Grice's System

By J. L. Speranza
for the Grice Club

THIS IS MEANT as reply or commentary on Jones's post on neotraditionalists and modernists.

Thank you, Roger -- As Roger knows, most of the references to this somewhat mysterious System G-HP -- are indeed a nod to our joint work on the conversation Carnap/Grice so I'm glad he offers his input. On a first reading of his comment, I would think that Grice would endorse the first of the theses Jones exposes, to wit:

(in Jones's apt wording):

certain features of ordinary language do in fact correspond more faithfully in their semantics to the corresponding features of "standard" logic than has been alleged by their critics.

Since Jones has easy access to Grice's WoW, I would suggest that the issue can be formulated in terms of what Grice calls 'specifications' of meaning -- we can expand on these in further blog posts, since I'll try to be brief here this being a commentary. Only ONE of those meaning specifications -- in my view --, i.e. those involving the meaning of expressions of a timeless kind for a part of an utterance -- would fit the bill.

"She got into bed and got off her nickers" -- is an utterance. By uttering it, an utterer may mean whatever he pleases, basically. Including, "It is raining". This is applied, not timeless, and it's in terms of 'that'-clauses. E.g. Utterer meant, on this occasion, that she FIRST got into bed and THEN got off her nickers".

But Grice seems to be wanting to say -- recall this is Lecture V I am referring, in WoW, which is thus seen as an expansion of Lecture II where he does mention the 'divergence' (alleged, of course) between 'and' and "/\" --.

So, whereas what an Utterer may mean by uttering such an utterance is pretty variable, we can still claim,

"and" means '/\'.

---- Note that the specification of expression meaning, for Grice, involves the use of 'direct quotation' marks. So, to use the list of seven devices he has in Lecture II, which is in fact an expansion of the prolegomenon Lecture I, where he mentions explicitly Strawson on 'if', would go:

"not" means '~'
"and" means '/\'
"or" means '\/'
"if" means ')'
"all" means '(x)'
"some (at least one)" means '(Ex)'.
"the" means '(ix)'

I agree with Jones that one feels Grice's neotraditionalist/modernist debate is a bit contrived, and I wouldn't be surprised, then with a surname like that he possibly deserved it, that Grice is using Strawson as his Strawman!