"Charles's decaptations willed his death" and other alleged absurdities (from Grice, WoW: 163)

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

In revising what Grice is saying about the gloss, by pre-Humeans:

"Charles I died"

Surely this event had a cause. What caused Charles's death?

Let's be on the safe side and say, 'his decapitation'.

This renders:

"Charles I's death was caused by his decapitation".

Turning the causal agent (alleged) as topic-subject of the utterance, this yields (Grice, Way of Words, p. 162)

i. Decapitation was the cause of Charles I's death.

Gloss:

ii. Charles's decapitation willed his death.

----

Is this an ordinary thing to say? Grice doubts it. On p. 163 he writes to the effect that "it [has] NOT yet [been] established that [ii] IS an ordinary [expression]. But what?

As Grice notes, people all the time are uttering things which sound 'ordinary' and which yet are not necessarily, to use Grice's sobriquet, 'free from absurdity'. He gives

four examples:



EXAMPLE 1:

"Tom is a very lucky person"

--- Grice's gloss: "'Lucky' ]is supposed to be] understood here as dispositional. This might on occasion turn ot to be a way of saying [the absurdity]:

----- "Tom is a person to whom what is unlikely to happen is likely to happen."




EXAMPLE 2:

"Departed spirits walk along this road on their way to Paradise".

--- "it being understood that departed spirits are supposed to be bodiless and imperceptible").





EXAMPLE 3:

"I wish I had been Napoleon"

----- "which does not mean the same as 'I wish I were like Napoleon'" -- this predates Kripke by decades! (The paper Grice dates 1953!)

--- Gloss: "I wish that I had lived not in the XXth century but in the XVIIIth century".




EXAMPLE 4:

"As far as I know, there are infinitely many stars"

--- No gloss provided by Grice -- but he must having in mind the intuitionists's constructive universe.

Or something!