Roger Bishop Jones, for The Grice Club
I don't know why I should have been surprised when Speranza pointed out the pervasiveness of metaphysics in Grice's philosophy, for surely every aspect of our language engages with its own special kinds of entity and thus involves some special metaphysics.
Naturally I ask the question whether this deals a serious blow to the prospects for our Grice/Carnap dialogue.
The simple answer is: "not at all!", for surely this is what Carnap's principle of tolerance is all about, freedom to use languages irrespective of whatever ontology they presuppose (though I don't think that way of putting it is Carnap's), subject only to pragmatic questions (does it serve any purpose?), not the meaningless metaphysical "external questions".
This kind of response, however, leaves us with a puzzle. If Carnap's positivism is so very accomodating, what is left of his rejection of metaphysics? Is this something which just melted away? On the other hand, can we be sure that the pervasive metaphysics in Grice is entirely concerned with questions which Carnap would recognise as "internal", as we might suppose by considering Grice's methods.
I revisited some of the milestones in Carnap's writings on Metaphysics to clarify my thinking on the first of those puzzles, and it is interesting to see that this very question (about what is left of Carnap's proscription of metaphysics after "Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology") is answered in the statement of his position on metaphysics in the Schilpp volume.
Evidently other people had wondered, after "Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology" whether Carnap's objections to Metaphysics had not just dwindled into nothingness (Carnap is responding to Beth).
Carnap's answer there is interesting because it presents a new aspect of what he had introduced as the internal/external distinction.
In relation to Grice's metaphysics it is easy to imagine that as an ordinary language philosopher all his metaphysics is based on the analysis of ordinary language, and that the ontological and conceptual analyses thus obtained are all "internal" in Carnap's terms and hence unobjectionable to Carnap. Of course, Carnap might have preferred the topics be addressed in formal languages, and then yield necessary conclusions, and would have considered the study of ordinary language to belong to pragmatics (though I myself think him mistaken to exclude the possibility of a semantic study of natural languages, even though the results would be synthetic).
However, the distinction between internal and external questions is particularly difficult when it comes to natural languages, for all Carnap's examples of external questions are couched in natural languages. Natural languages are often their own metalanguage and the distinction between internal and external is muddied. External questions are often put using the word "real" or "really".
Do these kinds of entity "really" exist? (Carnap often exemplifies external question using talk of "reality") This works fine when we are talking about the ontology of a formal language and the talk of "reality" is confined to the metalanguage. But in a natural language, talk of "reality" is internal and all those external questions are internalised.
So its helpful that in the Schilpp volume Carnap gives us an alternative vocabulary for talking about what he means by "metaphysics" and which he still rejects. As it happens this has been my preferred way of thinking of this for some time. The alternative account distinguishes between ontological claims which are relative to some language, and those which purport to be absolute, and on this account Carnap's rejection of metaphysics becomes a rejection of absolute ontological claims. Relative (aka internal) claims (relative to some language) are to be settled by the "rules" of the language, yielding answers only for specific languages which may disagree among themselves (between different languages).
With this clarification in mind we may ask again how Grice's work might have appeared in Canap's eyes. The question then becomes, is Grice's interest in metaphysics exclusively relative to some language (presumably English), or does he get into more absolute questions?
That's a question for JL perhaps, but I shall speculate a little myself.
It seems to me that Grice's species of ordinary language philosophy is not so exclusively concerned with the analysis of language as would be needed for there not to be an issue here. For Grice "ordinary language" is not an exclusive subject matter, but rather an ubiquitous source of insight. In at least some of his metaphysical enterprises the object of his studies does not seem to be language.
In some cases the point might be exegetical, he might be excavating the metaphysics of philosophers (Aristotle perhaps). This would not fit Carnap's narrow conception of philosophy, but at least it would not be the proscribed metaphysics.
I think however, that even when considering, say, some aspect of Aristotelian metaphysics, Grice is not purely, or even primarily. exegetical, rather he seeks to take up and progress some aspect of the problem which Aristotle was addressing. Aristotle is of course one of the early sources of just those metaphysical "pseudo-problems" which Carnap criticised, and so it seems likely that Grice may well in this way find himself crossing Carnap's line.
Why should we care whether Carnap would have found the problems which Grice addressed genuine? What was the point of fantasising about a conversation between these two philosophers.
There is more than one, but in this domain it seems to me that what is happening is that we are stripping away those kinds of metaphysics to which it is easy to give meaning (say, descriptive metaphysics, or the exegesis of Aristotelian metaphyics) and which for that reason do not fall foul of Carnap's critique, and when focussed down on the real metaphysics (perhaps what Strawson called "revisionary" metaphysics, perhaps only a part of that), we can imagine Carnap challenging Grice to give meaning to the enterprise. To the extent that Grice succeeds in doing so, the scope of Carnap's critique would be narrowed.
There is interplay here between method and meaning. Carnap wants to see a definite meaning for a metaphysical claim, because in default of that we can have no idea how it can be verified (using that term loosely). Conversely, if we could say in what way such claims could be verified or refuted then those methods would suffice to give meaning to the claims.
The effect of the dialogue is to extract from Grice more detail about meanings and methods, and from Carnap consequent narrowing of the scope of critique.
Further effects might be hoped for. From Carnap it seems to me one might hope for two further kinds of concession. The first is in the use of the term "metaphysics", which for Carnap is used exclusively in a perjorative, proscriptive way. We could reasonably hope that he might be persuaded to accept a wider use ot the term which embraced questions which he does not consider meaningless, e.g. to encompass descriptive metaphysics. We might suggest perhaps in the first instance that Carnap reserve the term "absolute metaphysics" for the external questions which he regards as meaningless and allow that internal ontological questions (especially ones internal to natural languages) be spoken of as a kind of meaningful metaphysics.
A second concession which might be easy to extract is the acknowledgement that meaningfulness is not discrete, that it is the business of philosophers and particularly of metaphysicians to probe into just those areas where meaning is hard to grasp, and that one should perhaps in metaphysics accept more a more tenuous grasp on meaning that one might hope for in say, arithmetic.
The concessions here, in relation to metaphysics, seem all on Carnap's side, Grice's part, clarification of meanings and methods seemingly just more of what he is ordinarily engaged in. It is in the dogmas that we seek concessions, and we have been talking here about Carnap's anti-metaphysical dogma.
The place for Grice's concessions is in his own dogmas, which is what I am here calling his Betes Noire, the various aspects of "minimalism".
There is a symmetry here, for the dogmas of Carnap and those of Grice are both anti-dogmatic. Carnap rejects external questions as criteria for the acceptability of languages, because he wants to be tolerant about language forms. Grice rejects minimalism for similar reasons. He construes minimalism as a set of nominalistic dogmas and he doesn't like being deprived of any of the ontology implicit in our language. Carnap's minimalism is however a pragmatic rather than a dogmatic enterprise. Our conversation will progress more fruitfully if Grice(*) would recognise that not all minimalism is abhorrent.
RBJ
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Friday, August 23, 2013
Graphing the longitudinal unity of Grice
Speranza
At
http://drunks-and-lampposts.com/2012/06/13/graphing-the-history-of-philosophy/
-- as the link indicates, we have an entry on
by Simon Raper, which is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
It is posted by simonraper and has collected come 234 comments.
It is:
THOMSON
STAAL
CHOMSKY
QUINE
DONNELLAN
MYRO
MABBOTT
HACKER
BAKER
KEMMERLING
CARTWRIGHT
NOWELL-SMITH
At
http://drunks-and-lampposts.com/2012/06/13/graphing-the-history-of-philosophy/
-- as the link indicates, we have an entry on
"Graphing the history of philosophy"
It is:
"Filed Under dbpedia, gephi, graphs, Philosophy, SPARQL,
Visualisation".
I think I (indeed R. B. Jones and I) once tried this (or something similar using a visual designed by R. B. Jones) for Grice -- elsewhere
-- and it worked.
The network of influences of the particular philosopher that Grice is -- not included (I
would think) in Simon Raper's graphing looked particularly fascinating -- to us
We may have the outcome of the application of the technique elsewhere.
It connects with Grice's view on the LONGITUDINAL unity of philosophy (as
opposed to its latitudinal unity) -- where 'longitudinal unity' reflects in this
kind of historical graphing.
(A corresponding exercise woud be to 'graph' Carnap, too).
The graphing for Grice should include references to
PLATO
ARISTOTLE
KANT
HARDIE
ARISTOTLE
KANT
HARDIE
STRAWSON
PEARS
URMSON
HARE
PRICHARD
STOUT
PEARS
URMSON
HARE
PRICHARD
STOUT
BRADLEY
RYLE
AYER
WARNOCK
WARNOCK
BAKER
LOCKETHOMSON
STAAL
CHOMSKY
QUINE
DONNELLAN
MYRO
MABBOTT
HACKER
BAKER
KEMMERLING
CARTWRIGHT
NOWELL-SMITH
and the list becomes to look so long that one is tempted to order it alphabetically! -- and subdivided into:
authors cited by Grice
authors who cite Grice
--- and so on
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Grice and the anti-metaphysicians
Speranza
Thanks to R. B. Jones for his commentary to my "Carnap [senior first] and Grice in the history of metaphysics" --
a "challenge for the reconciliation of Carnap and Grice", as Jones writes, kindly.
He adds: "I will try to re-sketch the development of Carnap's anti-metaphysics (possibly at Carnap corner) and consider how much and what kind of moderation would be necessary to accommodate Grice's pervasive metaphysics (here)."
Good.
It seems the anti-metaphysical movement that Carnap (and later Ayer) brought to the type of philosophy Grice would be familiar with was broad-ranging.
I recall browsing an interesting book (out-dated, shall we say, today) by Barnes (of Durham University), entitled, "The philosophical predicament". I found some of the text online at
http://www.questia.com/read/55437899/the-philosophical-predicament
and find a whole chapter dedicated to "LOGICAL POSITIVISM AND METAPHYSICS"
It starts with the quote:
"No man who invents words arbitrarily can be sure that he uses
them conscientiously" -- W. HAZLITT, On People of Sense.
Barnes writes:
"The Logical Positivists or, as they sometimes prefer to style themselves, the Scientific Empiricists burn with a fiery zeal for clarity, the clarity of the pure intellect, unspotted with the heat and dust of the practical and emotional life."
"Where once in philosophy "all was conscience and tender heart ", now, with them, all is gleaming intellect and logical acumen."
"They hate opacity."
"For them, what cannot be said clearly had better not be said at all."
"It can reveal only subjective muddle and confusion."
"In order to exorcise obscurity, they proliferate in symbolic inventions and "write a language of their own which darkens knowledge".
There is a footnote here -- and while I should double-check if Barnes refers explicitly to Carnap, he does to Oxonian Ayer:
"This," Barnes writes in the footnote here, "is NOT [emphasis mine -- Speranza] true of Professor Ayer, the chief English representative of the school, who succeeds in being supremely lucid in the midst of great obstacles."
Barnes in writing in 1950, by the time Ayer had left Oxford to settle in London -- hence the title, 'professor'.
Barnes goes on:
"In their [i.e. the logical positivists] hands Occam's Razor has a new and sharper edge, and they apply it with lively and murderous intent, not only to the throat of metaphysics, but to all discourse that fails to conform to their exacting canons."
"They are the dogmatic theologians and heresiologists of the Orthodox Church of Natural Science."
Barnes is using a language that would come out of Grice under attack, too!
----
Winston H. F. Barnes -- an excellent philosopher to consider!
Barnes goes on:
"All clear language is scientific language."
"All scientific language can be referred to actual sense-data for its formulation, provided we understand the logic of the scientific language."
"The true rôle of philosophy is, as the handmaid of science (ancilla scientiæ), to reveal the logical syntax of language."
A reference to Carnap cannot be more direct!
"To do this is at the same time to show that metaphysics is meaningless, poetry is nonsense, and a great deal of history is pure invention [...]."
----- I would think that Barnes would affiliate, in Oxford, with figures like Collingwood, who had a VERY CLEAR idea of what metaphysics was -- the study of 'presuppositions' -- and Grice/Strawson/Pears do deal with Collingwood briefly in their overview essay "Metaphysics" in "The nature of metaphysics" (Macmillan, 1957).
I would be less sure whether Barnes would have anything to do with the younger types like Ryle or Grice.
Note that by the 1950s, Grice would not be regarded as a metaphysician in Oxford at all.
One interesting thing to consider, within the Oxford context, is review who held the chair of Metaphysical Philosophy along the years -- Waynflete Professor, to be more pretentious! :)
The type of anti-metaphysical doctrine brought by the positivists then received different responses, which were not unitary -- and it would be difficult to classify Barnes's.
The Oxonian reply was possibly pretty pluralistic too.
And so on.
(Note that the expression, 'anti-metaphysician', is possibly ill-formed! :)).
Cheers.
