Grice's Equivocality Thesis

--- Generalised.

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

Grice wants to say:

Senses-0 should-1 not-2 be-3 multiplied-5 beyond-6 necessity-7.

His example:

"You must-1 know it by now"
"It must-2 rain soon"
"You must-3 pay back what you owe"

J. M. K. argues (online) that 'ontological' necessity is really 'epistemic' necessity or the other way round. She is a linguist, so typically she couldn't care less!

Grice is mainly interested in getting his Grice Pudding and eating it with his big Hume Fork. So he speaks, quoting from Von Wright, of

"alethic" 'must'

and

"practical" 'must'.

Strictly, 'practical' opposes 'theoretical'. There's NOTHING that opposes 'alethic'.

But really, he is into psychology. So he wants to speak of

'doxastic' -- "I believe that circle cannot be square"
--
and
'boulemaic' -- "I want 2 + 2 to be 4"

---

In both cases, as J. M. K. notes, Grice uses "accept". You 'accept' things in the 'alethic' realm of 'pure' reason and in the 'practical' realm of, er, practical reason.

---

Why Grice fought for 'equivocality' should be obvious (to him!).

My use of "Who's afraid of Equivocality?" is a pun on "Who's afraid of the Big Big Woolf?".

If we 'generalise' the equivocality thesis to most things, we win.

E.g. "and" and "&" are NOT different things. The 'and' of informal logic and the 'and' of formal logic mean the same thing. They are the same 'vox'.

In fact, the adj. Generalised is otiose, so I'm dropping it!.