Grice explores at some
length four alternative interpretations of an iffy buletic (as opposed to a non-iffy
buletic): three formal, one material. The first interpretation is the horseshoe
interpretation. A blind logical nose might lead us or be led to the
assumption of a link between an buletically iffy utterance and a
doxastically iffy utterance. Such a link no doubt exists, but the most
obvious version of it is plainly inadequate. At least one other
philosopher besides Grice has noticed that "If he torments the cat, have him
arrested!" is unlikely to express an buletically iffy utterance, and that even if one restricts oneself to this or that case in which the protasis specifies
a will, we find pairs of examples like "If you will to go to Chicago, travel by AA via Cleveland!" or "If
you will to go to Philadelphia, see a psychiatrist!" -- where it is plain
that one is, and the other is not, the expression of a buletically iffy
utterance. For fun, Grice does not tell which!. A less easily eliminable
suggestion, yet one which would still interprets the notion of a buletically
iffy utterance in terms of that particular logical form to which
"if", 'hypothetical' and 'conditional' attach, would be the following.
Let us assume that it is established, or conceded, as legitimate to formulate
an 'if' utterance in which not only the apodosis is couched in some mode other
than
the doxastic, as in this or that conditional
command. "If you see the whites of their eyes, shoot fire!" but also
the protasis or some part (clause) of them. In which case all of the following
might be admissible conditionals. Thus, we might have a doxastic protasis ("If
the cat is sick, take it to the vet”), or a mixed (buletic-cum-doxastic
protasis ("If you are to take the cat to the vet AND there's no cage
available, put it on Martha's lap!), and buletic protasis ("If you are to
take the cat to the vet, put it in a cage!”). If this suggestion seems
rebarbative, think of this or that quaint "if" utterance (when it is
quaint) as conditionalised versions of this or that
"therefore"-sequence, such as:
buletic-cum-doxastic premises ("Take the
cat to the vet! There isn't a cage. Therefore; Put the cat on Martha's
lap!"), buletic premise (“Take the cat to the vet! Put it in a
cage!"). And then, maybe, the discomfort is reduced. Grice next considers
a second formal interpretation or approach to the buletically iffy/non-iffy
utterance. Among 'if' utterances with a buletic apodosis some will have, then,
a 'mixed’protasis (partly judicative,
partly volitival)
and some will have a purely doxastic protasis (“If
the cat is sick, take him to the vet!). Grice proposes a definition of the
iffy/non-iffy distinction. A buletically iffy utterance is an iffy utterance
the apodosis of which is buletic and the protasis of which is buletic or mixed (buletic-cum-dxastic)
or it is an elliptical version of such an iffy utterance. A buletically
non-iffy utterance is a buletic utterance which is not iffy or else, if it is
iffy, has a purely doxastic protasis. Grice makes three 'quick comments' on
this second interpretation. First, re: REAL IMPERATIVES: The structures which
are being offered as a way of interpreting an iffy and a non-iffy imperative do not, as they stand, offer any
room for the appearance this or that buletic modality like 'ought' and 'should'
which are so prominently visible in the standard examples of those kinds of
imperatives. The imperatives suggested by Grice are explicit imperatives. An
explicit buletic utterance is "Do such-and-such!"; not 'You/one ought
to do such and such'. Grice thinks one can modify this suggestion to meet the
demand for the appearance or occurrence of 'ought' (etc) if such occurrence is
needed. Second, it would remain to be decided how close the preferred reading
of Grice’s 'deviant' conditional imperatives would be to the accepted interpretation
of standard hypothetical imperatives. But even if there were some divergence,
that might be acceptable if the 'new' interpretation turns out to embody a more
precise notion than the standard conception. Third, NEUSTICAL vs TROPICAL protases.
There are, Grice thinks, serious doubts of the admissibility of conditionals with
a NON-doxastic protasis, which are for Grice connected with the very difficult
question whether the doxastic and the buletic modes are co-ordinate or
whether the doxastic mode is in some crucial
fashion (but not in other) _prior_ (to
use Suppes’s qualification) to the buletic. Grice confesses he does not know
the answer to that question. A third formal interpretation links the iffy/non-iffy distinction to the
absolute-relative value distinction. An iffy imperatives would be
_end-relative_ and might be analogous to
an evidence-relative
probability. A non-iffy imperatives would not be end-relative.