Thanks to R. B. Jones for his commentary to my "Carnap [senior first] and Grice in the history of metaphysics" --
a "challenge for the reconciliation of Carnap and Grice", as Jones writes, kindly.
He adds: "I will try to re-sketch the development of Carnap's anti-metaphysics (possibly at Carnap corner) and consider how much and what kind of moderation would be necessary to accommodate Grice's pervasive metaphysics (here)."
Good.
It seems the anti-metaphysical movement that Carnap (and later Ayer) brought to the type of philosophy Grice would be familiar with was broad-ranging.
I recall browsing an interesting book (out-dated, shall we say, today) by Barnes (of Durham University), entitled, "The philosophical predicament". I found some of the text online at
http://www.questia.com/read/55437899/the-philosophical-predicament
and find a whole chapter dedicated to "LOGICAL POSITIVISM AND METAPHYSICS"
It starts with the quote:
"No man who invents words arbitrarily can be sure that he uses
them conscientiously" -- W. HAZLITT, On People of Sense.
Barnes writes:
"The Logical Positivists or, as they sometimes prefer to style themselves, the Scientific Empiricists burn with a fiery zeal for clarity, the clarity of the pure intellect, unspotted with the heat and dust of the practical and emotional life."
"Where once in philosophy "all was conscience and tender heart ", now, with them, all is gleaming intellect and logical acumen."
"They hate opacity."
"For them, what cannot be said clearly had better not be said at all."
"It can reveal only subjective muddle and confusion."
"In order to exorcise obscurity, they proliferate in symbolic inventions and "write a language of their own which darkens knowledge".
There is a footnote here -- and while I should double-check if Barnes refers explicitly to Carnap, he does to Oxonian Ayer:
"This," Barnes writes in the footnote here, "is NOT [emphasis mine -- Speranza] true of Professor Ayer, the chief English representative of the school, who succeeds in being supremely lucid in the midst of great obstacles."
Barnes in writing in 1950, by the time Ayer had left Oxford to settle in London -- hence the title, 'professor'.
Barnes goes on:
"In their [i.e. the logical positivists] hands Occam's Razor has a new and sharper edge, and they apply it with lively and murderous intent, not only to the throat of metaphysics, but to all discourse that fails to conform to their exacting canons."
"They are the dogmatic theologians and heresiologists of the Orthodox Church of Natural Science."
Barnes is using a language that would come out of Grice under attack, too!
----
Winston H. F. Barnes -- an excellent philosopher to consider!
Barnes goes on:
"All clear language is scientific language."
"All scientific language can be referred to actual sense-data for its formulation, provided we understand the logic of the scientific language."
"The true rôle of philosophy is, as the handmaid of science (ancilla scientiæ), to reveal the logical syntax of language."
A reference to Carnap cannot be more direct!
"To do this is at the same time to show that metaphysics is meaningless, poetry is nonsense, and a great deal of history is pure invention [...]."
----- I would think that Barnes would affiliate, in Oxford, with figures like Collingwood, who had a VERY CLEAR idea of what metaphysics was -- the study of 'presuppositions' -- and Grice/Strawson/Pears do deal with Collingwood briefly in their overview essay "Metaphysics" in "The nature of metaphysics" (Macmillan, 1957).
I would be less sure whether Barnes would have anything to do with the younger types like Ryle or Grice.
Note that by the 1950s, Grice would not be regarded as a metaphysician in Oxford at all.
One interesting thing to consider, within the Oxford context, is review who held the chair of Metaphysical Philosophy along the years -- Waynflete Professor, to be more pretentious! :)
The type of anti-metaphysical doctrine brought by the positivists then received different responses, which were not unitary -- and it would be difficult to classify Barnes's.
The Oxonian reply was possibly pretty pluralistic too.
And so on.
(Note that the expression, 'anti-metaphysician', is possibly ill-formed! :)).
Cheers.
Carnap and Grice in the history of metaphysics
Speranza
Thanks to R. B. Jones for his input. To my "Commentary", he noted:
"I look forward to any further elaborations along the lines you mooted."
He also refers to some stuff on "the Pears Metaphysics volume, and were not favourably impressed."
I will try to retrace some of the material.
Jones goes on:
"It is indeed a difficulty in our present context if it is hard to disentangle the views of Grice from the others (and I have never managed to make much of Kant myself)."
----
Indeed. As we know, the "Metaphysics" entry in the Pears volume is authored as "Grice/Strawson/Pears". This seems to have been typical with Grice. Recall his "In defense of a dogma" (co-authored Strawson), and "Davidson on weakness of the will" (co-authored with Judith Baker).
On top of that he would ENTANGLE views, as when he refers to Kantotle just to AVOID having to make a separation between the metaphysical views of Aristotle and Kant.
----
(I love the word 'disentangle' and 'entangle'. I notice that in the Latin Dictionary, there is an entry for 'implicatura' as used by Sidonius. It is translated as 'entanglement').
But I think it is worth having in mind Kant, Aristotle, Kantotle, Carnap and Grice -- in their place in the 'history of metaphysics'.
I would think that perhaps 'category' is the key word.
For Aristotle -- since Jones has recently been working on editions of his work -- 'category' is a piece of ontological vocabulary (To say that 'category' is an ontological category -- you can slogan that "Speranza's slogan").
Kant dismissed metaphysics, and 'category' becomes a piece of epistemological vocabulary. For Aristotle categories were ten; Kant reduces them to four.
Grice was enamoured with the number four: his categories of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner -- "conversational" categories he dubs them, genial him! -- are a mark of this.
---- Then came the neo-Kantians.
Then came the positivists. Carnap would dismiss, with Kant, all metaphysical talk, and deem is nonsensical.
This is the early, Viennese Carnap. The latter Carnap would assume a 'pragmatist' view -- while holding that 'external questions', whatever they are, remain senseless. (Also 'external answers', of course).
Then came Grice as a member of the Oxford group of Ordinary Language Philosophers. The first metaphysical steps in the group were given by Strawson.
His "Individuals", an 'essay in DESCRIPTIVE metaphysics", is an attempt to reconstruct metaphysics as per what English says about things like subject-predicate expressions. Strawson meditated on this at a much later stage twoo, notably a 1971 California Symposium at Irvine (with Grice) that transpired as Strawson's book, "Subject and predicate in logic and grammar".
Grice's metaphysical views remained 'ontological'. He, with Strawson, would be concerned with reflections on what 'categories' English commits us to; but he was adopting a pragmatist bend, realising that one has to be tolerant of, say, the ontological scheme of quantum physics, for example (not subject-predicate, but process, rather).
At a very later stage, Grice started to reflect on the 'architecture' of metaphysics as a discipline. And he finds that ontology (the study of categories) is only ONE part of it. The other he called 'eschatology' (borrowing the term from 'theological eschatology', the study of the beyond, as it were). Philosophical eschatology is that branch of metaphysics that looks OVER categories and comes with cross-categorial generalisations.
He applies 'eschatology' to the ordinary use of 'right' in WoW (Way of Words). Socrates would say that 'right' belongs in the moral realm. Thrasymachus would hold that 'right' belongs in the 'legal' realm.
This yields contradictory statements:
"That is right-m but not right-l".
Or
"That is right-l but not right-m"
where 'm' and 'l' are sub-indexes for 'legal' (alla positivism of Kelsen) and 'moral' (alla Macintyre, say).
Grice finds that analogy and metaphor can be used in eschatology to find something in common between 'right-l' and 'right-m'. Since we are encompassing a moral category (of right) with a legal category (of right) it's not ontology we are dealing with, but eschatology.
----
In "Actions and Events" (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly), Grice finds himself trying to edit Davidson's essay on the logical form of action sentences ("He hit the ball with the bat"), and failing. He finds in need of EXPANDING on his views on ontology and metaphysics, and it is in this essay that he refers to the Vienna circle and its associates, like Reichenbach.
On top of that, he was teaching "Metaphysics" at the graduate level, and dealing with students writing and opining on these topics. There are tapes at the Bancroft Library which display his routine in dealing with his students in the metaphysics classes -- seriously taking into consideration their observations and trying to provide some elucidatory input (or not).
----
Grice was for a while labelled a 'philosopher of language' and this possibly irritated him. When The Department of Philosophy at Berkeley would advertise its faculty in a catalogue, Grice would be listed as "Specialty: Philosophy of Language".
He felt, rather, that philosophy was unique, or univocal, and that to say:
"Grice was a philosopher of language"
is VERY misleading, with the usual implicature, "Grice was a BAD philosopher of language".
So, he found that a way to redeem his own reputation was to make it clear that he could excel in OTHER areas.
The first other area -- and actually his PET area -- was 'philosophy of perception' -- which he undertook in work co-authored with G. J. Warnock. The ontology of 'sense data' is a very hard question.
Then came 'philosophy of action' (the ontology of intentions and desires), which he co-authored with D. F. Pears.
Then ethics, which he co-authored with J. Baker.
For strict metaphysical matters, he relied on the logical expertise of G. Myro, and the Grice-Myro theory of relative (time-relative) identity is an output of this collaboration.
Therefore, when one speaks of Grice's metaphsyical standing one has to view it as his overall philosophical standing. Metaphysics is the first philosophy, which is to say, that in the first place, a philosopher is, first and foremost, a metaphysician.
Or not!
Thanks to R. B. Jones for his input. To my "Commentary", he noted:
"I look forward to any further elaborations along the lines you mooted."
He also refers to some stuff on "the Pears Metaphysics volume, and were not favourably impressed."
I will try to retrace some of the material.
Jones goes on:
"It is indeed a difficulty in our present context if it is hard to disentangle the views of Grice from the others (and I have never managed to make much of Kant myself)."
----
Indeed. As we know, the "Metaphysics" entry in the Pears volume is authored as "Grice/Strawson/Pears". This seems to have been typical with Grice. Recall his "In defense of a dogma" (co-authored Strawson), and "Davidson on weakness of the will" (co-authored with Judith Baker).
On top of that he would ENTANGLE views, as when he refers to Kantotle just to AVOID having to make a separation between the metaphysical views of Aristotle and Kant.
----
(I love the word 'disentangle' and 'entangle'. I notice that in the Latin Dictionary, there is an entry for 'implicatura' as used by Sidonius. It is translated as 'entanglement').
But I think it is worth having in mind Kant, Aristotle, Kantotle, Carnap and Grice -- in their place in the 'history of metaphysics'.
I would think that perhaps 'category' is the key word.
For Aristotle -- since Jones has recently been working on editions of his work -- 'category' is a piece of ontological vocabulary (To say that 'category' is an ontological category -- you can slogan that "Speranza's slogan").
Kant dismissed metaphysics, and 'category' becomes a piece of epistemological vocabulary. For Aristotle categories were ten; Kant reduces them to four.
Grice was enamoured with the number four: his categories of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner -- "conversational" categories he dubs them, genial him! -- are a mark of this.
---- Then came the neo-Kantians.
Then came the positivists. Carnap would dismiss, with Kant, all metaphysical talk, and deem is nonsensical.
This is the early, Viennese Carnap. The latter Carnap would assume a 'pragmatist' view -- while holding that 'external questions', whatever they are, remain senseless. (Also 'external answers', of course).
Then came Grice as a member of the Oxford group of Ordinary Language Philosophers. The first metaphysical steps in the group were given by Strawson.
His "Individuals", an 'essay in DESCRIPTIVE metaphysics", is an attempt to reconstruct metaphysics as per what English says about things like subject-predicate expressions. Strawson meditated on this at a much later stage twoo, notably a 1971 California Symposium at Irvine (with Grice) that transpired as Strawson's book, "Subject and predicate in logic and grammar".
Grice's metaphysical views remained 'ontological'. He, with Strawson, would be concerned with reflections on what 'categories' English commits us to; but he was adopting a pragmatist bend, realising that one has to be tolerant of, say, the ontological scheme of quantum physics, for example (not subject-predicate, but process, rather).
At a very later stage, Grice started to reflect on the 'architecture' of metaphysics as a discipline. And he finds that ontology (the study of categories) is only ONE part of it. The other he called 'eschatology' (borrowing the term from 'theological eschatology', the study of the beyond, as it were). Philosophical eschatology is that branch of metaphysics that looks OVER categories and comes with cross-categorial generalisations.
He applies 'eschatology' to the ordinary use of 'right' in WoW (Way of Words). Socrates would say that 'right' belongs in the moral realm. Thrasymachus would hold that 'right' belongs in the 'legal' realm.
This yields contradictory statements:
"That is right-m but not right-l".
Or
"That is right-l but not right-m"
where 'm' and 'l' are sub-indexes for 'legal' (alla positivism of Kelsen) and 'moral' (alla Macintyre, say).
Grice finds that analogy and metaphor can be used in eschatology to find something in common between 'right-l' and 'right-m'. Since we are encompassing a moral category (of right) with a legal category (of right) it's not ontology we are dealing with, but eschatology.
