To Ride Pegasus

Is the name of a novel based on the myth as cited by the wiki entry on "Pegasus".

Pegasus is also the logo of the International Poetry Society.

And of course it means a constellation.

Still -- the thing, in a narrow interpretation, IS 'vacuous'.

Mind that most people are never clear about the use of quotes.

"I saw Pegasus in the prairie today"

seems sublimely nonsensical.

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Grice only considers sentences with "Pegasus" which involve "not" ("Pegasus does not fly"). This is odd given the view that one of the only things that Pegasus did well, apparently, was 'to fly'.

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I think Grice also says,

"Pegasus failed to fly".

But this is slightly ambiguous.

We can say, "Paris failed to be bombed by the Nazis", or something -- meaning -- whatever. People misuse 'fail' -- as when we say, "She failed to reward me for my accomplishments", etc.

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Pegasus cannot really 'fail'. I mean, yes: it is not the case that Pegasus fails on this or that (on existing or flying, say).

But I wouldn't think we can say that Pegasus FAILS to fly (or exist).

Grice at times is not clear as to whether he is discussing "~" itself or verbs which 'incorporate' negation.

At one point he does mention that the 'explicit' appearance of the "not" 'device' is not essential.

But I wouldn't think, in HIS view, what we can say truly about Pegasus -- without the use of 'not'.

He would hold, Grice would,

"Pegasus = Pegasus".

---- very clever!

Note incidentally that the phrase uses for that purpose, "Pegasus is identical with Pegasus" uses a very cryptic term (cryptic vis a vis 'ordinary language'), to wit: 'identical'.

"Pegasus is Pegasus" seems to say all we need to say when we say "Pegasus is identical with Pegasus" (I owe the tenor of that remark to R. B. Jones, "Grice on vacuous names"). I owe to R. B. Jones, too, the idea of trying to explore the issues of 'predication' and 'identity' -- AND existence. E.g. Grice says very little, if anything at all, about issues of identity or existence qua predicates.

Recall that for Kant, existence is NOT a predicate, and that things like "Pegasus" and what we could say about them were 'ill-formed' (M. R. in 'non-existent objects', Stanford).

So it all relates -- for Frege is a sort of successor to Kant there and Frege's views on 'vacuity' are ... well, vacuous.

Grice rather shares the floridity of the Russell of "The principles of mathematics" and, later, Geach. Or something.