H.
P. Grice
St.
John's, Oxford
H. P. Grice, M. A. Lit. Hum., F. B. A, Tutorial Fellow in
Philosophy, St. John's, Oxford.
1938.
Negation and privation, negation, 1961, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II
(Essays), Carton 4, Folders 10-11, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: “not,” negation, privation,
verificationism, introspection, sense data, sense datum, logical form, unary
operator, knowledge. This is Grice's reflection, in a verificationist vein, of
two types of utterance: "I don't hear a noise" and "That is not
red." The strict actual ordering should be the
reverse: "That is not red" and "I don't hear a
noise" or, perhaps better, "I am not hearing a
noise" Surely, each is co-related to an affirmative
counterpart: "That is red" and "I hear a noise"
or "I am hearing a noise." But when it comes to the
psychological state, attitude, or stance, it is easier, Grice thinks, to
co-relate "That is not red" with, say, "That is green."
Like "That is red," "That is green" does NOT feature
"not," and it is alleged by Grice to be the source or reason for
Utterer U to utter "That is NOT red" on the basis of U's knowing that
it is green. In the case of "I don't hear a noise," or "I am not
hearing a noise," the source or reason, and indeed knowledge, is the
absence, 'verified' by introspection, of a psychological state, attitude or
stance, co-related to the affirmative counterpart, "I hear a
noise,” or "I am hearing a noise” -- which again, does NOT include
the "not" operator, but unlike the visual sense-datum example, it is
not related to a different experience, but to the absence of the experience,
which is thereby negated. The first utterance, featuring "not," is
thus explained in terms of a mere sense datum. The second utterance featuring
"not" is explained with the aid of an introspection, ultimately
related to a sense datum ('noise'). Grice could have
used, "I don't *see* this as red" or "I am not
*seeing* the pillar box as blue” and unify his account (by the common use of a
different perceptual verb, "to see" and "to hear." The
keyword then would be the philosophy of perception, a long-standing interest of
Grice's. The important distinction is that, as Grice states it,
"That is not red," does not mention the first-person or a perceptual
verb (cf. 'sight unseen'). Thus, "I don't hear a noise" or
"I am not hearing a noise," which does, seems like an apt utterance
to receive an introspective analysis. In relying on introspection, Grice
is being very pre-war Oxonian, at that! 1938. Grice's attempt to
'eliminate' "not" along verificationist lines succeeds. "That is
not red" is based and uttered on the ground of "That
is green." "I am not hearing a noise" is based and uttered
on the *absence* of an introspection, or the absence of an experience arrived
by introspection to the effect that the utterer is hearing a noise. Grice
is involved in serious philosophical studies before the Second World War
under the tutelage of Hardie at Corpus. While his socialising was limited
("having been born on the wrong side of the tracks"), first at
Corpus, and then at Merton, and ending at St. John's, he is unable to attend
Austin's seminal Thursday-evening play-group meetings with the seven:
Ayer, Hampshire, Hart, MacDermott, MacNabb, Woozley, and Berlin. But Grice
learns all about the methodology when he returns to Oxford after the war. Grice
turns back to the topic of negation later at Oxford (vide Grice 1961) in
connection with Strawson's treatment in "Introduction to logical theory."
Grice later includes "not" as the first item in his list of
vernacular counterparts to this or that 'formal device' -- in this case,
"~." In the fourth William James lecture, Grice explores a role for
negation along the lines of Cook Wilson's Statement and Inference. Grice's
'Vacuous names' contains inferences for the introduction (+, ~) and elimination
(-, ~) for negation. In his commentary in P. G. R. I. C. E., Grice illustrates
the metaphysical construction routine of Humeian projection with the pre-intuitive
concept of negation, specifying the various stages the intuitive concept
undergoes until it becomes fully rationally recostructed as
"something like a Fregeian sense." Grice goes back to the topic of
negation in later lectures. Strawson had included a section on 'not' in
his "Introduction to Logical Theory." Grice addresses that
point. Unlike "and," "or," and "if,"
"not" is a truth-functor, or satisfactory-value-functor, of the unary
type. Grice is interested in applying Cook Wilson's "Statement and
inference" to explore what the role of 'not' might be. And he succeds
in finding one. It is explained in terms of the conversational implicatum.
"That's not red” now IMPLICATES that some utterer has, somewhere,
sometime, expressed the contrary opinion. Is there a strict conceptual
distinction, as Grice thinks, between ‘negation’ and ‘privation’? If
‘privation’ involves or presupposes negation, one might appeal to something
like Modified Occam’s Razor, do not multiply negations beyond necessity. In his
choice of examples, Grice seems to be implicating that an empirically
verifiable, observational utterance, such as “That is not red,” on the basis of
his knowing that it is green, is a ‘negation,’ while an utterance arrived via
introspection, such as “I am not hearing a noise,” on the basis of his knowing
that he is aware of the absence of an experience to that effect, is a
‘privation.’ Or not! Of course, Grice is ultimately looking for the rationale
behind the conversational implicatum in terms of a principle of conversational
helpfulness underlying his picture of conversation as rational co-operation.
Pirot 1 says “p,” Pirot 2 wants to negate that ("~p"). Surely a
“rational creature” should be capable to deny, as Grice puts it in
"Indicative Conditionals." Grice does not consider the other possible
unitary functors – just negation, which reverses the truth-value of the radix.
In “Aspects of reason,” he explores negation within the scope of an operator
other than the indicative mode operator ("Don't do it!" "Don't
arrest the intruder!"). In terms of systematics, it is best to see Grice’s
view on negation (and privation) as his outlook on the utterer's this or that
basic expressive power (in this case, his proficiency with "not") as
co-related with this or that ‘formal device’ in general. Many of his comments
addressed to this more general topic (satisfactoriness-preserving operators)
thus apply to negation, and raise the question about the EXPLICITUM or
explicatum of "not." A Griceian should not be confused. The fact that
Grice does not explicitly MENTION negation, but ‘formal device’ in general,
does not mean that what he says about formal device may not be particularised
to apply to negation. His big concession is that Whitehead and Russell are
right about the explicitum or explicatum of "not" being
"~." Any divergence is explained via the 'implicatum.'
"Not" utterances are horribly uninformative, and not all of them are
of philosophical interest. Grice joked with Searle's "He's not lighting
the cigarette with a twenty-dollar bill," 'he' being a Texas oilman in his
club, and thus, the implicatum is usually to the effect that someone thought
otherwise. In terms of Cook-Wilson, the role has more to do with the expressive
power of a rational creature to deny a molecular utterance such as
"p.q." The example, "That's not green" out of "That's
red" (as opposed to "I'm not hearing a noise" from the absence
of the experience of hearing it) depends on Kant's synthetic a priori that Grice
tested with his children's playmates, "Can a sweater be red and green all
over? No stripes allowed!" -- cf. Ryle on negation for the Aristotelian
Society. As a conversational implicatum, Grice’s examples can be
re-phrased, “That’s unred” and “I’m unhearing a noise”!
1941.
Personal identity, Mind, vol. 50, pp. 330-50, repr. in J. R. Perry, Personal
identity, University of California Press, Berkeley, David Hume, Hume's quandary
about personal identity, Hume on personal identity, Hume'a account of
personal identity, Personal identity, revisited, the logical-construction
theory of personal identity, 1977, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays),
Carton 4-Folder 12 and Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folders 7-9, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords:
"I," personal identity, first person, first personal pronoun, Locke,
Hume. H. P. Grice’s quandary about personal identity: the implicata. Grice is
concerned with the implicatum involved in the use of the first person singular
("I will be fighting soon") since his pre-war days at Oxford! No
wonder his choice of an example! The topic of 'personal identity' (which label
Austin found pretentious, and preferred to talk about the illocutionary force
of "I") had a special Oxonian pedigree that Grice had occasion to
study and explore for his M. A. Lit. Hum. Locke, a philosopher with whom Oxford
identifes most, famously defends a memory-based account of "I" that
received some alleged counter-example by some Scots philosophers, notably Reid.
And Hume! (Or "Home," if you must). In fact, while he is not too
specific about Hume in the "Mind" essay, Grice will, due mainly to
his joint investigations with J. C. Haugeland, approach Hume's 'quandary,' too!
In his own approach to "I," Grice updates the time-honoured Lockeian
analysis. Grice embraces a 'logical construction' of "I" utterances,
and relies on Gallie. In fact, Grice is heterodoxical enough to use the
taxonomy by Broad ('from the other place') of "I" utterances, too.
Grice deals with the Reid-type counterexample, and comes up with a rather
elaborate 'analysans' for a simple "I" statement, such as "I am
hearing a noise," the affirmative counterpart of the focus of his earlier
essay on negation ("I am not hearing a noise"). In fact, Grice
dismisses the 'indexical' approach that will be made popular by J. R. Perry
(who reprinted Grice's essay in his influential collection for the University
of California Presss). Grice seems to be relying on 'reasoning which is too
good': "I am hearing a noise; therefore, someone is hearing a noise."