----
In "Actions and Events" (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly), Grice finds himself trying to edit Davidson's essay on the logical form of action sentences ("He hit the ball with the bat"), and failing. He finds in need of EXPANDING on his views on ontology and metaphysics, and it is in this essay that he refers to the Vienna circle and its associates, like Reichenbach.
On top of that, he was teaching "Metaphysics" at the graduate level, and dealing with students writing and opining on these topics. There are tapes at the Bancroft Library which display his routine in dealing with his students in the metaphysics classes -- seriously taking into consideration their observations and trying to provide some elucidatory input (or not).
----
Grice was for a while labelled a 'philosopher of language' and this possibly irritated him. When The Department of Philosophy at Berkeley would advertise its faculty in a catalogue, Grice would be listed as "Specialty: Philosophy of Language".
He felt, rather, that philosophy was unique, or univocal, and that to say:
"Grice was a philosopher of language"
is VERY misleading, with the usual implicature, "Grice was a BAD philosopher of language".
So, he found that a way to redeem his own reputation was to make it clear that he could excel in OTHER areas.
The first other area -- and actually his PET area -- was 'philosophy of perception' -- which he undertook in work co-authored with G. J. Warnock. The ontology of 'sense data' is a very hard question.
Then came 'philosophy of action' (the ontology of intentions and desires), which he co-authored with D. F. Pears.
Then ethics, which he co-authored with J. Baker.
For strict metaphysical matters, he relied on the logical expertise of G. Myro, and the Grice-Myro theory of relative (time-relative) identity is an output of this collaboration.
Therefore, when one speaks of Grice's metaphsyical standing one has to view it as his overall philosophical standing. Metaphysics is the first philosophy, which is to say, that in the first place, a philosopher is, first and foremost, a metaphysician.
Or not!
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
A commentary on Jones's, "Grice and Carnap, doctrines schools and tendencies"
Speranza
Thanks to R. B. Jones for his post.
Jones writes:
"Speranza and I have been exploring, over a very extended timescale, the (counterfactual) possibilities for dialogue between Grice and Carnap (counterfactual at least because they are long gone)."
Indeed.
And for refreshers,
Carnap -- born May 18, 1891 – died September 14, 1970
Grice -- born March 13, 1913 – died August 28, 1988
so they DID have an opportunity to talk, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did not exchange a greeting or two at some A. P. A. meeting (Grice loved them).
---- * American Philosophical Association.
----
Jones goes on:
"Interwoven with this we have the question of whether Oxford ordinary language, or North American nominalists constitute a school."
Indeed, where the very root for it is Greek and meaning 'otium'.
-----
INTERLUDE ON GREEK "SKHOLE":
σχολή , ἡ,
A.leisure, rest, ease, Pi.N.10.46, Hdt.3.134, etc.; opp. ἀσχολία, Arist.Pol.1334a15, etc.; σχολὴν ἄγειν to be at leisure, enjoy ease, keep quiet, Hdt. l.c., E.Med.1238, Th.5.29; ἐπί τινι for a thing, Pl.Ap.36d; “περί τι” Antip.Stoic.3.256; “πρός τι” Pl.Phdr.229e, Arr.Epict.1.27.15; τινι Luc.Cal.15; ς. ἀγαγεῖν ἐπί τινα to give up one's time to him, Id.DDeor.12.2, etc.; ς. ἔχειν to have leisure, E.Andr. 732, Pl.Lg.813c, etc.; ἀμφὶ ἑαυτόν for one's own business, X.Cyr.7.5.42; ς. ποιεῖσθαι to find leisure, “πρός τι” Id.Mem.2.6.4: c. inf., Pl. Ion530d; μὴ σχολὴν τίθει, i.e. make haste, A.Ag.1059; “ἡνίκ᾽ ἂν σχολὴν λάβω” E.IT1432; σχολή [ἐστί] μοι I have time, “οὐ σχολὴ αὐτῷ” Pl.Prt.314d; οὐκ οὔσης ς. Ar.Pl.281; also “παρούσης πολλῆς ς. . . πρός τι” Pl.Plt.272b: prov., “οὐ ς. δούλοις” Arist.Pol.1334a21: c. inf., “οὔτοι . . τῇδ᾽ ἐμοὶ ς. πάρα τρίβειν” A.Ag.1055, etc.; εἴ τῳ καὶ λογίζεσθαι ς. S. Aj.816; “εἴ σοι ς. προϊόντι ἀκούειν” Pl.Phdr.227b; καταβαίνειν οὐ ς. Ar. Ach.409,al.; “ς. πλείων ἢ θέλω πάρεστί μοι” A.Pr.818; σχολὴ ἐδόκει γίγνεσθαι he thought he had plenty of time, Th.5.10; ς. διδόναι, παρέχειν τινί, X.Cyr.4.2.22, Hier.10.5; “ς. καταναλίσκειν εἴς τι” Isoc.1.18; τὴν τοῦ πράττοντος ς. περιμένειν to wait his leisure, Pl.R.370b; σχολῆς τόδ᾽ ἔργον a work for leisure, i.e. requiring attention, E. Andr.552: freq. with Preps., ἐπὶ σχολῆς at leisure, Pl.Tht.172d; “κατὰ σχολήν” Ar.Ec.48, Pl.Phdr.228a; “μετὰ σχολῆς” Id.Criti.110a; “ὑπὸ σχολῆς” Plu.2.667d; v.infr. B.
2. c. gen., leisure, rest from a thing, “ἔν τινι σχολῇ κακοῦ” S.OT1286; “ὡς ἂν σχολὴν λύσωμεν . . πόνων” E.HF 725; “ς. ἐστί τινι τῶν πράξεων” Pl.Lg.961b, cf. R.370c; also “ς. γίγνεταί τινι ἀπό τινος” Id.Phd.66d; ς. ἄγειν ἀπό τινος to keep clear of . . , X.Cyr.8.3.47; ἡ τῶν ἀναγκαίων ς. Arist.Pol.1269a35.
3. idleness, τίκτει γὰρ οὐδὲν ἐσθλὸν εἰκαία ς. S.Fr.308; “ς. τερπνὸν κακόν” E.Hipp. 384.
II. that in which leisure is employed, οὐ κάμνω σχολῇ I am not weary of talk, Id.Ion 276; esp. learned discussion, disputation, lecture, Pl.Lg.820c (pl.), Arist.Pol.1323b39; “παρεκαθίζανον . . σχολαῖς φιλομαθεῖν προαιρούμενοι” IG22.1011.22; ταῦτ᾽ οὐ σχολὴ Πλάτωνος; Alex.158; “σχολὰς ἀναγράψαι” Phld.Acad.Ind.p.74 M., cf. Plu.2.37c, etc.; ς. περὶ πολιτείας γράψασθαι ib.790e; ς. ἀναγνῶναι, λέγειν, Phld. Acad.Ind.p.82 M., Arr.Epict.4.11.35; ἠθικαὶ ς., title of work by Persaeus, Stoic.1.102, cf.Cic.Tusc.1.4.7,8.
2. a group to whom lectures were given, school, Arist.Pol.1313b3, Phld.Ind.Sto.10, D.H.Isoc.1, Dem.44, Plu.Per.35, Alex.7, etc.; ς. ἔχειν to keep a school, Arr.Epict. 3.21.11; σχολῆς ἡγεῖσθαι to be master of it, Phld.Acad.Ind.p.92 M., D.H.Amm.1.7.
3. Lat. schola, = σχολαστήριον, Vitr.5.10.4, CIL 10.831, etc.
III. σχολαί, αἱ, regiments of the Imperial guard, Procop.Goth.4.27, Suid. s.v. διέδριον; Lat.scholae, Cod.Theod.14.17.9 (iv A.D.), etc.
b. section of an office, PMasp.57 ii 18 (vi A.D.); of the 15 'schools' of shorthand writers, Lyd.Mag.3.6.
B. σχολῇ as Adv., in a leisurely way, tardily, “ἤνυτον ς. βραδύς” S. Ant.231, cf. Th.1.142, 3.46, And.2.19, etc.; ἄτρεμά τε καὶ ς. Alex. 135.4; “ς. καὶ βάδην” Plb.8.28.11.
2. at one's leisure, i.e. scarcely, hardly, not at all, S.OT434. Ant.390, Pl.Sph.233b, etc.; “παραινῶ πᾶσι . . ς. τεκνοῦσθαι παῖδας” E.Fr.317; “ς. γε” And.1.102, X.Mem.3.14.3; “ς. που” Pl.Sph.261 b: freq. in apodosi, to introduce an a fortioriargument, εἰ δὲ μὴ . . , ἦ που σχολῇ . . γε if not so . . , hardly or much less so . . , And.1.90; “εἰ αὗται . . μὴ ἀκριβεῖς εἰσι, σχολῇ αἵ γε ἄλλαι” Pl.Phd.65b; “εἰ μὴ τούτων . . , ς. τῶν γε ἄλλων” Arist.Metaph.999a10; ὁπότε γὰρ . . , answered by ς. γε, Pl.R.610e; “μὴ γιγνώσκων τὴν οὐσίαν ς. τήν γε ὀρθότητα διαγνώσεται” Id.Lg.668c.
---- end of interlude on etymology of 'school', from Greek 'skhole'.
Jones goes on:
"This does actually connect with the question of what the most significant impediments might be to a fruitful conversation between Grice and Carnap, so I shall try here one way to make that connection."
Good.
"Our starting point in examining the Grice/Carnap question has been Grice's Betes Noires, which turn out to be aspects of "minimalism"."
Indeed.
Grice characterised a number of this. I wonder if he felt THE NEED for this retrospective flashback -- internal need, I mean -- or was just motivated by the fact that the festschrift-editors wanting a cover or big introduction to their thing that would motivate readers. There are various versions of this autobiography by Grice. My favourite runs along the lines:
"Prejudices and predilections; which become the life and opinions of Paul Grice", by Paul Grice.
-- Grice plays with Bunyan's "Pilgrim's progress" and it is with Bunyan that we must look for the ultimate source of Grice's monsters -- or black beasts -- he prefers the French: bête noire.
---
Jones notes:
"At first blush Carnap, as a Positivist (Viennese red neck) is in many ways a minimalist, but on closer inspection he seems (for a positivist, though he was not so sure of that label later on) insufficiently dogmatic on these. Particularly, just like Grice, he is an ontological pragmatist."
Good.
--- And Jones's reference to Vienna is very apt, because there is possibly progress (as in the pilgrim). Ditto for Grice: from Clifton (where he just read Greek) to Oxford where at first he just did classics (at Corpus Christi) to become a 'logician' at St. John's College (again Oxford) and the centre of a bit of a 'school' when he emigrated to Berkeley.
I'm sure a similar geographical and philosophical development applies to Carnap from his original Vienna corner to elsewhere.
Jones goes on:
"When I look closer to the details of these points of possible conflict I find myself unconvinced that Grice and Carnap might not reach a mutual and constructive understanding. But when I step back to survey the scene some of the more pungent critiques on both sides (Carnap's rhetoric on metaphysics, especially but not exclusively his youthful rhetoric, and Grice's throwaway line about Viennese rednecks) seem symptomatic of a cultural rift which reasoned debate might be powerless to bridge."
--- Interesting. But this seems a bit anti-synchronic, because we are trying to compare, as Jones notes, a 'youthful' Carnap with a 'latter-day' (if that's the expression) Grice.
Perhaps they came closest when Grice was writing his "Metaphysics" section to Pears, "The nature of metaphysics" (Macmillan, 1957) -- There, Grice, in a historicist vein, recounts the history of metaphysics and indeed is very objective as to the important role Positivism played there. But I should double-check with the sources! (It's a slim volume by Pears that is seldom quoted! I came across a reference to it in Edwards's Encyclopedia entry for 'metaphysics', as I recall -- and the piece by Grice is co-authored Grice/Strawson/Pears -- it originated in the famous Third Programme lectures of the BBC.
---
Jones goes on:
"Our discussion of minimalism, including extensionalism, lead naturally into consideration of metaphysics (for minimalism is often ontological) and also into the issue whether philosophy should be primarily (or exclusively) concerned with artificial or natural languages"
such as English or German. For we should note that 'natural language', often as used by linguists, tends towards a Platonist abstraction. What we have is Grice's English (or variety thereof, idiolect, basic for Grice) and Carnap's Viennese version of German -- * This Viennese thing reminds me of Popper who would often complain that his German sounded too Viennese even to his self [sic]!
Jones goes on:
"These are both issues on which, though we can see signs in both Grice and Carnap of moderation and tolerance, substantial cultural divergence is evident, of a kind which might be inimical to constructive dialogue."
