the occurrence of a certain state at a later time. The laws of classical mechanics are often thought to be paradigmatic examples of causal laws in this sense, whereas the laws of quantum mechanics are claimed to be essentially probabilistic. Causal laws are sometimes taken to be laws that explicitly specify certain events as causes of certain other events. Simple laws of this kind will have the form ‘Events of kind F cause events of kind G’; e.g., ‘Heating causes metals to expand’. A weaker related concept is this: a causal law is one that states a regularity between events which in fact are related as cause to effect, although the statement of the law itself does not say so laws of motion expressed by differential equations are perhaps causal laws in this sense. These senses of ‘causal law’ presuppose a prior concept of causation. Finally, causal laws may be contrasted with teleological laws, laws that supposedly describe how certain systems, in particular biological organisms, behave so as to achieve certain “goals” or “end states.” Such laws are sometimes claimed to embody the idea that a future state that does not as yet exist can exert an influence on the present behavior of a system. Just what form such laws take and exactly how they differ from ordinary laws have not been made wholly clear, however.  Grice was not too happy with the causal theory of proper names, the view that proper names designate what they name by virtue of a kind of causal connection to it. Perhaps his antipathy was due to the fact that he was Herbert Grice, and so was his father. This led Grice to start using once at Clifton and Oxford, “H. P.” and eventually, dropping the “Herbert” altogether and become “Paul Grice.” This view is a special case, and in some instances an unwarranted interpretation, of a direct reference view of names. On this approach, proper names, e.g., ‘Machiavelli’, are, as J. S. Mill wrote, “purely denotative. . . . they denote the individuals who are called by them; but they do not indicate or imply any attributes as belonging to those individuals” A System of Logic, 1879. Proper names may suggest certain properties to many competent speakers, but any such associated information is no part of the definition of the name. Names, on this view, have no definitions. What connects a name to what it names is not the latter’s satisfying some condition specified in the name’s definition. Names, instead, are simply attached to things, applied as labels, as it were. A proper name, once attached, becomes a socially available device for making the relevant name bearer a subject of discourse. On the other leading view, the descriptivist view, a proper name is associated with something like a definition. ‘Aristotle’, on this view, applies by definition to whoever satisfies the relevant properties  e.g., is ‘the teacher of Alexander the Great, who wrote the Nicomachean Ethics’. Russell, e.g., maintained that ordinary proper names which he contrasted with logically proper or genuine names have definitions, that they are abbreviated definite descriptions. Frege held that names have sense, a view whose proper interpretation remains in dispute, but is often supposed to be closely related to Russell’s approach. Others, most notably Searle, have defended descendants of the descriptivist view. An important variant, sometimes attributed to Frege, denies that names have articulable definitions, but nevertheless associates them with senses. And the bearer will still be, by definition as it were, the unique thing to satisfy the relevant mode of presentation. causal overdetermination causal theory of proper names 124   124 The direct reference approach is sometimes misleadingly called the causal theory of names. But the key idea need have nothing to do with causation: a proper name functions as a tag or label for its bearer, not as a surrogate for a descriptive expression. Whence the allegedly misleading term ‘causal theory of names’? Contemporary defenders of Mill’s conception like Keith Donnellan and Kripke felt the need to expand upon Mill’s brief remarks. What connects a present use of a name with a referent? Here Donnellan and Kripke introduce the notion of a “historical chains of communication.” As Kripke tells the story, a baby is baptized with a proper name. The name is used, first by those present at the baptism, subsequently by those who pick up the name in conversation, reading, and so on. The name is thus propagated, spread by usage “from link to link as if by a chain” Naming and Necessity, 0. There emerges a historical chain of uses of the name that, according to Donnellan and Kripke, bridges the gap between a present use of the name and the individual so named. This “historical chain of communication” is occasionally referred to as a “casual chain of communication.” The idea is that one’s use of the name can be thought of as a causal factor in one’s listener’s ability to use the name to refer to the same individual. However, although Kripke in Naming and Necessity does occasionally refer to the chain of communication as causal, he more often simply speaks of the chain of communication, or of the fact that the name has been passed “by tradition from link to link” p. 106. The causal aspect is not one that Kripke underscores. In more recent writings on the topic, as well as in lectures, Kripke never mentions causation in this connection, and Donnellan questions whether the chain of communication should be thought of as a causal chain. This is not to suggest that there is no view properly called a “causal theory of names.” There is such a view, but it is not the view of Kripke and Donnellan. The causal theory of names is a view propounded by physicalistically minded philosophers who desire to “reduce” the notion of “reference” to something more physicalistically acceptable, such as the notion of a causal chain running from “baptism” to later use. This is a view whose motivation is explicitly rejected by Kripke, and should be sharply distinguished from the more popular anti-Fregean approach sketched above. Causation is the relation between cause and effect, or the act of bringing about an effect, which may be an event, a state, or an object say, a statue. The concept of causation has long been recognized as one of fundamental philosophical importance. Hume called it “the cement of the universe”: causation is the relation that connects events and objects of this world in significant relationships. The concept of causation seems pervasively present in human discourse. It is expressed by not only ‘cause’ and its cognates but by many other terms, such as ‘produce’, ‘bring about’, ‘issue’, ‘generate’, ‘result’, ‘effect’, ‘determine’, and countless others. Moreover, many common transitive verbs “causatives”, such as ‘kill’, ‘break’, and ‘move’, tacitly contain causal relations e.g., killing involves causing to die. The concept of action, or doing, involves the idea that the agent intentionally causes a change in some object or other; similarly, the concept of perception involves the idea that the object perceived causes in the perceiver an appropriate perceptual experience. The physical concept of force, too, appears to involve causation as an essential ingredient: force is the causal agent of changes in motion. Further, causation is intimately related to explanation: to ask for an explanation of an event is, often, to ask for its cause. It is sometimes thought that our ability to make predictions, and inductive inference in general, depends on our knowledge of causal connections or the assumption that such connections are present: the knowledge that water quenches thirst warrants the predictive inference from ‘X is swallowing water’ to ‘X’s thirst will be quenched’. More generally, the identification and systematic description of causal relations that hold in the natural world have been claimed to be the preeminent aim of science. Finally, causal concepts play a crucial role in moral and legal reasoning, e.g., in the assessment of responsibilities and liabilities. Event causation is the causation of one event by another. A sequence of causally connected events is called a causal chain. Agent causation refers to the act of an agent person, object in bringing about a change; thus, my opening the window i.e., my causing the window to open is an instance of agent causation. There is a controversy as to whether agent causation is reducible to event causation. My opening the window seems reducible to event causation since in reality a certain motion of my arms, an event, causes the window to open. Some philosophers, however, have claimed that not all cases of agent causation are so reducible. Substantival causation is the creation of a genuinely new substance, or object, rather than causing changes in preexisting substances, or merely rearranging them. The possibility of substantival causation, at least in the natural world, has been disputed by some philosophers. Event causation, however, has been the primary focus of philosophical discussion in the modern and contemporary period. The analysis of event causation has been controversial. The following four approaches have been prominent: the regularity analysis, the counterfactual analysis, the manipulation analysis, and the probabilistic analysis. The heart of the regularity or nomological analysis, associated with Hume and J. S. Mill, is the idea that causally connected events must instantiate a general regularity between like kinds of events. More precisely: if c is a cause of e, there must be types or kinds of events, F and G, such that c is of kind F, e is of kind G, and events of kind F are regularly followed by events of kind G. Some take the regularity involved to be merely de facto “constant conjunction” of the two event types involved; a more popular view is that the regularity must hold as a matter of “nomological necessity”  i.e., it must be a “law.” An even stronger view is that the regularity must represent a causal law. A law that does this job of subsuming causally connected events is called a “covering” or “subsumptive” law, and versions of the regularity analysis that call for such laws are often referred to as the “covering-law” or “nomic-subsumptive” model of causality. The regularity analysis appears to give a satisfactory account of some aspects of our causal concepts: for example, causal claims are often tested by re-creating the event or situation claimed to be a cause and then observing whether a similar effect occurs. In other respects, however, the regularity account does not seem to fare so well: e.g., it has difficulty explaining the apparent fact that we can have knowledge of causal relations without knowledge of general laws. It seems possible to know, for instance, that someone’s contraction of the flu was caused by her exposure to a patient with the disease, although we know of no regularity between such exposures and contraction of the disease it may well be that only a very small fraction of persons who have been exposed to flu patients contract the disease. Do I need to know general regularities about itchings and scratchings to know that the itchy sensation on my left elbow caused me to scratch it? Further, not all regularities seem to represent causal connections e.g., Reid’s example of the succession of day and night; two successive symptoms of a disease. Distinguishing causal from non-causal regularities is one of the main problems confronting the regularity theorist. According to the counterfactual analysis, what makes an event a cause of another is the fact that if the cause event had not occurred the effect event would not have. This accords with the idea that cause is a condition that is sine qua non for the occurrence of the effect. The view that a cause is a necessary condition for the effect is based on a similar idea. The precise form of the counterfactual account depends on how counterfactuals are understood e.g., if counterfactuals are explained in terms of laws, the counterfactual analysis may turn into a form of the regularity analysis. The counterfactual approach, too, seems to encounter various difficulties. It is true that on the basis of the fact that if Larry had watered my plants, as he had promised, my plants would not have died, I could claim that Larry’s not watering my plants caused them to die. But it is also true that if George Bush had watered my plants, they would not have died; but does that license the claim that Bush’s not watering my plants caused them to die? Also, there appear to be many cases of dependencies expressed by counterfactuals that, however, are not cases of causal dependence: e.g., if Socrates had not died, Xanthippe would not have become a widow; if I had not raised my hand, I would not have signaled. The question, then, is whether these non-causal counterfactuals can be distinguished from causal counterfactuals without the use of causal concepts. There are also questions about how we could verify counterfactuals  in particular, whether our knowledge of causal counterfactuals is ultimately dependent on knowledge of causal laws and regularities. Some have attempted to explain causation in terms of action, and this is the manipulation analysis: the cause is an event or state that we can produce at will, or otherwise manipulate, to produce a certain other event as an effect. Thus, an event is a cause of another provided that by bringing about the first event we can bring about the second. This account exploits the close connection noted earlier between the concepts of action and cause, and highlights the important role that knowledge of causal connections plays in our control of natural events. However, as an analysis of the concept of cause, it may well have things backward: the concept of action seems to be a richer and more complex concept that presupposes the concept of cause, and an analysis of cause in terms of action could be accused of circularity. The reason we think that someone’s exposure to a flu patient was the cause of her catching the disease, notwithstanding the absence of an appropriate regularity even one of high probability, may be this: exposure to flu patients increases the probability of contracting the disease. Thus, an event, X, may be said to be a probabilistic cause of an event, Y, provided that the probability of the occurrence of Y, given that X has occurred, is greater than the antecedent probability of Y. To meet certain obvious difficulties, this rough definition must be further elaborated e.g., to eliminate the possibility that X and Y are collateral effects of a common cause. There is also the question whether probabilistic causation is to be taken as an analysis of the general concept of causation, or as a special kind of causal relation, or perhaps only as evidence indicating the presence of a causal relationship. Probabilistic causation has of late been receiving increasing attention from philosophers. When an effect is brought about by two independent causes either of which alone would have sufficed, one speaks of causal overdetermination. Thus, a house fire might have been caused by both a short circuit and a simultaneous lightning strike; either event alone would have caused the fire, and the fire, therefore, was causally overdetermined. Whether there are actual instances of overdetermination has been questioned; one could argue that the fire that would have been caused by the short circuit alone would not have been the same fire, and similarly for the fire that would have been caused by the lightning alone. The steady buildup of pressure in a boiler would have caused it to explode but for the fact that a bomb was detonated seconds before, leading to a similar effect. In such a case, one speaks of preemptive, or superseding, cause. We are apt to speak of causes in regard to changes; however, “unchanges,” e.g., this table’s standing here through some period of time, can also have causes: the table continues to stand here because it is supported by a rigid floor. The presence of the floor, therefore, can be called a sustaining cause of the table’s continuing to stand. A cause is usually thought to precede its effect in time; however, some have argued that we must allow for the possibility of a cause that is temporally posterior to its effect  backward causation sometimes called retrocausation. And there is no universal agreement as to whether a cause can be simultaneous with its effect  concurrent causation. Nor is there a general agreement as to whether cause and effect must, as a matter of conceptual necessity, be “contiguous” in time and space, either directly or through a causal chain of contiguous events  contiguous causation. The attempt to “analyze” causation seems to have reached an impasse; the proposals on hand seem so widely divergent that one wonders whether they are all analyses of one and the same concept. But each of them seems to address some important aspect of the variegated notion that we express by the term ‘cause’, and it may be doubted whether there is a unitary concept of causation that can be captured in an enlightening philosophical analysis. On the other hand, the centrality of the concept, both to ordinary practical discourse and to the scientific description of the world, is difficult to deny. This has encouraged some philosophers to view causation as a primitive, one that cannot be further analyzed. There are others who advocate the extreme view causal nihilism that causal concepts play no role whatever in the advanced sciences, such as fundamental physical theories of space-time and matter, and that the very notion of cause is an anthropocentric projection deriving from our confused ideas of action and power. Causatum -- Dretske, Fred b.2,  philosopher best known for his externalistic representational naturalism about experience, belief, perception, and knowledge. Educated at Purdue  and the  of Minnesota, he has taught at the  of Wisconsin 088 and Stanford  898. In Seeing and Knowing 9 Dretske develops an account of non-epistemic seeing, denying that seeing is believing  that for a subject S to see a dog, say, S must apply a concept to it dog, animal, furry. The dog must look some way to S S must visually differentiate the dog, but need not conceptually categorize it. This contrasts with epistemic seeing, where for S to see that a dog is before him, S would have to believe that it is a dog. In Knowledge and the Flow of Information 1, a mind-independent objective sense of ‘information’ is applied to propositional knowledge and belief content. “Information” replaced Dretske’s earlier notion of a “conclusive reason” 1. Knowing that p requires having a true belief caused or causally sustained by an event that carries the information that p. Also, the semantic content of a belief is identified with the most specific digitally encoded piece of information to which it becomes selectively sensitive during a period of learning. In Explaining Behavior 8, Dretske’s account of representation and misrepresentation takes on a teleological flavor. The semantic meaning of a structure is now identified with its indicator function. A structure recruited for a causal role of indicating F’s, and sustained in that causal role by this ability, comes to mean F  thereby providing a causal role for the content of cognitive states, and avoiding epiphenomenalism about semantic content. In Naturalizing the Mind 5, Dretske’s theory of meaning is applied to the problems of consciousness and qualia. He argues that the empirically significant features of conscious experience are exhausted by their functional and hence representational roles of indicating external sensible properties. He rejects the views that consciousness is composed of a higher-order hierarchy of mental states and that qualia are due to intrinsic, non-representational features of the underlying physical systems. Dretske is also known for his contributions on the nature of contrastive statements, laws of nature, causation, and epistemic non-closure, among other topics.  CAUSATUM -- Ducasse, C. J., philosopher of mind and aesthetician. He arrived in the United States in 0, received his Ph.D. from Harvard 2, and taught at the  of Washington 226 and Brown  658. His most important work is Nature, Mind and Death 1. The key to his general theory is a non-Humean view of causation: the relation of causing is triadic, involving i an initial event, ii the set of conditions under which it occurs, and iii a resulting event; the initial event is the cause, the resulting event is the effect. On the basis of this view he constructed a theory of categories  an explication of such concepts as those of substance, property, mind, matter, and body. Among the theses he defended were that minds are substances, that they causally interact with bodies, and that human beings are free despite every event’s having a cause. In A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life after Death 1, he concluded that “the balance of the evidence so far obtained is on the side of . . . survival.” Like Schopenhauer, whom he admired, Ducasse was receptive to the religious and philosophical writings of the Far East. He wrote with remarkable objectivity on the philosophical problems associated with so-called paranormal phenomena. Ducasse’s epistemological views are developed in Truth, Knowledge and Causation 8. He sets forth a realistic theory of perception he says, about sense-qualities, “Berkeley is right and the realists are wrong” and, of material things, “the realists are right and Berkeley is wrong”. He provides the classical formulation of the “adverbial theory” or sense-qualities, according to which such qualities are not objects of experience or awareness but ways of experiencing or of being aware. One does not perceive a red material object by sensing a red sense-datum; for then perceiving would involve three entities  i the perceiving subject, ii the red sense-datum, and iii the red material object. But one may perceive a red material object by sensing redly; then the only entities involved are i the perceiving subject and ii the material object. Ducasse observes that, analogously, although it may be natural to say “dancing a waltz,” it would be more accurate to speak of “dancing waltzily.”  causatum – causarum causare causaturus causatum causans – Grice: “The Romans never needed a verb, to cause – the monks did!” But the Romans had ‘causari, and causatum, surely. --  causa sui: an expression used by Grice’s mother, a High Church, as applied to God to mean in part that God owes his existence to nothing other than himself. It does not mean that God somehow brought himself into existence. The idea is that the very nature of God logically requires that he exists. What accounts for the existence of a being that is causa sui is its own nature.  

celsus: philosopher known only as the author of a work called “Alethes logos,” which is quoted extensively by Origen of Alexandria in his response, Against Celsus. “Alethes logos” is mainly important because it is the first anti-Christian polemic of which we have significant knowledge. Origen considers Celsus to be an Epicurean, but he is uncertain about this. There are no traces of Epicureanism in Origen’s quotations from Celsus, which indicate instead that he is a platonist, whose conception of an unnameable first deity transcending being and knowable only by “synthesis, analysis, or analogy” is based on Plato’s description of the Good in Rep. VI. In accordance with the Timaeus, Celsus believes that God created “immortal things” and turned the creation of “mortal things” over to them. According to him, the universe has a providential organization in which humans hold no special place, and its history is one of eternally repeating sequences of events separated by catastrophes.

centro per la filosofia italiana – the title is telling. A centro is like a a ‘centre,’ but Oxford would not have a ‘centre.’ – It’s more of a ‘new-world’ thing – Center for Advanced Studies, say. A centro is like a ‘circle,’ as in the Vienna Circcle. This ‘centro’ is not for philosophical research, but for Italian philosophy simpliciter.