Grice's attempt to reduce "I" statements ("I am hearing a
noise") in terms of a chain of mnemonic states poses a few quandaries
itself! While quoting from recent philosophers such as Gallie and Broad, it is
a good thing that Grice has occasion to go back to, or 'revisit,' Locke and
contest the infamous counterexamples presented by Reid and Hume. Grice
concludes on a methodological note. The intricacy of one's analysis for an
apparently simple utterance (cf. his earlier essay on "I am not hearing a
noise") should not be a minus, but a plus. Much later, Grice later
reconsiders, or revisits, indeed, Broad's remark and re-titles his approach as
"the" or "a" "logical-construction theory of personal
identity." It is indeed Haugeland who has Grice re-consider Hume's
vagaries with personal identity. Unlike the more conservative Locke (that Grice
favours), eliminationist Hume sees "I" as a conceptual, indeed
metaphysical chimaera. Hume presses the point for an 'empiricist'
verificationist account of "I." For, as Russell would say, "what
can be more direct that the experience of myself?" The Hume Society should
take notice of Grice's simplification of Hume's implicatum on "I." As
a matter of fact, Grice calls one of his metaphysical construction routines
"Humeian Projection," so it is not too adventurous to think that
Grice might have considered "I" as an intuitive concept that needs to
be 'metaphysically re-constructed' and be given a legitimate Fregeian sense.
Grice calls one of his metaphysical construction routines "Humeian
projection," since the 'mind,' as it were, 'spreads over' its objects.
But, by 'mind,' Hume does not necessarily mean the "I." Cf. "The
mind's I." Grice is especially concerned with the poverty of Hume's
criticism to Locke on personal identity. Grice opts to revisit the Lockeian
memory-based on "I" utterances that Hume rather regards as 'vague,'
and 'confusing.' Locke's approach to identity is NOT eliminationist as Hume's
is, and it is only natural that Grice would be sympathetic to it. Grice
explores these issues with J. C. Haugeland mainly at seminars. One wonders why
Grice spends so much time in a philosopher such as Hume, with whom he agreed
almost on nothing! One supposes Grice is trying to save Hume at the implicatum
level, at least! The phrase or term of art, "logical construction" is
Broad's, but Grice loved it. Rational reconstruction is not too dissimilar, but
Grice prefers Broad's more conservative label. This is more than a
terminological point. If Hume is right and there is NO 'intuitive' concept of
"I," one cannot strictly re-construct it, only 'construct' it!
Ultimately, Grice shows that, if only at the implicatum level, we are able to
provide an analysandum for an "I" utterance WITHOUT using "I,"
by implicating only 'mnemonic' concepts, which belong, naturally, in a theory
of philosophical psychology. The topic of personal identity unites various
interests of Grice. The first is ‘identity,' simpliciter. Instead of talking of
the meaning of “I,” as, say, Anscombe would, Grice sticks to the traditional
category, or keyword, for this, i. e. the theory-laden, ‘PERSONAL identity.’
Personal identity is a type of identity, but what does ‘person’ add?
Consciousness? Grice plays with the soul/body distinction ("I fell from
the stairs"). Some "I" utterances are purely 'bodily,' some are
purely 'soully,' and some are mixed! At the time of his "Mind" essay,
he was unaware of the complications that the concept of a ‘person’ (as attached
in adjective form to 'identity') may bring. Ayer did, and Strawson will, and
Grice learns much from Strawson (a person as a complex for a body-soul
spatio-temporal continuant substance. Ultimately, Grice finds a theoretical
counterpart here. A pirot may become a human, but that is not enough. A pirot must
aspire, via metousiosis, to become a PERSON. Thus, 'person' becomes a technical
term in Grice’s grand metaphysical scheme of things. "Someone heard a
noise" is analysed as "A past hearing of a noise is
an element in a total temporary state which is a member of a series
of total temporary states such that every member of the series would,
given certain conditions, contain as an element a memory of some
experience which is an element in some previous member, or
contains as an element some experience a memory of which would, given
certain conditions, occur as an element in some subsequent member;
there being no sub-set of members which is independent of the
rest." -- which Grice 'simplifies' as "A past hearing of a
noise is an element in a member of an interlocking series of memorative
and memorable total temporary states". Was his "Personal
identity" ever referred to? Indeeed, P. Edwards includes a reference to
Grice's Mind essay in the entry for "Personal identity," as a
reference to Grice et al on "Metaphysics," is referenced in Edwards's
encyclopaedia entry for 'metaphysics.'
1946. The sceptic’s implicature,
common sense and scepticism, repr. in Studies in the Way of
Words, Part II, Explorations in semantics and metaphysics, as
Essay 8, and 'G. E. Moore and Philosopher's Paradoxes,' as Essay 9,
1953, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 4-Folder 13, BANC
MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: common sense, scepticism, implicatum, the sceptic's implicature,
philosopher's paradox, paradox, G. E. Moore, ordinary language,
'ordinary-language' philosophy, Norman Malcolm. The sceptic’s implicature.
While it is, strictly, slightly odd to quote this as "(1946)" just
because, by a stroke of the pen, Grice writes that date in the Harvard
volume, we will follow the practice! This is vintage Grice! Grice always took
the sceptic's challenge seriously, as any serious philosopher should! In
his later reflections, Grice's took the sceptic's impicatum as a very affront
to our idea of rationality, conversational or other. Vide: "Conversations
with a sceptic: Can he be slightly more conversational helpful?" Hume's
sceptical attack is partial, and targeted only towards practical reason,
though. Yet, for Grice, reason is one; so you cannot really attack
'practical' reason without attacking 'theoretical' or doxastic reason, too!
There is something like a more general 'rational acceptance,' to use Grice's
term, that the sceptic is getting at! Grice liked to play with the idea that
ultimately all syllogism is 'practical.' If, say, a syllogism by Einstein looks
doxastic, that is because Einstein cares to 'omit the practical tail,' as Grice
puts it! And Einstein is not even a philosopher, they say! Grice is here
concerned with a Cantabrigian topic popularised by G. E. Moore. As
Grice recollects, "Some like Witters, but Moore's my man." Unlike
Cambridge analysts such as Moore, Grice sees himself as a 'linguistic-turn'
*Oxonian* analyst. So it is only natural that Grice would connect time-honoured
scepticism (yes, of the Stoa infame) and common sense with
'ordinary language', so mis-called, the elephant in Grice's room. If
scepticism attacks common sense and fails, Grice seems to be implicating,
‘ordinary-language’ philosophy is a good antidote to scepticism,
too! Since what language other than 'ordinary language' does common sense
speak? ("Well, strictly, common sense doesn't speak!"). In fact,
Grice re-addresses this topic in a strictly Mooreian way in a later essay, also
repr. in Studies: "G. E. Moore and Philosopher's paradoxes, repr. in Studies
in the Way of Words. As with his earlier 'Common sense and
scepticism,' Grice tackles Moore's and Malcolm's claim that 'ordinary
language,' so-called, solves a few of "Philosopher"'s paradoxes. "Philosopher"
is Moore's attempt at humour to symbolise "any" philosopher,
especially of the type he found eccentric, the sceptic included. Grice finds
problems in this overarching Cantabrigian manoeuvre, as over-simplifying a
pretty convoluted terrain. While Grice treasured Austin's "Some like
Witters, but Moore's MY man!" perhaps he found Moore too Cantabrigian to
his taste! While an Oxonian thoroughbred, Grice was a bit like
Austin, "Some like Witters, but Moore's my man." While
Grice would agree that Moore goes 'above' Witters, if that's the expression
('even if some like him'), we should find the Oxonian equivalent to Moore.
Grice would NOT name Ryle, since he saw him almost every day! "There is
something apostolic about Moore that I enjoy," Grice would say, referring
to the fact that Moore was one of the apostles. Grice spends some time
exploring what Malcolm, a follower of Witters, as it were, has to say about
Moore in connection with that particularly "Oxonian" turn of phrase, "ordinary
language." For Malcolm's Moore, a 'paradox' by a 'philosopher' arises
when 'Philosopher' fails to abide by the dictates of Ordinary
Language. That Moore was not too happy with Malcolm's criticism can be
witnessed by just a glimpse at Moore's "Reply to Norman Malcolm"!