Grice would, I think, NOT dialogue in German. Andreas Kemmerling did his best to bring Grice to Germany and he succeeded. Grice lectured at Bielefeld. Kemmerling became for me my favourite "German Grice", but there's always the motto:
I said it in Hebrew, I said it in Dutch
I said in German, and Greek,
but I wholly forgot
and it vexes me much
that ENGLISH is what you speak!
---
(Carroll, "Hunting of the Snark"). Kemmerling went on to write his PhD thesis on Grice on German, expanding on the 'meaning' of "Meinen" -- G. Meggle and others followed suit).
---
Jones goes on:
"Carnap's tolerance gives him an ontological flexibility which still sits alongside an intolerance of what he considers "metaphysics" (and does not include these pragmatic choices of ontology, which are not for Carnap metaphysical but conventional). Grice, though seemingly sharing a pragmatic attitude toward ontology (which perhaps feeds his antipathy toware minimalism) has nevertheles a genuine interest in metaphysics, and a difficulty in reconciling Carnap's anti-metaphysical rhetoric with that interest."
Indeed. It should be recalled that there is a 'professional association' or duty involved. Grice was meant to 'teach' Metaphysics (the "Metaphysics" graduate course) at Berkeley.
Interestingly, in 1968, when Grice emigrated to Berkeley (via Harvard), Strawson -- Grice's former tutee -- had been appointed Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford -- where 'metaphysical philosophy', in Oxford, is only meant to mean the opposition to 'natural' or 'physical' philosophy that was also taught -- at some time!
Grice would give graduate courses in Metaphysics (usually with G. Myro) and Ethics (usually with J. Baker) -- whereas Carnap's 'academic' connections with these alleged disciplines -- within a philosophy curriculum -- seem divergent.
The Grice Collection (now deposited at Berkeley's Bancroft Library) contains LOADS of stuff by Grice -- as "lecturer" in metaphysics and ethics: educational talks on the masters of these disciplines, with Kantotle on top. And he would often quote from the Oxford Clarendon Greek edition of Aristotle's Metaphysics -- Ackrill, his tutee at Oxford, having translated bits of it, too --.
Jones goes on:
Jones notes:
"I imagine that I can see how Carnap might be persuaded to take less dismissively many of the questions which Grice might consider as worthwhile and metaphysical."
But I wonder if he had enrolled to one of Grice's courses!
They tended to be fun, though. With Myro, who was more into logic, Grice's metaphysics seminars dealt with things like Geach's point about 'relative identity', and they would spend whole semesters discussing Wiggins's idea of substance and continuity...
Jones:
"This is because in general "metaphysical" and "meaningless" are so strongly coupled for Carnap that if one can show that a question has some meaning, even if only in a pragmatic way, then one has shown the question not to be mere metaphysics."
Grice would empathise with this as an Oxonian, seeing that Ryle had reviewed Heidegger's "Time and Being" (not yet translated to German) for "Mind" and was the cause of Ayer going to Vienna. Grice admired Ayer in views (enfant terrible of Oxford philosophy, he called him). Therefore, Grice was well aware that this was an important stage in the development of 'contemporary' "metaphysics" -- the challenge, as per Carnap and others, that metaphysical statements are cross-categorial if not plain nonsensical. Only at a MUCH later stage would Grice divide metaphysics into two branches: ontology proper and 'eschatology', to meet the challenge that metaphor and analogy may be proper methods for metaphysical discourse.
Jones:
"At the same time, Grice's ontological pragmatism suggests that he may be less absolute in his metaphysics than is typical. But despite these reconciling considerations, or perhaps making Carnap and Grice blind to such possibilities, there may be something like a cultural block, which might be seen in a reluctance of either to contemplate the possibility that the other's rhetoric is, under the cloak of differences in usage, not so severely incompatible as it might seem."
Indeed. Grice had a high respect for what he called the 'longitudinal unity' of philosophy, and since metaphysics has featured so large in the history of philosophy as a discipline, he would be more reluctanct to deny its priority. On top of that, Grice addd a 'latitudinal unity': philosophy, like virtue, is one. And he found that "metaphysics", in the words of Aristotle, was 'first philosophy' -- i.e. the source for a systematics of philosophy as a discipline.
Jones:
"Cultural divergence may be even more significant when we come to the ordinary language versus "constructed" languages issue. Until Oxford comes under attack Grice appears as a moderating force, moderating some of the excesses of "ordinary language philosophy". But under attack Grice closes ranks with the culture to which be belongs."
Indeed. This _can_ be irritating, but I guess you have to be 'under attack' to suffer as he did!
--
Jones:
"My suggestion is here, that what is under attack, and is being defended, is not a doctrine or a school, but a culture or a tendency."
Good point.
---- Perhaps alla Snow, "Two cultures" -- a favourite with Oxonians at some point!
Jones:
"Though denying that there is any school or any collection of doctrines or methods shared by the group under attack, Grice is also capable of describing to us the essential features of ordinary language philosophy."
Indeed: the gist of, say, his very first 'Prolegomena' lecture in Harvard "Logic and Conversation": all his examples drawn from ordinary-language philosophers who cannot distinguish a conversational implicature from their elbow, if that's the expression.
Jones:
"For Grice the essential feature is something like a belief that all philosophical problems should be approached via a careful study of the relevant features of our language"
---- In the case of what in that lecture he calls the "A-philosophers", the point being systematic: to be clear as to what pertains to mere 'implicature' (never 'use', which Grice found 'vague') and what to 'sense' (or truth-conditional feature in the logical form as it were -- since 'sense' he ALSO found 'vague').
Jones:
"In contrasting Oxford philosophy as a non-school with the supposed "school" of nominalists, Grice is putting up a paper tiger. If a school is identified using a particular doctrine (in this case nominalism) as a defining characteristic of its members, then that does make possible a criticism of all via a critique of that particular doctrine. However, most philosophical doctrines come in infinite variety."
Indeed.
Jones goes on:
"At one point, when Carnap was for a year or so at Harvard, Quine, Goodman and Carnap collaborated on a nominalistic project, but there may still have been no single notion of nominalism to which they all subscribed."
Interesting. Indeed, Quine was present when Grice delivered his William James lectures at Harvard. My favourite reference here is Lewis, whose PhD dissertation for Harvard is on "Convention", merging Quine with Grice nicely!
----
Jones goes on:
"Carnap for example, would have been interested at best in exploring what could been done with minimal ontologies without endorsing any nominalistic dogmas, but Goodman may well have been motivated by more definite doubts about more generous ontologies (we can see from his contribution to the Carnap Schilpp volume that he was unhappy about the criticisms which Carnap levelled at his own Aufbau as he moved on from that project, as discussed in the recent workshop at UEA in Norwich)."
Excellent references -- and indeed Goodman was a genius. I think M. A. E. Dummett worshipped him too, and I should double check my Goodmanian references.
The reference to the recent UEA workshop is also very apt, thanks.
Jones:
"I have failed to maintain focus here as much as I would have liked. Let me summarise where I now feel that I am in relation to the Carnap/Grice conversation. I feel that the problem of reconciliation, of discovering whether that might be possible or at what points there might be irresolvable conflicts, falls into two quite different parts."
Good.
"Firstly, there are a number of particular problems which one can approach, attempting to analyse apparant differences and establish whether they are substantive or could possibly be resolved.
There would be much detail here, and many uncertainties about what either philosopher would do in the face of attempts at reconciliation."
Here Jones makes interesting sub-divisions within this first part:
Jones's first query:
"Would Carnap, for example, countenance a change of language to admit the use of the word "Metaphysics" for certain meaningful investigations which would not otherwise fall under his concept of metaphysics and would not fall foul of his critique"
Jones's second query:
"Would either philosopher be willing to extend their conception of philosophy to encompass those kinds of useful work done by the other which do not fall within their present conception, e.g. Carnap to admit some empirical studies of natural languages as belonging to philosophy, or Grice to admit that there are genuinely philosophical problems which can be exposed and progressed in formal languages without any significant prior analysis of natural language?"
I hope to go back to these two queries at a later stage.
Jones notes:
"Those kinds of stumbling blocks might possibly originate in the other (second) part, which is concerned with the broader cultural or perhaps "political" issues. Often these manifest themselves in differences of language, especially if we admit that different view about the nature and scope of philosophy are at bottom different positions about language, about the use of that word "philosophy"".
T. P. Uschanov is an author that comes to mind to me as being good in this. His essay was published by Croom Helm, and available at this link below. It deals with this 'political' side to the polemic.
http://www.helsinki.fi/~tuschano/writings/strange/
Jones:
"Sometimes such issues are associated with major and irreconcilable rifts, sometimes they seem insignificant. For example, Carnap took the view that philosophy produces only analytic truths, and regarded all synthetic claims as belonging to empirical science. But he came from a positivist tradition, of which David Hume is often consider the first, even though Hume himself modelled philosophy on empirical science, and thought it the business of philosophy to achieve an understanding of human nature based on careful observation. In many other ways Carnap's views break with the positivist tradition of which he was a part, another conspicuous place is in his conception of metaphysics."
Good. Grice's attitude towards Hume was more ambivalent, but we should recall that Grice's book, "The conception of value" starts with a Hume quote: the distinction, indeed, between an objective concept (alleged) and our mere 'conception' of what the 'concept' seems to be about -- in this case, 'value'. Grice would often refer to Hume in his metaphysical routines, as he called them. (And we know that Jones has expanded elsewhere on what Jones calls Hume's Fork).
Jones concludes his post:
"We might progress the first kind, what one might call the technical issues, without ever impacting upon the second, the cultural issues, for in these people are often blind to detail and sensitive only, perhaps, to their sense of belonging, their desire to defend home territory against an alien culture."
Indeed. Excellent reminders, Jones. Thank you.
Cheers.
Thanks to R. B. Jones for his post.
Jones writes:
"Speranza and I have been exploring, over a very extended timescale, the (counterfactual) possibilities for dialogue between Grice and Carnap (counterfactual at least because they are long gone)."
Indeed.
And for refreshers,
Carnap -- born May 18, 1891 – died September 14, 1970
Grice -- born March 13, 1913 – died August 28, 1988
so they DID have an opportunity to talk, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did not exchange a greeting or two at some A. P. A. meeting (Grice loved them).
---- * American Philosophical Association.
----
Jones goes on:
"Interwoven with this we have the question of whether Oxford ordinary language, or North American nominalists constitute a school."
Indeed, where the very root for it is Greek and meaning 'otium'.
-----
INTERLUDE ON GREEK "SKHOLE":
σχολή , ἡ,
A.leisure, rest, ease, Pi.N.10.46, Hdt.3.134, etc.; opp. ἀσχολία, Arist.Pol.1334a15, etc.; σχολὴν ἄγειν to be at leisure, enjoy ease, keep quiet, Hdt. l.c., E.Med.1238, Th.5.29; ἐπί τινι for a thing, Pl.Ap.36d; “περί τι” Antip.Stoic.3.256; “πρός τι” Pl.Phdr.229e, Arr.Epict.1.27.15; τινι Luc.Cal.15; ς. ἀγαγεῖν ἐπί τινα to give up one's time to him, Id.DDeor.12.2, etc.; ς. ἔχειν to have leisure, E.Andr. 732, Pl.Lg.813c, etc.; ἀμφὶ ἑαυτόν for one's own business, X.Cyr.7.5.42; ς. ποιεῖσθαι to find leisure, “πρός τι” Id.Mem.2.6.4: c. inf., Pl. Ion530d; μὴ σχολὴν τίθει, i.e. make haste, A.Ag.1059; “ἡνίκ᾽ ἂν σχολὴν λάβω” E.IT1432; σχολή [ἐστί] μοι I have time, “οὐ σχολὴ αὐτῷ” Pl.Prt.314d; οὐκ οὔσης ς. Ar.Pl.281; also “παρούσης πολλῆς ς. . . πρός τι” Pl.Plt.272b: prov., “οὐ ς. δούλοις” Arist.Pol.1334a21: c. inf., “οὔτοι . . τῇδ᾽ ἐμοὶ ς. πάρα τρίβειν” A.Ag.1055, etc.; εἴ τῳ καὶ λογίζεσθαι ς. S. Aj.816; “εἴ σοι ς. προϊόντι ἀκούειν” Pl.Phdr.227b; καταβαίνειν οὐ ς. Ar. Ach.409,al.; “ς. πλείων ἢ θέλω πάρεστί μοι” A.Pr.818; σχολὴ ἐδόκει γίγνεσθαι he thought he had plenty of time, Th.5.10; ς. διδόναι, παρέχειν τινί, X.Cyr.4.2.22, Hier.10.5; “ς. καταναλίσκειν εἴς τι” Isoc.1.18; τὴν τοῦ πράττοντος ς. περιμένειν to wait his leisure, Pl.R.370b; σχολῆς τόδ᾽ ἔργον a work for leisure, i.e. requiring attention, E. Andr.552: freq. with Preps., ἐπὶ σχολῆς at leisure, Pl.Tht.172d; “κατὰ σχολήν” Ar.Ec.48, Pl.Phdr.228a; “μετὰ σχολῆς” Id.Criti.110a; “ὑπὸ σχολῆς” Plu.2.667d; v.infr. B.