certum: While Grice plays with ‘certum,’ he is happier with UNcertum. To be certain is to have dis-cerned. Oddly, Grice ‘evolved’ from an interest in the certainty and incorrigibility that ‘ordinary’ and the first-person gives to situations of ‘conversational improbability’ and indeterminate implicatura under conditions of ceteris paribus risk and uncertainty in survival. “To be certain that p” is for Grice one of those ‘diaphanous’ verbs. While it is best to improve Descartes’s fuzzy lexicon – and apply ‘certus’ to the emissor, if Grice is asked, “What are you certain of?,” “I have to answer, ‘p’”.  certum: certitude, from ecclesiastical medieval Roman “certitudo,” designating in particular Christian conviction, is heir to two meanings of “certum,” one objective and the other subjective: beyond doubt, fixed, positive, real, regarding a thing or knowledge, or firm in his resolutions, decided, sure, authentic, regarding an individual. Although certitudo has no Grecian equivalent, the Roman verb “cernere,” (cf. discern), from which “certum” is derived, has the concrete meaning of pass through a sieve, discern, like the Grecian “ϰρίνειν,” select, sieve, judge, which comes from the same root. Thus begins the relationship between certitude, judgment, and truth, which since Descartes has been connected with the problematics of the subject and of self-certainty. The whole terminological system of truth is thus involved, from unveiling and adequation to certitude and obviousness. Then there’s Certainty, Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Linguistic Systems  The objective aspect manifests itself first, “certitudo” translating e. g.  the determined nature of objects or known properties as the commentaries on Aristotle’s Met. translated into Roman, or the incontestably true nature of principles. With the revolution of the subject inaugurated by Cartesian Phil. , the second aspect comes to the fore: some reasons, ideas, or propositions are true and certain, or true and evident, but the most certain and the most evident of all, and thus in a sense the truest, is the certitude of my own existence, a certainty that the subject attributes to itself: The thematics of certainty precedes that of consciousness both historically and logically, but it ends up being incorporated and subordinated by it. Certainty thus becomes a quality or disposition of the subject that reproduces, in the field of rational knowledge, the security or assurance that the believer finds in religious faith, and that shields him from the wavering of the soul. It will be noted that Fr.  retains the possibility of reversing the perspective by exploiting the Roman etymology, as Descartes does in the Principles of Phil.  when he transforms the certitudo probabilis of the Scholastics Aquinas into moral certainty. On the other hand, Eng. tends to objectify “certainty” to the maximum in opposition to belief v. BELIEF, whereas G.  hears in “Gewissheit” the root “wissen,” to know, to have learned and situates it in a series with Bewusstsein and Gewissen, clearly marking the constitutive relationship to the subject in opposition to Glaube on the one hand, and to Wahrheit and Wahrscheinlichkeit lit., appearance of truth, i.e., probability on the other. Then there’s Knots of Problems  On the relations between certainty and belief, the modalities of subjective experience. On the relation between individual certainty and the wise man’s constancy. On the relations between certainty and truth, the confrontation between subjectivity and objectivity in the development of knowledge. On the relations between certainty and probability, the modalities of objective knowledge insofar as it is related to a subject’s experience.  uncertainty. This is Grice’s principle of uncertainty. One of Grice’s problem is with ‘know’ and ‘certainty.’ He grants that we only know that 2 + 2 = 4. He often identifies ‘knowledge’ with ‘certainty.’ He does not explore a cancellation like, “I am certain but I do not know.” The reason being that he defends common sense against the sceptic, and so his attitude towards certainty has to be very careful. The second problem is that he wants ‘certainty’ to deal within the desiderative realm. To do that, he divides an act of intending into two: an act of accepting and act of willing. The ‘certainty’ is found otiose if the intender is seen as ‘willing that p’ and accepting that the willing will be the cause for the desideratum to obtain.  n WoW:141, Grice proposes that ‘A is certain that p’ ENTAILS either ‘A is certain that he is certain that p, OR AT LEAST that it is not the case that A is UNCERTAIN that A is certain that p.” ‘Certainly,’ appears to apply to utterances in the credibility and the desirability realm. Grice sometimes uses ‘to be sure.’ He notoriously wants to distinguish it from ‘know.’ Grice explores the topic of incorrigibility and ends up with corrigibility which almost makes a Popperian out of him. In the end, its all about the converational implciata and conversation as rational co-operation. Why does P2 should judge that P1 is being more or less certain about what he is talking? Theres a rationale for that. Our conversation does not consist of idle remarks. Grices example: "The Chairman of the British Academy has a corkscrew in his pocket. Urmsons example: "The king is visiting Oxford tomorrow. Why? Oh, for no reason at all. As a philosophical psychologist, and an empiricist with realist tendencies, Grice was obsessed with what he called (in a nod to the Kiparskys) the factivity of know. Surely, Grices preferred collocation, unlike surely Ryles, is "Grice knows that p." Grice has no problem in seeing this as involving three clauses: First, p. Second, Grice believes that p, and third, p causes Grices belief. No mention of certainty. This is the neo-Prichardian in Grice, from having been a neo-Stoutian (Stout was obsessed, as a few Oxonians like Hampshire and Hart were, with certainty). If the three-prong analysis of know applies to the doxastic, Grices two-prong analysis of intending in ‘Intention and UNcertainty,’ again purposively avoiding certainty, covers the buletic realm. This does not mean that Grice, however proud he was of his ignorance of the history of philosophy (He held it as a badge of honour, his tuteee Strawson recalls), had read some of the philosophical classics to realise that certainty had been an obsession of what Ryle abusively (as he himself puts it) called Descartes and the Establishments "official doctrine"! While ps true in Grices analysis of know is harmless enough, there obviously is no correlate for ps truth in the buletic case. Grices example is Grice intending to scratch his head, via his willing that Grice scratches his head in t2. In this case, as he notes, the doxastic eleent involves the uniformity of nature, and ones more or less relying that if Grice had a head to be scratched in t1, he will have a head to be sratched in t2, when his intention actually GETS satisfied, or fulfilled. Grice was never worried about buletic satisfaction. As the intentionalist that Suppes showed us Grice was, Grice is very much happy to say that if Smith intends to give Joness a job, the facct as to whether Jones actually gets the job is totally irrelevant for most philosophical purposes. He gets more serious when he is happier with privileged access than incorrigibility in “Method.” But he is less strict than Austin. For Austin, "That is a finch implies that the utterer KNOWS its a finch. While Grice has a maxim, do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence (Gettiers analysandum)  and a super-maxim, try to make your contribution one that is true,  the very phrasing highlights Grices cavalier to this! Imagine Kant turning on his grave. "Try!?". Grice is very clever in having try in the super-maxim, and a prohibition as the maxim, involving falsehood avoidance, "Do not say what you believe to be false." Even here he is cavalier. "Cf. "Do not say what you KNOW to be false." If Gettier were wrong, the combo of maxims yields, "Say what you KNOW," say what you are certain about! Enough for Sextus Empiricus having one single maxim: "Either utter a phenomenalist utterance, a question or an order, or keep your mouth shut!." (cf. Grice, "My lips are sealed," as cooperative or helfpul in ways -- "At least he is not lying."). Hampshire, in the course of some recent remarks,l advances the view that self-prediction is (logically) impossible. When I say I know that I shall do X (as against, e.g., X will happen to me, or You will do X), I am not contemplating myself, as I might someone else, and giving tongue to a conjecture about myself and my future acts, as I might be doing about someone else or about the behaviour ofan animal -for that would be tantamount (if I understand him rightly) to looking upon myself from outside, as it were, and treating my own acts as mere caused events. In saying that I know that I shall do X, I am, on this view, saying that I have decided to do X: for to predict that I shall in certain circumstances in fact do X or decide to do X, with no reference to whether or not I have already decided to do it - to say I can tell you now that I shall in fact act in manner X, although I am, as a matter of fact, determined to do the very opposite - does not make sense. Any man who says I know myself too well to believe that, whatever I now decide, I shall do anything other than X when the circumstances actually arise is in fact, if I interpret Hampshires views correctly, saying that he does not really, i.e. seriously, propose to set himself against doing X, that he does not propose even to try to act otherwise, that he has in fact decided to let events take their course. For no man who has truly decided to try to avoid X can, in good faith, predict his own failure to act as he has decided. He may fail to avoid X, and he may predict this; but he cannot both decide to try to avoid X and predict that he will not even try to do this; for he can always try; and he knows this: he knows that this is what distinguishes him from non-human creatures in nature. To say that he will fail even to try is tantamount to saying that he has decided not to try. In this sense I know means I have decided and (Murdoch, Hampshire, Gardiner and Pears, Freedom and Knowledge, in Pears, Freedom and the Will) cannot in principle be predictive. That, if I have understood it, is Hampshires position, and I have a good deal of sympathy with it, for I can see that self-prediction is often an evasive way of disclaiming responsibility for difficult decisions, while deciding in fact to let events take their course, disguising this by attributing responsibility for what occurs to my own allegedly unalterable nature. But I agree with Hampshires critics in the debate, whom I take to be maintaining that, although the situation he describes may often occur, yet circumstances may exist in which it is possible for me both to say that I am, at this moment, resolved not to do X, and at the same time to predict that I shall do X, because I am not hopeful that, when the time comes, I shall in fact even so much as try to resist doing X. I can, in effect, say I know myself well. When the crisis comes, do not rely on me to help you. I may well run away; although I am at this moment genuinely resolved not to be cowardly and to do all I can to stay at your side. My prediction that my resolution will not in fact hold up is based on knowledge of my own character, and not on my present state of mind; my prophecy is not a symptom of bad faith (for I am not, at this moment, vacillating) but, on the contrary, of good faith, of a wish to face the facts. I assure you in all sincerity that my present intention is to be brave and resist. Yet you would run a great risk if you relied too much on my present decision; it would not be fair to conceal my past failures of nerve from you. I can say this about others, despite the most sincere resolutions on their part, for I can foretell how in fact they will behave; they can equally predict this about me. Despite Hampshires plausible and tempting argument, I believe that such objective self-knowledge is possible and occur. From Descartes to Stout and back. Stout indeed uses both intention and certainty, and in the same paragraph. Stout notes that, at the outset, performance falls far short of intention. Only a certain s. of contractions of certain muscles, in proper proportions and in a proper order, is capable of realising the end aimed at, with the maximum of rapidity and certainty, and the minimum of obstruction and failure, and corresponding effort. At the outset of the process of acquisition, muscles are contracted which are superfluous, and which therefore operate as disturbing conditions. Grices immediate trigger, however, is Ayer on sure that, and having the right to be sure, as his immediate trigger later will be Hampshire and Hart. Grice had high regard for Hampshires brilliant Thought and action.  He was also concerned with Stouts rather hasty UNphilosophical, but more scientifically psychologically-oriented remarks about assurance in practical concerns. He knew too that he was exploring an item of the philosophers lexicon (certus) that had been brought to the forum when Anscombe and von Wright translate Witters German expression Gewißheit in Über Gewißheit as Certainty. The Grecians were never sure about being sure. But the modernist turn brought by Descartes meant that Grice now had to deal with incorrigibility and privileged access to this or that P, notably himself (When I intend to go, I dont have to observe myself, Im on the stage, not in the audience, or Only I can say I will to London, expressing my intention to do so. If you say, you will go you are expressing yours! Grice found Descartes very funny ‒ in a French way. Grice is interested in contesting Ayer and other Oxford philosophers, on the topic of a criterion for certainty. In so doing, Grice choses Descartess time-honoured criterion of clarity and distinction, as applied to perception.  Grice does NOT quote Descartes in French! In the proceedings, Grice distinguishes between two kinds of certainty apparently ignored by Descartes: (a) objective certainty: Ordinary-language variant: It is certain that p, whatever it refers to, cf. Grice, it is an illusion; what is it? (b) Subjective certainty: Ordinary-language variant: I am certain that p. I being, of course, Grice, in my bestest days, of course! There are further items on Descartes in the Grice Collection, notably in the last s. of topics arranged alphabetically. Grice never cared to publish his views on Descartes until he found an opportunity to do so when compiling his WOW. Grice is not interested in an exegesis of Descartess thought. He doesnt care to give a reference to any edition of Descartess oeuvre. But he plays with certain. It is certain that p is objective certainty, apparently. I am certain that p is Subjectsive certainty, rather. Oddly, Grice will turn to UNcertainty as it connects with intention in his BA lecture. Grices interest in Descartes connects with Descartess search for a criterion of certainty in terms of clarity and distinction of this or that perception.  Having explored the philosophy of perception with Warnock, its only natural he wanted to give Descartess rambles a second and third look! Descartes on clear and distinct perception, in WOW, II semantics and metaphysics, essay, Descartes on clear and distinct perception and Malcom on dreaming, perception, Descartes, clear and distinct perception, Malcolm, dreaming. Descartes meets Malcolm, and vice versa.  Descartes on clear and distinct perception, in WOW, Descartes on clear and distinct perception, Descartes on clear and distinct perception, in WOW, part II, semantics and metaphysics, essay. Grice gives a short overview of Cartesian metaphysics for the BBC 3rd programme. The best example, Grice thinks, of a metaphysical snob is provided by Descartes, about whose idea of certainty Grice had philosophised quite a bit, since it is in total contrast with Moore’s. Descartes is a very scientifically minded philosopher, with very clear ideas about the proper direction for science.  Descartes, whose middle Names seems to have been Euclid, thinks that mathematics, and in particular geometry, provides the model for a scientific procedure, or method. And this determines all of Descartess thinking in two ways. First, Descartes thinks that the fundamental method in science is the axiomatic deductive method of geometry, and this Descartes conceives (as Spinoza morality more geometrico) of as rigorous reasoning from a self-evident axiom (Cogito, ergo sum.). Second, Descartes thinks that the Subjects matter of physical science, from mechanics to medicine, must be fundamentally the same as the Subjects matter of geometry! The only characteristics that the objects studied by geometry poses are spatial characteristics. So from the point of view of science in general, the only important features of things in the physical world were also their spatial characteristics, what he called extensio, res extensa. Physical science in general is a kind of dynamic, or kinetic, geometry.   Here we have an exclusive preference for a certain type of scientific method, and a certain type of scientific explanation: the method is deductive, the type of explanation mechanical. These beliefs about the right way to do science are exactly reflected in Descartess ontology, one of the two branches of metaphysics; the other is philosophical eschatology, or the study of categories), and it is reflected in his doctrine, that is, about what really exists.  Apart from God, the divine substance, Descartes recognises just two kinds of substance, two types of real entity. First, there is material substance, or matter; and the belief that the only scientifically important characteristics of things in the physical world are their spatial characteristics goes over, in the language of metaphysics, into the doctrine that these are their only characteristics. Second, and to Ryle’s horror, Descartes recognizes the mind or soul, or the mental substance, of which the essential characteristic is thinking; and thinking itself, in its pure form at least, is conceived of as simply the intuitive grasping of   this or that self-evident axiom and this or that of its deductive consequence. These restrictive doctrines about reality and knowledge naturally call for adjustments elsewhere in our ordinary scheme of things. With the help of the divine substance, these are duly provided.  It is not always obvious that the metaphysicians scheme involves this kind of ontological preference, or favoritism, or prejudice, or snobbery this tendency, that is, to promote one or two categories of entity to the rank of the real, or of the ultimately real, to the exclusion of others, Descartess entia realissima. One is taught at Oxford that epistemology begins with the Moderns such as Descartes, which is not true. Grice was concerned with “certain,” which was applied in Old Roman times to this or that utterer: the person who is made certain in reference to a thing, certain, sure. Lewis and Short have a few quotes: “certi sumus periisse omnia;” “num quid nunc es certior?,” “posteritatis, i. e. of posthumous fame,” “sententiæ,” “judicii,” “certus de suā geniturā;” “damnationis;” “exitii,” “spei,” “matrimonii,” “certi sumus;” in the phrase “certiorem facere aliquem;” “de aliquā re, alicujus rei, with a foll, acc. and inf., with a rel.-clause or absol.;” “to inform, apprise one of a thing: me certiorem face: “ut nos facias certiores,” “uti Cæsarem de his rebus certiorem faciant;” “qui certiorem me sui consilii fecit;” “Cæsarem certiorem faciunt, sese non facile ab oppidis vim hostium prohibere;” “faciam te certiorem quid egerim;” with subj. only, “milites certiores facit, paulisper intermitterent proelium,” pass., “quod crebro certior per me fias de omnibus rebus,” “Cæsar certior factus est, tres jam copiarum partes Helvetios id flumen transduxisse;” “factus certior, quæ res gererentur,” “non consulibus certioribus factis,” also in posit., though rarely; “fac me certum quid tibi est;” “lacrimæ suorum tam subitæ matrem certam fecere ruinæ,” uncertainty, Grice loved the OED, and its entry for will was his favourite. But he first had a look to shall. For Grice, "I shall climb Mt. Everest," is surely a prediction. And then Grice turns to the auxiliary he prefers, will. Davidson, Intending, R. Grandy and Warner, PGRICE. “Uncertainty,” “Aspects.” “Conception,” Davidson on intending, intending and trying, Brandeis.”Method,” in “Conception,” WOW . Hampshire and Hart. Decision, intention, and certainty, Mind, Harman, Willing and intending in PGRICE. Practical reasoning. Review of Met.  29. Thought, Princeton, for functionalist approach alla Grice’s “Method.” Principles of reasoning. Rational action and the extent of intention. Social theory and practice. Jeffrey, Probability kinematics, in The logic of decision, cited by Harman in PGRICE. Kahneman and Tversky, Judgement under uncertainty, Science, cited by Harman in PGRICE. Nisbet and Ross, Human inference, cited by Harman in PGRICE. Pears, Predicting and deciding. Prichard, Acting, willing, and desiring, in Moral obligations, Oxford ed. by Urmson  Speranza, The Grice Circle Wants You. Stout, Voluntary action. Mind 5, repr in Studies in philosophy and psychology, Macmillan, cited by Grice, “Uncertainty.” Urmson, ‘Introduction’ to Prichard’s ‘Moral obligations.’ I shant but Im not certain I wont – Grice. How uncertain can Grice be? This is the Henriette Herz BA lecture, and as such published in The Proceedings of the BA. Grice calls himself a neo-Prichardian (after the Oxford philosopher) and cares to quote from a few other philosophers  ‒ some of whom he was not necessarily associated with: such as Kenny and Anscombe, and some of whom he was, notably Pears. Grices motto: Where there is a neo-Prichardian willing, there is a palæo-Griceian way! Grice quotes Pears, of Christ Church, as the philosopher he found especially congenial to explore areas in what both called philosophical psychology, notably the tricky use of intending as displayed by a few philosophers even in their own circle, such as Hampshire and Hart in Intention, decision, and certainty. The title of Grices lecture is meant to provoke that pair of Oxonian philosophers Grice knew so well and who were too ready to bring in certainty in an area that requires deep philosophical exploration. This is the Henriette Herz Trust annual lecture. It means its delivered annually by different philosophers, not always Grice! Grice had been appointed a FBA earlier, but he took his time to deliver his lecture. With your lecture, you implicate, Hi! Grice, and indeed Pears, were motivated by Hampshires and Harts essay on intention and certainty in Mind. Grice knew Hampshire well, and had actually enjoyed his Thought and Action. He preferred Hampshires Thought and action to Anscombes Intention. Trust Oxford being what it is that TWO volumes on intending are published in the same year! Which one shall I read first? Eventually, neither ‒ immediately. Rather, Grice managed to unearth some sketchy notes by Prichard (he calls himself a neo-Prichardian) that Urmson had made available for the Clarendon Press ‒ notably Prichards essay on willing that. Only a Corpus-Christi genius like Prichard will distinguish will to, almost unnecessary, from will that, so crucial. For Grice, wills that , unlike  wills to, is properly generic, in that p, that follows the that-clause, need NOT refer to the Subjects of the sentence. Surely I can will that Smith wins the match! But Grice also quotes Anscombe (whom otherwise would not count, although they did share a discussion panel at the American Philosophical Association) and Kenny, besides Pears. Of Anscombe, Grice borrows (but never returns) the direction-of-fit term of art, actually Austinian. From Kenny, Grice borrows (and returns) the concept of voliting. His most congenial approach was Pearss. Grice had of course occasion to explore disposition and intention on earlier occasions. Grice is especially concerned with a dispositional analysis to intending. He will later reject it in “Uncertainty.” But that was Grice for you! Grice is especially interested in distinguishing his views from Ryles over-estimated dispositional account of intention, which Grice sees as reductionist, and indeed eliminationist, if not boringly behaviourist, even in analytic key. The logic of dispositions is tricky, as Grice will later explore in connection with rationality, rational propension or propensity, and metaphysics, the as if operator). While Grice focuses on uncertainty, he is trying to be funny. He knew that Oxonians like Hart and Hampshire were obsessed with certainty. I was so surprised that Hampshire and Hart were claiming decision and intention are psychological states about which the agent is certain, that I decided on the spot that that could certainly be a nice topic for my BA lecture! Grice granted that in some cases, a declaration of an intention can be authorative in a certain certain way, i. e. as implicating certainty. But Grice wants us to consider: Marmaduke Bloggs intends to climb Mt. Everest. Surely he cant be certain hell succeed. Grice used the same example at the APA, of all places. To amuse Grice, Davidson, who was present, said: Surely thats just an implicaturum! Just?! Grice was almost furious in his British guarded sort of way. Surely not just! Pears, who was also present, tried to reconcile: If I may, Davidson, I think Grice would take it that, if certainty is implicated, the whole thing becomes too social to be true.  They kept discussing implicaturum versus entailment. Is certainty entailed then? Cf. Urmson on certainly vs. knowingly, and believably. Davidson asked. No, disimplicated! is Grices curt reply. The next day, he explained to Davidson that he had invented the concept of disimplicaturum just to tease him, and just one night before, while musing in the hotel room! Talk of uncertainty was thus for Grice intimately associated with his concern about the misuse of know to mean certain, especially in the exegeses that Malcolm made popular about, of all people, Moore! V. Scepticism and common sense and Moore and philosophers paradoxes above, and Causal theory and Prolegomena for a summary of Malcoms misunderstanding Moore! Grice manages to quote from Stouts Voluntary action and Brecht. And he notes that not all speakers are as sensitive as they should be (e.g. distinguishing modes, as realised by shall vs. will). He emphasizes the fact that Prichard has to be given great credit for seeing that the accurate specification of willing should be willing that and not willing to. Grice is especially interested in proving Stoutians (like Hampshire and Hart) wrong by drawing from Aristotles prohairesis-doxa distinction, or in his parlance, the buletic-doxastic distinction. Grice quotes from Aristotle. Prohairesis cannot be opinion/doxa. For opinion is thought to relate to all kinds of things, no less to eternal things and impossible things than to things in our own power; and it is distinguished by its falsity or truth, not by its badness or goodness, while choice is distinguished rather by these. Now with opinion in general perhaps no one even says it is identical. But it is not identical even with any kind of opinion; for by choosing or deciding, or prohairesis, what is good or bad we are men of a certain character, which we are not by holding this or that opinion or doxa. And we choose to get or avoid something good or bad, but we have opinions about what a thing is or whom it is good for or how it is good for him; we can hardly be said to opine to get or avoid anything. And choice is praised for being related to the right object rather than for being rightly related to it, opinion for being truly related to its object. And we choose what we best know to be good, but we opine what we do not quite know; and it is not the same people that are thought to make the best choices and to have the best opinions, but some are thought to have fairly good opinions, but by reason of vice to choose what they should not. If opinion precedes choice or accompanies it, that makes no difference; for it is not this that we are considering, but whether it is identical with some kind of opinion. What, then, or what kind of thing is it, since it is none of the things we have mentioned? It seems to be voluntary, but not all that is voluntary to be an object of choice. Is it, then, what has been decided on by previous deliberation? At any rate choice involves a rational principle and thought. Even the Names seems to suggest that it is what is chosen before other things. His final analysis of G intends that p is in terms of, B1, a buletic condition, to the effect that G wills that p, and D2, an attending doxastic condition, to the effect that G judges that B1 causes p. Grice ends this essay with a nod to Pears and an open point about the justifiability (other than evidential) for the acceptability of the agents deciding and intending versus the evidential justifiability of the agents predicting that what he intends will be satisfied. It is important to note that in his earlier Disposition and intention, Grice dedicates the first part to counterfactual if general. This is a logical point. Then as an account for a psychological souly concept ψ. If G does A, sensory input, G does B, behavioural output. No ψ without the behavioural output that ψ is meant to explain. His problem is with the first person. The functionalist I does not need a black box. The  here would be both incorrigibility and privileged access. Pology only explains their evolutionary import. Certum -- Certainty: cf. H. P. Grice, “Intention and uncertainty.” the property of being certain, which is either a psychological property of persons or an epistemic feature of proposition-like objects e.g., beliefs, utterances, statements. We can say that a person, S, is psychologically certain that p where ‘p’ stands for a proposition provided S has no doubt whatsoever that p is true. Thus, a person can be certain regardless of the degree of epistemic warrant for a proposition. In general, philosophers have not found this an interesting property to explore. The exception is Peter Unger, who argued for skepticism, claiming that 1 psychological certainty is required for knowledge and 2 no person is ever certain of anything or hardly anything. As applied to propositions, ‘certain’ has no univocal use. For example, some authors e.g., Chisholm may hold that a proposition is epistemically certain provided no proposition is more warranted than it. Given that account, it is possible that a proposition is certain, yet there are legitimate reasons for doubting it just as long as there are equally good grounds for doubting every equally warranted proposition. Other philosophers have adopted a Cartesian account of certainty in which a proposition is epistemically certain provided it is warranted and there are no legitimate grounds whatsoever for doubting it. Both Chisholm’s and the Cartesian characterizations of epistemic certainty can be employed to provide a basis for skepticism. If knowledge entails certainty, then it can be argued that very little, if anything, is known. For, the argument continues, only tautologies or propositions like ‘I exist’ or ‘I have beliefs’ are such that either nothing is more warranted or there are absolutely no grounds for doubt. Thus, hardly anything is known. Most philosophers have responded either by denying that ‘certainty’ is an absolute term, i.e., admitting of no degrees, or by denying that knowledge requires certainty Dewey, Chisholm, Vitters, and Lehrer. Others have agreed that knowledge does entail absolute certainty, but have argued that absolute certainty is possible e.g., Moore. Sometimes ‘certain’ is modified by other expressions, as in ‘morally certain’ or ‘metaphysically certain’ or ‘logically certain’. Once again, there is no universally accepted account of these terms. Typically, however, they are used to indicate degrees of warrant for a proposition, and often that degree of warrant is taken to be a function of the type of proposition under consideration. For example, the proposition that smoking causes cancer is morally certain provided its warrant is sufficient to justify acting as though it were true. The evidence for such a proposition may, of necessity, depend upon recognizing particular features of the world. On the other hand, in order for a proposition, say that every event has a cause, to be metaphysically certain, the evidence for it must not depend upon recognizing particular features of the world but rather upon recognizing what must be true in order for our world to be the kind of world it is  i.e., one having causal connections. Finally, a proposition, say that every effect has a cause, may be logically certain if it is derivable from “truths of logic” that do not depend in any way upon recognizing anything about our world. Since other taxonomies for these terms are employed by philosophers, it is crucial to examine the use of the terms in their contexts.  Refs.: The main source is his BA lecture on ‘uncertainty,’ but using the keyword ‘certainty’ is useful too. His essay on Descartes in WoW is important, and sources elsehere in the Grice Papers, such as the predecessor to the “Uncertainty” lecture in “Disposition and intention,” also his discussion of avowal (vide references above), incorrigibility and privileged access in “Method,” repr. in “Conception,” BANC

character, mid-14c., carecter, "symbol marked or branded on the body;" mid-15c., "symbol or drawing used in sorcery;" late 15c., "alphabetic letter, graphic symbol standing for a sound or syllable;" from Old French caratere "feature, character" (13c., Modern French caractère), from Latin character, from Greek kharaktēr "engraved mark," also "symbol or imprint on the soul," properly "instrument for marking," from kharassein "to engrave," from kharax "pointed stake," a word of uncertain etymology which Beekes considers "most probably Pre-Greek."  The Latin ch- spelling was restored from 1500s.  The meaning of Greek kharaktēr was extended in Hellenistic times by metaphor to "a defining quality, individual feature." In English, the meaning "sum of qualities that define a person or thing and distinguish it from another" is from 1640s. That of "moral qualities assigned to a person by repute" is from 1712.  You remember Eponina, who kept her husband alive in an underground cavern so devotedly and heroically? The force of character she showed in keeping up his spirits would have been used to hide a lover from her husband if they had been living quietly in Rome. Strong characters need strong nourishment. [Stendhal "de l'Amour," 1822]  Sense of "person in a play or novel" is first attested 1660s, in reference to the "defining qualities" he or she is given by the author. Meaning "a person" in the abstract is from 1749; especially "eccentric person" (1773). Colloquial sense of "chap, fellow" is from 1931. Character-actor, one who specializes in characters with marked peculiarities, is attested from 1861; character-assassination is from 1888; character-building (n.) from 1886. -- the comprehensive set of ethical and intellectual dispositions of a person. Intellectual virtues  like carefulness in the evaluation of evidence  promote, for one, the practice of seeking truth. Moral or ethical virtues  including traits like courage and generosity  dispose persons not only to choices and actions but also to attitudes and emotions. Such dispositions are generally considered relatively stable and responsive to reasons. Appraisal of character transcends direct evaluation of particular actions in favor of examination of some set of virtues or the admirable human life as a whole. On some views this admirable life grounds the goodness of particular actions. This suggests seeking guidance from role models, and their practices, rather than relying exclusively on rules. Role models will, at times, simply perceive the salient features of a situation and act accordingly. Being guided by role models requires some recognition of just who should be a role model. One may act out of character, since dispositions do not automatically produce particular actions in specific cases. One may also have a conflicted character if the virtues one’s character comprises contain internal tensions between, say, tendencies to impartiality and to friendship. The importance of formative education to the building of character introduces some good fortune into the acquisition of character. One can have a good character with a disagreeable personality or have a fine personality with a bad character because personality is not typically a normative notion, whereas character is. 