Grice is totally against this view that Malcolm ascribes to Moore as being TOO
BROAD to even claim to be true! Perhaps Grice's implicature is that Malcolm is
appealing to Oxonian turns of phrase ('ordinary language') but not taking
proper Oxonian care (in clarifyng the nuances and stuff) in dealing with,
admittedly, a non-Oxonian philosopher such as Moore! When dealing with Moore,
Grice is not necessarily concerned with scepticism. “Time is unreal,” for
example, is hardly a sceptic utterance, yet Grice lists as one of philosopher's
paradoxes. So, there are various keywords to consider here. Grice would start
with “common sense.” In his “Preface” and “Retrospective Epilogue” to Studies
in the Way of Words, that’s how he organizes the themes and strands. “Common
Sense” is one keyword there. Scepticism is another. In his two essays opening
Part II, “Explorations in semantics and metaphysics” in Way of Words, it seems
it’s MALCOLM who interests Grice most. While Grice would provide exegeses of
Moore’s dicta, and indeed, Moore’s response to Malcolm, he seems to be more
concerned with applications of his own views. Notably in “Philosopher’s
Paradoxes.” The ‘fatal’ objection Grice finds for the paradox-propounder (not
necessarily a sceptic, although a sceptic may be one of the paradox
propounders) rests on Grice's analysis of meaning. Grice elaborates on
circumstances that he’ll later take up in the “Retrospective Epilogue” (“I find
myself not understanding what I mean” – dubiously acceptable). If meaning, Grice
is saying, is about an utterer intending to get his addressee to believe
something, the utterer must think there is a good chance that the addressee
will recognise what he is supposed to believe, by being aware of the utterer’s
practice or by a supplementary explanation. In which case, the utterer CANNOT
be meaning what Malcolm claims he might mean, because no utterer would intend
his addressee to believe what is ‘conceptually impossible,’ or incoherent, or
blatantly false (“Charles I’s decapitation willed Charles I’s death.”). Grice
edits the “Philosopher’s Paradoxes” essay. It’s only the FINAL objection which
is reprinted in Studies, but he provides a good summary of the previous
sections. Grice will use Moore’s example on two later occasions, at least. In
“Causal Theory,” he lists, as a THIRD philosophical mistake, the opinion by
Malcolm that Moore did not know how to use ‘know.’ Grice brings up the same
example again in “Prolegomena.” The use of Moore may well be a misuse. While at
lecturing at that eccentrically-constructed hall at Madison, Wisconsin, -- with
indirect lighting simulating actual sun rays, the hall, not the state -- Moore
infamously said, “I know THERE is a window behind that curtain,” when there
wasn’t! In 1987, Grice uses “M” to abbreviate Moore’s fairy godmother – along
with G (Grice’s), A (Austin’s), R (Ryle’s) and Q (Quine’s)!
1948.
Meaning, repr. in Studies in the Way of Words, Part II, Explorations in
semantics and metaphysics, as Essay 14, The Oxford Philosophical Society, The
Philosophical Review, vol. 66, pp. 377-88, C. S. Peirce's theory of
signs, cf. meaning revisited, philosophical psychology, The H. P. Grice Papers,
Series II (The Essays of H. P. Grice), Carton 1-Folder 16 and Carton 4-Folder
5, and Series V (Topical), Carton 8-Folder 29, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keyword: sign, meaning,
intention, Peirce, Stevenson. The Peirce in Grice’s soul. Besides St. John The
Baptist, and Salome, Grice cites few names in "Meaning." But he makes
a point about C. L. Stevenson! For Stevenson, smoke 'means' fire.
“Meaning" develops out of an interest by Grice on the philosophy of C. S.
Peirce. In his essays on Peirce, Grice quotes from many other authors,
including, besides Peirce himself (!), C. K. Ogden, I. A. Richards, and A. C.
Ewing, and this or that cricketer! Grice had no intention to submit
"Meaning" to publication! Bennett, however, guessed that Grice had
decided to publish it in 1957, just a year after his "Defence of a
dogma." Bennett's argument is that "Defence of a dogma"
pre-supposes some notion of 'meaning.’ However, a different story may be told,
not necessarily contradicting Bennett's! It is Strawson who submits the essay
by Grice to "The Philosophical Review." Strawson had attended Grice's
talk on Meaning for The Oxford Philosophical Society, and liked it! Since
"In defence of a dogma" WAS co-written with Strawson, the intention
Bennett ascribes to Grice may well have been Strawson's! Oddly, Strawson later
provides a famous alleged counter-example to Grice on meaning in
"Intention and convention in speech acts," which has Grice dedicating
a full William James lecture (No. 5) to it! An interesting fact, that confused
a few, is that H. L. A. Hart quotes from Grice's "Meaning” in his critical
review of Holloway for The Philosophical Quarterly. Hart quotes Grice
pre-dating the publication of "Meaning.” Hart's point is that Holloway
should have gone to Oxford! In "Meaning," Grice may be seen as a
practitioner of 'ordinary-language' philosophy: witness his explorations of the
factivity or lack thereof of various uses of "to mean." The second
part of the essay, for which he became philosophically especially popular,
takes up an intention-based approach to semantic notions. The only authority
Grice cites, in typical Oxonian fashion, is Stevenson, who, from The New World
(and via Yale, too!) had been defending an emotivist theory of ethics, and
making a few remarks on how "to mean" is used, with scare quotes, in
something like a 'causal' account ("Smoke 'means' fire."). After its
publication Grice's account received "almost as many alleged
counterexamples as rule-utilitarianism" (B. J. Harrison), but mostly
outside Oxford, and in The New World. New-World philosophers seem to have seen
Grice's attempt as reductionist and as oversimplifying. At Oxford, the sort of
counterexample Grice received, before Strawson, was of the Urmson-type:
refined, and subtle ("I think your account leaves bribery behind!").
On the other hand, in the New World -- in what Grice calls the "Latter-Day
School of Nominalism," Quine is having troubles with empiricism.
“Meaning" was reprinted in various collections, notably in P. F.
Strawson's Philosophical Logic (and it should be remembered that it was
Strawson who had the thing typed and submitted for publication!). Why
"Meaning" should be reprinted in a collection on "Philosophical
Logic" only Strawson knows! But Grice does say that his account may help
clarify the meaning of '... entails...'! It may be Strawson's implicature that
Parkinson should have reprinted (and not merely credited) Grice's Meaning in
HIS series for Oxford on "The theory of meaning"! The preferred
quotation for Griceians is of course Grice 1948, seeing that Grice recalled the
exact year when he gave the talk for the Philosophical Society at Oxford! It is
however, the publication in The Philosophical Review, rather than the quieter
evening at the Oxford Philosophical Society, that occasioned a tirade of
alleged counter-examples by New-World philosophers. Granted, one or two
Oxonians -- Urmson and Strawson -- fell in! Urmson criticised the NECESSITY of
Grice's account, by introducing an alleged counter-example involving bribery.
Grice will consider a way out of Urmson's alleged counter-example in his fifth
Wiliam James Lecture, rightly crediting and thanking Urmson for this!
Strawson's alleged counter-example was perhaps slightly more serious, if
regressive. It involved, rather, the SUFFICIENCY of Grice's analysis.
Strawson's "rat-infested house" alleged counter-example started a chain
which required Grice to avoid, ultimately, any 'sneaky' intention by way of a
recursive clause to the effect that, for utterer U to have MEANT that p, all
meaning-constitutive intentions should be 'above board.' But why this obsession
by Grice with 'mean'? He is being funny. Spots surely don't mean -- They don't
have a mind! Yet Grice opens with a SPECIFIC sample: THOSE spots mean, to the
doctor, that you, dear, have measles. “Mean"? Yes, dear, 'mean,' doctor's
orders. Those spots 'mean' measles. But how does the doctor KNOW? Can't he be
in the wrong? Not really, "mean" is factive, dear! Or so Peirce
thought! Grice is amazed that Peirce thought that some meaning is factive. “A
bullet went through this cloth," is one of Peirce's examples. “Surely,"
Grice notes, "this is an unhappy example. The hole in the cloth may well
have caused by something else, or 'fabricated.'" Yet, Grice was having
Oxonian students aware that Peirce was krypto-technical! Grice chose for one of
his pre-"Meaning" seminars (i.e. 1947) on Peirce's theory of signs.
Peirce, rather than the Vienna circle, becomes, in vein with Grice's dissenting
irreverent rationalism, important as a source for Grice's attempt to 'English'
Peirce. Grice's implicature seems to be that Peirce, rather than Ayer, cared for
the subtleties of 'meaning' and 'sign', never mind a verificationist theory
about them! Peirce ultra-Latinate-cum-Greek taxonomies have Grice very nervous,
though. He knew that his students were proficient in the classics, but still!
Grice thus proposes to reduce all of Peirceian divisions and sub-divisions
("one sub-division too many") to 'mean.' In the proceedings, he
quotes from Ogden, Richards, and Ewing. In particular, Grice was fascinated by
Peirce's correspondence with Lady Viola Welby, as reprinted by Ogden/Richards
in, well, their study on the 'meaning' of meaning! Grice thought "the
science of symbolism" pretentious, but then he almost thought Lady Viola
Welby "slightly pretentious, too" -- "if you've seen her"
-- "Beautiful lady!" It is via Peirce that Grice explores examples
such as those spots 'meaning' measles. Peirce's obsession is with weathercocks
(almost as Ockham was). Old-World Grice's use of New-World Peirce is
illustrative, thus, of the Oxonian linguistic turn focused on 'ordinary language.'
While Peirce's background was not philosophical, Grice thought it comical
enough! He would say that Peirce is an 'amateur,' but then he said the same
thing about Mill, whom Grice had to study by heart to get his B. A. Lit. Hum.!