2. c. gen., leisure, rest from a thing, “ἔν τινι σχολῇ κακοῦ” S.OT1286; “ὡς ἂν σχολὴν λύσωμεν . . πόνων” E.HF 725; “ς. ἐστί τινι τῶν πράξεων” Pl.Lg.961b, cf. R.370c; also “ς. γίγνεταί τινι ἀπό τινος” Id.Phd.66d; ς. ἄγειν ἀπό τινος to keep clear of . . , X.Cyr.8.3.47; ἡ τῶν ἀναγκαίων ς. Arist.Pol.1269a35.
3. idleness, τίκτει γὰρ οὐδὲν ἐσθλὸν εἰκαία ς. S.Fr.308; “ς. τερπνὸν κακόν” E.Hipp. 384.
II. that in which leisure is employed, οὐ κάμνω σχολῇ I am not weary of talk, Id.Ion 276; esp. learned discussion, disputation, lecture, Pl.Lg.820c (pl.), Arist.Pol.1323b39; “παρεκαθίζανον . . σχολαῖς φιλομαθεῖν προαιρούμενοι” IG22.1011.22; ταῦτ᾽ οὐ σχολὴ Πλάτωνος; Alex.158; “σχολὰς ἀναγράψαι” Phld.Acad.Ind.p.74 M., cf. Plu.2.37c, etc.; ς. περὶ πολιτείας γράψασθαι ib.790e; ς. ἀναγνῶναι, λέγειν, Phld. Acad.Ind.p.82 M., Arr.Epict.4.11.35; ἠθικαὶ ς., title of work by Persaeus, Stoic.1.102, cf.Cic.Tusc.1.4.7,8.
2. a group to whom lectures were given, school, Arist.Pol.1313b3, Phld.Ind.Sto.10, D.H.Isoc.1, Dem.44, Plu.Per.35, Alex.7, etc.; ς. ἔχειν to keep a school, Arr.Epict. 3.21.11; σχολῆς ἡγεῖσθαι to be master of it, Phld.Acad.Ind.p.92 M., D.H.Amm.1.7.
3. Lat. schola, = σχολαστήριον, Vitr.5.10.4, CIL 10.831, etc.
III. σχολαί, αἱ, regiments of the Imperial guard, Procop.Goth.4.27, Suid. s.v. διέδριον; Lat.scholae, Cod.Theod.14.17.9 (iv A.D.), etc.
b. section of an office, PMasp.57 ii 18 (vi A.D.); of the 15 'schools' of shorthand writers, Lyd.Mag.3.6.
B. σχολῇ as Adv., in a leisurely way, tardily, “ἤνυτον ς. βραδύς” S. Ant.231, cf. Th.1.142, 3.46, And.2.19, etc.; ἄτρεμά τε καὶ ς. Alex. 135.4; “ς. καὶ βάδην” Plb.8.28.11.
2. at one's leisure, i.e. scarcely, hardly, not at all, S.OT434. Ant.390, Pl.Sph.233b, etc.; “παραινῶ πᾶσι . . ς. τεκνοῦσθαι παῖδας” E.Fr.317; “ς. γε” And.1.102, X.Mem.3.14.3; “ς. που” Pl.Sph.261 b: freq. in apodosi, to introduce an a fortioriargument, εἰ δὲ μὴ . . , ἦ που σχολῇ . . γε if not so . . , hardly or much less so . . , And.1.90; “εἰ αὗται . . μὴ ἀκριβεῖς εἰσι, σχολῇ αἵ γε ἄλλαι” Pl.Phd.65b; “εἰ μὴ τούτων . . , ς. τῶν γε ἄλλων” Arist.Metaph.999a10; ὁπότε γὰρ . . , answered by ς. γε, Pl.R.610e; “μὴ γιγνώσκων τὴν οὐσίαν ς. τήν γε ὀρθότητα διαγνώσεται” Id.Lg.668c.
---- end of interlude on etymology of 'school', from Greek 'skhole'.
Jones goes on:
"This does actually connect with the question of what the most significant impediments might be to a fruitful conversation between Grice and Carnap, so I shall try here one way to make that connection."
Good.
"Our starting point in examining the Grice/Carnap question has been Grice's Betes Noires, which turn out to be aspects of "minimalism"."
Indeed.
Grice characterised a number of this. I wonder if he felt THE NEED for this retrospective flashback -- internal need, I mean -- or was just motivated by the fact that the festschrift-editors wanting a cover or big introduction to their thing that would motivate readers. There are various versions of this autobiography by Grice. My favourite runs along the lines:
"Prejudices and predilections; which become the life and opinions of Paul Grice", by Paul Grice.
-- Grice plays with Bunyan's "Pilgrim's progress" and it is with Bunyan that we must look for the ultimate source of Grice's monsters -- or black beasts -- he prefers the French: bête noire.
---
Jones notes:
"At first blush Carnap, as a Positivist (Viennese red neck) is in many ways a minimalist, but on closer inspection he seems (for a positivist, though he was not so sure of that label later on) insufficiently dogmatic on these. Particularly, just like Grice, he is an ontological pragmatist."
Good.
--- And Jones's reference to Vienna is very apt, because there is possibly progress (as in the pilgrim). Ditto for Grice: from Clifton (where he just read Greek) to Oxford where at first he just did classics (at Corpus Christi) to become a 'logician' at St. John's College (again Oxford) and the centre of a bit of a 'school' when he emigrated to Berkeley.
I'm sure a similar geographical and philosophical development applies to Carnap from his original Vienna corner to elsewhere.
Jones goes on:
"When I look closer to the details of these points of possible conflict I find myself unconvinced that Grice and Carnap might not reach a mutual and constructive understanding. But when I step back to survey the scene some of the more pungent critiques on both sides (Carnap's rhetoric on metaphysics, especially but not exclusively his youthful rhetoric, and Grice's throwaway line about Viennese rednecks) seem symptomatic of a cultural rift which reasoned debate might be powerless to bridge."
--- Interesting. But this seems a bit anti-synchronic, because we are trying to compare, as Jones notes, a 'youthful' Carnap with a 'latter-day' (if that's the expression) Grice.
Perhaps they came closest when Grice was writing his "Metaphysics" section to Pears, "The nature of metaphysics" (Macmillan, 1957) -- There, Grice, in a historicist vein, recounts the history of metaphysics and indeed is very objective as to the important role Positivism played there. But I should double-check with the sources! (It's a slim volume by Pears that is seldom quoted! I came across a reference to it in Edwards's Encyclopedia entry for 'metaphysics', as I recall -- and the piece by Grice is co-authored Grice/Strawson/Pears -- it originated in the famous Third Programme lectures of the BBC.
---
Jones goes on:
"Our discussion of minimalism, including extensionalism, lead naturally into consideration of metaphysics (for minimalism is often ontological) and also into the issue whether philosophy should be primarily (or exclusively) concerned with artificial or natural languages"
such as English or German. For we should note that 'natural language', often as used by linguists, tends towards a Platonist abstraction. What we have is Grice's English (or variety thereof, idiolect, basic for Grice) and Carnap's Viennese version of German -- * This Viennese thing reminds me of Popper who would often complain that his German sounded too Viennese even to his self [sic]!
Jones goes on:
"These are both issues on which, though we can see signs in both Grice and Carnap of moderation and tolerance, substantial cultural divergence is evident, of a kind which might be inimical to constructive dialogue."
Grice would, I think, NOT dialogue in German. Andreas Kemmerling did his best to bring Grice to Germany and he succeeded. Grice lectured at Bielefeld. Kemmerling became for me my favourite "German Grice", but there's always the motto:
I said it in Hebrew, I said it in Dutch
I said in German, and Greek,
but I wholly forgot
and it vexes me much
that ENGLISH is what you speak!
---
(Carroll, "Hunting of the Snark"). Kemmerling went on to write his PhD thesis on Grice on German, expanding on the 'meaning' of "Meinen" -- G. Meggle and others followed suit).
---
Jones goes on:
"Carnap's tolerance gives him an ontological flexibility which still sits alongside an intolerance of what he considers "metaphysics" (and does not include these pragmatic choices of ontology, which are not for Carnap metaphysical but conventional). Grice, though seemingly sharing a pragmatic attitude toward ontology (which perhaps feeds his antipathy toware minimalism) has nevertheles a genuine interest in metaphysics, and a difficulty in reconciling Carnap's anti-metaphysical rhetoric with that interest."
Indeed. It should be recalled that there is a 'professional association' or duty involved. Grice was meant to 'teach' Metaphysics (the "Metaphysics" graduate course) at Berkeley.
Interestingly, in 1968, when Grice emigrated to Berkeley (via Harvard), Strawson -- Grice's former tutee -- had been appointed Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford -- where 'metaphysical philosophy', in Oxford, is only meant to mean the opposition to 'natural' or 'physical' philosophy that was also taught -- at some time!
Grice would give graduate courses in Metaphysics (usually with G. Myro) and Ethics (usually with J. Baker) -- whereas Carnap's 'academic' connections with these alleged disciplines -- within a philosophy curriculum -- seem divergent.
The Grice Collection (now deposited at Berkeley's Bancroft Library) contains LOADS of stuff by Grice -- as "lecturer" in metaphysics and ethics: educational talks on the masters of these disciplines, with Kantotle on top. And he would often quote from the Oxford Clarendon Greek edition of Aristotle's Metaphysics -- Ackrill, his tutee at Oxford, having translated bits of it, too --.
Jones goes on:
Jones notes:
"I imagine that I can see how Carnap might be persuaded to take less dismissively many of the questions which Grice might consider as worthwhile and metaphysical."
But I wonder if he had enrolled to one of Grice's courses!
They tended to be fun, though. With Myro, who was more into logic, Grice's metaphysics seminars dealt with things like Geach's point about 'relative identity', and they would spend whole semesters discussing Wiggins's idea of substance and continuity...
Jones:
"This is because in general "metaphysical" and "meaningless" are so strongly coupled for Carnap that if one can show that a question has some meaning, even if only in a pragmatic way, then one has shown the question not to be mere metaphysics."
Grice would empathise with this as an Oxonian, seeing that Ryle had reviewed Heidegger's "Time and Being" (not yet translated to German) for "Mind" and was the cause of Ayer going to Vienna. Grice admired Ayer in views (enfant terrible of Oxford philosophy, he called him). Therefore, Grice was well aware that this was an important stage in the development of 'contemporary' "metaphysics" -- the challenge, as per Carnap and others, that metaphysical statements are cross-categorial if not plain nonsensical. Only at a MUCH later stage would Grice divide metaphysics into two branches: ontology proper and 'eschatology', to meet the challenge that metaphor and analogy may be proper methods for metaphysical discourse.
Jones:
"At the same time, Grice's ontological pragmatism suggests that he may be less absolute in his metaphysics than is typical. But despite these reconciling considerations, or perhaps making Carnap and Grice blind to such possibilities, there may be something like a cultural block, which might be seen in a reluctance of either to contemplate the possibility that the other's rhetoric is, under the cloak of differences in usage, not so severely incompatible as it might seem."
Indeed. Grice had a high respect for what he called the 'longitudinal unity' of philosophy, and since metaphysics has featured so large in the history of philosophy as a discipline, he would be more reluctanct to deny its priority. On top of that, Grice addd a 'latitudinal unity': philosophy, like virtue, is one. And he found that "metaphysics", in the words of Aristotle, was 'first philosophy' -- i.e. the source for a systematics of philosophy as a discipline.
Jones:
"Cultural divergence may be even more significant when we come to the ordinary language versus "constructed" languages issue. Until Oxford comes under attack Grice appears as a moderating force, moderating some of the excesses of "ordinary language philosophy". But under attack Grice closes ranks with the culture to which be belongs."
Indeed. This _can_ be irritating, but I guess you have to be 'under attack' to suffer as he did!
--
Jones:
"My suggestion is here, that what is under attack, and is being defended, is not a doctrine or a school, but a culture or a tendency."
Good point.
---- Perhaps alla Snow, "Two cultures" -- a favourite with Oxonians at some point!
Jones:
"Though denying that there is any school or any collection of doctrines or methods shared by the group under attack, Grice is also capable of describing to us the essential features of ordinary language philosophy."
Indeed: the gist of, say, his very first 'Prolegomena' lecture in Harvard "Logic and Conversation": all his examples drawn from ordinary-language philosophers who cannot distinguish a conversational implicature from their elbow, if that's the expression.
