"SO ABSTRACT IT HURTS"

I wrote on the margin, and sic in screaming full capitals, of Chapman, p. 131.

For hurts is that it's Grice.

Of course it don't (hurt) sic. Indeed, as I have congratulated someone elsehwere (J. Huggins on CHORA), it's the hurting ability to go abstract like that that makes US philosophers:

Grice writes -- or rather Chapman writes:

"Going further than Davidson, Grice argues that structures exprssing probability and desirability are not merely analogous. They can both be replaced by MORE COMPLEX structures containing a COMMON element."

"Grice proposes two types of oeprators, OpA and OpB. In combination, these replace Davidso's prima facie and pr. The operators grouped together as OpB represents moods close to ordinary indicatives and imperatives."

"They can be divided into two types: ObB-1 and ObB-2, corresponding to Frege's assertion sign and ! respectively. A-type operators, on the other hand (the right one, usually), represent some degree or measure of acceptability or justification."

"They can take scope over either of the B-type operators, yielding"

OpA1 + ObB1 + p

or

OpA1 + Frege assertion sign = p

for an expression of

"It is probable that p"

and

OpA1 + OpB2 + a

for an expression of

"It is desirable that a"

-- and here is where it starts to hurt:

"Moving on from operators to consider the psychological aspect of reasoning, Grice propsoes two basic propositional atitutdes: J-acceptance and V-acceptance, to be considered as more or less closely related to believing and wanting."

"GENERALING OVER ATTITUDES"

"using the symbol psi, he proposes"

"X psi-u (p)"

for "J-accepts"

and

"X psi-2 (p)"

for "V-accepts".

"There are, further, more complex attitudes."

These Grice labels

"psi-3 and psi-4"

"These are REFLEXIVE" [autophoric].

"attitudes that x can take to J-accepting or V-accepting" Cfr. Sperber on meta-representations and ignore? (:)).

"psi-3 is concerned with an attitude of V-accepting towards either J-accepting p or J-accepting not-p."

"x wants to decide whether to believe p or not"

"psi-4 is concerned with an attitude of V-accepting towards either x V-accepts p or x v-accepts non-p"

"x wants to decide whether to will p or not"

(akrasia, obviously). I add this because it merits a post to this blog with the appropriate Grecian.

"On the understanding that willing p gives an account of intending p, this offers a formalisation of intending"

"Grice notes that for each attitude there are two further subdivisions, depending on whether the attitude is focused on an attitute of x or of some other person."

"Therefore, x psi-3-A (p) is true in case x psi-sub-2 (x psi-1 (p) or x psi-sub-1 (-p) is true".

On the other hand

"x psi-sub-3B p is true in case or just in case x V-accepts psi-sub-2 (y V-accepts psi-2 (x J-accept psi-1 (p) or x J-accept (psi-1) not-p is true"

Grice suggests an operator Op-i-sub alpha corresponding to each particular propositional attitude psi-sub-3B where 'i' is A DUMMY TAKING THE PLACE OF either 1,2,3,or 4 and where alpha is A DUMMY taking the place of either A or B."

"He now has four sets of operators, corresponding to four sets of propositional attiudes"

Right. But he has no reader no more!

Just joking.

It ain't that complicated -- once you paid the proof-reader.