charron: p., H. P. Grice, “Do not multiply truths beyond necessity.” theologian who became the principal expositor of Montaigne’s ideas, presenting them in didactic form. His first work, The Three Truths 1595, presented a negative argument for Catholicism by offering a skeptical challenge to atheism, nonChristian religions, and Calvinism. He argued that we cannot know or understand God because of His infinitude and the weakness of our faculties. We can have no good reasons for rejecting Christianity or Catholicism. Therefore, we should accept it on faith alone. His second work, On Wisdom 1603, is a systematic presentation of Pyrrhonian skepticism coupled with a fideistic defense of Catholicism. The skepticism of Montaigne and the Grecian skeptics is used to show that we cannot know anything unless God reveals it to us. This is followed by offering an ethics to live by, an undogmatic version of Stoicism. This is the first modern presentation of a morality apart from any religious considerations. Charron’s On Wisdom was extremely popular in France and England. It was read and used by many philosophers and theologians during the seventeenth century. Some claimed that his skepticism opened his defense of Catholicism to question, and suggested that he was insincere in his fideism. He was defended by important figures in the  Catholic church. 

chiliagon: referred to by Grice in “Some remarks about the senses.’ In geometry, a chiliagon, or 1000-gon is a polygon with 1,000 sides. Philosophers commonly refer to chiliagons to illustrate ideas about the nature and workings of thought, meaning, and mental representation. A chiliagon is a regular chiliagon Polygon 1000.svg A regular chiliagon Type Regular polygon Edges and vertices 1000 Schläfli symbol {1000}, t{500}, tt{250}, ttt{125} Coxeter diagram CDel node 1.pngCDel 10.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel node.png CDel node 1.pngCDel 5.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel node 1.png Symmetry group Dihedral (D1000), order 2×1000 Internal angle (degrees) 179.64° Dual polygon Self Properties Convex, cyclic, equilateral, isogonal, isotoxal  A whole regular chiliagon is not visually discernible from a circle. The lower section is a portion of a regular chiliagon, 200 times as large as the smaller one, with the vertices highlighted. In geometry, a chiliagon (/ˈkɪliəɡɒn/) or 1000-gon is a polygon with 1,000 sides. Philosophers commonly refer to chiliagons to illustrate ideas about the nature and workings of thought, meaning, and mental representation.   Contents 1 Regular chiliagon 2 Philosophical application 3 Symmetry 4 Chiliagram 5 See also 6 References Regular chiliagon A regular chiliagon is represented by Schläfli symbol {1,000} and can be constructed as a truncated 500-gon, t{500}, or a twice-truncated 250-gon, tt{250}, or a thrice-truncated 125-gon, ttt{125}.  The measure of each internal angle in a regular chiliagon is 179.64°. The area of a regular chiliagon with sides of length a is given by  {\displaystyle A=250a^{2}\cot {\frac {\pi }{1000}}\simeq 79577.2\,a^{2}}A=250a^{2}\cot {\frac  {\pi }{1000}}\simeq 79577.2\,a^{2} This result differs from the area of its circumscribed circle by less than 4 parts per million.  Because 1,000 = 23 × 53, the number of sides is neither a product of distinct Fermat primes nor a power of two. Thus the regular chiliagon is not a constructible polygon. Indeed, it is not even constructible with the use of neusis or an angle trisector, as the number of sides is neither a product of distinct Pierpont primes, nor a product of powers of two and three.  Philosophical application René Descartes uses the chiliagon as an example in his Sixth Meditation to demonstrate the difference between pure intellection and imagination. He says that, when one thinks of a chiliagon, he "does not imagine the thousand sides or see them as if they were present" before him – as he does when one imagines a triangle, for example. The imagination constructs a "confused representation," which is no different from that which it constructs of a myriagon (a polygon with ten thousand sides). However, he does clearly understand what a chiliagon is, just as he understands what a triangle is, and he is able to distinguish it from a myriagon. Therefore, the intellect is not dependent on imagination, Descartes claims, as it is able to entertain clear and distinct ideas when imagination is unable to. Philosopher Pierre Gassendi, a contemporary of Descartes, was critical of this interpretation, believing that while Descartes could imagine a chiliagon, he could not understand it: one could "perceive that the word 'chiliagon' signifies a figure with a thousand angles [but] that is just the meaning of the term, and it does not follow that you understand the thousand angles of the figure any better than you imagine them." The example of a chiliagon is also referenced by other philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant. David Hume points out that it is "impossible for the eye to determine the angles of a chiliagon to be equal to 1996 right angles, or make any conjecture, that approaches this proportion."[4] Gottfried Leibniz comments on a use of the chiliagon by John Locke, noting that one can have an idea of the polygon without having an image of it, and thus distinguishing ideas from images. Henri Poincaré uses the chiliagon as evidence that "intuition is not necessarily founded on the evidence of the senses" because "we can not represent to ourselves a chiliagon, and yet we reason by intuition on polygons in general, which include the chiliagon as a particular case."  Inspired by Descartes's chiliagon example, Grice, R. M. Chisholm and other 20th-century philosophers have used similar examples to make similar points. Chisholm's ‘speckled hen,’ which need not have a determinate number of speckles to be successfully imagined, is perhaps the most famous of these. Symmetry  The symmetries of a regular chiliagon. Light blue lines show subgroups of index 2. The 4 boxed subgraphs are positionally related by index 5 subgroups. The regular chiliagon has Dih1000 dihedral symmetry, order 2000, represented by 1,000 lines of reflection. Dih100 has 15 dihedral subgroups: Dih500, Dih250, Dih125, Dih200, Dih100, Dih50, Dih25, Dih40, Dih20, Dih10, Dih5, Dih8, Dih4, Dih2, and Dih1. It also has 16 more cyclic symmetries as subgroups: Z1000, Z500, Z250, Z125, Z200, Z100, Z50, Z25, Z40, Z20, Z10, Z5, Z8, Z4, Z2, and Z1, with Zn representing π/n radian rotational symmetry.  John Conway labels these lower symmetries with a letter and order of the symmetry follows the letter.[8] He gives d (diagonal) with mirror lines through vertices, p with mirror lines through edges (perpendicular), i with mirror lines through both vertices and edges, and g for rotational symmetry. a1 labels no symmetry.  These lower symmetries allow degrees of freedom in defining irregular chiliagons. Only the g1000 subgroup has no degrees of freedom but can be seen as directed edges.  Chiliagram A chiliagram is a 1,000-sided star polygon. There are 199 regular forms[9] given by Schläfli symbols of the form {1000/n}, where n is an integer between 2 and 500 that is coprime to 1,000. There are also 300 regular star figures in the remaining cases.  For example, the regular {1000/499} star polygon is constructed by 1000 nearly radial edges. Each star vertex has an internal angle of 0.36 degrees.[10]  {1000/499} Star polygon 1000-499.svg Star polygon 1000-499 center.png Central area with moiré patterns See also Myriagon Megagon Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Language References  Meditation VI by Descartes (English translation).  Sepkoski, David (2005). "Nominalism and constructivism in seventeenth-century mathematical philosophy". Historia Mathematica. 32: 33–59. doi:10.1016/j.hm.2003.09.002.  Immanuel Kant, "On a Discovery," trans. Henry Allison, in Theoretical Philosophy After 1791, ed. Henry Allison and Peter Heath, Cambridge UP, 2002 [Akademie 8:121]. Kant does not actually use a chiliagon as his example, instead using a 96-sided figure, but he is responding to the same question raised by Descartes.  David Hume, The Philosophical Works of David Hume, Volume 1, Black and Tait, 1826, p. 101.  Jonathan Francis Bennett (2001), Learning from Six Philosophers: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Volume 2, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198250924, p. 53.  Henri Poincaré (1900) "Intuition and Logic in Mathematics" in William Bragg Ewald (ed) From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics, Volume 2, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 0198505361, p. 1015.  Roderick Chisholm, "The Problem of the Speckled Hen", Mind 51 (1942): pp. 368–373. "These problems are all descendants of Descartes's 'chiliagon' argument in the sixth of his Meditations" (Joseph Heath, Following the Rules: Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint, Oxford: OUP, 2008, p. 305, note 15).  The Symmetries of Things, Chapter 20  199 = 500 cases − 1 (convex) − 100 (multiples of 5) − 250 (multiples of 2) + 50 (multiples of 2 and 5)  0.36 = 180 (1 - 2 /(1000 / 499) ) = 180 ( 1 – 998 / 1000 ) = 180 ( 2 / 1000 ) = 180 / 500 chiliagon vte Polygons (List) Triangles Acute Equilateral Ideal IsoscelesObtuseRight Quadrilaterals Antiparallelogram Bicentric CyclicEquidiagonalEx-tangentialHarmonic Isosceles trapezoidKiteLambertOrthodiagonal Parallelogram Rectangle Right kite Rhombus Saccheri SquareTangentialTangential trapezoidTrapezoid By number of sides Monogon (1) Digon (2) Triangle (3) Quadrilateral (4) Pentagon (5) Hexagon (6) Heptagon (7) Octagon (8) Nonagon (Enneagon, 9) Decagon (10) Hendecagon (11) Dodecagon (12) Tridecagon (13) Tetradecagon (14) Pentadecagon (15) Hexadecagon (16) Heptadecagon (17) Octadecagon (18) Enneadecagon (19)Icosagon (20)Icosihenagon [de] (21)Icosidigon (22) Icositetragon (24) Icosihexagon (26) Icosioctagon (28) Triacontagon (30) Triacontadigon (32) Triacontatetragon (34) Tetracontagon (40) Tetracontadigon (42)Tetracontaoctagon (48)Pentacontagon (50) Pentacontahenagon [de] (51) Hexacontagon (60) Hexacontatetragon (64) Heptacontagon (70)Octacontagon (80) Enneacontagon (90) Enneacontahexagon (96) Hectogon (100) 120-gon257-gon360-gonChiliagon (1000) Myriagon (10000) 65537-gonMegagon (1000000) 4294967295-gon [ru; de]Apeirogon (∞) Star polygons Pentagram Hexagram Heptagram Octagram Enneagram Decagram Hendecagram Dodecagram Classes Concave Convex Cyclic Equiangular Equilateral Isogonal Isotoxal Pseudotriangle Regular Simple SkewStar-shaped Tangential Categories: Polygons1000 (number).

arbitrium -- choose -- choice, v. rational choice. choice sequence, a variety of infinite sequence introduced by L. E. J. Brouwer to express the non-classical properties of the continuum the set of real numbers within intuitionism. A choice sequence is determined by a finite initial segment together with a “rule” for continuing the sequence. The rule, however, may allow some freedom in choosing each subsequent element. Thus the sequence might start with the rational numbers 0 and then ½, and the rule might require the n ! 1st element to be some rational number within ½n of the nth choice, without any further restriction. The sequence of rationals thus generated must converge to a real number, r. But r’s definition leaves open its exact location in the continuum. Speaking intuitionistically, r violates the classical law of trichotomy: given any pair of real numbers e.g., r and ½, the first is either less than, equal to, or greater than the second. From the 0s Brouwer got this non-classical effect without appealing to the apparently nonmathematical notion of free choice. Instead he used sequences generated by the activity of an idealized mathematician the creating subject, together with propositions that he took to be undecided. Given such a proposition, P  e.g. Fermat’s last theorem that for n  2 there is no general method of finding triplets of numbers with the property that the sum of each of the first two raised to the nth power is equal to the result of raising the third to the nth power or Goldbach’s conjecture that every even number is the sum of two prime numbers  we can modify the definition of r: The n ! 1st element is ½ if at the nth stage of research P remains undecided. That element and all its successors are ½ ! ½n if by that stage P is proved; they are ½ † ½n if P is refuted. Since he held that there is an endless supply of such propositions, Brouwer believed that we can always use this method to refute classical laws. In the early 0s Stephen Kleene and Richard Vesley reproduced some main parts of Brouwer’s theory of the continuum in a formal system based on Kleene’s earlier recursion-theoretic interpretation of intuitionism and of choice sequences. At about the same time  but in a different and occasionally incompatible vein  Saul Kripke formally captured the power of Brouwer’s counterexamples without recourse to recursive functions and without invoking either the creating subject or the notion of free choice. Subsequently Georg Kreisel, A. N. Troelstra, Dirk Van Dalen, and others produced formal systems that analyze Brouwer’s basic assumptions about open-futured objects like choice sequences. 

Ciceronian implicaturum: Marcus Tullius, Roman statesman, orator, essayist, and letter writer. He was important not so much for formulating individual philosophical arguments as for expositions of the doctrines of the major schools of Hellenistic philosophy, and for, as he put it, “teaching philosophy to speak Latin.” The significance of the latter can hardly be overestimated. Cicero’s coinages helped shape the philosophical vocabulary of the Latin-speaking West well into the early modern period. The most characteristic feature of Cicero’s thought is his attempt to unify philosophy and rhetoric. His first major trilogy, On the Orator, On the Republic, and On the Laws, presents a vision of wise statesmen-philosophers whose greatest achievement is guiding political affairs through rhetorical persuasion rather than violence. Philosophy, Cicero argues, needs rhetoric to effect its most important practical goals, while rhetoric is useless without the psychological, moral, and logical justification provided by philosophy. This combination of eloquence and philosophy constitutes what he calls humanitas  a coinage whose enduring influence is attested in later revivals of humanism  and it alone provides the foundation for constitutional governments; it is acquired, moreover, only through broad training in those subjects worthy of free citizens artes liberales. In philosophy of education, this Ciceronian conception of a humane education encompassing poetry, rhetoric, history, morals, and politics endured as an ideal, especially for those convinced that instruction in the liberal disciplines is essential for citizens if their rational autonomy is to be expressed in ways that are culturally and politically beneficial. A major aim of Cicero’s earlier works is to appropriate for Roman high culture one of Greece’s most distinctive products, philosophical theory, and to demonstrate Roman superiority. He thus insists that Rome’s laws and political institutions successfully embody the best in Grecian political theory, whereas the Grecians themselves were inadequate to the crucial task of putting their theories into practice. Taking over the Stoic conception of the universe as a rational whole, governed by divine reason, he argues that human societies must be grounded in natural law. For Cicero, nature’s law possesses the characteristics of a legal code; in particular, it is formulable in a comparatively extended set of rules against which existing societal institutions can be measured. Indeed, since they so closely mirror the requirements of nature, Roman laws and institutions furnish a nearly perfect paradigm for human societies. Cicero’s overall theory, if not its particular details, established a lasting framework for anti-positivist theories of law and morality, including those of Aquinas, Grotius, Suárez, and Locke. The final two years of his life saw the creation of a series of dialogue-treatises that provide an encyclopedic survey of Hellenistic philosophy. Cicero himself follows the moderate fallibilism of Philo of Larissa and the New Academy. Holding that philosophy is a method and not a set of dogmas, he endorses an attitude of systematic doubt. However, unlike Cartesian doubt, Cicero’s does not extend to the real world behind phenomena, since he does not envision the possibility of strict phenomenalism. Nor does he believe that systematic doubt leads to radical skepticism about knowledge. Although no infallible criterion for distinguishing true from false impressions is available, some impressions, he argues, are more “persuasive” probabile and can be relied on to guide action. In Academics he offers detailed accounts of Hellenistic epistemological debates, steering a middle course between dogmatism and radical skepticism. A similar strategy governs the rest of his later writings. Cicero presents the views of the major schools, submits them to criticism, and tentatively supports any positions he finds “persuasive.” Three connected works, On Divination, On Fate, and On the Nature of the Gods, survey Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic arguments about theology and natural philosophy. Much of the treatment of religious thought and practice is cool, witty, and skeptically detached  much in the manner of eighteenth-century philosophes who, along with Hume, found much in Cicero to emulate. However, he concedes that Stoic arguments for providence are “persuasive.” So too in ethics, he criticizes Epicurean, Stoic, and Peripatetic doctrines in On Ends 45 and their views on death, pain, irrational emotions, and happiChurch-Turing thesis Cicero, Marcus Tullius 143   143 ness in Tusculan Disputations 45. Yet, a final work, On Duties, offers a practical ethical system based on Stoic principles. Although sometimes dismissed as the eclecticism of an amateur, Cicero’s method of selectively choosing from what had become authoritative professional systems often displays considerable reflectiveness and originality. 

circulus – Grice: “I prefer ‘kreis,’ which I learned from Ayer – its etymology is so obscure!” -- Grice’s circle -- Grice’s circle -- circular reasoning, reasoning that, when traced backward from its conclusion, returns to that starting point, as one returns to a starting point when tracing a circle. The discussion of this topic by Richard Whatley in his Logic sets a high standard of clarity and penetration. Logic textbooks often quote the following example from Whatley: To allow every man an unbounded freedom of speech must always be, on the whole, advantageous to the State; for it is highly conducive to the interests of the Community, that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited, of expressing his sentiments. This passage illustrates how circular reasoning is less obvious in a language, such as English, that, in Whatley’s words, is “abounding in synonymous expressions, which have no resemblance in sound, and no connection in etymology.” The premise and conclusion do not consist of just the same words in the same order, nor can logical or grammatical principles transform one into the other. Rather, they have the same propositional content: they say the same thing in different words. That is why appealing to one of them to provide reason for believing the other amounts to giving something as a reason for itself. Circular reasoning is often said to beg the question. ‘Begging the question’ and petitio principii are translations of a phrase in Aristotle connected with a game of formal disputation played in antiquity but not in recent times. The meanings of ‘question’ and ‘begging’ do not in any clear way determine the meaning of ‘question begging’. There is no simple argument form that all and only circular arguments have. It is not logic, in Whatley’s example above, that determines the identity of content between the premise and the conclusion. Some theorists propose rather more complicated formal or syntactic accounts of circularity. Others believe that any account of circular reasoning must refer to the beliefs of those who reason. Whether or not the following argument about articles in this dictionary is circular depends on why the first premise should be accepted: 1 The article on inference contains no split infinitives. 2 The other articles contain no split infinitives. Therefore, 3 No article contains split infinitives. Consider two cases. Case I: Although 2 supports 1 inductively, both 1 and 2 have solid outside support independent of any prior acceptance of 3. This reasoning is not circular. Case II: Someone who advances the argument accepts 1 or 2 or both, only because he believes 3. Such reasoning is circular, even though neither premise expresses just the same proposition as the conclusion. The question remains controversial whether, in explaining circularity, we should refer to the beliefs of individual reasoners or only to the surrounding circumstances. One purpose of reasoning is to increase the degree of reasonable confidence that one has in the truth of a conclusion. Presuming the truth of a conclusion in support of a premise thwarts this purpose, because the initial degree of reasonable confidence in the premise cannot then exceed the initial degree of reasonable confidence in the conclusion. Circulus -- diallelon from ancient Grecian di allelon, ‘through one another’, a circular definition. A definition is circular provided either the definiendum occurs in the definiens, as in ‘Law is a lawful command’, or a first term is defined by means of a second term, which in turn is defined by the first term, as in ‘Law is the expressed wish of a ruler, and a ruler is one who establishes laws.’ A diallelus is a circular argument: an attempt to establish a conclusion by a premise that cannot be known unless the conclusion is known in the first place. Descartes, e.g., argued: I clearly and distinctly perceive that God exists, and what I clearly and distinctly perceive is true. Therefore, God exists. To justify the premise that clear and distinct perceptions are true, however, he appealed to his knowledge of God’s existence.

civil disobedience: explored by H. P. Grice in his analysis of moral vs. legal right -- a deliberate violation of the law, committed in order to draw attention to or rectify perceived injustices in the law or policies of a state. Illustrative questions raised by the topic include: how are such acts justified, how should the legal system respond to such acts when justified, and must such acts be done publicly, nonviolently, and/or with a willingness to accept attendant legal sanctions? 

clarke: s.  Grice analyses Clark’s proof of the existence of God in “Aspects of reasoning” -- English philosopher, preacher, and theologian. Born in Norwich, he was educated at Cambridge, where he came under the influence of Newton. Upon graduation Clarke entered the established church, serving for a time as chaplain to Queen Anne. He spent the last twenty years of his life as rector of St. James, Westminster. Clarke wrote extensively on controversial theological and philosophical issues  the nature of space and time, proofs of the existence of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the incorporeality and natural immortality of the soul, freedom of the will, the nature of morality, etc. His most philosophical works are his Boyle lectures of 1704 and 1705, in which he developed a forceful version of the cosmological argument for the existence and nature of God and attacked the views of Hobbes, Spinoza, and some proponents of deism; his correspondence with Leibniz 171516, in which he defended Newton’s views of space and time and charged Leibniz with holding views inconsistent with free will; and his writings against Anthony Collins, in which he defended a libertarian view of the agent as the undetermined cause of free actions and attacked Collins’s arguments for a materialistic view of the mind. In these works Clarke maintains a position of extreme rationalism, contending that the existence and nature of God can be conclusively demonstrated, that the basic principles of morality are necessarily true and immediately knowable, and that the existence of a future state of rewards and punishments is assured by our knowledge that God will reward the morally just and punish the morally wicked. 

class: the class for those philosophers whose class have no members -- a term sometimes used as a synonym for ‘set’. When the two are distinguished, a class is understood as a collection in the logical sense, i.e., as the extension of a concept e.g. the class of red objects. By contrast, sets, i.e., collections in the mathematical sense, are understood as occurring in stages, where each stage consists of the sets that can be formed from the non-sets and the sets already formed at previous stages. When a set is formed at a given stage, only the non-sets and the previously formed sets are even candidates for membership, but absolutely anything can gain membership in a class simply by falling under the appropriate concept. Thus, it is classes, not sets, that figure in the inconsistent principle of unlimited comprehension. In set theory, proper classes are collections of sets that are never formed at any stage, e.g., the class of all sets since new sets are formed at each stage, there is no stage at which all sets are available to be collected into a set. 

clemens: formative teacher in the early Christian church who, as a “Christian gnostic,” combined enthusiasm for Grecian philosophy with a defense of the church’s faith. He espoused spiritual and intellectual ascent toward that complete but hidden knowledge or gnosis reserved for the truly enlightened. Clement’s school did not practice strict fidelity to the authorities, and possibly the teachings, of the institutional church, drawing upon the Hellenistic traditions of Alexandria, including Philo and Middle Platonism. As with the law among the Jews, so, for Clement, philosophy among the pagans was a pedagogical preparation for Christ, in whom logos, reason, had become enfleshed. Philosophers now should rise above their inferior understanding to the perfect knowledge revealed in Christ. Though hostile to gnosticism and its speculations, Clement was thoroughly Hellenized in outlook and sometimes guilty of Docetism, not least in his reluctance to concede the utter humanness of Jesus.

