Grice and consequentialism

by J. L. Speranza
--- for the Grice Club.

WE WERE DISCUSSING VARIOUS ASPECTS of 'fighting words', etc. with L. J. Kramer; in particular, 'consequence', 'effect', 'response' in the utterer's 'recipient' or 'addressee'. As Kramer notes:

"I referred to a “legal consequence,” by
which I mean a change in some legal status."

Oops! Sorry about that! I guess I was having in mind this rather odious term used by philosophers, and which I had been recently discussing elsewhere, 'consequentialism'. I.e., the sort of moral or meta-ethical, if one must, doctrine which judges the morality or worth even of a given action by its outcomes or consequences!

--- But I'm sure they need not relate!

Yet, for the record, I found this in via googlebooks which I found easy and relatable!

It's Feteris, Legal Argumentation, p. 74:

p --> q
p
----
q

Feteris writes:

"A legal rule can always
be reconstructed as the premise
'if p, [...] q', if certain
facts obtain ('p'), a certain
legal consequence follows ('q')."

I see the author is Dutch, so not really a good native English speaker. I wouldn't use 'rule', 'fact' and 'consequence' so freely!

--- Also, I would NOT use 'then' (as Feteris did, in the "[...]"). Feteris's example at this point is from the Dutch civil code:

"If someone comits a tort he can be held responsible for,
he is obliged to compensate for the damages caused by his conduct."

--- Solum also uses 'consequentialism' and 'legal consequence' in his blog, but I have been unable to search -- my "find" search engine is pretty poor -- where exactly in somewhere of his lexicon.

Anyway, thought I would mention, since indeed if the qualifier is 'legal', a 'legal consequence' has little to do with 'effect' or 'response' of the type I was considering.