Grice as an intentionalist -- according to Suppes

Speranza

It perhaps wasn't clear that when I chose to title a recent post of mine, "Grice as intentionalist" I was echoing a brilliant passage by Suppes!

I was recently re-reading Suppes's contribution to the Griceian festschrift, P. G. R. I. C. E., "philosophical grounds of rationality: intentions, categories, ends".

Suppes focuses on a few points:

Paul Yu's point on Grice's relying on 'literal meaning' -- Yu is wrong.

John Biro's point about Grice being circular in his reasoning -- But Biro is wrong. Apparently Biro held some private correspondence with Suppes on that point, and they agreed to disagree!

Chomsky's exegesis of Grice as a behaviourist. Suppes relies on Chomsky's "John Locke Lectures" at Oxford, -- "Reflections on language" -- where Chomsky quotes profusely from the reprint of one of Grice's William James lectures in Searle, "Philosophy of Language" (Oxford readings in Philosophy, ed. by G. J. Warnock).

Suppes writes:

 "It seems to me that Chomsky is badly off the mark"

The implicature of 'it seems to me' can here very appropriately be cancelled:

Chomsky IS badly off the mark -- never mind what it seems to Suppes!

Suppes goes on:

Chomsky is widely off the mark "in the passages" on Grice in "Reflections on language" on Grice being a behaviourist."

Suppes goes on:

"In terms of more reasoned and dispassionate analyses, it seems to me that one would ordinarily think of Grice not as a behaviourist" -- as Ryle was -- "but as an intentionalist" -- as the good ole phenomenologists.

I love the term 'intentionalist', and I think of Martin Anton Maurus Marty.

Martin Anton Maurus Marty (18 October 1847, in Schwyz – 1 October 1914, in Prague) was a Swiss philosopher. He specialized in philosophy of language, psychology and ontology. He was considered the successor of Franz Brentano.

More of his links with Grice later.