Plus, as Watson commented, "What's wrong with 'amateur'? Give me an
amateur philosopher ANY day, if I have to choose from 'professional'
Hegel!" In finding Peirce krypo-technical, Grice is ensuing that his
tutees, and indeed any Oxonian philosophy student (he was university lecturer)
be aware that 'to mean' should be more of a priority than this or that jargon
by this or that (New World?) philosopher!? Partly! Grice wanted his students to
think on their own, and draw their own conclusions! Grice cites Ewing,
Ogden/Richards, and many others. Ewing, while Oxford-educated, had ended
up at Cambridge (Scruton almost had him as his tutor!) and written some points
on "Meaninglessness"! “Those spots mean measles." Grice finds
Peirce 'krypto-technical' and proposes to "English" him into an
'ordinary-language' philosopher. Surely it is not 'important' whether we
consider a measles spot a 'sign,' a 'symbol,' or an 'icon.' “I may well find a
doctor in London who thinks those spots 'symbolic'!" If Grice feels like
Englishing Peirce, he does not altogether fail! 1957. Meaning,
reprints. H. P. Grice (1957). Reprints, of 'Meaning' and other essays, a collection
of reprints and offprints of Grice's essays. Meaning becomes a central
topic of at least two strands in “Retrospective epilogue.” The first strand
concerns the idea of the centrality of the utterer. What Grice there calls
“meaning BY” (versus meaning TO), i.e. as he also puts it, ‘active or agent’s
meaning.’ Surely he is right in defending an agent-based account to ‘meaning.’
Peirce need not, but Grice must, because he is working with an English root,
‘mean,’ that is only figurative applicable to non-agentive items (“Smoke
‘means’ rain”). On top, Grice wants to conclude that only RATIONAL creatures
(like persons) can meanNN properly. Non-human animals may have a correlate.
This is a truly important point for Grice since he surely is seen as promoting
a NON-convention-based approach to ‘meaning,’ and also defending from the
charge of circularity in the non-semantic account of propositional attitudes.
His final picture is a rationalist one. Pirot 1 wants to communicate about a
danger to Pirot 2. This presupposes there IS a danger (item of reality). Then
Pirot 1 *believes* there is a danger, and communicates to Pirot 2 that there is
a danger. This simple view of conversation as rational co-operation underlies
Grice’s account of meaning too, now seen as an offshoot of philosophical
psychology, and indeed biology, as he puts it. Meaning as yet another survival
mechanism. While Grice would NEVER use cognates like ‘significance’ in his
Oxford Philosophical Society talk, he eventually starts to use such Latinate
cognates at a later stage of his development. In "Meaning," Grice
does not explain his goal. By sticking with a root that the Oxford curriculum
did not necessarily recognised as 'philosophical' (amateur Peirce did!), Grice
is implicating that he is starting an 'ordinary-language' botanising on his own
repertoire!
1953.
A pint of philosophy, Grice on Gordon, a pint of philosophy, by Alfred Brook
Gordon, includes notes by Grice, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V
(Topical), Carton 8, Folder 27, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library,
The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Gordon. A
pint of philosophy with Grice! Figurative!
1954.
Categories: Aristotle and beyond, categories, with J. L. Austin and P. F.
Strawson, Categoriae, Aristotle's Categoriae, 1955, 1956, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series I (The Correspondence of H. P. Grice, IA -- Code), Carton
1-Folders 5-6, Series II (Esssays), Carton 4-Folders 6-7, Series III (The
Doctrines), Carton 5-Folder 22, and Series V (Topical), Carton 6-Folders 15 and 23, Carton
7-Folder 10, and Carton 9-Folder 13, BANC MSS 90/a35c, The Bancroft Library,
The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: category, Aristotle,
Strawson, Austin, category shift, Categoriae. H. P. Grice’s category shift.
Grice found Aristotle's use of a 'category,' κατηγορία, a bit of a
geniality. Aristotle is using legalese (from 'kata,' against, on, and
'agoreuô' [ἀγορεύω], speak in public), and uses it to designate both the prosecution in a trial and
the attribution in a logical proposition — that is, the questions that must be
asked with regard to a subject, and the answers that can be given. As a
representative of the 'linguistic turn' in philosophy, Grice is attracted to
the idea that a category can thus be understood variously, as applying to the
realm of reality (ontology), but also to the philosophy of language (category
of expression) and to philosophical psychology (category of
representation). Grice kept his explorations on categories under two very
separate, shall we say, categories: his explorations with J. L. Austin (very
serious), and those with P. F. Strawson (more congenial). Where is Smith's
altruism? Nowhere to be seen. Should we say it is idle (otiose) to speak of
altruism? No, it is just an ATTRIBUTE, which, via category shift, can be made
the subject of your sentence, Strawson. It's not spatio-temporal, though, right?
Not really. -- I don't particularly like your 'trouser words.' The essay is
easy to date since Grice notes that Strawson reproduced some of the details in
his "Individuals," dated 1959. Grice thought Aristotle was the best!
Or at any rate almost as good as Kantotle! Aristotle saw Categoriae, along with
De Interpretatione as part of his 'Organon.' However, philosophers of
language tend to explore these topics without a consideration of the later
parts of the Organon dealing with the syllogism, the tropes, and the topics --
"the boring bits!" The reason Grice is attracted to the Aristotelian
category (as Austin and Strawson equally were) is that 'category' allows for a
'linguistic-turn' reading. Plus, it's a nice, pretentious (in the Oxonian way) piece
of philosophical jargon! (Aristotle couldn't find 'category' in the 'koine,' so
he had to coin it!). While meant by Aristotle in a primarily ontological way,
Oxonian philosophers hasten to add that a 'category of expression,' as Grice
puts it, is just as valid a topic for philosophical exploration. His tutee
Strawson will actually publish a book on subject and predicate in grammar!
("Trivial, Strawson!"). Grice will later add an intermediary
category, which is the subject of his philosophical psychology. As such, a
category can be construed ontologically, or representationally: the latter
involving philosophical psychological concepts, and expressions themselves. For
Aristotle, as Grice and Austin, and Grice and Strawson, were well aware as they
educated some of the poor at Oxford ("Only the poor learn at Oxford"
-- Arnold), there are (at least -- at most?) ten categories. Grice doesn't
(really) care about the number. But the first are important. Actually the VERY
first: THERE's 'substantia prima,' such as Grice. And then there's 'substantia
secunda,' such as Grice's rationality. The 'essentia.' Then there are various
types of 'attributes.' But, as Grice sharply notes, even 'substantia secunda'
may be regarded as an 'attribute.' Grice's favourite game with Strawson was
indeed "Category Shift," or "Subject-ification," as
Strawson preferred. Essence may be introduced as a sub-type of an attribute. We
would have 'substantia prima' AND 'attribute,' which in turn gets divided into
'essential' (the izzing) and 'non-essential' (the hazzing). While Austin was
not so fun to play with, Strawson is. "Banbury is a very altruist
person." Where is his altruism? Nowhere to be seen, really. Yet we may
sensically speak of Banbury's altruism. It's just a matter of a 'category
shift'! (Grice scores). Grice was slightly disappointed, but he perfectly
understood, that Strawson, who had footnoted Grice as 'the tutor from whom I
never ceased to learn about logic' in "Introduction to Logical
Theory," fails to acknowledge that MOST of the research in Strawson's
"Individuals: an essay in descriptive (not revisionary) metaphysics"
derives from the conclusions reached at his joint philosophical investigations
with Grice. Grice will later elaborate on this with A. D. Code -- who was keen
on Grice's other game, "The hazz and the hazz not, the izz." But then
"the tutor from whom I never ceased to learn about metaphysics"
sounds slightlier clumsier, as far as the implicature goes! Categories, 1973,
The Grice-Myro theory of identity, Relative identity, Grice on "=,"
The Grice-Myro theory of identity, identity, notes, with G. Myro, metaphysics,
philosophy, 1974, 1977, 1980, with A. D. Code, keywords: identity, relative
identity, the Grice-Myro theory of identity, metaphysics, Myro, Code. H. P.
Grice izz H. P. Grice – or izz he? The idea that "=" is unqualified
requires qualification. Whitehead and Russell ignored this. Grice and Myro
didn't! Grice wants to allow for “It is the case that a = b /t1” and “ It is
not the case that a = b /t2.” The idea is intuitive, but philosophers of a
Leibnizian bent are too accustomed to deal with "=" as an absolute.
