Objections of Desire

by J. L. Speranza

for the Grice Club, &c.


Are you not annoyed by the phrase, 'object of desire'? Danny Frederick is!

I am more annoyed by people who exchange "object" and "objection" -- or, worse, "concept" and "conception".

These refer to different metaphysical routines.

Consider

"This is a good typewriter"

-- "Not to me," Grice adds. "I don't type".

He thinks that while 'typewriter' may be a valuable object to _some_ (notably to whom he calls "type-writers") it would be monstrously Kantian to think that a typewriter is a _noumenon_. (Ditto for "A waist is a terrible thing to mind").

The routine, which Hume foresaw and after whom Grice calls "The Humean Projection" is what lies behind the provocative title of Grice's Paul Carus Lectures, delivered in Oklahoma.

Grice writes:


"You may be wondering about the title of
my six lectures you're about to be entertained
with. Conception of Value. Conception. Why not
raw 'concept'?"

"Indeed, as my friend, and former student P. F.
Strawson once pointed out to me, there is an
ambiguity of a familiar type."

"It is an act-object ambiguity."

"For, the phrase


'the conception of value'

might refer to

(i) the title of my book.

(ii) the title of the name of my book.

(iii) the name of the title of my book.

But not, I would think to,

(iv) the name of my book."

He may be having in mind The Pet-Shop Boys hit, "Where the Streets Have No Names".

He goes on,


"If we opt for (i), however, viz.

the item, whatever it may be, which

one conceives, or

conceives of,

when one entertains the notion of value."

"But then again, as my former friend, and student, Sir Peter also remarked,


The Conception of Value

might refer to the act, i.e. to the
operation, or

'undertaking' if you must (I hope you won't)
in which the

entertainment of that notion,

to wit, value,

consists, and of which the
conception (or concept, if you must)

of value, in the first sense,

of this rather abstract expression,

is the distinctive object."

"But surely you'll object to my use of sense, or, again, if you must, 'sense', in connection with this ambiguity. Surely it's not like your average vyse or vice which you may find on occasion gotten caught in the grip of."

"So what gives?"

"My introduction of this ambiguity [is], my friend Peter suggests, not accidental."

"For, he submits, the precise nature of the connection between,
on the one hand -- usually the right one --, the kind of thinking

or mental state which is found,

at least in primary instances, of course,

when we make attributions of value,

as in

"Such a cute Olivetti".


"and, on the other, the kind of
item (if any) which serves as the
characteristic

object

-- I'm thinking Objekt, not Noumenon here --
of such thinking is a matter which I, personally,
and sometimes sub-personally, but never, as far
as I am aware, super-personally,

regard as quite central
to a proper study of the notion of value".

"So now you see what gives."