Finally, a fourth Interpretation is not formal,
but _material_. This is close to part of what Kant says on the topic. It
is a distinction between
an imperative being
_escapable_ (iffy), through the absence of a
particular _will_ and
its not being escapable (non-iffy). If we
understand the idea of
escabability sufficiently widely, the following imperatives are all
escapable, even though their logical form is not in every case the same: "Give
up popcorn!," "To get slim, give up popcorn!", “If you will to
get slim, give up popcorn!" Suppose Grice has no will to get slim. One might
say that the first imperative (“Give up popcorn!”) is 'escaped',
provided giving up popcorn has nothing else to recommend it, by
_falsifying_ 'You should give up popcorn'. The second and the third imperatives (“To
get slim, give up pocorn!” and “If you will to get slim, give up popcorn!”) would
not, perhaps, involve _falsification_ but
they would, in the
circumstances, be _inapplicable_ to Grice – and inapplicability, too, counts, as escape. A
non-iffy imperative however, is in no way escapable. Re: the Dynamics
of Imperatives in Discourse, Grice then gives three examples which he had
discussed in _Aspects of Reason_, which concern _arguments_ (or
“therefore”-chains). This we may see as an
elucidation to grasp the
logical form of buletically iffy utterance (elided by the ‘therefore’, which is
an ‘if’ in the metalanguage) in its
dynamics in
argumentation. We should, Grice suggests, consider not merely imperatives
of each sort, together with the range of possible
characterisations, but also the possible forms
of _argument_ into which_particular_ hypothetical imperatives might enter. Consider: “ Defend the Philosophy
Department! If you are to defend the philosophy department,
learn to use bows and arrows! Therefore, learn
to use bows and arrows!" Grice says he is using the dichotomy of original-derived
value. In this example, in the first premise, it is not specified whether the
will is original or derived, the second premise specifies 'conducive to'
(means), and the conclusion would involve a 'derived' will, provided the second
premise is doxastically satisfactory. Another example would be: “Fight for your
country! If you're to fight for your country, join up (one of the services)!
Therefore, join up!” Here, the first premise and the conclusion do not specify
the protasis. If the conclusion did, it would repeat the second premise. Then
there’s "Increase your holdings in oil shares! If you visit your father,
he'll give you some oil shares. Therefore, visit your father!” This argument
(purportedly) transmits value. Let us explore these characterisations by Grice
with the aid of R. M. Hare's distinctions. For
Hare in a hypothetical imperative, "the protasis contains a
neustic/tropic" (_Language of Morals_, p.37). A distinction may be made
between 'hypothetical imperative' and a term
used by Grice in his first interpretation of the hypothetical imperative, that of 'conditional
command ('If you see the whites of their eyes, shoot fire!”). A
hypothetical imperative can be distinguished from a _conditional_ imperative (“If
you want to make bread, use yeast!”, “If you see anything suspicious, telephone
the police!") by the fact that modus ponens is not valid for
it. One
may use 'conditional imperative' for an imperative which is
grammatically conditional, and reserve
'conditional command' for a command which is conditional on the satisfaction of the protasis. Thus,on this view,
treating the major premise of the following
argument as a hypothetical
imperative, turns the “therefore”-chain invalid'. Major Premise as Hypothetical
Imperative (“If you will to make someone mad, give him drug D! You will to make Peter
mad; therefore, give Peter drug D!”). The hypothetical imperative tells one
only what _means_ to adopt to achieve a given _end_ in a way which does not necessarily _endorse_
the adoption of that end, and hence of the means
to it. Thus someone
might say, "If you will to make someone mad, give him
drug D!" But, of course, even if you will to do that, you must _not_ try to do
so. On
the other hand, the following is arguably valid
because the major premise is a
'conditional' imperative and not a mere hypothetical
one. Major Premise as
Conditional Imperative: “You will to make someone mad, give him drug D! Make Peter mad! Therefore, give Peter
drug D!”. We can explain this in terms of the presence of the neustic in the antecedent of the
imperative working as the major premise. The supposition that the protasis of a
hypothetical imperative contains a clause in the buletic mode neatly explains
why the argument with the major premise
as a hypothetical imperative
is not valid. But the argument with the major premise as a conditional
imperative is, as well as helping to
differentiate a hypothetical
imperative from a _conditional_ one. For, if the protasis of the major premise in the hypothetical
imperative is volitival, the mere fact that you will to make
Peter mad does not license
the inference of the
imperative to give him the drug; but this _can_ be
inferred from the major premise
of the hypothetical imperative _together with an imperative --
the minor premise in the conditional imperative
– to make Peter mad. In other
words, whether the subordinate clause
contains a
neustic thus does have have a consequence as to the validity of inferences into which
the complex sentence enters. The Principle of Mode Constancy in Buletic and
Doxastic Inference. One may tries to elucidate Grice's ideas on the
logical form of the hypothetical imperative proper. His suggestion is, admittedly,
rather tentative. But it might be argued, in the spirit of it,
that a hypothetical imperative
is of the form "i. If !p, !q, .p, Therefore, !q.” But this violates a
principle of MODE CONSTANCY. A phrastic
must remain _in the same
mode_ (within the scope of the same _tropic_) throughout an argument.
