Cock-A-Grice With Pears in Syrup

1402 Anc. Cookery in Househ. Ord.
Cock-a-grice with pears in syrup.

O. E. D.


Grice worked often with Pears, both formally and informally. He indeed co-authored, "Metaphysics" with Pears, published in Pears, "The nature of metaphysics", and in his "Life and Opinions", Grice mentions joint work with Pears in the philo of actin.

This ref. to Pears in Grice 1971 is my favourite.


Grice's final paragraph in the lecture is of special interest for the reference to work by his colleague D. F. Pears:

"The justifiability of Jones's factual commitment, if he expresses an intention by saying

"I shall-i scratch my head in 1 minute's time."


to its being the case that he _will_, in fact, scratch his head in 1 minute's time reduces, then, to the question of the justifiability of an assumption, on his part, given that he _now_ wills that his head _be scratched_..."

Note again the subjunctive mood] "...in 1 minute time, that he _will_ (still) in 1 minute hence _will_ that this be so."

Note that Grice is having here the iterated occurrence

"Jones will will."

Odd, but not impossible:



"This question, shich is fairly

closely related to questions about the

PREDICTABILITY of one's own decisions

(which have been worked on by D. F. Pears

and others), is not one which I shall attempt to

resolve in this lecture".

For then there would be overlap. And that's a bad thing. Note too that Grice was perhaps, amusingly regretting that having been born in 1913 he was delivering his PBA thing in 1971, while the Pears stuff Grice is quoting had already been published in the proc. Brit. Ac. couple years earlier!