Clifford: Grice was attracted to Clifford’s idea of the ‘ethics of belief,’ -- philosopher. Educated at King’s , London, and Trinity , Cambridge, he began giving public lectures in 1868, when he was appointed a fellow of Trinity, and in 1870 became professor of applied mathematics at  , London. His academic career ended prematurely when he died of tuberculosis. Clifford is best known for his rigorous view on the relation between belief and evidence, which, in “The Ethics of Belief,” he summarized thus: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence.” He gives this example. Imagine a shipowner who sends to sea an emigrant ship, although the evidence raises strong suspicions as to the vessel’s seaworthiness. Ignoring this evidence, he convinces himself that the ship’s condition is good enough and, after it sinks and all the passengers die, collects his insurance money without a trace of guilt. Clifford maintains that the owner had no right to believe in the soundness of the ship. “He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.” The right Clifford is alluding to is moral, for what one believes is not a private but a public affair and may have grave consequences for others. He regards us as morally obliged to investigate the evidence thoroughly on any occasion, and to withhold belief if evidential support is lacking. This obligation must be fulfilled however trivial and insignificant a belief may seem, for a violation of it may “leave its stamp upon our character forever.” Clifford thus rejected Catholicism, to which he had subscribed originally, and became an agnostic. James’s famous essay “The Will to Believe” criticizes Clifford’s view. According to James, insufficient evidence need not stand in the way of religious belief, for we have a right to hold beliefs that go beyond the evidence provided they serve the pursuit of a legitimate goal. 

closure – Grice: The etymology is convoluted: claudere --- cfr. clausura. Griceian anti-sneak closure: a set of objects, O, is said to exhibit closure or to be closed under a given operation, R, provided that for every object, x, if x is a member of O and x is R-related to any object, y, then y is a member of O. For example, the set of propositions is closed under deduction, for if p is a proposition and p entails q, i.e., q is deducible from p, then q is a proposition simply because only propositions can be entailed by propositions. In addition, many subsets of the set of propositions are also closed under deduction. For example, the set of true propositions is closed under deduction or entailment. Others are not. Under most accounts of belief, we may fail to believe what is entailed by what we do, in fact, believe. Thus, if knowledge is some form of true, justified belief, knowledge is not closed under deduction, for we may fail to believe a proposition entailed by a known proposition. Nevertheless, there is a related issue that has been the subject of much debate, namely: Is the set of justified propositions closed under deduction? Aside from the obvious importance of the answer to that question in developing an account of justification, there are two important issues in epistemology that also depend on the answer. Subtleties aside, the so-called Gettier problem depends in large part upon an affirmative answer to that question. For, assuming that a proposition can be justified and false, it is possible to construct cases in which a proposition, say p, is justified, false, but believed. Now, consider a true proposition, q, which is believed and entailed by p. If justification is closed under deduction, then q is justified, true, and believed. But if the only basis for believing q is p, it is clear that q is not known. Thus, true, justified belief is not sufficient for knowledge. What response is appropriate to this problem has been a central issue in epistemology since E. Gettier’s publication of “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Analysis, 3. Whether justification is closed under deduction is also crucial when evaluating a common, traditional argument for skepticism. Consider any person, S, and let p be any proposition ordinarily thought to be knowable, e.g., that there is a table before S. The argument for skepticism goes like this: 1 If p is justified for S, then, since p entails q, where q is ‘there is no evil genius making S falsely believe that p’, q is justified for S. 2 S is not justified in believing q. Therefore, S is not justified in believing p. The first premise depends upon justification being closed under deduction. 

cockburn: c. English philosopher and playwright who made a significant contribution to the debates on ethical rationalism sparked by Clarke’s Boyle lectures. The major theme of her writings is the nature of moral obligation. Cockburn displays a consistent, non-doctrinaire philosophical position, arguing that moral duty is to be rationally deduced from the “nature and fitness of things” Remarks, 1747 and is not founded primarily in externally imposed sanctions. Her writings, published anonymously, take the form of philosophical debates with others, including Samuel Rutherforth, William Warburton, Isaac Watts, Francis Hutcheson, and Lord Shaftesbury. Her best-known intervention in contemporary philosophical debate was her able defense of Locke’s Essay in 1702.

cogitatum -- cogito ergo sum – Example given by Grice of Descartes’s conventional implicaturum. “What Descartes said was, “je pense; donc, j’existe.” The ‘donc’ implicaturum is an interesting one to analyse. cited by Grice in “Descartes on clear and distinct perception.” ‘I think, therefore I am’, the starting point of Descartes’s system of knowledge. In his Discourse on the Method 1637, he observes that the proposition ‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’ je pense, donc je suis is “so firm and sure that the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were incapable of shaking it.” The celebrated phrase, in its better-known Latin version, also occurs in the Principles of Philosophy 1644, but is not to be found in the Meditations 1641, though the latter contains the fullest statement of the reasoning behind Descartes’s certainty of his own existence. 

cognitum – incognitum --

cohaesum- cohaerence – Grice: “All Roman words starting with co- are a trick. haerĕo , haesi, haesum, 2, v. n. etym. dub., I.to hang or hold fast, to hang, stick, cleave, cling, adhere, be fixed, sit fast, remain close to any thing or in any manner (class. and very freq., esp. in the trop. sense; cf. pendeo); usually constr. with in, the simple abl. or absol., less freq. with dat., with ad, sub, ex, etc. since H. P. Grice was a correspondentist, he hated Bradley. --  theory of truth, the view that either the nature of truth or the sole criterion for determining truth is constituted by a relation of coherence between the belief or judgment being assessed and other beliefs or judgments. As a view of the nature of truth, the coherence theory represents an alternative to the correspondence theory of truth. Whereas the correspondence theory holds that a belief is true provided it corresponds to independent reality, the coherence theory holds that it is true provided it stands in a suitably strong relation of coherence to other beliefs, so that the believer’s total system of beliefs forms a highly or perhaps perfectly coherent system. Since, on such a characterization, truth depends entirely on the internal relations within the system of beliefs, such a conception of truth seems to lead at once to idealism as regards the nature of reality, and its main advocates have been proponents of absolute idealism mainly Bradley, Bosanquet, and Brand Blanshard. A less explicitly metaphysical version of the coherence theory was also held by certain members of the school of logical positivism mainly Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel. The nature of the intended relation of coherence, often characterized metaphorically in terms of the beliefs in question fitting together or dovetailing with each other, has been and continues to be a matter of uncertainty and controversy. Despite occasional misconceptions to the contrary, it is clear that coherence is intended to be a substantially more demanding relation than mere consistency, involving such things as inferential and explanatory relations within the system of beliefs. Perfect or ideal coherence is sometimes described as requiring that every belief in the system of beliefs entails all the others though it must be remembered that those offering such a characterization do not restrict entailments to those that are formal or analytic in character. Since actual human systems of belief seem inevitably to fall short of perfect coherence, however that is understood, their truth is usually held to be only approximate at best, thus leading to the absolute idealist view that truth admits of degrees. As a view of the criterion of truth, the coherence theory of truth holds that the sole criterion or standard for determining whether a belief is true is its coherence with other beliefs or judgments, with the degree of justification varying with the degree of coherence. Such a view amounts to a coherence theory of epistemic justification. It was held by most of the proponents of the coherence theory of the nature of truth, though usually without distinguishing the two views very clearly. For philosophers who hold both of these views, the thesis that coherence is the sole criterion of truth is usually logically prior, and the coherence theory of the nature of truth is adopted as a consequence, the clearest argument being that only the view that perfect or ideal coherence is the nature of truth can make sense of the appeal to degrees of coherence as a criterion of truth.  -- coherentism, in epistemology, a theory of the structure of knowledge or justified beliefs according to which all beliefs representing knowledge are known or justified in virtue of their relations to other beliefs, specifically, in virtue of belonging to a coherent system of beliefs. Assuming that the orthodox account of knowledge is correct at least in maintaining that justified true belief is necessary for knowledge, we can identify two kinds of coherence theories of knowledge: those that are coherentist merely in virtue of incorporating a coherence theory of justification, and those that are doubly coherentist because they account for both justification and truth in terms of coherence. What follows will focus on coherence theories of justification. Historically, coherentism is the most significant alternative to foundationalism. The latter holds that some beliefs, basic or foundational beliefs, are justified apart from their relations to other beliefs, while all other beliefs derive their justification from that of foundational beliefs. Foundationalism portrays justification as having a structure like that of a building, with certain beliefs serving as the foundations and all other beliefs supported by them. Coherentism rejects this image and pictures justification as having the structure of a raft. Justified beliefs, like the planks that make up a raft, mutually support one another. This picture of the coherence theory is due to the positivist Otto Neurath. Among the positivists, Hempel shared Neurath’s sympathy for coherentism. Other defenders of coherentism from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were idealists, e.g., Bradley, Bosanquet, and Brand Blanshard. Idealists often held the sort of double coherence theory mentioned above. The contrast between foundationalism and coherentism is commonly developed in terms of the regress argument. If we are asked what justifies one of our beliefs, we characteristically answer by citing some other belief that supports it, e.g., logically or probabilistically. If we are asked about this second belief, we are likely to cite a third belief, and so on. There are three shapes such an evidential chain might have: it could go on forever, if could eventually end in some belief, or it could loop back upon itself, i.e., eventually contain again a belief that had occurred “higher up” on the chain. Assuming that infinite chains are not really possible, we are left with a choice between chains that end and circular chains. According to foundationalists, evidential chains must eventually end with a foundational belief that is justified, if the belief at the beginning of the chain is to be justified. Coherentists are then portrayed as holding that circular chains can yield justified beliefs. This portrayal is, in a way, correct. But it is also misleading since it suggests that the disagreement between coherentism and foundationalism is best understood as concerning only the structure of evidential chains. Talk of evidential chains in which beliefs that are further down on the chain are responsible for beliefs that are higher up naturally suggests the idea that just as real chains transfer forces, evidential chains transfer justification. Foundationalism then sounds like a real possibility. Foundational beliefs already have justification, and evidential chains serve to pass the justification along to other beliefs. But coherentism seems to be a nonstarter, for if no belief in the chain is justified to begin with, there is nothing to pass along. Altering the metaphor, we might say that coherentism seems about as likely to succeed as a bucket brigade that does not end at a well, but simply moves around in a circle. The coherentist seeks to dispel this appearance by pointing out that the primary function of evidential chains is not to transfer epistemic status, such as justification, from belief to belief. Indeed, beliefs are not the primary locus of justification. Rather, it is whole systems of belief that are justified or not in the primary sense; individual beliefs are justified in virtue of their membership in an appropriately structured system of beliefs. Accordingly, what the coherentist claims is that the appropriate sorts of evidential chains, which will be circular  indeed, will likely contain numerous circles  constitute justified systems of belief. The individual beliefs within such a system are themselves justified in virtue of their place in the entire system and not because this status is passed on to them from beliefs further down some evidential chain in which they figure. One can, therefore, view coherentism with considerable accuracy as a version of foundationalism that holds all beliefs to be foundational. From this perspective, the difference between coherentism and traditional foundationalism has to do with what accounts for the epistemic status of foundational beliefs, with traditional foundationalism holding that such beliefs can be justified in various ways, e.g., by perception or reason, while coherentism insists that the only way such beliefs can be justified is by being a member of an appropriately structured system of beliefs. One outstanding problem the coherentist faces is to specify exactly what constitutes a coherent system of beliefs. Coherence clearly must involve much more than mere absence of mutually contradictory beliefs. One way in which beliefs can be logically consistent is by concerning completely unrelated matters, but such a consistent system of beliefs would not embody the sort of mutual support that constitutes the core idea of coherentism. Moreover, one might question whether logical consistency is even necessary for coherence, e.g., on the basis of the preface paradox. Similar points can be made regarding efforts to begin an account of coherence with the idea that beliefs and degrees of belief must correspond to the probability calculus. So although it is difficult to avoid thinking that such formal features as logical and probabilistic consistency are significantly involved in coherence, it is not clear exactly how they are involved. An account of coherence can be drawn more directly from the following intuitive idea: a coherent system of belief is one in which each belief is epistemically supported by the others, where various types of epistemic support are recognized, e.g., deductive or inductive arguments, or inferences to the best explanation. There are, however, at least two problems this suggestion does not address. First, since very small sets of beliefs can be mutually supporting, the coherentist needs to say something about the scope a system of beliefs must have to exhibit the sort of coherence required for justification. Second, given the possibility of small sets of mutually supportive beliefs, it is apparently possible to build a system of very broad scope out of such small sets of mutually supportive beliefs by mere conjunction, i.e., without forging any significant support relations among them. Yet, since the interrelatedness of all truths does not seem discoverable by analyzing the concept of justification, the coherentist cannot rule out epistemically isolated subsystems of belief entirely. So the coherentist must say what sorts of isolated subsystems of belief are compatible with coherence. The difficulties involved in specifying a more precise concept of coherence should not be pressed too vigorously against the coherentist. For one thing, most foundationalists have been forced to grant coherence a significant role within their accounts of justification, so no dialectical advantage can be gained by pressing them. Moreover, only a little reflection is needed to see that nearly all the difficulties involved in specifying coherence are manifestations within a specific context of quite general philosophical problems concerning such matters as induction, explanation, theory choice, the nature of epistemic support, etc. They are, then, problems that are faced by logicians, philosophers of science, and epistemologists quite generally, regardless of whether they are sympathetic to coherentism. Coherentism faces a number of serious objections. Since according to coherentism justification is determined solely by the relations among beliefs, it does not seem to be capable of taking us outside the circle of our beliefs. This fact gives rise to complaints that coherentism cannot allow for any input from external reality, e.g., via perception, and that it can neither guarantee nor even claim that it is likely that coherent systems of belief will make contact with such reality or contain true beliefs. And while it is widely granted that justified false beliefs are possible, it is just as widely accepted that there is an important connection between justification and truth, a connection that rules out accounts according to which justification is not truth-conducive. These abstractly formulated complaints can be made more vivid, in the case of the former, by imagining a person with a coherent system of beliefs that becomes frozen, and fails to change in the face of ongoing sensory experience; and in the case of the latter, by pointing out that, barring an unexpected account of coherence, it seems that a wide variety of coherent systems of belief are possible, systems that are largely disjoint or even incompatible. 

collier: Grice found the Clavis Universalis quite fun (“to read”). -- English philosopher, a Wiltshire parish priest whose Clavis Universalis defends a version of immaterialism closely akin to Berkeley’s. Matter, Collier contends, “exists in, or in dependence on mind.” He emphatically affirms the existence of bodies, and, like Berkeley, defends immaterialCoimbra commentaries Collier, Arthur 155   155 ism as the only alternative to skepticism. Collier grants that bodies seem to be external, but their “quasi-externeity” is only the effect of God’s will. In Part I of the Clavis Collier argues as Berkeley had in his New Theory of Vision, 1709 that the visible world is not external. In Part II he argues as Berkeley had in the Principles, 1710, and Three Dialogues, 1713 that the external world “is a being utterly impossible.” Two of Collier’s arguments for the “intrinsic repugnancy” of the external world resemble Kant’s first and second antinomies. Collier argues, e.g., that the material world is both finite and infinite; the contradiction can be avoided, he suggests, only by denying its external existence. Some scholars suspect that Collier deliberately concealed his debt to Berkeley; most accept his report that he arrived at his views ten years before he published them. Collier first refers to Berkeley in letters written in 171415. In A Specimen of True Philosophy 1730, where he offers an immaterialist interpretation of the opening verse of Genesis, Collier writes that “except a single passage or two” in Berkeley’s Dialogues, there is no other book “which I ever heard of” on the same subject as the Clavis. This is a puzzling remark on several counts, one being that in the Preface to the Dialogues, Berkeley describes his earlier books. Collier’s biographer reports seeing among his papers now lost an outline, dated 1708, on “the question of the visible world being without us or not,” but he says no more about it. The biographer concludes that Collier’s independence cannot reasonably be doubted; perhaps the outline would, if unearthed, establish this. 