Grice applies this to 'human' vs. 'person.' A human may be identical to a
person, but cease to be so. Grice makes Peano feel deeply Griceian, as Grice
lists his “=” postulates, here for consideration. Note the use of alethic
modalities for necessity and possibility, starting with (11). 1. ⊢ (α izz α) 2. ⊢ (α
izz β ∧ β izz γ) ⊃ α
izz γ 3. ⊢ α hazz β ⊃ ~(α
izz β) 4. ⊢ α hazz β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(α hazz x ∧ x
izz β) 5. ⊢ (∀β)(β is a universal ⊃ β
is a form) 6. ⊢ (α hazz β ∧ α
is a particular) ⊃ (∃γ)(γ≠α ∧ α izz β) 7. ⊢ α is predicable of β ⊃⊂ ((β izz α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazz x ∧ x
izz α) 8. ⊢ α is essentially predicable of β ⊃⊂ β izz α 9. ⊢ α
is accidentally predicable of β ⊃⊂ (∃x)(β hazz x ∧ x
izz α) 10. ⊢ α = β ⊃⊂ α
izz β ∧ β izz α 11. ⊢ α
is an individual ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(β izz α ⊃ α izz β) 12. ⊢ α
is a particular ⊃⊂ □(∀β)(α is predicable of β ⊃ (α izz β ∧ β
izz α)) 13. ⊢ α is a universal ⊃⊂ ◊(∃β)(α is predicable of α ∧ ~(α
izz β ∧ β izz α) 14. ⊢ α
is some-thing ⊃ α is an individual 15. ⊢ α is a form ⊃ (α
is some-thing ∧ α is a universal) 16. ⊢ α is predicable of β ⊃⊂ (β izz α) ∨ (∃x)(β hazz x ∧ x
izz α) 17. ⊢ α is essentially predicable of α 18. ⊢ α is accidentally predicable of β ⊃ α ≠ β 19. ⊢ ~(α
is accidentally predicable of β) ⊃ α
≠ β 20. ⊢ α is a particular ⊃ α
is an individual 21. ⊢ α is a particular ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x
izz α) 22. ⊢~ (∃x)(x is a particular ∧ x
is a form) 23. ⊢ α is a form ⊃ ~(∃x)(x ≠ α ∧ x
izz α) 24. ⊢ x is a particular ⊃ ~(∃β)(α izz β) 25. ⊢ α
is a form ⊃ ((α is predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ β
hazz α) 26. ⊢ α is a form ∧ β
is a particular ⊃ (α is predicable of β ⊃⊂ β hazz A) 27. ⊢ (α
is a particular ∧ β is a universal ∧ β
is predicable of α) ⊃ (∃γ)(α ≠ γ ∧ γ
is essentially predicable of α) 28. ⊢ (∃x) (∃y)(x is a particular ∧ y
is a universal ∧ y is predicable of x ⊃ ~(∀x)(x is a universal ∧ x is some-thing) 29. ⊢ (∀β)(β is a universal ⊃ β
is some-thing) 30. ⊢ α is a particular) ⊃ ~∃β.(α ≠ β ∧ β
is essentially predicable of α) 31. ⊢ (α
is predicable of β ∧ α ≠ β) ⊃ α
is accidentally predicable of β. The use of alethic modalities, necessity and
possibility, starting with (11) above, make this a good place to consider one
philosophical mistake Grice mentions in "Causal Theory": "What
is actual is not also possible." He is criticising a 'contemporary' (if
'dated') form of 'ordinary-language' philosophy, where the philosopher detects
a nuance, and embarks risking colliding with the facts, rushing ahead to
exploit it before he can clarify it! Grice liked to see his explorations on
"=" as belonging to metaphysics, as the Series on his
"Doctrines" at the Grice Collecction testifies. While Grice
presupposes the use of "=" in his treatment of 'the' king of France,
he also explores a relativisation of "=." His motivation was an essay
by Wiggins, almost Aristotelian in spirit, against Strawson's criterion of
space-time continuancy for the identification of the 'substantia prima.' Grice
wants to apply '=' to cases were the time continuancy is made explicit. This
yields that "a = b" in scenario S, but that it may not be the case
that "a = b" in a second scenario S'. Myro had an occasion to expand
on Grice's views in his contribution on the topic for Philosophical Grounds of
Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends, or P. G. R. I. C. E. for short. Myro
mentions his System Ghp, a highly powerful/hopefully plausible version of
Grice's System Q, "in gratitude to H. P. Grice." Grice explored also
the logic of izzing and hazzing with A. D. Code. Grice and Myro developed a
Geach-type of 'qualified identity.' The formal aspects were developed by Myro,
and also by Code. Grice discussed Wiggins's "Sameness and substance,"
rather than Geach (cf. Wiggins and Strawson on Grice for the British Academy).
At Oxford, Grice was more or less given free rein to teach what he wanted. He
found the New World slightly disconcerting at first. At Oxford, he expected his
tutees to be willing to 'read' the classics in the vernacular Greek. His
approach to teaching was diagogic, as Socrates's! Even in his details of
'izzing' and 'hazzing.' "Greek enough to me!," as a student recalled!
1980, correspondence with A. D. Code, keywords: Grice, Code, izzing,
hazzing. Grice sees in Code an excellent Aristotelian. They
collaborated on an exploration of Aristotle's underlying logic of essential and
non-essential predication, for which they would freely use such verbal forms as
'izzing' and 'hazzing.' 1980, izzing and hazzing, The H. P. Grice Papers, A. D.
Code on the significance of the middle book in Aristotle's Metaphysics, keywords:
Aristotle, metaphysics, the middle book. Very middle. Grice never knew
what was middle for Aristotle, but admired Code too much to air this! The
organisation of Aristotle's metaphysics was a topic of much concern for
Grice. With Code, Grice coined 'izzing' and 'hazzing' to refer to
essential and non-essential attribution. Izzing and hazzing, Aristotle on the
multiplicity of being, Aristotle on multiplicity, The Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly, 1988, posthumously ed. by B. F. Loar, keywords:
Aristotle, multiplicity, izzing, hazzing, being, good, Code. Grice offers a
thorough discussion of Owen’s treatment of Aristotle as leading us to the
'snares' of ontology. Grice distinguishes between 'izzing' and 'hazzing,' which
he thinks help in clarifying, 'more axiomatico,' what Aristotle is getting at
with his remarks on 'essential' versus 'non-essential' predication. Surely, for
Grice, 'being,' nor indeed 'good,' should not be multiplied beyond
necessity, but izzing and hazzing *are* already multiplied. The Grice
Papers contains drafts of the essay eventually submitted for publication
by Loar 'In memoriam H. P. Grice.' Note that the Grice Papers contains a
typically Griceian 'un-publication,' entitled "Aristotle *and*
multiplicity," simpliciter. Rather than "Aristotle *on*,"
as the title for The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly piece goes. Note also
that, since it's 'multiplicity' simpliciter, it refers to Aristotle on two key
ideas: being and the good. As Code notes in his contribution to P. G. R.
I. C. E., Grice first presents his thoughts on izzing and hazzing publicly at
Vancouver. R. B. Jones has developed the axiomatic treatment favoured by
Grice. For Grice there is 'multiplicity' in both 'being' and 'good' (ton
agathon), both accountable in terms of conversational implicata, of course. If
in "Prolegomena," Grice was interested in criticising himself, in
essays of historical nature like these, Grice is seeing Aristotle's
"Athenian dialectic" as a foreshadow of the "Oxonian
dialectic," and treating him as an equal. Grice is yielding his razor:
"Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity." But
then Aristotle is talking about the 'multiplicity' of '... is ...' and '... is
good.' Surely, there are ways to turn Aristotle into the monoguist
he has to be! There is a further item in the Grice collection
that combines Aristotle on being with Aristotle on good, which is relevant in
connection with this. Aristotle on being and good (ἀγαθός), 1970, keywords: Aristotle,
being, good (agathon), ἀγαθός. As from this folder,
the essays are ordered alphabetically, starting with "Aristotle,” Grice
will explore Aristotle on 'being' or "is" and "good" (ἀγαθός) in explorations with A.
D. Code. Grice comes up with 'izzing' and 'hazzing' as the two
counterparts to Aristotle's views on, respectively, essential and non-essential
predication. Grice's views on Aristotle on 'the good' (strictly, there is
no need to restrict Arisstotle's use to the neuter form, since he employs
"ἀγαθός") connect with
Grice's Aristotelian idea of 'eudaimonia,' that he explores elsewhere.
Strictly: Aristotle on being and the good. If that had been
Grice's case, he would have used the definite article. Otherwise, 'good' may
well translate as masculine, ἀγαθός -- the agathetic
implicatum. Grice at his jocular best. If he is going to be a
Kantian, he will. He uses Kantian jargon to present his theory of conversation.
This he does only at Harvard. The implicature being that talking of vaguer
assumptions of helpfulness would not sound too convincing. So he has the maxim,
the super-maxim, and the sub-maxim. A principle and a maxim is Kantian enough.
But when he actually ECHOES Kant, is when he introduces what he later calls the
CONVERSATIONAL CATEGORIES – the keyword here is ‘conversational category,' as
'categoria' is used by Aristotle and Kant -- or Kantotle. Grice surely knew
that, say, his “Category of Conversational Modality” had NOTHING to do with the
Kantian Category of Modality. Still, he stuck with the idea of FOUR categories
(versus Aristotle's 'ten,' 'eight' or 'seven,' as the text you consult may tell
you): category of conversational quantity (which at Oxford he had formulated in
much vaguer terms like ‘strength’ and informativeness and entailment), the
category of conversational quality (keyword: principle of conversational
TRUST), and the category of conversational relation, where again Kant’s
‘relation’ has NOTHING to do with the maxim Grice associates with this
category. In any case, his Kantian joke may be helpful when considering the
centrality of the concept ‘category’ SIMPLICITER that Grice had to fight with
with his pupils at Oxford – he was lucky to have Austin and Strawson as
co-lecturers!
