System GHP

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

WE WERE DISCUSSING WITH J -- comments on "Grice on neo-traditionalism" about the role of logic, or rather the place of logic. As Grice notes -- one point in his synopsis of the neo-traditionalist credo -- Strand 6, Retrospective Epilogue --, predicate calculus is not 'faithful' to ordinary discourse. As J notes: but then ordinary discourse is not faithful to the predicate calculus. For the sake of it, I shall provide the exact quote, since, the 'predicate' calculus bit, I did add in brackets (meaning it was my addition) and I also had a ' ... ' bit to unemphasise the point that Grice was making -- which was about his forte, syncategoremata. Yes, boring, but what are you gonna do.

So the exact 'first' point (to which Grice will later react) vis a vis the neo-traditionalist credo, reads, in Grice's wording:

"So far as I can NOW reconstruct it, Strawson's

response to Modernism at the time of "... Introduction

to Logical Theory" [I add ... because Grice quotes this

as "An Introduction to Logical Theory". JLS] ran along

the following lines."


----

"At a NUMBER OF POINTS it is clear [to Strawson] that

the apparatus of Modernism does NOT give a faithful

account of the caracter of the logical connectives

of ordinary discourse."

-----


Now, strictly, this should refer to 'if'. It is the ONLY

direct quotation by Grice from Strawson. We are reading now

p. 373 of Grice's Way of Words. But the direct quotation goes

back to, let me check, p. 9. On that page, Grice quotees

directly from "Introduction to Logical Theory" -- now

properly cited, without the "An". It's Part III, pt. 2

-- and it's the section "If and )".

Strawson writes:

each hypothetical statement made by the
use of 'if' is acceptable (true, reasonable)
if the antecedent statement, if made or
accepted, would in the circumstances be a good
ground or reason for accepting the consequence
statement, and the making of the hypothetical
statement carries the implication either of
uncertainty about, or of disbelief in, the
fulfillment of both antecedent and
consequent

----

So you get to the heart of HOW parochial Oxford can be. Grice was in his 30s when he was so fortunate to have an older Strawson (not older than Grice, but old compared to say the days of William of Ockham when you could get a doctorate in Oxford at age 19 -- but Strawson had gone to the war) as his tutee.

Strawson was a Locke Scholar -- which Grice never was. When Grice was decades later appointed John Locke Lecturer, he puns on the idea that this is his revenge for not having gotten the Locke scholarship back then.

As a Locke Scholar, Strawson was a student at St. John's, Grice's college, and he had to fulfil requirements for his P. P. E. programme -- philosophy, politics and economics. We don't know what politics and economics he read, but we can be sure that Marxism never had a big bite on him.

As a philosophy student he had to fulfil the requirement of a 'logic' course -- and it was in THIS capacity, only, that Grice got into the picture. Strawson in fact shared tutorials with the OTHER tutor at St. John's, too, the Scots J. D. Mabbott. Mabbott and Grice never talked (much) and when Mabbott later wrote his memories, decades later ("Oxford memories", published by a small publisher on High Street, Oxford) he calls Grice an 'excellent philosopher' -- which moved Grice at the time ("Good old Mabb -- never thought he had such a high opinion of me").

Anyway, Strawson eventually got a second -- this was Mabbott's point in the memoirs -- how that could have happened! -- but soon enough, in 1952, he was publishing with what remained his publishing house for years -- before he came to Oxford University Press -- Methuen. And the book was "An introduction to logical theory". There are TWO cites to Grice in that book. In the foreword, he refers to "Mr. H. P. Grice" from whom "I've never ceased to learn about logic since he was my tutor in that subject" or area. And more importantly, on the discussion not of logical connectives, but quantifiers, notably (x) and (Ex) -- So that to say, "All of Smith's children are asleep, but he hasn't any", or "Some students are lazy" when ALL are, etc., would infringe a 'rule' which Strawson calls 'pragmatic'. This is ALL in the context of a FOOTNOTE. It is a very systematic book, and a discussion of authors -- such as Grice as credited there -- and 'pragmatic rules' would be out of style for what was meant as a textbook which the book soon became in Oxford. In that footnote, Grice is credited with having pointed to Strawson of the existence of these rules or this rule about making a stronger statement when one can.

