It Ain't Necessarily So

---- Grice on "necessity"
------- by JLS
------- For the GC.


---- KRAMER WAS OBJECTING (smoothly) on the Gricean hammer and the Gricean nail. As he notes, there is

* the Gricean nail


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but there is also

* the Gricean hammer

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Or, "people, 'disapprovingly', say that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

His point:

there is the Griceist phenomenon: conversation as a rational activity, etc. as per Grice's untiled William James Lectures (I follow J. Kennedy, elsewhere, this blog) that 'untitled' is the apex of a healthy narcissism -- "All titles narrow down the stuff, and I contain multitudes").

-- This is the Gricean nail. As when we say: "He e.g. Leech hit the (Griceist) nail".

If Leech hits the Griceist nail with the Griceist sledgehammer (e.g. "Leech explains the rationality of conversation along Griceist lines") then he is a full-blown or something Griceist.

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This is different from 'reductionist'. As Kramer notes, he (Kramer) is a reductionist, and relies on 'evolutionary necessity' like a good Darwinist (or Darwinian). His point is that there is a PHAINOMENON ('evolution', as per Herbert Spencer, the philosopher, and his obsession with it). There is the Darwinist sledgehammer, too, 'evolutionary necessity'.

Two points then on the former and the latter:

---- evolutionary necessity. For a Griceist, few things are necessary. On analysis, it can be shown that what was held to be a posteriori analytic is, as R. B. Jones taught me, 'mere a priori definitional stuff'. Cfr. "The fate of evolution", "evolutionary necessity". There is the minor problem of qualifying necessity. Grice refers to 'ichthyological necessity': the necessity of fish, that is. Do we need a concept of 'ichthyological necessity' ("I guess you do if you are a fish", I hear someone comment). A necessity for the fish is different from a different about a fish -- cfr. "You're the cream in my coffee", also cited by Grice, the song that ends: "My only necessity is you".

--- reductionist: Kramer is wanting to say that all reduces to 'evolutionary necessity', and that is an excellent point. Grice had qualms regarding 'reductionism', though. (He was a reductivist alright, but not perhaps a reductionist). A reductivist explains things, and explaining is to 'reduce', i.e. via, e.g. reductive analysis. A reductionist Grice rather sees as an 'eliminationist'. Suppose we do explain the love of chimpanzees as a 'evolutionary necessity' ("If a chimp loves a chimp other than himself, that's an evolutionary necessity"). This 'reduces' the experience of love in the chimp to 'evolutionary necessity', but surely the chimp's experience of love is irreducible (or unreductible). So one has to be careful there. The reductionist may have a problem in having lost the baby with the tub water, as they say. (This is a hyperbole, unless it's a newt baby, or something). Etc.