Jones:
"For Grice the essential feature is something like a belief that all philosophical problems should be approached via a careful study of the relevant features of our language"
---- In the case of what in that lecture he calls the "A-philosophers", the point being systematic: to be clear as to what pertains to mere 'implicature' (never 'use', which Grice found 'vague') and what to 'sense' (or truth-conditional feature in the logical form as it were -- since 'sense' he ALSO found 'vague').
Jones:
"In contrasting Oxford philosophy as a non-school with the supposed "school" of nominalists, Grice is putting up a paper tiger. If a school is identified using a particular doctrine (in this case nominalism) as a defining characteristic of its members, then that does make possible a criticism of all via a critique of that particular doctrine. However, most philosophical doctrines come in infinite variety."
Indeed.
Jones goes on:
"At one point, when Carnap was for a year or so at Harvard, Quine, Goodman and Carnap collaborated on a nominalistic project, but there may still have been no single notion of nominalism to which they all subscribed."
Interesting. Indeed, Quine was present when Grice delivered his William James lectures at Harvard. My favourite reference here is Lewis, whose PhD dissertation for Harvard is on "Convention", merging Quine with Grice nicely!
----
Jones goes on:
"Carnap for example, would have been interested at best in exploring what could been done with minimal ontologies without endorsing any nominalistic dogmas, but Goodman may well have been motivated by more definite doubts about more generous ontologies (we can see from his contribution to the Carnap Schilpp volume that he was unhappy about the criticisms which Carnap levelled at his own Aufbau as he moved on from that project, as discussed in the recent workshop at UEA in Norwich)."
Excellent references -- and indeed Goodman was a genius. I think M. A. E. Dummett worshipped him too, and I should double check my Goodmanian references.
The reference to the recent UEA workshop is also very apt, thanks.
Jones:
"I have failed to maintain focus here as much as I would have liked. Let me summarise where I now feel that I am in relation to the Carnap/Grice conversation. I feel that the problem of reconciliation, of discovering whether that might be possible or at what points there might be irresolvable conflicts, falls into two quite different parts."
Good.
"Firstly, there are a number of particular problems which one can approach, attempting to analyse apparant differences and establish whether they are substantive or could possibly be resolved.
There would be much detail here, and many uncertainties about what either philosopher would do in the face of attempts at reconciliation."
Here Jones makes interesting sub-divisions within this first part:
Jones's first query:
"Would Carnap, for example, countenance a change of language to admit the use of the word "Metaphysics" for certain meaningful investigations which would not otherwise fall under his concept of metaphysics and would not fall foul of his critique"
Jones's second query:
"Would either philosopher be willing to extend their conception of philosophy to encompass those kinds of useful work done by the other which do not fall within their present conception, e.g. Carnap to admit some empirical studies of natural languages as belonging to philosophy, or Grice to admit that there are genuinely philosophical problems which can be exposed and progressed in formal languages without any significant prior analysis of natural language?"
I hope to go back to these two queries at a later stage.
Jones notes:
"Those kinds of stumbling blocks might possibly originate in the other (second) part, which is concerned with the broader cultural or perhaps "political" issues. Often these manifest themselves in differences of language, especially if we admit that different view about the nature and scope of philosophy are at bottom different positions about language, about the use of that word "philosophy"".
T. P. Uschanov is an author that comes to mind to me as being good in this. His essay was published by Croom Helm, and available at this link below. It deals with this 'political' side to the polemic.
http://www.helsinki.fi/~tuschano/writings/strange/
Jones:
"Sometimes such issues are associated with major and irreconcilable rifts, sometimes they seem insignificant. For example, Carnap took the view that philosophy produces only analytic truths, and regarded all synthetic claims as belonging to empirical science. But he came from a positivist tradition, of which David Hume is often consider the first, even though Hume himself modelled philosophy on empirical science, and thought it the business of philosophy to achieve an understanding of human nature based on careful observation. In many other ways Carnap's views break with the positivist tradition of which he was a part, another conspicuous place is in his conception of metaphysics."
Good. Grice's attitude towards Hume was more ambivalent, but we should recall that Grice's book, "The conception of value" starts with a Hume quote: the distinction, indeed, between an objective concept (alleged) and our mere 'conception' of what the 'concept' seems to be about -- in this case, 'value'. Grice would often refer to Hume in his metaphysical routines, as he called them. (And we know that Jones has expanded elsewhere on what Jones calls Hume's Fork).
Jones concludes his post:
"We might progress the first kind, what one might call the technical issues, without ever impacting upon the second, the cultural issues, for in these people are often blind to detail and sensitive only, perhaps, to their sense of belonging, their desire to defend home territory against an alien culture."
Indeed. Excellent reminders, Jones. Thank you.
Cheers.
Grice and Carnap, doctrines schools and tendencies
Roger Bishop Jones, for The Grice Club
Speranza and I have been exploring, over a very extended timescale, the (counterfactual) possibilities for dialogue between Grice and Carnap (counterfactual at least because they are long gone).
Interwoven with this we have the question of whether Oxford ordinary language, or North American nominalists constitute a school. This does actually connect with the question of what the most significant impediments might be to a fruitful conversation between Grice and Carnap, so I shall try here one way to make that connection.
Our starting point in examining the Grice/Carnap question has been Grice's Betes Noires, which turn out to be aspects of "minimalism". At first blush Carnap, as a Positivist (Viennese red neck) is in many ways a minimalist, but on closer inspection he seems (for a positivist, though he was not so sure of that label later on) insufficiently dogmatic on these. Particularly, just like Grice, he is an ontological pragmatist.
When I look closer to the details of these points of possible conflict I find myself unconvinced that Grice and Carnap might not reach a mutual and constructive understanding. But when I step back to survey the scene. some of the more pungent critiques on both sides (Carnap's rhetoric on metaphysics, especially but not exclusively his youthful rhetoric, and Grice's throwaway line about Viennese rednecks) seem symptomatic of a cultural rift which reasoned debate might be powerless to bridge.
Our discussion of minimalism, including extensionalism, lead naturally into consideration of metaphysics (for minimalism is often ontological) and also into the issue whether philosophy should be primarily (or exclusively) concerned with artificial or natural languages.
These are both issues on which, though we can see signs in both Grice and Carnap of moderation and tolerance, substantial cultural divergence is evident, of a kind which might be inimical to constructive dialogue.
Carnap's tolerance gives him an ontological flexibility which still sits alongside an intolerance of what he considers "metaphysics" (and does not include these pragmatic choices of ontology, which are not for Carnap metaphysical but conventional). Grice, though seemingly sharing a pragmatic attitude toward ontology (which perhaps feeds his antipathy toware minimalism) has nevertheles a genuine interest in metaphysics, and a difficulty in reconciling Carnap's anti-metaphysical rhetoric with that interest.
I imagine that I can see how Carnap might be persuaded to take less dismissively many of the questions which Grice might consider as worthwhile and metaphysical.
This is because in general "metaphysical" and "meaningless" are so strongly coupled for Carnap that if one can show that a question has some meaning, even if only in a pragmatic way, then one has shown the question not to be mere metaphysics.
At the same time, Grice's ontological pragmatism suggests that he may be less absolute in his metaphysics than is typical.
But despite these reconciling considerations, or perhaps making Carnap and Grice blind to such possibilities, there may be something like a cultural block, which might be seen in a reluctance of either to contemplate the possibility that the others rhetoric is, under the cloak of differences in usage, not so severely incompatible as it might seem.
Cultural divergence may be even more significant when we come to the ordinary language versus "constructed" languages issue.
Until Oxford comes under attack Grice appears as a moderating force, moderating some of the excesses of "ordinary language philosophy".
But under attack Grice closes ranks with the culture to which be belongs.
My suggestion is here, that what is under attack, and is being defended, is not a doctrine or a school, but a culture or a tendency.
Though denying that there is any school or any collection of doctrines or methods shared by the group under attack, Grice is also capable of describing to us the essential features of ordinary language philosophy.
For Grice the essential feature is something like a belief that all philosophical problems should be approached via a careful study of the relevant features of our language.
In contrasting Oxford philosophy as a non-school with the supposed "school" of nominalists, Grice is putting up a paper tiger.
If a school is identified using a particular doctrine (in this case nominalism) as a defining characteristic of its members, then that does make possible a criticism of all via a critique of that particular doctrine.
However, most philosophical doctrines come in infinite variety.
At one point, when Carnap was for a year or so at Harvard, Quine, Goodman and Carnap collaborated on a nominalistic project, but there may still have been no single notion of nominalism to which they all subscribed.
Carnap for example, would have been interested at best in exploring what could been done with minimal ontologies without endorsing any nominalistic dogmas, but Goodman may well have been motivated by more definite doubts about more generous ontologies (we can see from his contribution to the Carnap Schilpp volume that he was unhappy about the criticisms which Carnap levelled at his own Aufbau as he moved on from that project, as discussed in the recent workshop at UEA in Norwich).
I have failed to maintain focus here as much as I would have liked.
Let me summarise where I now feel that I am in relation to the Carnap/Grice conversation.
I feel that the problem of reconciliation, of discovering whether that might be possible or at what points there might be irresolvable conflicts, falls into two quite different parts.
Firstly, there are a number of particular problems which one can approach, attempting to analyse apparant differences and establish whether they are substantive or could possibly be resolved.
There would be much detail here, and many uncertainties about what either philosopher would do in the face of attempts at reconciliation.
Would Carnap, for example, countenance a change of language to admit the use of the word "Metaphysics" for certain meaningful investigations which would not otherwise fall under his concept of metaphysics and would not fall foul of his critique.
Would either philosopher be willing to extend their conception of philosophy to encompass those kinds of useful work done by the other which do not fall within their present conception, e.g. Carnap to admit some empirical studies of natural languages as belonging to philosophy, or Grice to admit that there are genuinely philosophical problems which can be exposed and progressed in formal languages without any significant prior analysis of natural language?
Those kinds of stumbling blocks might possibly originate in the other (second) part, which is concerned with the broader cultural or perhaps "political" issues. Often these manifest themselves in differences of language, especially if we admit that different view about the nature and scope of philosophy are at bottom different positions about language, about the use of that word "philosophy".
Sometimes such issues are associated with major and irreconcilable rifts, sometimes they seem insignificant. For example, Carnap took the view that philosophy produces only analytic truths, and regarded all synthetic claims as belonging to empirical science.
But he came from a positivist tradition, of which David Hume is often consider the first, even though Hume himself modelled philosophy on empirical science, and thought it the business of philosophy to achieve an understanding of human nature based on careful observation.
In many other ways Carnap's views break with the positivist tradition of which he was a part, another conspicuous place is in his conception of metaphysics.
We might progress the first kind, what one might call the technical issues, without ever impacting upon the second, the cultural issues, for in these people are often blind to detail and sensitive only, perhaps, to their sense of belonging, their desire to defend home territory against an alien culture.
RBJ
Speranza and I have been exploring, over a very extended timescale, the (counterfactual) possibilities for dialogue between Grice and Carnap (counterfactual at least because they are long gone).
Interwoven with this we have the question of whether Oxford ordinary language, or North American nominalists constitute a school. This does actually connect with the question of what the most significant impediments might be to a fruitful conversation between Grice and Carnap, so I shall try here one way to make that connection.
Our starting point in examining the Grice/Carnap question has been Grice's Betes Noires, which turn out to be aspects of "minimalism". At first blush Carnap, as a Positivist (Viennese red neck) is in many ways a minimalist, but on closer inspection he seems (for a positivist, though he was not so sure of that label later on) insufficiently dogmatic on these. Particularly, just like Grice, he is an ontological pragmatist.
When I look closer to the details of these points of possible conflict I find myself unconvinced that Grice and Carnap might not reach a mutual and constructive understanding. But when I step back to survey the scene. some of the more pungent critiques on both sides (Carnap's rhetoric on metaphysics, especially but not exclusively his youthful rhetoric, and Grice's throwaway line about Viennese rednecks) seem symptomatic of a cultural rift which reasoned debate might be powerless to bridge.
Our discussion of minimalism, including extensionalism, lead naturally into consideration of metaphysics (for minimalism is often ontological) and also into the issue whether philosophy should be primarily (or exclusively) concerned with artificial or natural languages.
These are both issues on which, though we can see signs in both Grice and Carnap of moderation and tolerance, substantial cultural divergence is evident, of a kind which might be inimical to constructive dialogue.
Carnap's tolerance gives him an ontological flexibility which still sits alongside an intolerance of what he considers "metaphysics" (and does not include these pragmatic choices of ontology, which are not for Carnap metaphysical but conventional). Grice, though seemingly sharing a pragmatic attitude toward ontology (which perhaps feeds his antipathy toware minimalism) has nevertheles a genuine interest in metaphysics, and a difficulty in reconciling Carnap's anti-metaphysical rhetoric with that interest.
I imagine that I can see how Carnap might be persuaded to take less dismissively many of the questions which Grice might consider as worthwhile and metaphysical.