A conditional imperative does not violate the principle of Modal
Constancy, since it is of the form “If p, !q, !p. Therefore, !q". The question of the
logical form of the hypothetical imperative is too obscure to base much on arguments concerning it. There is an
alternative to Grice’s account of the validity
of an argument featuring a conditional imperative. This is to treat the major premise of a
conditional imperative, "as some
have urged it should be" as an _indicative_ tantamount to "In order to make someone mad, you have
to give him drug D". Then an
utterer who EXPLICITLY conveys or asserts the major premise of a conditional imperative and
_commands_ the second premise is in consistency
committed to commanding the conclusion. "If" does not
always connect phrastic with phrastic but sometimes connects two expressions consisting
of a phrastic and a tropic. Consider:
"If you walk past
the post office, post the letter!"
The antecedent of this
imperative states, it seems, the _CONDITION_ under which the imperative expressed becomes operative, and so can _not_ be construed
buletically, since by uttering a buletic utterance, an utterer cannot
EXPLICITLY convey or assert that a condition obtains. Hence, the protasis ought
not be within the scope of
the buletic
"!", and whatever we take to represent the
form of the utterance
above we must not take "!(if p, q)" to do so. One way out.
On certain interpretation of the Isomorphism or aequi-vocality Thesis between Indicative and
Imperative Inference the utterance has to
be construed as an
imperative (in the generic sense) to make the doxasatic conditional "If you will walk past the
post office, you will post the letter" satisfactory. Leaving aside issues
of the implicature of "if", that
the utterance can _not_
be so construed seems to be shown by the fact
that the imperative to make
the associated doxastically “iffy” utterance satisfactory is conformed with by one
who does not walk past the post office. But it seems strange at best to say
that the utterance is conformed with in the same
circumstances. This
'strangeness’ or ‘bafflingliness,’ as Grice prefers, is aptly explained away in
terms of the implicatum. At Oxford, Dummett
was endorsing this idea
that a conditional
imperative be construed as an imperative to make
an indicative material conditional true.
Dummett urges to divide conditional imperatives into those whose antecedent is
"within the power of the addressee"
--- like the
utterance in question -- and those in which it
is not. Consider: "If you go out, wear your coat!" One may be not so
much concerned with how to _escape_ this, as Grice was, but how to _conform_
it. A child may choose not to go out in order to comply with the imperative.
For an imperative whose protasis is_not_ within the power of the addressee ("If
anyone tries to escape, shoot him!”) it is indifferent whether we treat it as a
conditional
imperative or not, so why bother. A small caveat here: If no one tries to escape, the imperative is _not violated_.
One might ask, might there not be an important practical difference bewteen saying that an imperative has not
been violated and that it has been complied with?
Dummett ignores this
distinction. One may feel
think there is much of a
practical difference there (Is Grice an intuitionist? Suppose that you are a frontier
guard and the antecedent has remained unfulfilled. Then,
whether we say that you complied with it, or simply did not _violate_ it will make a great deal of difference if you appear
before a war crimes tribunal. For
Dummett, the fact that in the case of an
imperative expressed by a conditional imperative in which the antecedent is not within the
agent's power, we should NOT say that
the agent had obeyed just on the ground that the protassi is false, is no ground
for construing an imperative as expressing a conditional command: for there is no question of fixing
what shall constitute obedience independently of the determination of what
shall constitute disobedience. This complicates the issues. One may with Grice (and
Hare, and Edgley) defend imperative inference against other Oxonian
philosophers, such as A. J. P. Kenny or B. A. O. Williams. What is questioned
by the sceptics about
imperative inference is whether if each one of a
set of imperatives is used with the force of a command, one can infer a _further_
imperative with that force from them.
Cf. Wiggins on Aristotle on the practical syllogism. One may be more
conservative than Hare, if not Grice. Consider “If you stand by Jane, don't
look at her! You stand by Jane. Therefore, don't look at her!” This is valid.
However, the following, obtained by anti-logism, is not: “If you stand by Jane,
don't look at her! Look at her! Therefore, you don't stand by Jane." It
may seem more reasonable to some to deny Kant’s thesis, and maintain that anti-logism
is valid in imperative inference than it is to hold onto Kant’s thesis and deny
that antilogism is valid in the case in question. Then there’s the question of
the implicate involved in the ordering of modes. Consider: “Varnish every piece
of furniture you make! You are going to make a table; therefore, varnish it! This
is _prima facie_ valid. The following, however, switching the order of the
modes in the premises is not: “You are going to varnish every piece of furniture
that you make. Make a table! Therefore; varnish it!” (The connection between
the ‘if’ and the ‘therefore’ is metalinguistic, obviously – the validity of the
‘therefore’ chain is proved by the ‘associated’ “if” that takes the premise as,
literally, the protasis and the consequence as the apodosis. Conversational Implicature at the Rescue. Problems
with "or": Consider Ross's infamous example: “Post the letter!
