Uncertain About Certainty (Trust Grice To Be)

By J. L. Speranza

for the Grice Club, &c.



----

Grice liked to play the sceptic.

Of course, he was a man of the strongest convictions, but he felt he had to display a healthy sceptical attitude to motivate his female students.

("Male students, I find," he would observe, "are less prone to the methodical doubt than female students are. And I don't mean spring break").

Consider,

"It is certain"

"Are we to suppose that we are _certain_ as to what we mean by that?"

"By all means".



Gr89:192 maintains that that 'certain' has

what we may call two main usages, or two main _families_ of usages.

"Under the first category, I would place utterances like"

"I am certain".


"Or "Peter is certain" for that matter". "Perhaps we should distinguish these two rather different scenarios."

The second class corresponds, rather, and broadly, to what linguists call the 'anticipatory' it:

"For Peter thought it certain that..."

from which we yield

"It is certain, to Peter (or to me, as the case may be) that... p"


"Without much improperty, we can dub the first type as 'subjective' uses of "certain", while the second type I shall refer to as the 'objective' uses.

"If Descartes is right", -- "and we have no certainty to allow that he was" it may transpire that what I've been calling 'objective' "certainty" is, indeed, undefinable."

"And this even under a rather narrow Cartesian analysis of the necessary and sufficient conditions that such an analysis provides for. To wit

i. '... is

a. clearly and
b. distinctively perceiving
that...'

---

"The lack of a solution to our uncertainty about certainty should not lead us to believe, but should not lead us to DISbelieve, either that 'uncertain' is certain, for it isn't, or at least I would not hide my confidence that I have some level of uncertainty that I am, certainly, not too certain about it."