1955.
Pleasure, Aristotle on pleasure, Aristotle: pleasure, hedonism, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 4, Folder 8, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: hedonism, pleasure,
Aristotle, agreeableness, happiness, system of ends, ends, end, desire,
satisfaction, delight. Griceian pleasures! As a Lit. Hum. Oxon., and especially
as a tutee of Hardie at Corpus, Grice is almost too well aware of the
centrality of 'hedone' in Aristotle's system! "Pleasure" is rendered
"placitum" (as in "ad placitum") in scholastic philosophy,
but that's because scholastic philosophy is not as Hellenic as it should be!
Actually, Grice prefers 'agreeable.' One of Grice's requisites for an
ascription of 'eudaimonia' ('to have a fairy godmother') precisely has the system
of ends an agent chooses to realise to be an 'agreeable' one. One form, or
'mode,' of agreeableness, as Grice notes, is, unless counteracted,
automatically attached to the attainment of an object of desire, such
attainment being *routinely* a source of satisfaction. The generation of such a
satisfaction thus provides an independent ground for preferring one system of
ends to another. However, some *other* 'mode' of agreeableness, such as being a
source of *delight*, for example, which are _not_ *routinely* associated with
the fulfilment of this or that desire, could discriminate, independently of
other features relevant to such a preference, between one system of ends and
another. Further, a system of ends the operation of which is *specially* agreeable
is stable not only vis-à-vis a rival system, but also against the somewhat
weakening effect of incontinence, or 'akrasia,' if you mustn’t! A disturbing
influence, as Aristotle knew from experience, is more surely met by a
*principle* _in consort with a supporting attraction_ than by the principle
alone!
1955. Can
I have a pain in my tail?, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS
90/135c. Keywords: pain. A discussion of a category mistake. Cf.
Grice: "I may be categorically mistaken but I'm not categorically confused."
1956. In defence of a 'dogma,' in Studies in the Way of Words (London: Harvard University Press, 1989). With P. F. Strawson, The Philosophical Review. H. P. Grice (1956). The analytic-synthetic distinction, 'In defence of a dogma,' in Studies in the Way of Words, from The Philosophical Review, 141-58, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 6, Folders 13 and 14, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: analytic-synthetic distinction.The locus classicus for the 'ordinary-language' philosophical response to Quine in "Two dogmas of empiricism." Grice and Strawson claim that '... is analytic" does have an ordinary use, as attached two a type of behavioural conversational response. To an analytically false move (such as "My neighbour's three-year-old son is an adult") the addressee is bound to utter, "I don't understand you! You are not being figurative, are you?." To a synthetically false move, on the other hand (such as "My neighbour's three-year-old understands Russell's Theory of Types"), the addressee will jump with, "Can't believe it!" The idea of 'analyticity' was for Grice very important to defend. Philosophy depends on it! He knew that to many his claim to fame was his "In defence of a dogma," the dogma of analyticity, no less. He eventually turns to a 'pragmatist' justification of the distinction. This pragmatist justification is still in accordance with what he sees as the use of 'analytic' in 'ordinary language'. His infamous examples: "My neighbour's three-year old understands Russell's Theory of Types." A: Hard to believe, but I will. "My neighbour's three-year old is an adult." Metaphorically? No. Then I don't understand you, and what you've just said is, in my scheme of things, analytically FALSE. Grice was also circumstantially concerned with the 'synthetic a priori,' and he would ask his children's playmates: "Can a sweater be red and green all over? No stripes allowed!" The distinction is ultimately Kantian, but it had brought to the fore by the 'linguistic turn,' Oxonian and other! 1956. In defence of a dogma. H. P. Grice (1956). In defence of a dogma, 'Two dogmas of empiricism,' The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 6, Folder 31, MSS 90/135c. Keywords: the analytic-synthetic distinction. For Quine, there are two. Grice is mainly interested in the first one: that there is a distinction between the analytic and the synthetic. Grice considers Empiricism as a monster on his way to the Rationalist City of Eternal Truth. Grice came back time and again to explore the analytic-synthetic distinction. But his philosophy remained constant. His sympathy was for the practicality of it, its rationale. He saw it as involving formal calculi, rather than his own theory of conversation as rational co-operation which does NOT presuppose the analytic-synthetic distinction! Grice would press the issue here: if one wants to PROVE that such a theory of conversation as rational co-operation HAS TO BE seen as ‘philosophical,’ rather than some other way, some idea of ‘analyticity’ may be needed to justify the philosophical enterprise. Cfr. the SYNTHETIC A PRIORI, that fascinated Grice most than anything Kantian else! “Can a sweater be green and red all over? No stripes allowed.” With "In defence of a dogma," Grice and Strawson attack a New-World philosopher.
1955.
Metaphysics, with P. F. Strawson and D. F. Pears, in D. F. Pears, The nature of
metaphysics, proceedings of the BBC Third programe lectures, Macmillan, London,
Metaphysics, in D. F. Pears, The Nature of Metaphysics, London, Macmillan,
Metaphysics, while the Macmillan came out in 1957, the broadcast was in 1955.
The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folders 26-27 and Carton
8-Folder 2, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: metaphysics, presupposition, Aristotle, Kant, Hume,
Collingwood. “Some like Hegel, but Collingwood's *my* man!” -- H. P. Grice.
Grice participated in two consecutive evenings of the series of programmes on
metaphysics organised by D. F. Pears. Actually, charming Pears felt pretentious
enough to label the meetings to be about 'the NATURE of metaphysics'! Grice
ends up discussing, as he should, Collingwood on presupposition. Metaphysics
remained a favourite topic for Grice's philosophical explorations, as it is
evident from his 1988 essay on "Metaphysics, Philosophical Eschatology,
and Plato's Republic," reprinted in his Studies in the Way of Words.
Possibly Hardie is to blame, since he hardly tutored Grice on metaphysics!
Grice's two BBC lectures are typically dated in tone. It was the ("good
ole") days when philosophers thought they could educate the non-elite by
dropping names like Collingwood and stuff! The Third Programme was extremely
popular, especially among the "uneducated ones at London," as Pears
almost put it, as it was a way for Londoners to get to know "what is going
on" down at Oxford, the only place an uneducated (or educated, for that
matter) Londoner at the time was interested in displaying some interest about!
I mean, Johnson is right: if a man is tired of the nature of metaphysics, he is
tired of life! Since the authorship is Grice/Strawson/Pears,
"Metaphysics," in D. F. Pears, The Nature of Metaphysics, The BBC
Third Programme, it is somewhat difficult to identify what paragraphs were
actually read by Grice (and which ones by Pears and which ones by Strawson).
But trust the sharp Griceian to detect the correct implicature! There are many
("too many") other items covered by these two lectures: Kant, Aristotle,
in no particular order. *And* in The Grice Collection, for that matter, that
cover the field of metaphysics. In the New World, as a sort of tutor in the
'graduate' programme, Grice was expected to cover the discipline at various
seminars. "Only I dislike 'discipline'!" Perhaps his clearest
exposition is in the opening section of his "Metaphysics, philosophical
eschatology, and Plato's Republic," reprinted in his Studies in the Way of
Words, where he states, bluntly: “All you need is -- metaphysics!" 1980,
metaphysics, Miscellaneous, metaphysics notes, Grice would possible see
metaphysics as a class – ‘category’ figuring large. He was concerned with the
METHODOLOGICAL aspects of the metaphysical enterprise, since he was enough of a
relativist to allow for one metaphysical scheme to apply to one area of
discourse (one of Eddington’s tables) and another metaphysical scheme to apply
to another (Eddington’s other table). In the third programme for the BBC Grice
especially enjoyed criticising John Wisdom's innovative look at metaphysics as
a bunch of 'self-evident falsehoods' ("We're all alone"). Grice
focuses on Wisdom on the knowledge of other minds. He also discusses
Collingwood's presuppositions, and Bradley on the reality-appearance
distinction.