This is because in general "metaphysical" and "meaningless" are so strongly coupled for Carnap that if one can show that a question has some meaning, even if only in a pragmatic way, then one has shown the question not to be mere metaphysics.
At the same time, Grice's ontological pragmatism suggests that he may be less absolute in his metaphysics than is typical.
But despite these reconciling considerations, or perhaps making Carnap and Grice blind to such possibilities, there may be something like a cultural block, which might be seen in a reluctance of either to contemplate the possibility that the others rhetoric is, under the cloak of differences in usage, not so severely incompatible as it might seem.
Cultural divergence may be even more significant when we come to the ordinary language versus "constructed" languages issue.
Until Oxford comes under attack Grice appears as a moderating force, moderating some of the excesses of "ordinary language philosophy".
But under attack Grice closes ranks with the culture to which be belongs.
My suggestion is here, that what is under attack, and is being defended, is not a doctrine or a school, but a culture or a tendency.
Though denying that there is any school or any collection of doctrines or methods shared by the group under attack, Grice is also capable of describing to us the essential features of ordinary language philosophy.
For Grice the essential feature is something like a belief that all philosophical problems should be approached via a careful study of the relevant features of our language.
In contrasting Oxford philosophy as a non-school with the supposed "school" of nominalists, Grice is putting up a paper tiger.
If a school is identified using a particular doctrine (in this case nominalism) as a defining characteristic of its members, then that does make possible a criticism of all via a critique of that particular doctrine.
However, most philosophical doctrines come in infinite variety.
At one point, when Carnap was for a year or so at Harvard, Quine, Goodman and Carnap collaborated on a nominalistic project, but there may still have been no single notion of nominalism to which they all subscribed.
Carnap for example, would have been interested at best in exploring what could been done with minimal ontologies without endorsing any nominalistic dogmas, but Goodman may well have been motivated by more definite doubts about more generous ontologies (we can see from his contribution to the Carnap Schilpp volume that he was unhappy about the criticisms which Carnap levelled at his own Aufbau as he moved on from that project, as discussed in the recent workshop at UEA in Norwich).
I have failed to maintain focus here as much as I would have liked.
Let me summarise where I now feel that I am in relation to the Carnap/Grice conversation.
I feel that the problem of reconciliation, of discovering whether that might be possible or at what points there might be irresolvable conflicts, falls into two quite different parts.
Firstly, there are a number of particular problems which one can approach, attempting to analyse apparant differences and establish whether they are substantive or could possibly be resolved.
There would be much detail here, and many uncertainties about what either philosopher would do in the face of attempts at reconciliation.
Would Carnap, for example, countenance a change of language to admit the use of the word "Metaphysics" for certain meaningful investigations which would not otherwise fall under his concept of metaphysics and would not fall foul of his critique.
Would either philosopher be willing to extend their conception of philosophy to encompass those kinds of useful work done by the other which do not fall within their present conception, e.g. Carnap to admit some empirical studies of natural languages as belonging to philosophy, or Grice to admit that there are genuinely philosophical problems which can be exposed and progressed in formal languages without any significant prior analysis of natural language?
Those kinds of stumbling blocks might possibly originate in the other (second) part, which is concerned with the broader cultural or perhaps "political" issues. Often these manifest themselves in differences of language, especially if we admit that different view about the nature and scope of philosophy are at bottom different positions about language, about the use of that word "philosophy".
Sometimes such issues are associated with major and irreconcilable rifts, sometimes they seem insignificant. For example, Carnap took the view that philosophy produces only analytic truths, and regarded all synthetic claims as belonging to empirical science.
But he came from a positivist tradition, of which David Hume is often consider the first, even though Hume himself modelled philosophy on empirical science, and thought it the business of philosophy to achieve an understanding of human nature based on careful observation.
In many other ways Carnap's views break with the positivist tradition of which he was a part, another conspicuous place is in his conception of metaphysics.
We might progress the first kind, what one might call the technical issues, without ever impacting upon the second, the cultural issues, for in these people are often blind to detail and sensitive only, perhaps, to their sense of belonging, their desire to defend home territory against an alien culture.
RBJ
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Silly uses of 'the' and their implications (conventional, conversational)
Speranza
Thanks to R. B. Jones for his commentary to my "How silly can Grice get?". We are expanding on this famous (or infamous, as I prefer -- call me silly) quote by Russell: silly people (like Strawson) do say silly things -- and the worst thing is that some sillier philosophers (Grice) think their task is to analyse them.
Jones writes:
"I love the etymology of silly".
--- Indeed, it is lovely.
"Here's another Russellian sally (on "the cult of ordinary usage")" -- up the Russellian ally, as it were (I love that song by Gracie Fields, "Sally" -- and I like your alliteration).
Russell writes as follows and Jones asks, "We may ask, who were Russell's target's here?
Surely not Grice. Did anyone fit this bill?"
Mmm. Let's re-read and re-vise:
Russell:
"The doctrine, as I understand it, consists in maintaining that the language of daily life, with words used in their ordinary meanings, suffices for philosophy, which has no need of technical terms or of changes in the significance of common terms."
Well, Grice was ambivalent here. His hero was of course Austin, who would say that the language of daily life was sufficient, yet comes up with 'phatic', 'rhetic', 'per-locution' and 'il-locution' to name a few, or Hare who writes in "The language of morals" that he's into 'must' and 'ought' and 'good' and comes up with 'clistic', 'tropic', 'phrastic' and 'neustic'.
Grice himself (or hisself -- bless his silly soul) with 'conversational implicatum', radical, radix, prothetic, alethic, not to mention the 'pirot' and the 'immanuel'.
In "Reply to Richards", Grice makes the explicit point about Austin's use of special terminology as not being inconsistent with a more general dogma that Ordinary Language is Enough.
Russell goes on:
"I find myself totally unable to accept this view. I object to it:
Because it is insincere;
Because it is capable of excusing ignorance of mathematics, physics and neurology in those who have had only a classical education;"
I love this reference to 'a classical education'. Note the 'a': "a classical education", rather than just 'classical education'. Is education, as grammarians would say, 'countable' or a mass-term? Grice surely was aware of this kind of criticism as coming from Gellner (in "Words and Things") and Bergmann. And we SHOULD bear in mind that the members -- or distinguished members -- of Grice's Play Group ('the class whose members have no other class", as Grice qualified it) had all
Lit. Hum.
i..e. THIS was the degree that counted -- and surely NOT a doctorate. A mere MA will do. Doctorates were thought of as overqualified.
H. P. Grice, MA (Lit. Hum.).
--- So 'a classical education' indeed. O. T. O. H., Strawson was NOT: he belonged to this generation where Oxonian philosophers (some of them, or the majority of them) started to get PPE instead (Philosophy-Cum-Politics and Economics). THIS was "not" a classical education.
Grice's 'a classical education' can and should and ought and must indeed be traced back to CLIFTON -- because there was no way you could be a member of the Play Group without a public school background. This meant that 'a classical education' did not really belong in OXFORD, but was a 'pre-Oxonian' thing: Clifton in Grice's case. This meant that their familiarity with the grammar of classical languages -- Greek and Latin -- was well into their system, and would regard English as an offspring of that. They would try to see the mechanisms of English grammar (with their implications) in terms of what they knew, second-hand, from their masters in the Sixth Form of their corresponding public schools.
Indeed, just because Grice was so good at GREEK at Clifton, he gained the scholarship to Corpus Christi. A thing that made for the exception to the rule: he was a "Midlands scholarship boy" who came from the 'wrong side of the tracks', and would thus NOT belong to J. L. Austin's very first "play group" that met with the 'hoi oligoi' (the happy few) in All Souls on Thursday Evenings (Hampshire, Hart, Berlin, Ayer, and a few others did).
----
In "Aspects of reason", when Grice goes on to analyse 'moods' (like indicative, subjunctive, optative, imperative) in an attempt for an elucidation of the alethic/practical distinction) he does comment that he regrets the mood system in English is never as refined as that of the classical counterparts of Greek and Latin.
Similarly, in "Intention and uncertainty" he makes a similar point regarding the old-fashioned (he felt) distinction between "I shall go to London, but I will not" as NOT being contradictory -- again a point of grammar, and perhaps a 'silly thing' some 'silly people' will (but shall not?) say, or is it vice versa?
As for the references to neurology made by Russell, suffice it to say that Grice called it the 'devil of scientism'.
Russell's love for 'twentieth-centuryh physics', Grice responds with a modification of Russell's other slogan: it's not 'stone age metaphysics' we (silly philosophers into silly things people say) are engaged with, but
'stone-age PHYSICS',
rather.
Russell goes on:
"Because it is advanced by some in a tone of unctuous rectitude, as if opposition to it were a sin against democracy; Because it makes philosophy trivial; Because it makes almost inevitable the perpetuation amongst philosophers of the muddle-headedness they have taken over from common sense."
Well, the reference to common sense must be a Scottish thing, where it originates. But the other day I came across a cartoon, I will try to trace and share here (when I do retrace it).
It referred to ways in which philosophers, physicists, and mathematicisans assess their subject-matters.
The philosopher said, 'elementary'.
The mathematician said, 'trivial'.
And the physicist was fascinated by it, and found it to be 'true'.
We should then perhaps distinguish the use made by philosophers of words like 'trivial' and 'elementary'. Indeed, Grice spends some time with 'trivial' (etymologically, part of the trivium) in "Aspects of reason"
"p because p"
he finds 'trivial', but nonetheless valid. And so on.
Of course, the strong word in Russell's prose seems to be 'muddle-headedness' but this, as I say, I connect with the Scottish brand of common sense philosophy that Grice never really adhered to. He did played with G. E. Moore's and Malcolm's idea that 'ordinary language' and 'common sense' are co-extensive -- especially in the two or three earliest essays in the second Part to "Way of Words".
The title of the post refers to 'the'.
As we know, Strawson criticised Russell's theory of descriptions.
Russell, in his explicit tirade against Oxonian philosophy, came up with "Mr. Strawson on referring", which closes with a paragraph against ordinary-language philosophy.
Grice wrote "Definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular".
The distinction between Grice and Strawson here is subtle. Grice wants to say that if there is a difference between 'the' and the iota operator (used by Russell and Whitehead in Principia Mathematica), it is a difference in CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE. In "If and the horseshoe", in PGRICE, Strawson makes it clear that his position is not as weak. He would like to say that the distinction between a formal device and its vernacular countepart (the horseshoe and 'if', for example) is one of a CONVENTIONAL implicature, rather.
Grandy addresses these topics in his contribution to the Berkeley University symposium, "Legacy of Grice".
So we have three positions:
Russell, arguing for a distinction between formal and ordinary language.
Strawson, mis-identifying (in my opinion, which follows Grice) the distinction as a matter of conventional implicature (and thus somewhat attached 'conventionally' to the 'meaning' of the expressions involved, if not, openly, their truth-conditions)
Grice, saying it all 'boils down' to implicature of the conversational kind, and its corresponding 'disimplicature', i.e. to issues of 'maxims' and pragmatic constraints on ordinary language that don't necessarily operate when we engage with a formal calculus.
And so on.
Cheers.
We may ask, who were Russell's target's here?
Surely not Grice. Did anyone fit this bill?
Thanks to R. B. Jones for his commentary to my "How silly can Grice get?". We are expanding on this famous (or infamous, as I prefer -- call me silly) quote by Russell: silly people (like Strawson) do say silly things -- and the worst thing is that some sillier philosophers (Grice) think their task is to analyse them.
Jones writes:
"I love the etymology of silly".
--- Indeed, it is lovely.
"Here's another Russellian sally (on "the cult of ordinary usage")" -- up the Russellian ally, as it were (I love that song by Gracie Fields, "Sally" -- and I like your alliteration).
Russell writes as follows and Jones asks, "We may ask, who were Russell's target's here?
Surely not Grice. Did anyone fit this bill?"
Mmm. Let's re-read and re-vise:
Russell:
"The doctrine, as I understand it, consists in maintaining that the language of daily life, with words used in their ordinary meanings, suffices for philosophy, which has no need of technical terms or of changes in the significance of common terms."
Well, Grice was ambivalent here. His hero was of course Austin, who would say that the language of daily life was sufficient, yet comes up with 'phatic', 'rhetic', 'per-locution' and 'il-locution' to name a few, or Hare who writes in "The language of morals" that he's into 'must' and 'ought' and 'good' and comes up with 'clistic', 'tropic', 'phrastic' and 'neustic'.
Grice himself (or hisself -- bless his silly soul) with 'conversational implicatum', radical, radix, prothetic, alethic, not to mention the 'pirot' and the 'immanuel'.
In "Reply to Richards", Grice makes the explicit point about Austin's use of special terminology as not being inconsistent with a more general dogma that Ordinary Language is Enough.
