Behind the Typo

Grice wrote "designatum".

Grice wrote "description".

!

Jones:

"I presumed [Grice] intended "designatum" [where 'description' appears in print] because he does use that term several times in the immediately preceding paragraphs.
I guess Oxford philosophers like the latin endings, I don't know where "..tion" comes from."

Right. I wonder who copied that!

I'm glad it wasn't me!

Just imagine having to TYPE all those subscripts give me ONE headache.

Grice's handwriting wasn't precisely 'beautiful' and left a bit to be desired. Plus, he couldn't type (as per typewriter). He was poor with computers too. He was especially irritated that his word processor would not recognise "pirot" -- or indeed "sticky wicket".

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So, I assume, with Jones, that he wrote

'designatum'

and the copyist (amanuensis) typed, "description".

---- Some proof-reader!

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Jones is right that Grice had used "designatum" a few times before.

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The ending -ation, as in "designation" (or "correlATION") or indeed, -tion, as in 'description', all stem from the Latin of course.

So I was thinking

correlate -- correlatio correlation correlatum
designate -- designatio designation designatum
describe --- descriptio description descriptum

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In the case of the 'designatum' and 'correlatum', it is obvious that it's neuter singular, and it has the form of the past participle. So,

implicatum (plural implicata) -- what has been implicated, as per implicatio.
designatum -- what has been designed, or what IS designed (with present perfect, as it were).
descriptum -- what is described
correlatum -- what is correlated.

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Grice's idiom is a good one. He wants to say that

"Marmaduke Bloggs" has a correlatum (He does not exist).
But it has no designatum.

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Since in the later (indeed last) section of "Vacuous Names" he deals with 'psychological attitudes' in sensu diviso and in sensu composito, one wonders.

After all, there is what that essay has as a "Dossier".

DOSSIER for "Marmaduke Bloggs" -- think F. B. I., or C. I. A., or the British Intelligence Unit --:

---------- believed by readers of "The Merseyside Newsletter" to have climbed Mt. Everest on hands and knees.

---------- invented by journalists.

---------- does not exist.

"Does not exist" must mean, "he is not a spatio-temporal continuant". In that essay, Grice has no problem with saying that Pegasus, as per Greek mythology, does 'exist', and indeed, 'flies', and that Bellorophon rode him. Grice wants to say that that Pegasus did fly is, as per Greek mythology, truER than "Pegasus did not fly", and so on.

So, the correlatum-designatum distinction may be in need of a further distinction.

I think Grice is just honouring Quine and thinking of a System that will give room for something Quine never would have allowed or did allow: individual constants (never mind with our without designata). Some way to honour a philosopher!

It's sad that in "Reply to Grice," Quine notably ignored all the charm and genius of Grice.