collingwood: r. g.— Grice: “The most Italian of English Oxonians! He loved Gentile, Croce, and de Ruggiero!” – Grice: “I would not count Collingwood as a philosopher, really, since his tutor was Carritt!” -- cited by H. P. Grice in “Metaphysics,” in D. F. Pears, “The nature of metaphysics.” – Like Grice, Collingwood was influenced by J. C. Wilson’s subordinate interrogation. English philosopher and historian. His father, W. G. Collingwood, John Ruskin’s friend, secretary, and biographer, at first educated him at home in Coniston and later sent him to Rugby School and then Oxford. Immediately upon graduating in 2, he was elected to a fellowship at Pembroke ; except for service with admiralty intelligence during World War I, he remained at Oxford until 1, when illness compelled him to retire. Although his Autobiography expresses strong disapproval of the lines on which, during his lifetime, philosophy at Oxford developed, he was a varsity “insider.” He was elected to the Waynflete Professorship, the first to become vacant after he had done enough work to be a serious candidate. He was also a leading archaeologist of Roman Britain. Although as a student Collingwood was deeply influenced by the “realist” teaching of John Cook Wilson, he studied not only the British idealists, but also Hegel and the contemporary  post-Hegelians. At twenty-three, he published a translation of Croce’s book on Vico’s philosophy. Religion and Philosophy 6, the first of his attempts to present orthodox Christianity as philosophically acceptable, has both idealist and Cook Wilsonian elements. Thereafter the Cook Wilsonian element steadily diminished. In Speculum Mentis4, he investigated the nature and ultimate unity of the four special ‘forms of experience’  art, religion, natural science, and history  and their relation to a fifth comprehensive form  philosophy. While all four, he contended, are necessary to a full human life now, each is a form of error that is corrected by its less erroneous successor. Philosophy is error-free but has no content of its own: “The truth is not some perfect system of philosophy: it is simply the way in which all systems, however perfect, collapse into nothingness on the discovery that they are only systems.” Some critics dismissed this enterprise as idealist a description Collingwood accepted when he wrote, but even those who favored it were disturbed by the apparent skepticism of its result. A year later, he amplified his views about art in Outlines of a Philosophy of Art. Since much of what Collingwood went on to write about philosophy has never been published, and some of it has been negligently destroyed, his thought after Speculum Mentis is hard to trace. It will not be definitively established until the more than 3,000 s of his surviving unpublished manuscripts deposited in the Bodleian Library in 8 have been thoroughly studied. They were not available to the scholars who published studies of his philosophy as a whole up to 0. Three trends in how his philosophy developed, however, are discernible. The first is that as he continued to investigate the four special forms of experience, he came to consider each valid in its own right, and not a form of error. As early as 8, he abandoned the conception of the historical past in Speculum Mentis as simply a spectacle, alien to the historian’s mind; he now proposed a theory of it as thoughts explaining past actions that, although occurring in the past, can be rethought in the present. Not only can the identical thought “enacted” at a definite time in the past be “reenacted” any number of times after, but it can be known to be so reenacted if colligation physical evidence survives that can be shown to be incompatible with other proposed reenactments. In 334 he wrote a series of lectures posthumously published as The Idea of Nature in which he renounced his skepticism about whether the quantitative material world can be known, and inquired why the three constructive periods he recognized in European scientific thought, the Grecian, the Renaissance, and the modern, could each advance our knowledge of it as they did. Finally, in 7, returning to the philosophy of art and taking full account of Croce’s later work, he showed that imagination expresses emotion and becomes false when it counterfeits emotion that is not felt; thus he transformed his earlier theory of art as purely imaginative. His later theories of art and of history remain alive; and his theory of nature, although corrected by research since his death, was an advance when published. The second trend was that his conception of philosophy changed as his treatment of the special forms of experience became less skeptical. In his beautifully written Essay on Philosophical Method 3, he argued that philosophy has an object  the ens realissimum as the one, the true, and the good  of which the objects of the special forms of experience are appearances; but that implies what he had ceased to believe, that the special forms of experience are forms of error. In his Principles of Art 8 and New Leviathan 2 he denounced the idealist principle of Speculum Mentis that to abstract is to falsify. Then, in his Essay on Metaphysics 0, he denied that metaphysics is the science of being qua being, and identified it with the investigation of the “absolute presuppositions” of the special forms of experience at definite historical periods. A third trend, which came to dominate his thought as World War II approached, was to see serious philosophy as practical, and so as having political implications. He had been, like Ruskin, a radical Tory, opposed less to liberal or even some socialist measures than to the bourgeois ethos from which they sprang. Recognizing European fascism as the barbarism it was, and detesting anti-Semitism, he advocated an antifascist foreign policy and intervention in the  civil war in support of the republic. His last major publication, The New Leviathan, impressively defends what he called civilization against what he called barbarism; and although it was neglected by political theorists after the war was won, the collapse of Communism and the rise of Islamic states are winning it new readers.   Grice: “Collingwood thought of language importantly enough to dedicate a full seminar at Oxford to it. He entitled it “Language.” The first section is on “symbol and expression.” Language comes into existence with imagination, as a feature of experience at the conscious level. . . ‘. . . It is an imaginative activity whose function is to express emotion. Intel- lectual language is this same thing intellectualized, or modified so as to express thought.’ A symbol is established by agreement; but this agreement is established in a language that already exists. In this way, intellectualized language ‘presupposes imaginative language or language proper. . . in the traditional theory of language these relations are reversed, with disastrous results.’ Children do not learn to speak by being shown things while their names are uttered; or if they do, it is because (unlike, say, cats) they already understand the language of pointing and naming. The child may be accustomed to hearing ‘Hatty off!’ when its bonnet is removed; then the child may exclaim ‘Hattiaw!’ when it removes its own bonnet and throws it out of the perambulator. The exclamation is not a symbol, but an expression of satisfaction at removing the bonnet. The second section is on “Psychical Expression.” More primitive than linguistic expression is psychical expression: ‘the doing of involuntary and perhaps even wholly unconscious bodily acts [such as grimac- ing], related in a peculiar way to the emotions [such as pain] they are said to express.’ A single experience can be analyzed: -- sensum (as an abdominal gripe), or the field of sensation containing this; ) the emotional charge on the sensum (as visceral pain); -- the psychical expression (as the grimace). We can observe and interpret psychical expressions intellectually. But there is the possibility of emotional contagion, or sympathy, whereby expressions can also be sensa for others, with their own emotional charges. Examples are the spread of panic through a crowd, or a dog’s urge to attack the person who is afraid of it (or the cat that runs from it). Psychical emotions can be expressed only psychically. But there are emotions of consciousness (as hatred, love, anger, shame): these are the emotional charges, not on sensa, but on modes of consciousness, which can be expressed in language or psychically. Expressed psychically, they have the same analysis as psychical emotions; for example, --  ‘consciousness of our own inferiority, ) ‘shame -- ) ‘blushing.’ Shame is not the emotional charge on the sensa associated with blushing. ‘The common-sense view [that we blush because we are ashamed] is right, and the James–Lange theory is wrong.’ Emotions of consciousness can be expressed in two different ways because, more generally, a ‘higher level [of experience] differs from the lower in having a new principle of organization; this does not supersede the old, it is superimposed on it. The lower type of experience is perpetuated in the higher type’ somewhat as matter is perpetuated, even with a new form. ‘A mode of consciousness like shame is thus, formally, a mode of consciousness and nothing else; materially, it is a constellation or synthesis of psychical expe- riences.’ But consciousness is ‘an activity by which those elements are combined in this particular way.’ It is not just a new arrangement of those elements— otherwise the sensa of which shame is the emotional charge would have been obvious, and the James–Lange theory would not have needed to arise. ‘[E]ach new level [of experience] must organize itself according to its own principles before a transition can be made to the next’. Therefore, to move beyond consciousness to intellect, ‘emotions of consciousness must be formally or linguistically expressed, not only materially or psychically expressed’. The third section is on “Imaginative Expression.” Psychical expression is uncontrollable. At the level of awareness, expressions are experienced ‘as activities belonging to ourselves and controlled in the same sense as the emotions they express. ‘Bodily actions expressing certain emotions, insofar as they come under our control and are conceived by us in our awareness of controlling them, as our way of expressing these emotions, are language.’ ‘[A]ny theory of language must begin here.’ The controlled act of expression is materially the same as psychical expression; the difference is just that it is done ‘on purpose’. ‘[T]he conversion of impression into idea by the work of consciousness im- mensely multiplies the emotions that demand expression.’ ‘There are no unexpressed emotions.’ What are so called are emotions, already expressed at one level, of which somebody is trying to become conscious. 5From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James-Lange_theory, The theory states that within human beings, as a response to experiences in the world, the autonomic nervous system creates physiological events such as muscular tension, a rise in heart rate, perspiration, and dryness of the mouth. Emotions, then, are feelings which come about as a result of these physiological changes, rather than being their cause. Corresponding to the series of sensum, emotional charge, psychical expression (as in red color, fear, start), we have, say, -- ) bonnet removal, ) feeling of triumph, -- cry of ‘Hattiaw!’ The child imitates the speech of others only when it realizes that they are speaking. The fourth section is on “Language and Languages.” Language need not be spoken by the tongue. ‘[T]here is no way of expressing the same feeling in two different media.’ However, ‘each one of us, whenever he expresses himself, is doing so with his whole body’, in the ‘original language of total bodily gesture’—this is the ‘motor side’ of the ‘total imaginative experience’ identified as art proper in Book I. The sixth section is on “Speaker and Hearer.” A child’s first utterances are not addressed to anybody. But a speaker is always -- ness does not begin as a mere self-consciousness. . . the consciousness of our own existence is also consciousness of the existence of’ other persons. These persons could be cats or trees or shadows: as a form of thought, consciousness can make mistakes [§ .]. In speaking, we do not exactly communicate an emotion to a listener. To do this would be to cause the listener to have a similar emotion; but to compare the emotions, we would need language. The single experience of expressing emotion has two parts: the emotion, and the controlled bodily action expressing it. This union of idea with expression can be considered from two points of view: -- ) we can express what we feel only because we know it; -- ) we know what we feel because we can express it. ‘The person to whom speech is addressed is already familiar with this double situation’. He ‘takes what he hears exactly as if it were speech of his own. . . and this constructs in himself the idea which those words express.’ But he attributes the idea to the speaker. This does not presuppose community of language; it is community of language. If the hearer is to understand the speaker though, he must have enough expe- rience to have the impressions from which the ideas of the speaker are derived. (Collingwood’s footnote to the section title is ‘In this section, whatever is said of speech is meant of language in general.’) conscious of himself as speaking, so he is a also a listener. The origin of self-consciousness will not be discussed. However, ‘Conscious- However, misunderstanding may be the fault of the speaker, if his consciousness is corrupt. The seventh section is on Language and Thought: Language is an activity of thought; but if thought is taken in the narrower sense of intellect, then language expresses not thought, but emotions. However, these may be the emotions of a thinker. ‘Everything which imagination presents to itself is a here, a now’. This might be the song of a thrush in May. One may imagine, alongside this, the January song of the thrush; but at the level of imagination, the two songs coalesce into one. By thinking, one may analyze the song into parts—notes; or one may relate it to things not imagined, such as the January thrush song that one remembers having heard four months ago at dawn (though one may not remember the song -- to express any kind of thought (again, in the narrower sense), language must be adapted. The eighth section is on “The Grammatical Analysis of Language.” This adaptation of language to the expression of thought is the function or business of the grammarian. ‘I do not call it purpose, because he does not propose it to himself as a conscious aim’. The grammarian analyzes, not the activity of language, but ‘speech’ or ‘discourse’, the supposed product of speech. But this product ‘is a metaphysical fiction. It is supposed to exist only because the theory of language is approached from the standpoint of the philosophy of craft. . . what the grammarian is really doing is to think, not about a product of the activity of speaking, but about the activity itself, distorted in his thoughts about it by the assumption that it is not an activity, but a product or “thing”. ‘Next, this “thing” must be scientifically studied; and this involves a double process. The first stage of this process is to cut the “thing” up into parts. Some readers will object to this phrase on the ground that I have used a verb of acting when I ought to have used a verb of thinking. . . [but] philosophical controversies are not to be settled by a sort of police-regulation governing people’s choice of words. . . I meant cut. . àBird songs are wonderful to hear; but I am not sufficiently familiar with them, or I live in the wrong place, to be able to recognize seasonal variations in them. Looking for my own examples, I can remember that, last summer, I became drenched in sweat from walking at midday in the hills above the Aegean coast, before giving a mathematics lecture; but I need not remember the feeling of the heat.) itself ). Analyzing and relating are not the only kinds of thought. The point is that. -- ‘The final process is to devise a scheme of relations between the parts thus divided. . . a) ‘Lexicography. Every word, as it actually occurs in discourse, occurs once and once only. . . Thus we get a new fiction: the recurring word’. ‘Meanings’ of words are established in words, so we get another fiction: synonymity. b) Accidence. The rules whereby a single word is modified into dominus, domine, dominum are also ‘palpable fictions; for it is notorious that excep- tions to them occur’. c) Syntax. ‘A grammarian is not a kind of scientist studying the actual structure of lan- guage; he is a kind of butcher’. Idioms are another example of how language resists the grammarian’s efforts. The ninth section is on The Logical Analysis of Language. Logical technique aims ‘to make language into a perfect vehicle for the expression of thought.’ It asssumes ‘that the grammatical transformation of language has been successfully accomplished.’ It makes three further assumptions:) the propositional assumption that some ‘sentences’ make statements; ) the principle of homolingual translation whereby one sentence can mean exactly the same as another (or group of others) in the same language;) logical preferability: one sentence may be preferred to another that has the same meaning. The criterion is not ease of understanding (this is the stylist’s concern), but ease of manipulation by the logician’s technique to suit his aims. The logician’s modification of language can to some extent be carried out; but it tries to pull language apart into two things: language proper, and symbolism. ‘No serious writer or speaker ever utters a thought unless he thinks it worth uttering...Nor does he ever utter it except with a choice of words, and in a tone of voice, that express his sense of this importance.’ The problem is that written words do not show tone of voice. One is tempted to believe that scientific discourse is what is written; what is spoken is this and something else, emotional expression. Good logic would show that the logical structure of a proposition is not clear from its written form. Good literature is written so (8Collingwood imaginatively describes Dr. Richards, who writes of Tolstoy’s view of art, ‘This is plainly untrue’, as if he were a cat shaking a drop of water from its paw. Dr. Richards is Ivor Armstrong Richards, to whose Principles of Literary Criticism Collingwood refers; ac- cording to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._A._Richards (accessed December , ), ‘Richards is regularly considered one of the founders of the contemporary study of literature in English’.) (In a footnote, Collingwood mentions an example of Cook Wilson: ‘That building is the Bodleian’ could mean ‘That building is the Bodleian’ or ‘That building is the Bodleian.’ that the reader cannot help but read it with the right tempo and tone. The proposition, as a form of words expressing thought and not emotion, is a fictitious entity. But ‘a second and more difficult thesis’ is that words do not express thought at all directly; they express the emotional charge on a thought, allowing the hearer to rediscover the thought ‘whose peculiar emotional tone the speaker has expressed.’The tenth section is on “Language and Symbolism.” Symbols and technical terms are invented for unemotional scientific purposes, but they always acquire emotional expressiveness. ‘Every mathematician knows this.’ Intellectualized language, • as language, expresses emotion, • as symbolism, has meaning; it points beyond emotion to a thought. ‘The progressive intellectualization of language, its progressive conversion by the work of grammar and logic into a scientific symbolism, thus represents not a progressive drying-up of emotion, but its progressive articulation and specializa- tion. We are not getting away from an emotional atmosphere into a dry, rational atmosphere; we are acquiring new emotions and new means of expressing them.’ Grice: “Collingwood improves on Croce – for one, he makes Croce understandable at Oxford. Collingwood wants to distinguish between emotion and expression of emotion. He also speaks of communication of emotion. The keyword is ‘expression.’ Collingwood distinguishes between uncontrolled manifestation and controlled manifestation. It is the latter that he dignifies with the term ‘expression.’ He makes an interesting point about the recipient. The recipient must be in some degree of familiarty with the emotion expressed by the utterer that the utterer is ‘communicating.’ To communicate is not really like ‘transfer.’ It is not THE SAME EMOTION that gets transferred.  Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Collingwood,” in “Metaphysics,” in D. F. Pears, The nature of metaphysics. Luigi Speranza, “A commentary on the language and conversation section of Collingwood’s “The idea of language.”

commitment: Grice’s commitment to the 39 Articles. An utterer is committed to those and only those entities to which the bound variables of his utterance must be capable of referring in order that the utterance made be true.” Cf. Grice on substitutional quantification for his feeling Byzantine, and ‘gap’ sign in the analysis.

common-ground status assignment: While Grice was invited to a symposium on ‘mutual knowledge,’ he never was for ‘regressive accounts’ of ‘know,’ perhaps because he had to be different, and the idea of the mutual or common knowledge was the obvious way to deal with his account of communication. He rejects it and opts for an anti-sneak clause. In the common-ground he uses the phrase, “What the eye no longer sees, the heart no longer grieves for.” What does he mean? He means that in the case of some recognizable divergence between the function of a communication device in a rational calculus and in the vernacular, one may have to assign ‘common ground status’ to certain features, e. g. [The king of France is] bald. By using the square brackets, or subscripts, in “Vacuous names and descriptions,” the material within their scope is ‘immune’ to refutation. It has some sort of conversational ‘inertia.’ So the divergence, for which Grice’s heart grieved, is no more to be seen by Grice’s eye. Strwson and Wiggins view that this is only tentative for Grice. the regulations for common-ground assignment have to do with general rational constraints on conversation. Grice is clear in “Causal,” and as Strawson lets us know, he was already clear in “Introduction” when talking of a ‘pragmatic rule.’ Strawson states the rule in terms of making your conversational contribution the logically strongest possible. If we abide by an imperative of conversational helpfulness, enjoining the maximally giving and receiving of information and the influencing and being influenced by others in the institution of a decisions, the sub-imperative follows to the effect, ‘Thou shalt NOT make a weak move compared to the stronger one that thou canst truthfully make, and with equal or greater economy of means.’“Causal” provides a more difficult version, because it deals with non-extensional contexts where ‘strong’ need not be interpreted as ‘logical strength’ in terms of entailment. Common ground status assignment springs from the principle of conversational helpfulness or conversational benevolence. What would be the benevolent point of ‘informing’ your addressee what you KNOW your addressee already knows? It is not even CONCEPTUALLY possible. You are not ‘informing’ him if you are aware that he knows it. So, what Strawson later calls the principle of presumption of ignorance and the principle of the presumption of knowledge are relevant. There is a balance between the two. If Strawson asks Grice, “Is the king of France bald?” Grice is entitled to assume that Strawson thinks two things Grice will perceive as having been assigned a ‘common-ground’ status as uncontroversial topic not worth conversing about. First, Strawson thinks that there is one king. (∃x)Fx. Second, Strawson thinks that there is at most one king. (x)(y)((Fx.Fy)⊃ x=y). That the king is bald is NOT assigned common-ground status, because Grice cannot expect that Strawson thinks that Grice KNOWS that. Grice symbolises the common-ground status by means of subscripts. He also uses square-bracekts, so that anything within the scope of the square brackets is immune to controversy, or as Grice also puts it, conversationally _inert_: things we don’t talk about.

communication device: Grice: “I shall frequently speak of a ‘device,’ because its etymology is fascinating.”  divisare, frequentative of Latin dividere – Grice: “So, ultimately, it’s a Platonic notion, since he was into division. The Romans did not quite need a frequentative for ‘dividere,’ but the Italians did, and this was passed to the Gallics, and then to the Brits.”Grice always has ‘or communication devices’ at the tip of his tongue. “Language or communication devices” (WoW: 284). A device is produced. A device can be misunderstood.