1958. Oxford philosophy and linguistic botanising, rev. 1970, post-war Oxford philosophy, in Studies in the Way of Words, Part II: Explorations in semantics and metaphysics, Essay, philosophy and ‘ordinary’ language, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 1-Folder 19, Carton 3-Folder 6, Carton 4-Folder 15, and Series V (Topical), Carton 8-Folder 3, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Oxford philosophy, linguistic botanising, 'ordinary language' philosophy. Grice’s main Oxonian association is St. John's, Oxford. By "Oxford Philosophy," H. P. Grice notably refers to J. L. Austin's Play Group, of which he was a member. But Grice had Oxford associations pre-war, and after the demise of Austin. But back to the Play Group, this, to some, infamous, playgroup, met on Saturday mornings at different venues at Oxford, including Grice's own St. John's -- apparently, Austin's favourite venue. Austin regarded himself and his 'kindergarten' as 'linguistic' or 'language' *botanists*. The idea was to list various 'ordinary' uses of this or that 'philosophical notion." Austin: "They say philosophy is about language; well, then, let's botanise!" Grice's involvement with "Oxford philosophy" of course predated his associations with Austin's play group. He always said he was fortunate of having been a tutee to Hardie at Corpus. H. P. Grice, Corpus, Oxford. Grice would occasionally refer to the emblematic pelican, so prominently displayed at Corpus. Grice had an interim association with the venue one associates most directly with philosophy, Merton --: H. P. Grice, Merton, Oxford. While Grice loved to drop Oxonian names -- notably his 'rivals,' such as Dummett or Anscombe, he knew when not to. His "Post-war Oxford philosophy," as opposed to more specific items in The Grice Collection, remains 'general' in tone, and intended as a defense of the 'ordinary-language' approach to philosophy. Surprisingly, or perhaps not (for those who knew Grice), he takes a pretty idiosyncratic characterisation of conceptual analysis. Grice's philosophical problems emerge with Grice's idiosyncratic use of this or that expression. Conceptual analysis is meant to solve HIS problems, not others'! Repr. in Grice, Studies in the Way of Words. Grice found it important to reprint this since he had updated thoughts on the matter, which he displays in his "Conceptual analysis and the province of philosophy." The topic represents one of the strands he identifies behind the unity of his philosophy. By "post-war Oxford philosophy," Grice meant the period he was interested in. While he had been at Corpus, Merton, and St. John's in the pre-war days, for some reason, he felt that he had made history in the post-war period. The historical reason Grice gives is understandable enough. In the pre-war days, Grice was the good student and the new fellow of St. John's -- the other one was Mabbott. But he had not been able to engage in philosophical discussion much, other than with other tutees of Hardie. AFTER the war, Grice joins Austin's "Saturday mornings." Indeed, for Grice, 'post-war' means "all philosophy after the war," since he never abandoned the methods he developed under Austin, which were pretty congenial to the ones he had himself displayed in the pre-war days, in essays like "Negation" and "Personal Identity." Grice was an EXPERT on Oxonian philosophy. He saw himself as a member of the school of analytic philosophy, rather than the abused term 'ordinary-language' philosophy. This is evident by the fact that he contributed to such polemic -- but typically Oxonian -- volumes such as Butler, Analytic Philosophy, published by Blackwell (of all publishers). Grice led a very social life at Oxford, and held frequent philosophical discussions with philosophers such as Austin, J. L., Pears, D. F. , Strawson, P. F., Thomson, J. F. , Urmson, J. O. , Warnock, G. J. , and many others. Post-war Oxford philosophy, 1958, Miscellaneous, Oxford philosophy, in Studies in the Way of Words, Part II, Semantics and Metaphysics, Essay. By Oxford philosophy, Grice meant his own! Grice went back to the topic of philosophy and ‘ordinary language,’ as one of his essays is precisely entitled, “Philosophy and ‘ordinary language.’” 1970. Philosophy and 'ordinary' language,’ keywords: 'ordinary-language' philosophy, linguistic botanising. Grice is not really interested in 'ordinary' language as a philologist might. He SPOKE 'ordinary' language, he thought. The point had been brought to the fore by Austin. "If they think philosophy is a play on words, well then, let's play the game." Grice's interest is methodological. Malcolm had been claiming that 'ordinary language' is incorrigible. While Grice agreed that 'language can be clever,' he knew that Aristotle was possibly right when he explored 'ta legomena' in terms of the 'many' and the selected 'wise.' 1960. Philosophy and 'ordinary language.' H. P. Grice (1960). Philosophy and 'ordinary language,' keywords: philosophy, 'ordinary language'. At the time of writing, "'ordinary-language' philosophy" had become, "even within Oxford," a bit of a term of abuse. Grice tries to defend Austin's approach to it, while suggesting ideas that Austin somewhat ignored, like what an utterer implies by the use of an 'ordinary-language' expression, rather than what the expression itself does. Grice is concerned, contra Austin, in explanation (or 'explanatory adequacy'), not taxonomy (or 'descriptive adequacy'). Grice disregards Austin's piecemeal approach to 'ordinary language,' as Grice searches for 'the big picture of it all.' Grice never used 'ordinary language' seriously. The phrase was used, as he explains, by those who HATED 'ordinary-language' philosophy. There's no such thing as 'ordinary language.' Surely you cannot fairly describe the idiosyncratic linguistic habits of an Old Cliftonian as even 'remotely' 'ordinary.' "Extra-ordinary" more likely! As far as the 'philosophy' bit goes, this is what Bergmann jocularly described as the 'linguistic turn.' But as Grice notes, the linguistic turn involves both the 'ideal language' and the 'ordinary language.' Grice defends Austin's choice of the 'ordinary' seeing that 'it was what he had to hand!' While Grice seems to be in agreement with the tone of his Wellesley talk, his idioms there in (“You’re crying for the moon! Philosophy need not be grand!”) seem to contrast with his more grandiose approach to philosophy. His struggle was to defend the minutiae of Linguistic Botanising, that had occupied most of his professional life, with a grander view of the discipline. He blamed Oxford for that: “Never in the history of philosophy had philosophers shown such an attachment to ordinary language as they did in post-war Oxford!” Having learned Greek and Latin at Clifton, Grice saw in Oxford a way to go back to English! (He never felt the need to explore ‘Continental’ modern languages like German or French. Aristotle was of course cited in Greek, but Descartes is almost not cited, and Kant is cited in the translation available to Oxonians then.
1961.
The causal theory of perception, in Studies in the Way of Words, Part II,
Explorations in semantics and metaphysics, Essay (without the excursus on
implication), 1989, repr. from The Aristotelian Society, Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 35, no. 1, pp. 121-153. repr. in G.
J. Warnock, The philosophy of perception, 1968, Symposium with A. R. White.
Chair: R. Braithwaite, Cambridge, with R. O. Warner, 1975, knowledge and
belief, 1977, Causation colloquium, causality, cause, Stanford, 1980, The H. P.
Grice Papers, Series III (The Doctrines), Carton 5-Folder 18, Series IV
(Associations), Carton 6-Folder 7, and Series V (Topical), Carton 6-Folder 22
and Carton 8-Folder 25, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University
of California, Berkeley. Keywords: causal theory of perception, implicature,
perception, pirotology, knowledge, belief, doxastic, epistemic, Urmson,
entailment. H. P. Grice: That pillar box seems red to me. The locus classicus
in the philosophical literature for Grice's implicatum. Grice introduces a
'dout-or-denial' condition for an utterance of a 'phenomenalist' report
("That pillar-box seems red to me"). Grice attacks
neo-Wittgensteinian approaches that regard the report as _false_. In a long
excursus on 'implication,' he compares the phenomenalist report with utterances
like “He has beautiful handwriting" (He is hopeless at philosophy), a
particularised conversational implicatum; “My wife is in the kitchen or the
garden" (I have non-truth-functional grounds to utter this), a generalised
conversational implicatum; “She was poor but she was honest" (a Great-War
witty (her poverty and her honesty contrast), a 'conventional' implicatum; and
“Have you stopped beating your wife?" -- an old Oxonian conundrum -- (You
have been beating your wife), a presupposition. More importantly, he considers
different tests for each concoction! Those for the conversational implicatum
will become crucial: cancellability, calculability, non-detachability, and
indeterminacy. In the proceedings he plays with something like the principle of
conversational helpfulness, as having a basis on a view of conversation as
rational co-operation, and as giving the rationale to the implicatum. Past the
excursus, and back to the issue of perception, he holds a conservative view as
presented by Price at Oxford. One interesting reprint of Grice's essay is in
Davis's volume on "Causal Theories," since this is where it belongs!
White's response is usually ignored, but shouldn't. White is an interesting
Australian philosopher at Oxford who is usually regarded as a practitioner of
'ordinary-language' philosophy. However, in his response, White hardly touches
the issue of the 'implicature' with which Grice is primarily concerned. Grice
found that a full reprint from the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society in a
compilation also containing the William James Harvard would be too repetitive.
Therefore, he omits the 'excursus' on 'implication.' However, the way Grice
re-formulates, in 1987, what that 'excursus' covers is very interesting. There
is the conversational implicatum, particularised ("Smith has beautiful
handwriting") and generalised ("My wife is in the kitchen or in the
garden"). Then there is the praesuppositum, or presupposition ("You
haven't stopped beating your wife"). Finally, there is the CONVENTIONAL
implicatum ("She was poor, but she was honest"). Even at Oxford,
Grice's implicature goes, philosophers -- even Oxonian philosophers -- use
'imply' for all those 'different animals'! Warnock had attended Austin's
"Sense and Sensibilia" (not to be confused with Austen's Sense and
Sensibility). But Warnock, for obvious reasons, preferred philosophical
investigations with Grice. Warnock: "Grice once told me, not on a Saturday
morning, either, 'How clever language is'” For they had found that 'ordinary
language' does NOT need the concept of a visum. Grice and Warnock spent lovely
occasions exploring what Oxford has as "the philosophy of
perception." While Grice later came to see philosophy of perception as a
bit or an offshoot of 'philosophical psychology,' 'the philosophy of
perception' is concerned with that treasured bit of the Oxonian philosopher's
lexicon, the sense-datum, always in the singular! The 'cause' involved is
crucial. (Grice played with an ‘evolutionary’ justification of the ‘material’
thing as the denotatum of a perceptual judgement. If a material thing causes
the sense-datum of a nut, that is because the squarrel (or squirrel) will not
be nourished by the sense datum of the nut; only by the nut! There are many
other items in the Grice Collection that address the topic of perception –
notably with Warnock (on ‘vision,’ cf. ‘visa’ -- ‘taste’, and ‘perception,’ in
general – And we should not forget that Grice contributed a splendid essay on
the distinction of the senses to Butler’s “Analytic philosophy,” which in a
way, redeemed a rather old-fashioned discipline by shifting it to the idiom of
the day. 1959. The philosophy of perception: a retrospective, with G. J.