Therefore, post the letter or burn it!” as 'invalid' (Ross 1944:38 -- endorsed
by B. Williams). To permit to do p or q
is to permit to do p and to permit to do
q. Similarly, to give permission to do
something is to lift a prohibition against doing it. Admittedly, Williams does not need this so
we are stating his claim more strongly than he does. One may review Grice’s way out (defense of
the validity of the utterance above in terms of the implicatum. Grice claims that in
Ross’s infamous example (valid, for Grice), whilst (to state it roughly) the premise's
"permissive presupposition" (to use the rather clumsy
term introduced by Williams) is entailed by
it, the conclusion's is only _conversationally implicated_. Typically for an isomorphist, Grice says this is
something shared by indicative
inferences. If, being
absent-minded, Grice asks his wife, ‘What have I done with the letter?' and she
replies, ‘You have posted it or burnt it,’ she
conversationally implicates that she is not in a
position to say which Grice has done. She also conversationally implicates that Grice may
not have post it, so long as he has
burnt it. Similarly, the future tense
indicative, "You are going to post the letter" has the conversational
implicature "You may be not going
to post the letter so long as you are going to burn it". But this surely does not validate the
introduction rule for “OR,” to wit:
"p; therefore, p or q"" One _can_ similarly, say:
"Eclipse will win. He may not, of course, if it rains. And I _know_ it
will not rain". Problems with "and.” Consider: “Put on your AND jump
out! Therefore, jump out!” Someone who _only_ jumps out of an aeroplane does not fulfil 'Put on your parachute and
jump out!' He has done only what is necessary,
but not sufficient to fulfil it. Imperatives do not differ from indicatives in
this respect, except that fulfilment takes the place of belief or ‘doxa’, which
is the form of acceptance apprpriate to
a doxasatic utterance, as the name implies. Someone who is told "Smith put on his
parachute AND jumped out" is
entitled to believe that
Smith jumped out. But if he believes that this
is _all_ Smith did he is in error” (Cf. R. Edgley). One may discuss Grice’s
test of cancellability in the case of the transport officer who says: "Go
via Coldstream or Berwick!" It seems the transport officer's way of
expressing himself is extremely
_eccentric_, or ‘conversationally baffling,’ as Grice prefers – yet ‘validly.’If
the transport officer is not sure if a
storm may block one of the routes, what
he should say is “_Prepare_ to go via Coldstream or Berwick!" As for the application
of Grice's test of EXPLICIT cancellation here, it yield, in the circumstances,
the transport officer uttering: "Go either via Coldstream or Berwick! But you may not go via Coldstream if you do
not go via Berwick, and you may not go via Berwick if you do not go via
Coldstream." Such qualifications (what Grice calls ‘explicit cancellation
of the implicature’) seem to the addressee to empty the buletic mode of
utterance of all content and is thus reminiscent of Henry Ford's utterance to
the effect that people can choose what colour car they like provided it is
black. But then Grice doesn’t think Ford is being illogical, only Griceian and
implicatural!
ARISTOTLE. Practical syllogism.
CLARKE D. Mode constancy in mixed
inferences. _Analysis_ 30.
DUNCAN-JONES AE. Symposium on
imperatives. See MITCHELL.
FOOT P. Morality as a system of a
hypothetical imperatives. In _Moral
Philosophy_.
Discussed by Grice in _The Conception of
Value_.
GEACH PT. Imperative inference. _Analysis_ 23
GREGOR MJ. _The categorical imperative_.
GRICE HP. The conception of value. Clarendon
Aspects of Reason. Clarendon
HARE RM. _The language of morals_.
Clarendon.
Some alleged differences between imperatives
& indicatives.
_Mind_ 76, repr. in _Practical Inferences_.
HOLDCROFT D. _Words & deeds_.
Ch V: Hare's theses: phrastics &
neustics.
KENNY AJP. Practical inferences. _Analysis_ 26
MAYO B. Symposium on imperatives.
See MITCHELL.
MITCHELL B. Imperatives.
Aristotelian Society 52.
PATON HJ. _The categorical imperative_
WILLIAMS BAO. Imperative inference.
_Analysis_ 23
WILLIAMS T. The concept of the categorical
imperative.
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