communicatum: With the linguistic turn, as Grice notes, it was all about ‘language.’ But at Oxford they took a cavalier attitude to language, that Grice felt like slightly rectifying, while keeping it cavalier as we like it at Oxford. The colloquialism of ‘mean’ does not translate well in the Graeco-Roman tradition Grice was educated via his Lit. Hum. (Philos.) and at Clifton. ‘Communicate’ might do. On top, Grice does use ‘communicate’ on various occasions in WoW.  By psi-transmission, something that belonged in the emissor becomes ‘common property,’ ‘communion’ has been achived. Now the recipient KNOWS that it is raining (shares the belief with the emissor) and IS GOING to bring that umbrella (has formed a desire). “Communication” is cognate with ‘communion,’ while conversation is cognate with ‘sex’! When Grice hightlights the ‘common ground’ in ‘communication’ he is being slightly rhetorical, so it is good when he weakens the claim from ‘common ground’ to ‘non-trivial.’ A: I’m going to the concert. My uncle’s brother went to that concert. The emissor cannot presume that his addressee KNEW that he had an unlce let alone that his uncle had a brother (the emissor’s father). But any expansion would trigger the wrong implicaturum. One who likes ‘communication’ is refined Strawson (I’m using refined as J. Barnes does it, “turn Plato into refined Strawson”). Both in his rat-infested example and at the inaugural lecture at Oxford. Grice, for one, has given us reason to think that, with sufficient care, and far greater refinement than I have indicated, it is possible to expound such a concept of communication-intention or, as he calls it, utterer's meaning, which is proof against objection.  it is a commonplace that Grice belongs, as most philosophers of the twentieth century, to the movement of the linguistic turn. Short and Lewis have “commūnĭcare,” earlier “conmunicare,” f. communis, and thus sharing the prefix with “conversare.” Now “communis” is an interesting lexeme that Grice uses quite centrally in his idea of the ‘common ground’ – when a feature of discourse is deemed to have been assigned ‘common-ground status.’ “Communis” features the “cum-” prefix, commūnis (comoinis); f. “con” and root “mu-,” to bind; Sanscr. mav-; cf.: immunis, munus, moenia. The ‘communicatum’ (as used by Tammelo in  social philosophy) may well cover what Grice would call the total ‘significatio,’ or ‘significatum.’ Grice takes this seriously. Let us start then by examining what we mean by ‘linguistic,’ or ‘communication.’ It is curious that while most Griceians overuse ‘communicative’ as applied to ‘intention,’ Grice does not. Communicator’s intention, at most. This is the Peirce in Grice’s soul. Meaning provides an excellent springboard for Grice to centre his analysis on psychological or soul-y verbs as involving the agent and the first person: smoke only figuratively means fire, and the expression smoke only figuratively (or metabolically) means that there is fire. It is this or that utterer (say, Grice) who means, say, by uttering Where theres smoke theres fire, or ubi fumus, ibi ignis, that where theres smoke theres fire. A means something by uttering x, an utterance-token is roughly equivalent to utterer U intends the utterance of x to produce some effect in his addressee A by means of the recognition of this intention; and we may add that to ask what U means is to ask for a specification of the intended effect - though, of course, it may not always be possible to get a straight answer involving a that-clause, for example, a belief that  He does provide a more specific example involving the that-clause at a later stage. By uttering x, U means that-ψ­_b-dp ≡ (Ǝφ)(Ǝf)(Ǝc) U utters x  intending x to be such that anyone who has φ think that x has f, f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing that p, and (Ǝφ') U intends x to be such that anyone who has φ' think, via thinking that x has f and that f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing that p, that U ψ-s that p, and in view of (Ǝφ') U intending x to be such that anyone who has φ' think, via thinking that x has f, and f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing that p, that U ψ-s that p, U ψ-s that p, and, for some substituends of ψ_b-d, U utters x intending that, should there actually be anyone who has φ, he will, via thinking in view of (Ǝφ') U intending x to be such that anyone who has φ' think, via thinking that x has f, and  f is correlated in way c with ψ-ing that p, that U ψ-s that p, U ψ-s that p himself ψ that p, and it is not the case that, for some inference element E, U intends x to be such that anyone who has φ both rely on E in coming to ψ, or think that U ψ-s, that p and  think that (Ǝφ) U intends x to be such that anyone who has φ come to ψ (or think that U ψ-s) that p without relying on E. Besides St. John The Baptist, and Salome, Grice cites few Namess in Meaning. But he makes a point about Stevenson! For Stevenson, smoke means fire. Meaning develops out of an interest by Grice on the philosophy of Peirce. In his essays on Peirce, Grice quotes from many other authors, including, besides Peirce himself (!), Ogden, Richards, and Ewing, or A. C. Virtue is not a fire-shovel Ewing, as Grice calls him, and this or that cricketer. In the characteristic Oxonian fashion of a Lit. Hum., Grice has no intention to submit Meaning to publication. Publishing is vulgar. Bennett, however, guesses that Grice decides to publish it just a year after his Defence of a dogma. Bennett’s argument is that Defence of a dogma pre-supposes some notion of meaning. However, a different story may be told, not necessarily contradicting Bennetts. It is Strawson who submits the essay by Grice to The Philosophical Review (henceforth, PR) Strawson attends Grices talk on Meaning for The Oxford Philosophical Society, and likes it. Since In defence of a dogma was co-written with Strawson, the intention Bennett ascribes to Grice is Strawsons. Oddly, Strawson later provides a famous alleged counter-example to Grice on meaning in Intention and convention in speech acts, following J. O. Urmson’s earlier attack to the sufficiency of Grices analysans -- which has Grice dedicating a full James lecture (No. 5) to it. there is Strawsons rat-infested house for which it is insufficient. An interesting fact, that confused a few, is that Hart quotes from Grices Meaning in his critical review of Holloway for The Philosophical Quarterly. Hart quotes Grice pre-dating the publication of Meaning. Harts point is that Holloway should have gone to Oxford! In Meaning, Grice may be seen as a practitioner of ordinary-language philosophy: witness his explorations of the factivity (alla know, remember, or see) or lack thereof of various uses of to mean. The second part of the essay, for which he became philosophically especially popular, takes up an intention-based approach to semantic notions. The only authority Grice cites, in typical Oxonian fashion, is, via Ogden and Barnes, Stevenson, who, from The New World (and via Yale, too!) defends an emotivist theory of ethics, and making a few remarks on how to mean is used, with scare quotes, in something like a causal account (Smoke means fire.). After its publication Grices account received almost as many alleged counterexamples as rule-utilitarianism (Harrison), but mostly outside Oxford, and in The New World. New-World philosophers seem to have seen Grices attempt as reductionist and as oversimplifying. At Oxford, the sort of counterexample Grice received, before Strawson, was of the Urmson-type: refined, and subtle. I think your account leaves bribery behind. On the other hand, in the New World ‒ in what Grice calls the Latter-Day School of Nominalism, Quine is having troubles with empiricism. Meaning was repr. in various collections, notably in Philosophical Logic, ed. by Strawson. It should be remembered that it is Strawson who has the thing typed and submitted for publication. Why Meaning should be repr. in a collection on Philosophical Logic only Strawson knows. But Grice does say that his account may help clarify the meaning of entails! It may be Strawsons implicaturum that Parkinson should have repr. (and not merely credited) Meaning by Grice in his series for Oxford on The theory of meaning. The preferred quotation for Griceians is of course The Oxford Philosophical Society quote, seeing that Grice recalled the exact year when he gave the talk for the Philosophical Society at Oxford! It is however, the publication in The Philosophi, rather than the quieter evening at the Oxford Philosophical Society, that occasioned a tirade of alleged counter-examples by New-World philosophers. Granted, one or two Oxonians ‒ Urmson and Strawson ‒ fell in! Urmson criticises the sufficiency of Grices account, by introducing an alleged counter-example involving bribery. Grice will consider a way out of Urmsons alleged counter-example in his fifth Wiliam James Lecture, rightly crediting and thanking Urmson for this! Strawsons alleged counter-example was perhaps slightly more serious, if regressive. It also involves the sufficiency of Grices analysis. Strawsons rat-infested house alleged counter-example started a chain which required Grice to avoid, ultimately, any sneaky intention by way of a recursive clause to the effect that, for utterer U to have meant that p, all meaning-constitutive intentions should be above board. But why this obsession by Grice with mean? He is being funny. Spots surely dont mean, only mean.They dont have a mind. Yet Grice opens with a specific sample. Those spots mean, to the doctor, that you, dear, have measles. Mean? Yes, dear, mean, doctors orders. Those spots mean measles. But how does the doctor know? Cannot he be in the wrong? Not really, mean is factive, dear! Or so Peirce thought. Grice is amazed that Peirce thought that some meaning is factive. The hole in this piece of cloth means that a bullet went through is is one of Peirce’s examples. Surely, as Grice notes, this is an unhappy example. The hole in the cloth may well have caused by something else, or fabricated. (Or the postmark means that the letter went through the post.) Yet, Grice was having Oxonian tutees aware that Peirce was krypto-technical. Grice chose for one of his pre-Meaning seminars on Peirce’s general theory of signs, with emphasis on general, and the correspondence of Peirce and Welby. Peirce, rather than the Vienna circle, becomes, in vein with Grices dissenting irreverent rationalism, important as a source for Grices attempt to English Peirce. Grices implicaturum seems to be that Peirce, rather than Ayer, cared for the subtleties of meaning and sign, never mind a verificationist theory about them! Peirce ultra-Latinate-cum-Greek taxonomies have Grice very nervous, though. He knew that his students were proficient in the classics, but still. Grice thus proposes to reduce all of Peirceian divisions and sub-divisions (one sub-division too many) to mean. In the proceedings, he quotes from Ogden, Richards, and Ewing. In particular, Grice was fascinated by the correspondence of Peirce with Lady Viola Welby, as repr. by Ogden/Richards in, well, their study on the meaning of meaning. Grice thought the science of symbolism pretentious, but then he almost thought Lady Viola Welby slightly pretentious, too, if youve seen her; beautiful lady. It is via Peirce that Grice explores examples such as those spots meaning measles. Peirce’s obsession is with weathercocks almost as Ockham was with circles on wine-barrels. Old-World Grices use of New-World Peirce is illustrative, thus, of the Oxonian linguistic turn focused on ordinary language. While Peirce’s background was not philosophical, Grice thought it comical enough. He would say that Peirce is an amateur, but then he said the same thing about Mill, whom Grice had to study by heart to get his B. A. Lit. Hum.! Plus, as Watson commented, what is wrong with amateur? Give me an amateur philosopher ANY day, if I have to choose from professional Hegel! In finding Peirce krypo-technical, Grice is ensuing that his tutees, and indeed any Oxonian philosophy student (he was university lecturer) be aware that to mean should be more of a priority than this or that jargon by this or that (New World?) philosopher!? Partly! Grice wanted his students to think on their own, and draw their own conclusions! Grice cites Ewing, Ogden/Richards, and many others. Ewing, while Oxford-educated, had ended up at Cambridge (Scruton almost had him as his tutor) and written some points on Meaninglessness! Those spots mean measles. Grice finds Peirce krypto-technical and proposes to English him into an ordinary-language philosopher. Surely it is not important whether we consider a measles spot a sign, a symbol, or an icon. One might just as well find a doctor in London who thinks those spots symbolic. If Grice feels like Englishing Peirce, he does not altogether fail! meaning, reprints, of Meaning and other essays, a collection of reprints and offprints of Grices essays. Meaning becomes a central topic of at least two strands in Retrospective epilogue. The first strand concerns the idea of the centrality of the utterer. What Grice there calls meaning BY (versus meaning TO), i.e. as he also puts it, active or agents meaning. Surely he is right in defending an agent-based account to meaning. Peirce need not, but Grice must, because he is working with an English root, mean, that is only figurative applicable to non-agentive items (Smoke means rain). On top, Grice wants to conclude that only a rational creature (a person) can meanNN properly. Non-human animals may have a correlate. This is a truly important point for Grice since he surely is seen as promoting a NON-convention-based approach to meaning, and also defending from the charge of circularity in the non-semantic account of propositional attitudes. His final picture is a rationalist one. P₁ G wants to communicate about a danger to P₂. This presupposes there IS a danger (item of reality). Then P₁ G believes there is a danger, and communicates to P₂ G2 that there is a danger. This simple view of conversation as rational co-operation underlies Grices account of meaning too, now seen as an offshoot of philosophical psychology, and indeed biology, as he puts it. Meaning as yet another survival mechanism. While he would never use a cognate like significance in his Oxford Philosophical Society talk, Grice eventually starts to use such Latinate cognates at a later stage of his development. In Meaning, Grice does not explain his goal. By sticking with a root that the Oxford curriculum did not necessarily recognised as philosophical (amateur Peirce did!), Grice is implicating that he is starting an ordinary-language botanising on his own repertoire! Grice was amused by the reliance by Ewing on very Oxonian examples contra Ayer: Surely Virtue aint a fire-shovel is perfectly meaningful, and if fact true, if, Ill admit, somewhat misleading and practically purposeless at Cambridge. Again, the dismissal by Grice of natural meaning is due to the fact that natural meaning prohibits its use in the first person and followed by a that-clause. ‘I mean-n that p’ sounds absurd, no communication-function seems in the offing, there is no ‘sign for,’ as Woozley would have it. Grice found, with Suppes, all types of primacy (ontological, axiological, psychological) in utterers meaning. In Retrospective epilogue, he goes back to the topic, as he reminisces that it is his suggestion that there are two allegedly distinguishable meaning concepts, even if one is meta-bolical, which may be called natural meaning and non-natural meaning. There is this or that test (notably factivity-entailment vs. cancelation, but also scare quotes) which may be brought to bear to distinguish one concept from the other. We may, for example, inquire whether a particular occurrence of the predicate mean is factive or non-factive, i. e., whether for it to be true that [so and so] means that p, it does or does not have to be the case that it is true that p. Again, one may ask whether the use of quotation marks to enclose the specification of what is meant would be inappropriate or appropriate. If factivity, as in know, remember, and see, is present and quotation marks, oratio recta, are be inappropriate, we have a case of natural meaning. Otherwise the meaning involved is non-natural meaning. We may now ask whether there is a single overarching idea which lies behind both members of this dichotomy of uses to which the predicate meaning that seems to be Subjects. If there is such a central idea it might help to indicate to us which of the two concepts is in greater need of further analysis and elucidation and in what direction such elucidation should proceed. Grice confesses that he has only fairly recently come to believe that there is such an overarching idea and that it is indeed of some service in the proposed inquiry. The idea behind both uses of mean is that of consequence, or consequentia, as Hobbes has it. If x means that p, something which includes p or the idea of p, is a consequence of x. In the metabolic natural use of meaning that p, p, this or that consequence, is this or that state of affairs. In the literal, non-metabolic, basic, non-natural use of meaning that p, (as in Smith means that his neighbour’s three-year child is an adult), p, this or that consequence is this or that conception or complexus which involves some other conception. This perhaps suggests that of the two concepts it is, as it should, non-natural meaning which is more in need of further elucidation. It seems to be the more specialised of the pair, and it also seems to be the less determinate. We may, e. g., ask how this or that conception enters the picture. Or we may ask whether what enters the picture is the conception itself or its justifiability. On these counts Grice should look favorably on the idea that, if further analysis should be required for one of the pair, the notion of non-natural meaning would be first in line. There are factors which support the suitability of further analysis for the concept of non-natural meaning. Meaning_NN that p (non-natural meaning) does not look as if it Namess an original feature of items in the world, for two reasons which are possibly not mutually independent. One reason is that, given suitable background conditions, meaning, can be changed by fiat. The second reason is that the presence of meaning_NN is dependent on a framework provided by communication, if that is not too circular.  Communication is in the philosophical lexicon. Lewis and Short have “commūnĭcātĭo,” f. communicare,"(several times in Cicero, elsewhere rare), and as they did with negatio and they will with significatio, Short and Lewis render, unhelpfully, as a making common, imparting, communicating. largitio et communicatio civitatis;” “quaedam societas et communicatio utilitatum,” “consilii communicatio, “communicatio sermonis,” criminis cum pluribus; “communicatio nominum, i. e. the like appellation of several objects; “juris; “damni; In rhetorics, communicatio, trading on the communis, a figure, translating Grecian ἀνακοίνωσις, in accordance with which the utterer turns to his addressee, and, as it were, allows him to take part in the inquiry. It seems to Grice, then, at least reasonable and possibly even emphatically mandatory, to treat the claim that a communication vehicle, such as this and that expression means that p, in this transferred, metaphoric, or meta-bolic use of means that as being reductively analysable in terms of this or that feature of this or that utterer, communicator, or user of this or that expression. The use of meaning that as applied to this or that expression is posterior to and explicable through the utterer-oriented, or utterer-relativised use, i.e. involving a reference to this or that communicator or user of this or that expression. More specifically, one should license a metaphorical use of mean, where one allows the claim that this or that expression means that p, provided that this or that utterer, in this or that standard fashion, means that p, i.e. in terms of this or that souly statee toward this or that propositional complexus this or that utterer ntends, in a standardly fashion, to produce by his uttering this or that utterance. That this or that expression means (in this metaphorical use) that p is thus explicable either in terms of this or that souly state which is standardly intended to produce in this or that addressee A by this or that utterer of this or that expression, or in this or that souly staken up by this or that utterer toward this or that activity or action of this or that utterer of this or that expression. Meaning was in the air in Oxfords linguistic turn. Everybody was talking meaning. Grice manages to quote from Hares early “Mind” essay on the difference between imperatives and indicatives, also Duncan-Jones on the fugitive proposition,  and of course his beloved Strawson. Grice was also concerned by the fact that in the manoeuvre of the typical ordinary-language philosopher, there is a constant abuse of mean. Surely Grice wants to stick with the utterers meaning as the primary use. Expressions mean only derivatively. To do that, he chose Peirce to see if he could clarify it with meaning that. Grice knew that the polemic was even stronger in London, with Ogden and Lady Viola Welby. In the more academic Oxford milieu, Grice knew that a proper examination of meaning, would lead him, via Kneale and his researches on the history of semantics, to the topic of signification that obsessed the modistae (and their modus significandi). For what does L and S say about about this? This is Grice’s reply to popular Ogden. They want to know what the meaning of meaning is? Here is the Oxononian response by Grice, with a vengeance. Grice is not an animist nor a mentalist, even modest.  While he allows for natural phenomena to mean (smoke means fire), meaning is best ascribed to some utterer, where this meaning is nothing but the intentions behind his utterance. This is the fifth James lecture. Grice was careful enough to submit it to PR, since it is a strictly philosophical development of the views expressed in Meaning which Strawson had submitted on Grice’s behalf to the same Review and which had had a series of responses by various philosophers. Among these philosophers is Strawson himself in Intention and convention in the the theory of speech acts, also in PR. Grice quotes from very many other philosophers in this essay, including: Urmson, Stampe, Strawson, Schiffer, and Searle. Strawson is especially relevant since he started a series of alleged counter-examples with his infamous example of the rat-infested house. Grice particularly treasured Stampes alleged counter-example involving his beloved bridge! Avramides earns a D. Phil Oxon. on that, under Strawson! This is Grices occasion to address some of the criticisms ‒ in the form of alleged counter-examples, typically, as his later reflections on epagoge versus diagoge note  ‒ by Urmson, Strawson, and other philosophers associated with Oxford, such as Searle, Stampe, and Schiffer. The final analysandum is pretty complex (of the type that he did find his analysis of I am hearing a sound complex in Personal identity  ‒ hardly an obstacle for adopting it), it became yet another target of attack by especially New-World philosophers in the pages of Mind, Nous, and other journals, This is officially the fifth James lecture. Grice takes up the analysis of meaning he had presented way back at the Oxford Philosophical Society. Motivated mainly by the attack by Urmson and by Strawson in Intention and convention in speech acts, that offered an alleged counter-example to the sufficiency of Grices analysis, Grice ends up introducing so many intention that he almost trembled. He ends up seeing meaning as a value-paradeigmatic concept, perhaps never realisable in a sublunary way. But it is the analysis in this particular essay where he is at his formal best. He distinguishes between protreptic and exhibitive utterances, and also modes of correlation (iconic, conventional). He symbolises the utterer and the addressee, and generalises over the type of psychological state, attitude, or stance, meaning seems to range (notably indicative vs. imperative). He formalises the reflexive intention, and more importantly, the overtness of communication in terms of a self-referential recursive intention that disallows any sneaky intention to be brought into the picture of meaning-constitutive intentions. Grice thought he had dealt with Logic and conversation enough! So he feels of revising his Meaning. After all, Strawson had had the cheek to publish Meaning by Grice and then go on to criticize it in Intention and convention in speech acts. So this is Grices revenge, and he wins! He ends with the most elaborate theory of mean that an Oxonian could ever hope for. And to provoke the informalists such as Strawson (and his disciples at Oxford – led by Strawson) he pours existential quantifiers like the plague! He manages to quote from Urmson, whom he loved! No word on Peirce, though, who had originated all this! His implicaturum: Im not going to be reprimanted in informal discussion about my misreading Peirce at Harvard! The concluding note is about artificial substitutes for iconic representation, and meaning as a human institution. Very grand. This is Grices metabolical projection of utterers meaning to apply to anything OTHER than utterers meaning, notably a token of the utterers expression and a TYPE of the utterers expression, wholly or in part. Its not like he WANTS to do it, he NEEDS it to give an account of implicaturum. The phrase utterer is meant to provoke. Grice thinks that speaker is too narrow. Surely you can mean by just uttering stuff! This is the sixth James lecture, as published in “Foundations of Language” (henceforth, “FL”), or “The foundations of language,” as he preferred. As it happens, it became a popular lecture, seeing that Searle selected this from the whole set for his Oxford reading in philosophy on the philosophy of language. It is also the essay cited by Chomsky in his influential Locke lectures. Chomsky takes Grice to be a behaviourist, even along Skinners lines, which provoked a reply by Suppes, repr. in PGRICE. In The New World, the H. P. is often given in a more simplified form. Grice wants to keep on playing. In Meaning, he had said x means that p is surely reducible to utterer U means that p. In this lecture, he lectures us as to how to proceed. In so doing he invents this or that procedure: some basic, some resultant. When Chomsky reads the reprint in Searles Philosophy of Language, he cries: Behaviourist! Skinnerian! It was Suppes who comes to Grices defence. Surely the way Grice uses expressions like resultant procedure are never meant in the strict behaviourist way. Suppes concludes that it is much fairer to characterise Grice as an intentionalist. Published in FL, ed. by Staal, Repr.in Searle, The Philosophy of Language, Oxford, the sixth James Lecture, FL, resultant procedure, basic procedure. Staal asked Grice to publish the sixth James lecture for a newish periodical publication of whose editorial board he was a member. The fun thing is Grice complied! This is Grices shaggy-dog story. He does not seem too concerned about resultant procedures. As he will ll later say, surely I can create Deutero-Esperanto and become its master! For Grice, the primacy is the idiosyncratic, particularized utterer in this or that occasion. He knows a philosopher craves for generality, so he provokes the generality-searcher with divisions and sub-divisions of mean. But his heart does not seem to be there, and he is just being overformalistic and technical for the sake of it. I am glad that Putnam, of all people, told me in an aside, you are being too formal, Grice. I stopped with symbolism since! Communication. This is Grice’s clearest anti-animist attack by Grice. He had joins Hume in mocking causing and willing: The decapitation of Charles I as willing Charles Is death. Language semantics alla Tarski. Grice know sees his former self. If he was obsessed, after Ayer, with mean, he now wants to see if his explanation of it (then based on his pre-theoretic intuition) is theoretically advisable in terms other than dealing with those pre-theoretical facts, i.e. how he deals with a lexeme like mean. This is a bit like Grice: implicaturum, revisited. An axiological approach to meaning. Strictly a reprint of Grice, which should be the preferred citation. The date is given by Grice himself, and he knew! Grice also composed some notes on Remnants on meaning, by Schiffer. This is a bit like Grices meaning re-revisited. Schiffer had been Strawsons tutee at Oxford as a Rhode Scholar in the completion of his D. Phil. on Meaning, Clarendon. Eventually, Schiffer grew sceptic, and let Grice know about it! Grice did not find Schiffers arguments totally destructive, but saw the positive side to them. Schiffers arguments should remind any philosopher that the issues he is dealing are profound and bound to involve much elucidation before they are solved. This is a bit like Grice: implicaturum, revisited. Meaning revisited (an ovious nod to Evelyn Waughs Yorkshire-set novel) is the title Grice chose for a contribution to a symposium at Brighton organised by Smith. Meaning revisited (although Grice has earlier drafts entitled Meaning and philosophical psychology) comprises three sections. In the first section, Grice is concerned with the application of his modified Occam’s razor now to the very lexeme, mean. Cf. How many senses does sense have? Cohen: The Senses of Senses. In the second part, Grice explores an evolutionary model of creature construction reaching a stage of non-iconic representation. Finally, in the third section, motivated to solve what he calls a major problem ‒ versus the minor problem concerning the transition from the meaning by the utterer to the meaning by the expression. Grice attempts to construct meaning as a value-paradeigmatic notion. A version was indeed published in the proceedings of the Brighton symposium, by Croom Helm, London. Grice has a couple of other drafts with variants on this title: philosophical psychology and meaning, psychology and meaning. He keeps, meaningfully, changing the order. It is not arbitrary that the fascinating exploration by Grice is in three parts. In the first, where he applies his Modified Occams razor to mean, he is revisiting Stevenson. Smoke means fire and I mean love, dont need different senses of mean. Stevenson is right when using scare quotes for smoke ‘meaning’ fire utterance. Grice is very much aware that that, the rather obtuse terminology of senses, was exactly the terminology he had adopted in both Meaning and the relevant James lectures (V and VI) at Harvard! Now, its time to revisit and to echo Graves, say, goodbye to all that! In the second part he applies Pology. While he knows his audience is not philosophical ‒ it is not Oxford ‒ he thinks they still may get some entertainment! We have a P feeling pain, simulating it, and finally uttering, I am in pain. In the concluding section, Grice becomes Plato. He sees meaning as an optimum, i.e. a value-paradeigmatic notion introducing value in its guise of optimality. Much like Plato thought circle works in his idiolect. Grice played with various titles, in the Grice Collection. Theres philosophical psychology and meaning. The reason is obvious. The lecture is strictly divided in sections, and it is only natural that Grice kept drafts of this or that section in his collection. In WOW Grice notes that he re-visited his Meaning re-visited at a later stage, too! And he meant it! Surely, there is no way to understand the stages of Grice’s development of his ideas about meaning without Peirce! It is obvious here that Grice thought that mean two figurative or metabolical extensions of use. Smoke means fire and Smoke means smoke. The latter is a transferred use in that impenetrability means lets change the topic if Humpty-Dumpty m-intends that it and Alice are to change the topic. Why did Grice feel the need to add a retrospective epilogue? He loved to say that what the “way of words” contains is neither his first, nor his last word. So trust him to have some intermediate words to drop. He is at his most casual in the very last section of the epilogue. The first section is more of a very systematic justification for any mistake the reader may identify in the offer. The words in the epilogue are thus very guarded and qualificatory. Just one example about our focus: conversational implicate and conversation as rational co-operation. He goes back to Essay 2, but as he notes, this was hardly the first word on the principle of conversational helpfulness, nor indeed the first occasion where he actually used implicaturum. As regards co-operation, the retrospective epilogue allows him to expand on a causal phrasing in Essay 2, “purposive, indeed rational.” Seeing in retrospect how the idea of rationality was the one that appealed philosophers most – since it provides a rationale and justification for what is otherwise an arbitrary semantic proliferation. Grice then distinguishes between the thesis that conversation is purposive, and the thesis that conversation is rational. And, whats more, and in excellent Griceian phrasing, there are two theses here, too. One thing is to see conversation as rational, and another, to use his very phrasing, as rational co-operation! Therefore, when one discusses the secondary literature, one should be attentive to whether the author is referring to Grices qualifications in the Retrospective epilogue. Grice is careful to date some items. However, since he kept rewriting, one has to be careful. These seven folder contain the material for the compilation. Grice takes the opportunity of the compilation by Harvard of his WOW, representative of the mid-60s, i. e. past the heyday of ordinary-language philosophy, to review the idea of philosophical progress in terms of eight different strands which display, however, a consistent and distinctive unity. Grice keeps playing with valediction, valedictory, prospective and retrospective, and the different drafts are all kept in The Grice Papers. The Retrospective epilogue, is divided into two sections. In the first section, he provides input for his eight strands, which cover not just meaning, and the assertion-implication distinction to which he alludes to in the preface, but for more substantial philosophical issues like the philosophy of perception, and the defense of common sense realism versus the sceptial idealist. The concluding section tackles more directly a second theme he had idenfitied in the preface, which is a methodological one, and his long-standing defence of ordinary-language philosophy. The section involves a fine distinction between the Athenian dialectic and the Oxonian dialectic, and tells the tale about his fairy godmother, G*. As he notes, Grice had dropped a few words in the preface explaining the ordering of essays in the compilation. He mentions that he hesitated to follow a suggestion by Bennett that the ordering of the essays be thematic and chronological. Rather, Grice chooses to publish the whole set of seven James lectures, what he calls the centerpiece, as part I. II, the explorations in semantics and metaphysics, is organised more or less thematically, though. In the Retrospective epilogue, Grice takes up this observation in the preface that two ideas or themes underlie his Studies: that of meaning, and assertion vs. implication, and philosophical methodology. The Retrospective epilogue is thus an exploration on eight strands he identifies in his own philosophy. Grices choice of strand is careful. For Grice, philosophy, like virtue, is entire. All the strands belong to the same knit, and therefore display some latitudinal, and, he hopes, longitudinal unity, the latter made evidence by his drawing on the Athenian dialectic as a foreshadow of the Oxonian dialectic to come, in the heyday of the Oxford school of analysis, when an interest in the serious study of ordinary language had never been since and will never be seen again. By these two types of unity, Grice means the obvious fact that all branches of philosophy (philosophy of language, or semantics, philosophy of perception, philosophical psychology, metaphysics, axiology, etc.) interact and overlap, and that a historical regard for ones philosophical predecessors is a must, especially at Oxford. Why is Grice obsessed with asserting? He is more interested, technically, in the phrastic, or dictor. Grice sees a unity, indeed, equi-vocality, in the buletic-doxastic continuum. Asserting is usually associated with the doxastic. Since Grice is always ready to generalise his points to cover the buletic (recall his Meaning, “theres by now no reason to stick to informative cases,”), it is best to re-define his asserting in terms of the phrastic. This is enough of a strong point. As Hare would agree, for emotivists like Barnes, say, an utterance of buletic force may not have any content whatsoever. For Grice, there is always a content, the proposition which becomes true when the action is done and the desire is fulfilled or satisfied. Grice quotes from Bennett. Importantly, Grice focuses on the assertion/non-assertion distinction. He overlooks the fact that for this or that of his beloved imperative utterance, asserting is out of the question, but explicitly conveying that p is not.  He needs a dummy to stand for a psychological or souly state, stance, or attitude of either boule or doxa, to cover the field of the utterer mode-neutrally conveying explicitly that his addressee A is to entertain that p. The explicatum or explicitum sometimes does the trick, but sometimes it does not. It is interesting to review the Names index to the volume, as well as the Subjects index. This is a huge collection, comprising 14 folders. By contract, Grice was engaged with Harvard, since it is the President of the College that holds the copyrights for the James lectures. The title Grice eventually chooses for his compilation of essays, which goes far beyond the James, although keeping them as the centerpiece, is a tribute to Locke, who, although obsessed with his idealist and empiricist new way of ideas, leaves room for both the laymans and scientists realist way of things, and, more to the point, for this or that philosophical semiotician to offer this or that study in the way of words. Early in the linguistic turn minor revolution, the expression the new way of words, had been used derogatorily. WOW is organised in two parts: Logic and conversation and the somewhat pretentiously titled Explorations in semantics and metaphysics, which offers commentary around the centerpiece. It also includes a Preface and a very rich and inspired Retrospective epilogue. From part I, the James lectures, only three had not been previously published. The first unpublished lecture is Prolegomena, which really sets the scene, and makes one wonder what the few philosophers who quote from The logic of grammar could have made from the second James lecture taken in isolation. Grice explores Aristotle’s “to alethes”: “For the true and the false exist with respect to synthesis and division (peri gar synthesin kai diaireisin esti to pseudos kai to alethes).” Aristotle insists upon the com-positional form of truth in several texts: cf. De anima, 430b3 ff.: “in truth and falsity, there is a certain composition (en hois de kai to pseudos kai to alethes, synthesis tis)”; cf. also Met. 1027b19 ff.: the true and the false are with respect to (peri) composition and decomposition (synthesis kai diaresis).” It also shows that Grices style is meant for public delivery, rather than reading. The second unpublished lecture is Indicative conditionals. This had been used by a few philosophers, such as Gazdar, noting that there were many mistakes in the typescript, for which Grice is not to be blamed. The third is on some models for implicaturum. Since this Grice acknowledges is revised, a comparison with the original handwritten version of the final James lecture retrieves a few differences From Part II, a few essays had not been published before, but Grice, nodding to the longitudinal unity of philosophy, is very careful and proud to date them. Commentary on the individual essays is made under the appropriate dates. Philosophical correspondence is quite a genre. Hare would express in a letter to the Librarian for the Oxford Union, “Wiggins does not want to be understood,” or in a letter to Bennett that Williams is the worse offender of Kantianism! It was different with Grice. He did not type. And he wrote only very occasionally! These are four folders with general correspondence, mainly of the academic kind. At Oxford, Grice would hardly keep a correspondence, but it was different with the New World, where academia turns towards the bureaucracy. Grice is not precisely a good, or reliable, as The BA puts it, correspondent. In the Oxford manner, Grice prefers a face-to-face interaction, any day. He treasures his Saturday mornings under Austins guidance, and he himself leads the Play Group after Austins demise, which, as Owen reminisced, attained a kind of cult status. Oxford is different. As a tutorial fellow in philosophy, Grice was meant to tutor his students; as a University Lecturer he was supposed to lecture sometimes other fellowss tutees! Nothing about this reads: publish or perish! This is just one f. containing Grices own favourite Griceian references. To the historian of analytic philosophy, it is of particular interest. It shows which philosophers Grice respected the most, and which ones the least. As one might expect, even on the cold shores of Oxford, as one of Grices tutees put it, Grice is cited by various Oxford philosophers. Perhaps the first to cite Grice in print is his tutee Strawson, in “Logical Theory.” Early on, Hart quotes Grice on meaning in his review in The Philosophical Quarterly of Holloways Language and Intelligence before Meaning had been published. Obviously, once Grice and Strawson, In defense of a dogma and Grice, Meaning are published by The Philosophical Review, Grice is discussed profusely. References to the implicaturum start to appear in the literature at Oxford in the mid-1960s, within the playgroup, as in Hare and Pears. It is particularly intriguing to explore those philosophers Grice picks up for dialogue, too, and perhaps arrange them alphabetically, from Austin to Warnock, say. And Griceian philosophical references, Oxonian or other, as they should, keep counting! The way to search the Grice Papers here is using alternate keywords, notably “meaning.” “Meaning” s. II, “Utterer’s meaning and intentions,” s. II, “Utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning, and word meaning,” s. II, “Meaning revisited,” s. II. – but also “Meaning and psychology,” s. V, c.7-ff.  24-25. While Grice uses “signification,” and lectured on Peirce’s “signs,” “Peirce’s general theory of signs,” (s. V, c. 8-f. 29), he would avoid such pretentiously sounding expressions. Searching under ‘semantic’ and ‘semantics’ (“Grammar and semantics,” c. 7-f. 5; “Language semantics,” c. 7-f.20, “Basic Pirotese, sentence semantics and syntax,” c. 8-f. 30, “Semantics of children’s language,” c. 9-f. 10, “Sentence semantics” (c. 9-f. 11); “Sentence semantics and propositional complexes,” c. 9-f.12, “Syntax and semantics,” c. 9-ff. 17-18) may help, too. Folder on Schiffer (“Schiffer,” c. 9-f. 9), too.