-----

In 1967, when Grice delivered the William James Lectures, he went back to a topic of his interest, "Contemporary British Philosophy" (recall that he had been engaged as early as 1955 to direct a colloquium at Brasenose College for that). So he picked up a number of philosophers who have talked about 'implication', 'inappropriate', etc. -- and he chose that passage by Strawson on the 'if' -- AND, Grice's own point about the related, "D or D" (doubt or denial) implication of "the pillar box seems red to me".

----

So back to the point about the faithfulness.

Grice writes:

"At a NUMBER OF POINTS it is clear [to Strawson] that

the apparatus of Modernism does NOT give a faithful

account of the caracter of the logical connectives

of ordinary discourse."

At this point it is best to compare this vis a vis the modernist's counterclaim:

"In their most severe and purist guise Modernists are ready to admit to the domain of Logic only first-order predicate logic with identity, though laxer spirits may be willing to add to this bare minimum some more liberal studies, like that of some system of modalities."

--- I like to think that he is thinking of Myro. While Grice and Mates (Grice bases his System Q on Mates's Elementary Logic) Myro (his "Sketch of System G in gratitude to Paul Grice for the idea") wants to introduce at least time-relative identity, and thus some sort of 'possible-world semantics' to deal with 'chronological indexes').

Grice goes on:

"It seems to me that a Modernist might maintain ...." a position which he describes as:

POSITION I: The modernist might hold that what he recognises as "Logic"

'reflects EXACTLY or within an acceptable margin

of approximation the inferential and semantic

properties of vulgar logical connectives."

-------

POSITION 2:

"[The modernist] might hold that though

NOT EVERY FEATURE OF vulgar logical connectives

is preserved, all features are preserved

which DESERVE to preserved, all features that is

to say, which are not irremediably vitiated by

obscurity or incoherence"

------ e.g. the account of 'if p, q' in terms of that 'reason or ground' that Strawson is speaking of, or a Duns Scotus account of individual essence as in []Fa, where [] reflects the square of modal operator "it is necessary that ..."

----


Position III:

"Without claiming that features which are

omitted from his preferred system are ones

which are marred by obscurity or incoherence

he might claim that those which are

NOT omitted possess, collectively,

the economic virtue of being adequate

of presenting, in good logical order,

that science or body of sciences the

proper presentation of which is called for

by some authority, such as Common

Sense or the "Cathedral of Learning"".


-----

We know that Grice was more liberal than that. In fact, he takes issue with Russell's rhetorical appeal to the 'stone-age metaphysics' that ordinary discourse embodies. "Why not stone-age PHYSICS at most?", etc.

But the thing is there. In fact, still the best summary of this I find to be the precis of what he calls the "Formalist" credo in the second paragraph of 'Logic and Conversation', where he uses that lovely phrase, 'metaphysical excrescence'. He is saying that 'if p, q' is 'p ) q' and that anything that Strawson holds it means, besides, is a metaphysical excrescence. When reading Urmson's "Philosophical Analysis", which came out not much after Strawson's book, the point is made about logical atomism. Only an account of 'if p, q' as 'p ) q', truth-functional, allows for the logical atomist picture. The idea that there are reasons, grounds, for one state of affair being stated as an antecedent to the other would be 'metaphysically' loaded in ways totally in dissonance with Russell and the early Wittgenstein.

---- I recall because it is at that stage, after discussing 'if' -- rather obscurely, that Urmson provides an example which I find much clearer!

"She got onto bed and took off her panties" (or something).

------ p & q ) ( q & p

--

Grice uses 'formal device', or 'logical device' in "Logic and Conversation". He prefers the narrower 'logical connective' in the Strand 6, but what he says is surely generalisable to "not" -- not quite a connective, and more importantly, the non-truth-functor quantifiers like the three he mentions in the first page of "Logic and Conversation": 'all' (x), 'some (at least one)' (Ex)-- cfr. Kant on particular versus singular thrown to the dustbin -- and 'the' (ix).

But there's more to say. Grice's reference to 'Common sense' or "Cathedral of Learning", or as I prefer, keeping the architectural simile, 'the pillars of wisdom' is then, in this caricature, where Logic belongs. Perhaps not astrology. Grice has something very charming to say about astrology. A layperson cannot ask philosophy questions philosophy cannot answer; it would be like being disappointed by one who consults an astrologer and gets it all the wrong answers (or something like that). It is cited by T. P. Uschanov in his essay in Croom Helm, in full -- and it comes from an early essay by Grice, in WoW).