Russell goes on:
"I find myself totally unable to accept this view. I object to it:
Because it is insincere;
Because it is capable of excusing ignorance of mathematics, physics and neurology in those who have had only a classical education;"
I love this reference to 'a classical education'. Note the 'a': "a classical education", rather than just 'classical education'. Is education, as grammarians would say, 'countable' or a mass-term? Grice surely was aware of this kind of criticism as coming from Gellner (in "Words and Things") and Bergmann. And we SHOULD bear in mind that the members -- or distinguished members -- of Grice's Play Group ('the class whose members have no other class", as Grice qualified it) had all
Lit. Hum.
i..e. THIS was the degree that counted -- and surely NOT a doctorate. A mere MA will do. Doctorates were thought of as overqualified.
H. P. Grice, MA (Lit. Hum.).
--- So 'a classical education' indeed. O. T. O. H., Strawson was NOT: he belonged to this generation where Oxonian philosophers (some of them, or the majority of them) started to get PPE instead (Philosophy-Cum-Politics and Economics). THIS was "not" a classical education.
Grice's 'a classical education' can and should and ought and must indeed be traced back to CLIFTON -- because there was no way you could be a member of the Play Group without a public school background. This meant that 'a classical education' did not really belong in OXFORD, but was a 'pre-Oxonian' thing: Clifton in Grice's case. This meant that their familiarity with the grammar of classical languages -- Greek and Latin -- was well into their system, and would regard English as an offspring of that. They would try to see the mechanisms of English grammar (with their implications) in terms of what they knew, second-hand, from their masters in the Sixth Form of their corresponding public schools.
Indeed, just because Grice was so good at GREEK at Clifton, he gained the scholarship to Corpus Christi. A thing that made for the exception to the rule: he was a "Midlands scholarship boy" who came from the 'wrong side of the tracks', and would thus NOT belong to J. L. Austin's very first "play group" that met with the 'hoi oligoi' (the happy few) in All Souls on Thursday Evenings (Hampshire, Hart, Berlin, Ayer, and a few others did).
----
In "Aspects of reason", when Grice goes on to analyse 'moods' (like indicative, subjunctive, optative, imperative) in an attempt for an elucidation of the alethic/practical distinction) he does comment that he regrets the mood system in English is never as refined as that of the classical counterparts of Greek and Latin.
Similarly, in "Intention and uncertainty" he makes a similar point regarding the old-fashioned (he felt) distinction between "I shall go to London, but I will not" as NOT being contradictory -- again a point of grammar, and perhaps a 'silly thing' some 'silly people' will (but shall not?) say, or is it vice versa?
As for the references to neurology made by Russell, suffice it to say that Grice called it the 'devil of scientism'.
Russell's love for 'twentieth-centuryh physics', Grice responds with a modification of Russell's other slogan: it's not 'stone age metaphysics' we (silly philosophers into silly things people say) are engaged with, but
'stone-age PHYSICS',
rather.
Russell goes on:
"Because it is advanced by some in a tone of unctuous rectitude, as if opposition to it were a sin against democracy; Because it makes philosophy trivial; Because it makes almost inevitable the perpetuation amongst philosophers of the muddle-headedness they have taken over from common sense."
Well, the reference to common sense must be a Scottish thing, where it originates. But the other day I came across a cartoon, I will try to trace and share here (when I do retrace it).
It referred to ways in which philosophers, physicists, and mathematicisans assess their subject-matters.
The philosopher said, 'elementary'.
The mathematician said, 'trivial'.
And the physicist was fascinated by it, and found it to be 'true'.
We should then perhaps distinguish the use made by philosophers of words like 'trivial' and 'elementary'. Indeed, Grice spends some time with 'trivial' (etymologically, part of the trivium) in "Aspects of reason"
"p because p"
he finds 'trivial', but nonetheless valid. And so on.
Of course, the strong word in Russell's prose seems to be 'muddle-headedness' but this, as I say, I connect with the Scottish brand of common sense philosophy that Grice never really adhered to. He did played with G. E. Moore's and Malcolm's idea that 'ordinary language' and 'common sense' are co-extensive -- especially in the two or three earliest essays in the second Part to "Way of Words".
The title of the post refers to 'the'.
As we know, Strawson criticised Russell's theory of descriptions.
Russell, in his explicit tirade against Oxonian philosophy, came up with "Mr. Strawson on referring", which closes with a paragraph against ordinary-language philosophy.
Grice wrote "Definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular".
The distinction between Grice and Strawson here is subtle. Grice wants to say that if there is a difference between 'the' and the iota operator (used by Russell and Whitehead in Principia Mathematica), it is a difference in CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE. In "If and the horseshoe", in PGRICE, Strawson makes it clear that his position is not as weak. He would like to say that the distinction between a formal device and its vernacular countepart (the horseshoe and 'if', for example) is one of a CONVENTIONAL implicature, rather.
Grandy addresses these topics in his contribution to the Berkeley University symposium, "Legacy of Grice".
So we have three positions:
Russell, arguing for a distinction between formal and ordinary language.
Strawson, mis-identifying (in my opinion, which follows Grice) the distinction as a matter of conventional implicature (and thus somewhat attached 'conventionally' to the 'meaning' of the expressions involved, if not, openly, their truth-conditions)
Grice, saying it all 'boils down' to implicature of the conversational kind, and its corresponding 'disimplicature', i.e. to issues of 'maxims' and pragmatic constraints on ordinary language that don't necessarily operate when we engage with a formal calculus.
And so on.
Cheers.
We may ask, who were Russell's target's here?
Surely not Grice. Did anyone fit this bill?
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
How silly can Grice get?
Speranza
R. B. Jones and I are discussing this rather fascinating quote by Russell (or Lord Russell, as I prefer). Russell, in a rather over-quoted quote, speaks about the 'new philosophy'.
It is important to bear that in mind, since the quote is usually NOT given in full. It is also interesting that it comes from "My" (i.e. Russell's) "Philosophical Development" -- since the source is not often given, either.
The main focus of those who make use of the quote is Russell's game (or play) with 'silly': twice in the expression: "silly things silly people say" and variants thereof.
So let us re-quote the quote:
New philosophy,
Lord Russell writes,
"seems to concern itself, not with the world and our relation to it, but only with the different ways in which silly people can say silly things. If this is all that philosophy has to offer, I cannot think that it is a worthy subject of study. The only reason that I can imagine for the restriction of philosophy to such triviality is the desire to separate it sharply from empirical science. I do not think such a separation can be usefully made."
Jones comments and makes various points:
Jones's first point:
"Furthermore, Carnap's gripe with Grice would more likely to have been that the study of ordinary language belongs to science rather than philosophy, so the one merit it would not have for him would be to distinguish itself from empirical science. ... (I hope to be back on the Grice/Carnap connection soon)."
R. B. Jones and I are discussing this rather fascinating quote by Russell (or Lord Russell, as I prefer). Russell, in a rather over-quoted quote, speaks about the 'new philosophy'.
It is important to bear that in mind, since the quote is usually NOT given in full. It is also interesting that it comes from "My" (i.e. Russell's) "Philosophical Development" -- since the source is not often given, either.
The main focus of those who make use of the quote is Russell's game (or play) with 'silly': twice in the expression: "silly things silly people say" and variants thereof.
So let us re-quote the quote:
New philosophy,
Lord Russell writes,
"seems to concern itself, not with the world and our relation to it, but only with the different ways in which silly people can say silly things. If this is all that philosophy has to offer, I cannot think that it is a worthy subject of study. The only reason that I can imagine for the restriction of philosophy to such triviality is the desire to separate it sharply from empirical science. I do not think such a separation can be usefully made."
Jones comments and makes various points:
Jones's first point:
"Interesting of course that Carnap, who saw himself as progressing Russell's
conception of scientific philosophy, had no problem in distinguishing philosophy
from empirical science.
It seems that what Russell intended to put into that conception was not exactly what Carnap took out of it."
It seems that what Russell intended to put into that conception was not exactly what Carnap took out of it."
Jones's second point:
"Furthermore, Carnap's gripe with Grice would more likely to have been that the study of ordinary language belongs to science rather than philosophy, so the one merit it would not have for him would be to distinguish itself from empirical science. ... (I hope to be back on the Grice/Carnap connection soon)."
I would, for starters, don't think that Carnap would use a silly word such as 'silly'. Russell, on the other hand, _revels_ on it.
It's silly things SAID -- i.e. Aristotle's TA LEGOMENA -- by silly people.
As opposed to smart things said by the smarties.
---- Jones is of course alright that Carnap, unlike Russell, had no problem in distinguishing philosophy from 'empirical science'.
Russell seems always to have been confused about things -- but then, the president of the (so-called) Russell Society may disagree. Note that he neve wrote a book,
"My scientific development"
not even for George Allen & Unwin who would have published ANYTHING coming from 'the master'.
"silly" is, if silly, a beautiful word. It's SO English. It means, of course, 'blessed', as in the Virgin Mary. Check Etymology online:
Old English gesælig "happy" (related to sæl "happiness"), from West Germanic *sæligas (cf. Old Norse sæll "happy," Gothic sels "good, kindhearted," Old Saxon salig, Middle Dutch salich, Old High German salig, German selig "blessed, happy, blissful"), from PIE root *sel- (2) "happy, of good mood; to favor" (cf. Latin solari "to comfort").
The site --
The site --
-- goes on to expand:
"The word's considerable sense development moved from "blessed" to "pious," to "innocent" (c.1200), to "harmless," to "pitiable" (late 13c.), to "weak" (c.1300), to "feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish" (1570s). Further tendency toward "stunned, dazed as by a blow" (1886) in knocked silly, etc. Silly season in journalism slang is from 1861 (August and September, when newspapers compensate for a lack of hard news by filling up with trivial stories). Silly Putty trademark claims use from July 1949."
If I relate this to Grice and Strawson, that's because by that time Russell was replying to "Mr." (later Sir) P. F. Strawson in "Mind" -- "Mister Strawson on Referring" -- I always found the "mister" otiose. But then if I had been Sir Peter (Strawson) I would have responded, "Baron Russell on stuff".
---- what's the good of having a nobility title if you're not gonna flaunt it?
-----
Carnap, as the programme to a recent seminar at Norwich included -- had a very interesting position regarding ordinary language.
And we KNOW what Grice's position was.
"Silly people" should better read "layman" or "man in the street". Oddly, if by 'street' we mean "High Street" in Oxford, this may NOT apply. For some reason, when one thinks of the expression, "man in the street" one thinks of Piccadilly, or 5th Avenue, rather than a student (not a man) on High Street, but let that go.
----
"Silly things" may be said CONSISTENTLY by silly people.
Are silly people silly ALL the time? Is 'silly' a disposition. Cfr. "I'm feeling silly today". Note how the the adjective can be used adverbially in some idiolects ("I ate the big sandwich silly").
I would think that silly is a disposition --. Now if 'silly' DOES mean 'happy' -- as this Etymology Online source indicates it did -- then of course, one wouldn't call a person SILLY until she is dead -- silliness, like happiness, relates to a long period (NOT of time! that's one of the most atrocious otiosity I've heard).
Now a person, when silly, may come up with one silly thing to say.
-----
Russell was right that the 'new' philosophy was too much onto that. Cfr. Urmson on parenthetical uses of 'I believe' or 'I regret' as non-truth-conditionally: "your son, I regret, is dead" being one of his examples -- an officer informing the mother of a soldier during the 'phoney' war.
But then, Grice and company, were well aware of various criticisms on that. Grice enjoyed the criticisms by Bergmann ("I won't waste my time with an English futilitarian", he would excuse himself on attending an Oxford seminar), and Gellner, the French philosopher, who never enjoyed the Oxbridge background that Grice did.
But _my_ favourite criticism comes from, of all people, Hywell Lewis:
Clarity Is not Enough: Essays in Criticism of Linguistic Philosophy
www.librarything.com/work/2247205
Clarity Is not Enough: Essays in Criticism of Linguistic Philosophy by H. D. Lewis.
----
For we can see Grice as 'clarifying' the implicatures (AND disimplicatures) of the silly things that silly people sometime say --.
And Grice NEVER thought this was ENOUGH.
But, for now, 'nuff!
Cheers
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Grice's new philosophy -- Russellianly silly
Speranza
Russell, "My Philosophical Development" (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1959), p. 230.
Bertrand Russell claimed that the 'new philosophy' which was practised in Oxford by H. P. Grice
"seems to concern itself, not with the world and our relation to it,
but
only with the different ways in which
silly people can say silly things.
If this
is all that philosophy has to offer, I cannot think that it is a worthy subject
of study. The only reason that I can imagine for the restriction of philosophy
to such triviality is the desire to separate it sharply from empirical science.
I do not think such a separation can be usefully made."
Russell, "My Philosophical Development" (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1959), p. 230.
-- but then this begs the question (only it is improper to beg): 'how silly can Russell get?'
References:
Grice, "Definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular".
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