compactum: Grice: “One should distinguish between Grice’s compact and the compact.” G. R. Grice, the Welsh philosopher, speaks of a contract as a compact. Grice on the compactness theorem, a theorem for first-order logic: if every finite subset of a given infinite theory T is consistent, then the whole theory is consistent. The result is an immediate consequence of the completeness theorem, for if the theory were not consistent, a contradiction, say ‘P and not-P’, would be provable from it. But the proof, being a finitary object, would use only finitely many axioms from T, so this finite subset of T would be inconsistent. This proof of the compactness theorem is very general, showing that any language that has a sound and complete system of inference, where each rule allows only finitely many premises, satisfies the theorem. This is important because the theorem immediately implies that many familiar mathematical notions are not expressible in the language in question, notions like those of a finite set or a well-ordering relation. The compactness theorem is important for other reasons as well. It is the most frequently applied result in the study of first-order model theory and has inspired interesting developments within set theory and its foundations by generating a search for infinitary languages that obey some analog of the theorem. 

completum: incompletum: Grice on completeness, a property that something  typically, a set of axioms, a logic, a theory, a set of well-formed formulas, a language, or a set of connectives  has when it is strong enough in some desirable respect. 1 A set of axioms is complete for the logic L if every theorem of L is provable using those axioms. 2 A logic L has weak semantical completeness if every valid sentence of the language of L is a theorem of L. L has strong semantical completeness or is deductively complete if for every set G of sentences, every logical consequence of G is deducible from G using L. A propositional logic L is Halldén-complete if whenever A 7 B is a theorem of L, where A and B share no variables, either A or B is a theorem of L. And L is Post-complete if L is consistent but no stronger logic for the same language is consistent. Reference to the “completeness” of a logic, without further qualification, is almost invariably to either weak or strong semantical completeness. One curious exception: second-order logic is often said to be “incomplete,” where what is meant is that it is not axiomatizable. 3 A theory T is negation-complete often simply complete if for every sentence A of the lancommon notions completeness 162   162 guage of T, either A or its negation is provable in T. And T is omega-complete if whenever it is provable in T that a property f / holds of each natural number 0, 1, . . . , it is also provable that every number has f. Generalizing on this, any set G of well-formed formulas might be called omega complete if vA[v] is deducible from G whenever A[t] is deducible from G for all terms t, where A[t] is the result of replacing all free occurrences of v in A[v] by t. 4 A language L is expressively complete if each of a given class of items is expressible in L. Usually, the class in question is the class of twovalued truth-functions. The propositional language whose sole connectives are - and 7 is thus said to be expressively or functionally complete, while that built up using 7 alone is not, since classical negation is not expressible therein. Here one might also say that the set {-,7} is expressively or functionally complete, while {7} is not.  completum – “The idea of the completum is transformational; i. e. that there are components in a meaningful string – The unstructured utterance is complete – To speak of an incomplete segment is quite a step in compositionality.” Grice: “All Roman words starting with con- are a trick, since they mean togetherness. In this case, plere is to fill.  plĕo , ēre, v. n., I.to fill, to fulfil, the root of plenus, q. v., compleo, expleo, suppleo: “plentur antiqui etiam sine praepositionibus dicebant,” Fest. p. 230 Müll. And then there’s completion. Grice speaks of ‘complete’ and ‘incomplete. Consider “Fido is shaggy.” That’s complete. “Fido” is incomplete – like pig. “is shaggy” is incomplete. This is Grice’s Platonism, hardly the nominalism that Bennett abuses Grice with! For the rational pirot (not the parrot) has access to a theory of complete --. When lecturing on Peirce, Grice referred to Russell’s excellent idea of improving on Peirce. “Don’t ask for the meaning of ‘red,’ ask for the meaning of ‘x is red.” Cf. Plato, “Don’t try to see horseness, try to see ‘x is a horse. Don’t be stupid.” Now “x is red” is a bit incomplete. Surely it can be rendered by the complete, “Something, je-ne-sais-quoi, to use Hume’s vulgarism, is red.” So, to have an act of referring without an act of predicating is incomplete. But still useful for philosophical analysis.

complexum: Grive: “All Roman words starting with con- are a trick, since they mean an agreement, in this case, the plexum. -- versus the ‘simplex.’ Grice starts with the simplex. All he needs is a handwave to ascribe ‘the emissor communicates that he knows the route.’ The proposition which is being transmitted HAS to be complex: Subject, “The emissor”, copula, “is,” ‘predicate: “a knower of the route.”Grice allows for the syntactically unstructured handwave to be ‘ambiguous’ so that the intention on the emissor’s part involves his belief that the emissee will take this rather than that proposition as being transmitted: Second complex: “Subject: Emissor, copula: is, predicate: about to leave the emissee.”Vide the altogether nice girl, and the one-at-a-time sailor. The topic is essential in seeing Grice within the British empiricist tradition. Empiricists always loved a simplex, like ‘red.’ In his notes on ‘Meaning’ and “Peirce,’ Grice notes that for a ‘simplex’ like “red,” the best way to deal with it is via a Russellian function, ‘x is red.’ The opposite of ‘simplex’ is of course a ‘complexum.’ hile Grice does have an essay on the ‘complexum,’ he is mostly being jocular. His dissection of the proposition proceds by considering ‘the a,’ and its denotatum, or reference, and ‘is the b,’ which involves then the predication. This is Grice’s shaggy-dog story. Once we have ‘the dog is shaggy,’ we have a ‘complexum,’ and we can say that the utterer means, by uttering ‘Fido is shaggy,’ that the dog is hairy-coated. Simple, right? It’s the jocular in Grice. He is joking on philosophers who look at those representative of the linguistic turn, and ask, “So what do you have to say about reference and predication,’ and Grice comes up with an extra-ordinary analysis of what is to believe that the dog is hairy-coat, and communicating it. In fact, the ‘communicating’ is secondary. Once Grice has gone to metabolitical extension of ‘mean’ to apply to the expression, communication becomes secondary in that it has to be understood in what Grice calls the ‘atenuated’ usage involving this or that ‘readiness’ to have this or that procedure, basic or resultant, in one’s repertoire! Bealer is one of Grices most brilliant tutees in the New World. The Grice collection contains a full f. of correspondence with Bealer. Bealer refers to Grice in his influential Clarendon essay on content. Bealer is concerned with how pragmatic inference may intrude in the ascription of a psychological, or souly, state, attitude, or stance. Bealer loves to quote from Grice on definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular, the implicaturum being that Russell is impenetrable! Bealers mentor is Grices close collaborator Myro, so he knows what he is talking about. Grice explored the matter of subperception at Oxford only with G. J. Warnock.

conceptus: Grice: “The etymology of ‘conceptus’ is a fascinating one. For one, all Roman words staring with ‘cum-‘ mean a sort of agreement – In this case it’s cum-  plus capio, as in captus, capture. Grice obviously uses Frege’s notion of a ‘concept.’ One of Grice’s metaphysical routines is meant to produce a logical construction of a concept or generate a new concept. Aware of the act/product distinction, Grice distinguishes between the conceptum, or concept, and the conception, or conceptio. Grice allows that ‘not’ may be a ‘concept,’ so he is not tied to the ‘equine’ idea by Frege of the ‘horse.’ Since an agent can fail to conceive that his neighbour’s three-year old is an adult, Grice accepts that ‘conceives’ may take a ‘that’-clause. In ‘ordinary’ language, one does not seem to refer, say, to the concept that e = mc2, but that may be a failure or ‘ordinary’ language. In the canonical cat-on-the-mat, we have Grice conceiving that the cat is on the mat, and also having at least four concepts: the concept of ‘cat,’ the concept of ‘mat,’ the concept of ‘being on,’ and the concept of the cat being on the mat. Griceian Meinongianism -- conceivability, capability of being conceived or imagined. Thus, golden mountains are conceivable; round squares, inconceivable. As Descartes pointed out, the sort of imaginability required is not the ability to form mental images. Chiliagons, Cartesian minds, and God are all conceivable, though none of these can be pictured “in the mind’s eye.” Historical references include Anselm’s definition of God as “a being than which none greater can be conceived” and Descartes’s argument for dualism from the conceivability of disembodied existence. Several of Hume’s arguments rest upon the maxim that whatever is conceivable is possible. He argued, e.g., that an event can occur without a cause, since this is conceivable, and his critique of induction relies on the inference from the conceivability of a change in the course of nature to its possibility. In response, Reid maintained that to conceive is merely to understand the meaning of a proposition. Reid argued that impossibilities are conceivable, since we must be able to understand falsehoods. Many simply equate conceivability with possibility, so that to say something is conceivable or inconceivable just is to say that it is possible or impossible. Such usage is controversial, since conceivability is broadly an epistemological notion concerning what can be thought, whereas possibility is a metaphysical notion concerning how things can be. The same controversy can arise regarding the compossible, or co-possible, where two states of affairs are compossible provided it is possible that they both obtain, and two propositions are compossible provided their conjunction is possible. Alternatively, two things are compossible if and only if there is a possible world containing both. Leibniz held that two things are compossible provided they can be ascribed to the same possible world without contradiction. “There are many possible universes, each collection of compossibles making one of them.” Others have argued that non-contradiction is sufficient for neither possibility nor compossibility. The claim that something is inconceivable is usually meant to suggest more than merely an inability to conceive. It is to say that trying to conceive results in a phenomenally distinctive mental repugnance, e.g. when one attempts to conceive of an object that is red and green all over at once. On this usage the inconceivable might be equated with what one can “just see” to be impossible. There are two related usages of ‘conceivable’: 1 not inconceivable in the sense just described; and 2 such that one can “just see” that the thing in question is possible. Goldbach’s conjecture would seem a clear example of something conceivable in the first sense, but not the second. Grice was also interested in conceptualism as an answer to the problem of the universale. conceptualism, the view that there are no universals and that the supposed classificatory function of universals is actually served by particular concepts in the mind. A universal is a property that can be instantiated by more than one individual thing or particular at the same time; e.g., the shape of this , if identical with the shape of the next , will be one property instantiated by two distinct individual things at the same time. If viewed as located where the s are, then it would be immanent. If viewed as not having spatiotemporal location itself, but only bearing a connection, usually called instantiation or exemplification, to things that have such location, then the shape of this  would be transcendent and presumably would exist even if exemplified by nothing, as Plato seems to have held. The conceptualist rejects both views by holding that universals are merely concepts. Most generally, a concept may be understood as a principle of classification, something that can guide us in determining whether an entity belongs in a given class or does not. Of course, properties understood as universals satisfy, trivially, this definition and thus may be called concepts, as indeed they were by Frege. But the conceptualistic substantive views of concepts are that concepts are 1 mental representations, often called ideas, serving their classificatory function presumably by resembling the entities to be classified; or 2 brain states that serve the same function but presumably not by resemblance; or 3 general words adjectives, common nouns, verbs or uses of such words, an entity’s belonging to a certain class being determined by the applicability to the entity of the appropriate word; or 4 abilities to classify correctly, whether or not with the aid of an item belonging under 1, 2, or 3. The traditional conceptualist holds 1. Defenders of 3 would be more properly called nominalists. In whichever way concepts are understood, and regardless of whether conceptualism is true, they are obviously essential to our understanding and knowledge of anything, even at the most basic level of cognition, namely, recognition. The classic work on the topic is Thinking and Experience 4 by H. H. Price, who held 4. 

conditionalis: Grice: “The etymology of ‘conditionale’ is fascinating. I wish I knew it.” – It is strictly from conditio "a making," from conditus, past participle of condere "to put together,” i.e. cum- plus dare. dāre (do I.obsol., found only in the compounds, abdo, “condo,” – which gives ‘conditio,” confused with ‘con-dicio,” a putting together taken as a ‘speaking-together,” abscondo, indo, etc.), 1, v. a. Sanscr. root dhā-, da-dhāmi, set, put, place; Gr. θε-, τίθημι; Ger. thun, thue, that; indeed cognate with English “do,” “deed,” etc.. The root “dare” in “conditio” is distinct from 1. do, Sanscr. dā, in most of the Arian langg.; cf. Pott. Etym. Forsch. 2, 484; Corss. Ausspr. 2, 410, “but in Italy the two *seem* to have been confounded – or lumped -- at least in compounds,” Georg Curtius Gr. Etym. p. 254 sq.; cf. Max Müller, Science of Lang. Ser. 2, p. 220, N. Y. ed.; Fick, Vergl. Wört. p. 100. The conditional is of special interest to Grice because his ‘impilcature’ has a conditional form. In other words, ‘implicaturum’ is a variant on ‘implication,’ and the conditionalis has been called ‘implication’ – ‘even a material one, versus a formal one by Whitehead and Russell. So it is of special philosophical interest. Since Grice’s overarching interest is rationality, ‘conditionalis’ features in the passage from premise to conclusion, deemed tautological: the ‘associated conditional” of a valid piece of reasoning. “This is an interesting Latinism,” as Grice puts it. For those in the know, it’s supposed to translate ‘hypothetical,’ that Grice also uses. But literally, the transliteration of ‘hypothetica’ is ‘sub-positio,’ i.e. ‘suppositio,’ so infamous in the Dark Ages! So one has to be careful. For some reason, Boethius disliked ‘suppositio,’ and preferred to add to the Latinate philosophical vocabulary, with ‘conditionalis,’ the hypothetical, versus the categoric, become the ‘conditionale.’ And the standard was not the Diodoran, but the Philonian, also known, after Whitehead, as the ‘implicatio materialis.’ While this sounds scholastic, it isn’t. Cicero may have used ‘implicatio materialis.’ But Whitehead’s and Russell’s motivation is a different one. They start with the ‘material’, by which they mean a proposition WITH A TRUTH VALUE. For implication that does not have this restriction, they introduce ‘implicatio formalis,’ or ‘formal implication.’ In their adverbial ways, it goes p formally implies q.  trictly, propositio conditionalis: vel substitutive, versus propositio praedicativa in Apuleius.  Classical Latin condicio was confused in Late Latin with conditio "a making," from conditus, past participle of condere "to put together." The sense evolution in Latin apparently was from "stipulation" to "situation, mode of being." Grice lists ‘if’ as the third binary functor in his response to Strawson. The relations between “if” and “⊃” have already, but only in part, been discussed. 1 The sign “⊃” is called the Material Implication sign a name I shall consider later. Its meaning is given by the rule that any statement of the form ‘p⊃q’ is false in the case in which the first of its constituent statements is true and the second false, and is true in every other case considered in the system; i. e., the falsity of the first constituent statement or the truth of the second are, equally, sufficient conditions of the truth of a statement of material implication ; the combination of truth in the first with falsity in the second is the single, necessary and sufficient, condition (1 Ch. 2, S. 7) of its falsity. The standard or primary -- the importance of this qualifying phrase can scarcely be overemphasized. There are uses of “if … then … ”  which do not answer to the description given here,, or to any other descriptions given in this chapter -- use of an  “if … then …” sentence, on the other hand, we saw to be in circumstances where, not knowing whether some statement which could be made by the use of a sentence corresponding in a certain way to the first clause of the hypothetical is true or not, or believing it to be false, we nevertheless consider that a step in reasoning from that statement to a statement related in a similar way to the second clause would be a sound or reasonable step ; the second statement also being one of whose truth we are in doubt, or which we believe to be false. Even in such circumstances as these we may sometimes hesitate to apply the word ‘true’ to hypothetical statements (i.e., statements which could be made by the use of “if ... then …,” in its standard significance), preferring to call them reasonable or well-founded ; but if we apply ‘true’ to them at all, it will be in such circumstances as these. Now one of the sufficient conditions of the truth of a statement of material implication may very well be fulfilled without the conditions for the truth, or reasonableness, of the corresponding hypothetical statement being fulfilled ; i.e., a statement of the form ‘p⊃q’ does not entail the corresponding statement of the form “if p then q.” But if we are prepared to accept the hypothetical statement, we must in consistency be prepared to deny the conjunction of the statement corresponding to the first clause of the sentence used to make the hypothetical statement with the negation of the statement corresponding to its second clause ; i.e., a statement of the form “if p then q” does entail the corresponding statement of the form ‘p⊃q.’ The force of “corresponding” needs elucidation. Consider the three following very ordinary specimens of hypothetical sentences. If the Germans had invaded England in 1940, they would have won the war. If Jones were in charge, half the staff would have been dismissed. If it rains, the match will be cancelled. The sentences which could be used to make statements corresponding in the required sense to the subordinate clauses can be ascertained by considering what it is that the speaker of each hypothetical sentence must (in general) be assumed either to be in doubt about or to believe to be not the case. Thus, for (1) to (8), the corresponding pairs of sentences are as follows. The Germans invaded England in 1940; they won the war. Jones is in charge; half the staff has been dismissed. It will rain; the match will be cancelled. Sentences which could be used to make the statements of material implication corresponding to the hypothetical statements made by these sentences can now be framed from these pairs of sentences as follows. The Germans invaded England in 1940 ⊃ they won the war. Jones is in charge ⊃ half the staff has been, dismissed. It will rain ⊃ the match will be cancelled. The very fact that these verbal modifications are necessary, in order to obtain from the clauses of the hypothetical sentence the clauses of the corresponding material implication sentence is itself a symptom of the radical difference between hypothetical statements and truth-functional statements. Some detailed differences are also evident from these examples. The falsity of a statement made by the use of ‘The Germans invaded England in 1940’ or ‘Jones is in charge’ is a sufficient condition of the truth of the corresponding statements made by the use of (Ml) and (M2) ; but not, of course, of the corresponding statements made by the use of (1) and (2). Otherwise, there would normally be no point in using sentences like (1) and (2) at all; for these sentences would normally carry – but not necessarily: one may use the pluperfect or the imperfect subjunctive when one is simply working out the consequences of an hypothesis which one may be prepared eventually to accept -- in the tense or mood of the verb, an implication of the utterer's belief in the falsity of the statements corresponding to the clauses of the hypothetical. It is not raining is sufficient to verify a statement made by the use of (MS), but not a statementmade by the use of (3). Its not raining Is also sufficient to verify a statement made by the use of “It will rain ⊃ the match will not be cancelled.” The formulae ‘p revise ⊃q’ and ‘q revise⊃ q' are consistent with one another, and the joint assertion of corresponding statements of these forms is equivalent to the assertion of the corresponding statement of the form * *-~p. But “If it rains, the match will be cancelled” is inconsistent with “If it rains, the match will not be cancelled,” and their joint assertion in the same context is self-contradictory. Suppose we call the statement corresponding to the first clause of a sentence used to make a hypothetical statement the antecedent of the hypothetical statement; and the statement corresponding to the second clause, its consequent. It is sometimes fancied that whereas the futility of identifying conditional statements with material implications is obvious in those cases where the implication of the falsity of the antecedent is normally carried by the mood or tense of the verb (e.g., (I) or (2)), there is something to be said for at least a partial identification in cases where no such implication is involved, i.e., where the possibility of the truth of both antecedent and consequent is left open (e.g., (3). In cases of the first kind (‘unfulfilled’ or ‘subjunctive’ conditionals) our attention is directed only to the last two lines of the truth-tables for * p ⊃ q ', where the antecedent has the truth-value, falsity; and the suggestion that ‘~p’ entails ‘if p, then q’ is felt to be obviously wrong. But in cases of the second kind we may inspect also the first two lines, for the possibility of the antecedent's being fulfilled is left open; and the suggestion that ‘p . q’ entails ‘if p, then q’ is not felt to be obviously wrong. This is an illusion, though engendered by a reality. The fulfilment of both antecedent and consequent of a hypothetical statement does not show that the man who made the hypothetical statement was right; for the consequent might be fulfilled as a result of factors unconnected with, or in spite of, rather than because of, the fulfilment of the antecedent. We should be prepared to say that the man who made the hypothetical statement was right only if we were also prepared to say that the fulfilment of the antecedent was, at least in part, the explanation of the fulfilment of the consequent. The reality behind the illusion is complex : en. 3 it is, partly, the fact that, in many cases, the fulfilment of both antecedent and consequent may provide confirmation for the view that the existence of states of affairs like those described by the antecedent is a good reason for expecting states of affairs like those described by the consequent ; and it is, partly, the fact that a man whosays, for example, 4 If it rains, the match will be cancelled * makes a prediction (viz.. that the match will be cancelled) under a proviso (viz., that it rains), and that the cancellation of the match because of the rain therefore leads us to say, not only that the reasonableness of the prediction was confirmed, but also that the prediction itself was confirmed. Because a statement of the form “p⊃q” does not entail the corresponding statement of the form ' if p, then q ' (in its standard employment), we shall expect to find, and have found, a divergence between the rules for '⊃' and the rules for ' if J (in its standard employment). Because ‘if p, then q’ does entail ‘p⊃q,’ we shall also expect to find some degree of parallelism between the rules; for whatever is entailed by ‘p "3 q’ will be entailed by ‘if p, then q,’ though not everything which entails ‘p⊃q’ will entail ‘if p, then q.’ Indeed, we find further parallels than those which follow simply from the facts that ‘if p, then q’ entails ‘p⊃q’ and that entailment is transitive. To laws (19)-(23) inclusive we find no parallels for ‘if.’ But for (15) (p⊃j).JJ⊃? (16) (P ⊃q).~qZ)~p (17) p'⊃q s ~q1)~p (18) (?⊃j).(? ⊃r) ⊃ (p⊃r) we find that, with certain reservations, 1 the following parallel laws hold good : (1 The reservations are important. It is, e. g., often impossible to apply entailment-rule (iii) directly without obtaining incorrect or absurd results. Some modification of the structure of the clauses of the hypothetical is commonly necessary. But formal logic gives us no guide as to which modifications are required. If we apply rule (iii) to our specimen hypothetical sentences, without modifying at all the tenses or moods of the individual clauses, we obtain expressions which are scarcely English. If we preserve as nearly as possible the tense-mood structure, in the simplest way consistent with grammatical requirements, we obtain the sentences : If the Germans had not won the war, they would not have invaded England in 1940.) If half the staff had not been dismissed, Jones would not be in charge. If the match is not cancelled, it will not rain. But these sentences, so far from being logically equivalent to the originals, have in each case a quite different sense. It is possible, at least in some such cases, to frame sentences of more or less the appropriate pattern for which one can imagine a use and which do stand in the required logical relationship to the original sentences (e.g., ‘If it is not the case that half the staff has been dismissed, then Jones can't be in charge;’ or ‘If the Germans did not win the war, it's only because they did not invade England in 1940;’ or even (should historical evidence become improbably scanty), ‘If the Germans did not win the war, it can't be true that they invaded England in 1940’). These changes reflect differences in the circumstances in which one might use these, as opposed to the original, sentences. Thus the sentence beginning ‘If Jones were in charge …’ would normally, though not necessarily, be used by a man who antecedently knows that Jones is not in charge : the sentence beginning ‘If it's not the case that half the staff has been dismissed …’ by a man who is working towards the conclusion that Jones is not in charge. To say that the sentences are nevertheless logically equivalent is to point to the fact that the grounds for accepting either, would, in different circumstances, have been grounds for accepting the soundness of the move from ‘Jones is in charge’ to ‘Half the staff has been dismissed.’)  (i) (if p, then q; and p)^q (ii) (if p, then qt and not-g) Dnot-j? (iii) (if p, then f) ⊃ (if not-0, then not-j?) (iv) (if p, then f ; and iff, then r) ⊃(if j>, then r) (One must remember that calling the formulae (i)-(iv) is the same as saying that, e.g., in the case of (iii), c if p, then q ' entails 4 if not-g, then not-j> '.) And similarly we find that, for some steps which would be invalid for 4 if ', there are corresponding steps that would be invalid for “⊃,”  e. g.  (p^q).q :. p are invalid inference-patterns, and so are if p, then q ; and q /. p if p, then ; and not-j? /. not-f .The formal analogy here may be described by saying that neither * p 13 q ' nor * if j?, then q * is a simply convertible formula. We have found many laws (e.g., (19)-(23)) which hold for “⊃” and not for “if.” As an example of a law which holds for “if,”  but not for “⊃,” we may give the analytic formula “ ~[(if p, then q) * (if p, then not-g)]’. The corresponding formula 4 ~[(P 3 ?) * (j? 3 ~?}]’ is not analytic, but (el (28)) is equivalent to the contingent formula ‘~~p.’ The rules to the effect that formulae such as (19)-{23) are analytic are sometimes referred to as ‘paradoxes of implication.’ This is a misnomer. If ‘⊃’ is taken as identical either with ‘entails’ or, more widely, with ‘if  ... then …’ in its standard use, the rules are not paradoxical, but simply incorrect. If ‘⊃’ is given the meaning it has in the system of truth functions, the rules are not paradoxical, but simple and platitudinous consequences of the meaning given to the symbol. Throughout this section, I have spoken of a ‘primary or standard’ use of “if … then …,” or “if,” of which the main characteristics were: that for each hypothetical statement made by this use of “if,” there could be made just one statement which would be the antecedent of the hypothetical and just one statement which would be its consequent; that the hypothetical statement is acceptable (true, reasonable) if the antecedent statement, if made or accepted, would, in the circumstances, be a good ground or reason for accepting the consequent statement; and that the making of the hypothetical statement carries the implication either of uncertainty about, or of disbelief in, the fulfilment of both antecedent and consequent. (1 Not all uses of * if ', however, exhibit all these characteristics. In particular, there is a use which has an equal claim to rank as standard and which is closely connected with the use described, but which does not exhibit the first characteristic and for which the description of the remainder must consequently be modified. I have in mind what are sometimes called 'variable' or 'general’ hypothetical : e.g., ‘lf ice is left in the sun, it melts,’ ‘If the side of a triangle is produced, the exterior angle is equal to the sum of the two interior and opposite angles ' ; ' If a child is very strictly disciplined in the nursery, it will develop aggressive tendencies in adult life,’ and so on. To a statement made by the use of a sentence such as these there corresponds no single pair of statements which are, respectively, its antecedent and consequent. On the other 1 There is much more than this to be said about this way of using ‘if;’ in particular, about the meaning of the question whether the antecedent would be a good ground or reason for accepting the consequent and about the exact way in which this question is related to the question of whether the hypothetical is true {acceptable, reasonable) or not hand, for every such statement there is an indefinite number of non-general hypothetical statements which might be called exemplifications, applications, of the variable hypothetical; e.g., a statement made by the use of the sentence ‘If this piece of ice is left in the sun, it will melt.’ To the subject of variable hypothetical I may return later. 1 Two relatively uncommon uses of ‘if’ may be illustrated respectively by the sentences ‘If he felt embarrassed, he showed no signs of it’ and ‘If he has passed his exam, I’m a Dutchman (I'll eat my hat, &c.)’ The sufficient and necessary condition of the truth of a statement made by the first is that the man referred to showed no sign of embarrassment. Consequently, such a statement cannot be treated either as a standard hypothetical or as a material implication. Examples of the second kind are sometimes erroneously treated as evidence that ‘if’ does, after all, behave somewhat as ‘⊃’ behaves. The evidence for this is, presumably, the facts (i) that there is no connexion between antecedent and consequent; (ii) that the consequent is obviously not (or not to be) fulfilled ; (iii) that the intention of the speaker is plainly to give emphatic expression to the conviction that the antecedent is not fulfilled either ; and (iv) the fact that “(p ⊃ q) . ~q” entails “~p.” But this is a strange piece of logic. For, on any possible interpretation, “if p then q” has, in respect of (iv), the same logical powers as ‘p⊃q;’ and it is just these logical powers that we are jokingly (or fantastically) exploiting. It is the absence of connexion referred to in (i) that makes it a quirk, a verbal flourish, an odd use of ‘if.’ If hypothetical statements were material implications, the statements would be not a quirkish oddity, but a linguistic sobriety and a simple truth. Finally, we may note that ‘if’  can be employed not simply in making statements, but in, e.g., making provisional announcements of intention (e.g., ‘If it rains, I shall stay at home’) which, like unconditional announcements of intention, we do not call true or false but describe in some other way. If the man who utters the quoted sentence leaves home in spite of the rain, we do not say that what he said was false, though we might say that he lied (never really intended to stay in) ; or that he changed his mind. There are further uses of ‘if’ which I shall not discuss. 1 v. ch. 7, I. The safest way to read the material implication sign is, perhaps, ‘not both … and not …’ The material equivalence sign ‘≡’ has the meaning given by the following definition : p q =df=⊃/'(p⊃ff).(sOj)' and the phrase with which it is sometimes identified, viz., ‘if and only if,’ has the meaning given by the following definition: ‘p if and only if q’ =df ‘if p then g, and if q then p.’ Consequently, the objections which hold against the identification of ‘p⊃q” with ‘if p then q’ hold with double force against the identification of “p≡q’ with ‘p if and only if q.’ ‘If’ is of particular interest to Grice. The interest in the ‘if’ is double in Grice. In doxastic contexts, he needs it for his analysis of ‘intending’ against an ‘if’-based dispositional (i.e. subjective-conditional) analysis. He is of course, later interested in how Strawson misinterpreted the ‘indicative’ conditional! It is later when he starts to focus on the ‘buletic’ mode marker, that he wants to reach to Paton’s categorical (i.e. non-hypothetical) imperative. And in so doing, he has to face the criticism of those Oxonian philosophers who were sceptical about the very idea of a conditional buletic (‘conditional command – what kind of a command is that?’. Grice would refere to the protasis, or antecedent, as a relativiser – where we go again to the ‘absolutum’-‘relativum’ distinction. The conditional is also paramount in Grice’s criticism of Ryle, where the keyword would rather be ‘disposition.’ Then ther eis the conditional and disposition. Grice is a philosophical psychologist. Does that make sense? So are Austin (Other Minds), Hampshire (Dispositions), Pears (Problems in philosophical psychology) and Urmson (Parentheticals). They are ALL against Ryle’s silly analysis in terms of single-track disposition" vs. "many-track disposition," and "semi-disposition." If I hum and walk, I can either hum or walk. But if I heed mindfully, while an IN-direct sensing may guide me to YOUR soul, a DIRECT sensing guides me to MY soul. When Ogden consider attacks to meaning, theres what he calls the psychological, which he ascribes to Locke Grices attitude towards Ryle is difficult to assess. His most favourable assessment comes from Retrospective epilogue, but then he is referring to Ryle’s fairy godmother. Initially, he mentions Ryle as a philosopher engaged in, and possibly dedicated to the practice of the prevailing Oxonian methodology, i.e. ordinary-language philosophy. Initially, then, Grice enlists Ryle in the regiment of ordinary-language philosophers. After introducing Athenian dialectic and Oxonian dialectic, Grice traces some parallelisms, which should not surprise. It is tempting to suppose that Oxonian dialectic reproduces some ideas of Athenian dialectic.  It would actually be surprising if there were no parallels. Ryle was, after all, a skilled and enthusiastic student of Grecian philosophy. Interestingly, Grice then has Ryles fairy godmother as proposing the idea that, far from being a basis for rejecting the analytic-synthetic distinction, opposition that there are initially two distinct bundles of statements, bearing the labels analytic and synthetic, lying around in the world of thought waiting to be noticed, provides us with the key to making the analytic-synthetic distinction acceptable. The essay has a verificationist ring to it. Recall Ayer and the verificationists trying to hold water with concepts like fragile and the problem of counterfactual conditionals vis-a-vis observational and theoretical concepts. Grices essay has two parts: one on disposition as such, and the second, the application to a type of psychological disposition, which would be phenomenalist in a way, or verificationist, in that it derives from introspection of, shall we say, empirical phenomena. Grice is going to analyse, I want a sandwich. One person wrote in his manuscript, there is something with the way Grice goes to work. Still. Grice says that I want a sandwich (or I will that I eat a sandwich) is problematic, for analysis, in that it seems to refer to experience that is essentially private and unverifiable. An analysis of intending that p in terms of being disposed that p is satisfied solves this. Smith wants a sandwich, or he wills that he eats a sandwich, much as Toby needs nuts, if Smith opens the fridge and gets one. Smith is disposed to act such that p is satisfied. This Grice opposes to the ‘special-episode’ analysis of intending that p. An utterance like I want a sandwich iff by uttering the utterance, the utterer is describing this or that private experience, this or that private sensation. This or that sensation may take the form of a highly specific souly sate, like what Grice calls a sandwich-wanting-feeling. But then, if he is not happy with the privacy special-episode analysis, Grice is also dismissive of Ryles behaviourism in The concept of mind, fresh from the press, which would describe the utterance in terms purely of this or that observable response, or behavioural output, provided this or that sensory input. Grice became friendlier with functionalism after Lewis taught him how.  The problem or crunch is with the first person. Surely, Grice claims, one does not need to wait to observe oneself heading for the fridge before one is in a position to know that he is hungry.  Grice poses a problem for the protocol-reporter. You see or observe someone else, Smith, that Smith wants a sandwich, or wills that he eats a sandwich. You ask for evidence. But when it is the agent himself who wants the sandwich, or wills that he eats a sandwich, Grice melodramatically puts it, I am not in the audience, not even in the front row of the stalls; I am on the stage. Genial, as you will agree. Grice then goes on to offer an analysis of intend, his basic and target attitude, which he has just used to analyse and rephrase Peirces mean and which does relies on this or that piece of dispositional evidence, without divorcing itself completely from the privileged status or access of first-person introspective knowledge. In “Uncertainty,” Grice weakens his reductive analysis of intending that, from neo-Stoutian, based on certainty, or assurance, to neo-Prichardian, based on predicting. All very Oxonian: Stout was the sometime Wilde reader in mental philosophy (a post usually held by a psychologist, rather than a philosopher ‒ Stouts favourite philosopher is psychologist James! ‒ and Prichard was Cliftonian and the proper White chair of moral philosophy. And while in “Uncertainty” he allows that willing that may receive a physicalist treatment, qua state, hell later turn a functionalist, discussed under ‘soul, below, in his “Method in philosophical psychology (from the banal to the bizarre” (henceforth, “Method”), in the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, repr. in “Conception.” Grice can easily relate to Hamsphires "Thought and Action," a most influential essay in the Oxonian scene. Rather than Ryle! And Grice actually addresses further topics on intention drawing on Hampshire, Hart, and his joint collaboration with Pears. Refs.: The main reference is Grice’s early essay on disposition and intention, The H. P. Grice. Refs.: The main published source is Essay 4 in WOW, but there are essays on ‘ifs and cans,’ so ‘if’ is a good keyword, on ‘entailment,’ and for the connection with ‘intending,’ ‘disposition and intention,’ BANC.

confirmatum – cf. infirmatum, firmatum -- disconfirmatum -- confirmation, an evidential relation between evidence and any statement especially a scientific hypothesis that this evidence supports. It is essential to distinguish two distinct, and fundamentally different, meanings of the term: 1 the incremental sense, in which a piece of evidence contributes at least some degree of support to the hypothesis in question  e.g., finding a fingerprint of the suspect at the scene of the crime lends some weight to the hypothesis that the suspect is guilty; and 2 the absolute sense, in which a body of evidence provides strong support for the hypothesis in question  e.g., a case presented by a prosecutor making it practically certain that the suspect is guilty. If one thinks of confirmation in terms of probability, then evidence that increases the probability of a hypothesis confirms it incrementally, whereas evidence that renders a hypothesis highly probable confirms it absolutely. In each of the two foregoing senses one can distinguish three types of confirmation: i qualitative, ii quantitative, and iii comparative. i Both examples in the preceding paragraph illustrate qualitative confirmation, for no numerical values of the degree of confirmation were mentioned. ii If a gambler, upon learning that an opponent holds a certain card, asserts that her chance of winning has increased from 2 /3 to ¾, the claim is an instance of quantitative incremental confirmation. If a physician states that, on the basis of an X-ray, the probability that the patient has tuberculosis is .95, that claim exemplifies quantitative absolute confirmation. In the incremental sense, any case of quantitative confirmation involves a difference between two probability values; in the absolute sense, any case of quantitative confirmation involves only one probability value. iii Comparative confirmation in the incremental sense would be illustrated if an investigator said that possession of the murder weapon weighs more heavily against the suspect than does the fingerprint found at the scene of the crime. Comparative confirmation in the absolute sense would occur if a prosecutor claimed to have strong cases against two suspects thought to be involved in a crime, but that the case against one is stronger than that against the other. Even given recognition of the foregoing six varieties of confirmation, there is still considerable controversy regarding its analysis. Some authors claim that quantitative confirmation does not exist; only qualitative and/or comparative confirmation are possible. Some authors maintain that confirmation has nothing to do with probability, whereas others  known as Bayesians  analyze confirmation explicitly in terms of Bayes’s theorem in the mathematical calculus of probability. Among those who offer probabilistic analyses there are differences as to which interpretation of probability is suitable in this context. Popper advocates a concept of corroboration that differs fundamentally from confirmation. Many real or apparent paradoxes of confirmation have been posed; the most famous is the paradox of the ravens. It is plausible to suppose that ‘All ravens are black’ can be incrementally confirmed by the observation of one of its instances, namely, a black crow. However, ‘All ravens are black’ is logically equivalent to ‘All non-black things are non-ravens.’ By parity of reasoning, an instance of this statement, namely, any nonblack non-raven e.g., a white shoe, should incrementally confirm it. Moreover, the equivalence condition  whatever confirms a hypothesis must equally confirm any statement logically equivalent to it  seems eminently reasonable. The result appears to facilitate indoor ornithology, for the observation of a white shoe would seem to confirm incrementally the hypothesis that all ravens are black. Many attempted resolutions of this paradox can be found in the literature.