Warnock, the philosophy of perception, Keywords: perception, the philosophy of
perception, visum. Warnock was possibly the only philosopher at Oxford
Grice felt congenial enough to engage in different explorations in the
so-called 'philosophy of perception.' Their joint adventures involved the
disimplicature of a 'visum.' Grice later approached sense data in more
'evolutionary' terms: a material thing is to be vindicated transcendentally, in
the sense that it is a material thing (and not a sense datum or collection
thereof) that nourishes a creature like a human. Grice was particularly
grateful to Warnock. By reprinting the full symposium on "The Causal
Theory of Perception" in his influential series of Oxford Readings in
Philosophy, Warnock had spread Grice's lore of implicature all over! In some
parts of the draft he uses "more on visa," 1959, vision, 1969,
vision, with G. J. Warnock, Series V (Topical), Carton 8-Folder 21, Keywords:
vision. Of the five senses, Grice and Warnock are particularly interested
in 'seeing.' As Grice will put it later, 'see' is a factive. It presupposes the
existence of the event reported after the 'that'-clause. A 'visum,' however, as
an intermediary between the material thing and the perceiver does not seem
necessary in 'ordinary' discourse. Warnock will reconsider Grice's views too
("On what is seen," in Sibley). While Grice uses 'vision,' he knows
he is interested in Philosopher's paradox concerning 'seeing,' notably Witters
on 'seeing as.' 1959. vision, taste and the philosophy of perception, Series V
(Topical), Carton 8-Folders 21-22, keywords: vision, seeing. As an Oxonian
philosopher, Grice was of course more interested in 'seeing' than in 'vision.'
He said that Austin would criticise even the use of things like 'sensation' and
'volition'! 1959, taste, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton
8-Folders 21-22, keyword: taste, the objects of the five senses, the philosophy
of perception, perception, the philosophy of perception, Series V (Topical),
Carton 8-Folders 21 -22, keywords: philosophy of perception, vision, taste,
perception. Mainly with Warnock. Warnock reprinted Grice's
"Causal Theory of Perception" in his influential Reading in
Philosophy, "The philosophy of perception," 1959, perception, with G.
J. Warnock (folders 23-24), with R. O. Warner (folder 25), Series V
(Topical), Carton 8-Folders 23-24, keywords: perception. Warnock
learned about perception much more from Grice than from Austin! 1959, taste, in
Series V (Topical), Carton 8, 1960, The philosophy of perception, the
philosophy of perception, notes with G. J. Warnock on visum, keywords: visum,
Warnock, Grice, the philosophy of perception. Grice kept the lecture
notes to a view of publishing a retrospective. Warnock recalled Grice
saying, "How clever language is!" Grice took the offer by
Harvard University Press, and it was a good thing he reprinted part of “Causal
theory.” However, the relevant bits for his theory of conversation as rational
co-operation lie in the excursus which he omitted. What is Grice’s implicature:
that one SHOULD consider the TOPIC rather than the METHOD here. Keywords being ‘sense
datum,’ and ‘causation,’ rather than conversational helpfulness. After all,
“That pillar box seems red to me,” does not SOUND very helpful. But the TOPIC
of ‘Causal Theory’ is CENTRAL for his view of conversation as rational
co-operation. Why? Pirot 1 gets an impression of DANGER as caused by the danger
out there. He communicates the danger to Pirot 1, CAUSING in Pirot 2 some
behaviour. Without ‘causation,’ or causal links, the very POINT of offering a
theory of conversation as rational co-operation seems minimized. On top, as a
metaphysician, he was also concerned with ‘cause’ simpliciter. He was
especially proud that Price’s ‘Casual Theory of Perception’ had been reprinted
along with his essay in the influential volume by Davis on “Causal Theories.” In
“Actions and events,” he further explores ‘cause’ now in connection with Greek
‘aitia’. As Grice notes, the original usage of this very Grecian item is the
one we find in ‘rebel without a cause.’ CAUSE TO, rather than CAUSE BECAUSE.
The two-movement nature of ‘causing’ is reproduced in the conversational
exchange: a material thing CAUSES a sense datum which causes an expression
which gets communicated, thus CAUSING a psychological state which will cause a
behaviour. This ‘causation’ is almost ‘representational’. A material thing or a
situation CANNOT govern our actions and behaviours, but a REPRAESENTATUM of it
MIGHT. “Govern our actions and behaviour” is Grice’s correlate of what a team
of North-Oxfordshire cricketers can do for North-Oxfordshire: what North
Oxfordshire cannot do for herself, “namely, engage in a game of cricket”! In
Retrospective Epilogue he casts doubts on the point of his causal approach. It
is a short paragraph that merits much exploration. Basically, Grice is saying
his causalist approach is hardly an established thesis. He also proposes a
similar serious objection to his view in “Some remarks about the senses,” the
other essay in the philosophy of perception in Studies. As he notes, both
engage with “some fundamental questions in the philosophy of perception,” which
is hardly the same thing as saying that they provide AN ANSWER to each
question! Grice: The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be
thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are
several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined
in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis
which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general
kind. Examples which occur to me are the following: (1) You cannot see a knife
as a knife, though you may see what is not a knife as a knife. (2) When Moore
said he knew that the objects before him were human hands, he was guilty of
misusing the word "know". (3) For an occurrence to be properly said
to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual. (4) For an action to
be properly described as one for which the agent is responsible, it must be the
sort of action for which people are condemned. (5) What is actual is not also
possible. (6) What is known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to
be the case. I have no doubt that there will be other candidates besides the
six which I have mentioned. I must emphasize that I am not saying that all
these examples are importantly similar to the thesis which I have been
criticizing, only that, for all I know, they may be. To put the matter more
generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of
manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre; I am merely
suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with
the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have
detectcd, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what sort of nuanccs
they are.” The Causal Theory of Perception, Knowledge and belief, 1977,
Series III (Doctrines), Carton 5-Folder 18, keywords: knowledge, belief,
philosophical psychology. H. P. Grice: the doxastic implicatum. “I know”
IMPLICATES “I don’t believe.” (Philosopher’s mistake: “What is known by me to
be the case is NOT also believed by me to be the case.”) The topic had
attracted the attention of some Oxonian philosophers such as J. O. Urmson in
"Parenthetical verbs." Urmson speaks of a 'scale': "I know"
can be used parenthetically, as "I believe" can. For Grice, to utter
"I believe" is obviously to make a weaker conversational move
than you would if you utter “I know.” And in this case, an approach to
informativeness in terms of entailment *is* in order, seeing that “I know”
ENTAILS “I believe.” The addressee is thus allowed to infer that the utterer is
not in a position to make the stronger claim. The mechanism is explained via
his principle of conversational helpfulness. Philosophers tend two over-use
these two basic psychological states, attitudes, or stances. Grice is concerned
with Gettier-type cases, and also the 'factivity' of 'know' versus the
non-factivity of 'believe.' Grice follows Hintikka's lexicological innovations:
the logic of belief is 'doxastic;' the logic of knowledge is 'epistemic.' The
last thesis that Grice lists in "Causal Theory" that he thinks rests
on a big mistake he formulates as: “What is known by me to be the case is NOT
also believed by me to be the case." What are his attending remarks? Grice
writes: “The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought
rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one." “There are
several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined
in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis
which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general
kind." “An example which occurs to me is the following: What is known by
me to be the case is not also believed by me to be the case.” “I must emphasise
that I am not saying that this example is importantly similar to the thesis
which I have been criticising, only that, for all I know, it may be." “To put
the matter more generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to
involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one
contemporary mode of philosophizing." “I am not condemning this kind of
manoeuvre." “I am merely suggesting that to embark on it without due
caution is to risk collision with the facts." “Before we rush ahead to
exploit the linguistic NUANCES which we have detected, we should make sure that
we are reasonably clear what SORT of nuances they are!” The ætiological
implicatum. Grice. "For an occurrence to be properly said to have a cause,
it must be something abnormal or unusual." This is an example Grice lists
in "Causal theory" but NOT in "Prolegomena." "For an
occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal
or unusual." Similar commentary to his example on
'responsible'/condemnable apply. The objector may stick with the fact that he
is only concerned with PROPER utterances. Surely Grice wants to go to a
pre-Humeian account of causation, possible Aristotelian. KEYWORD: Aetiologia.
Where EVERYTHING has a cause, except, for Aristotle, God! What are his
attending remarks? Grice writes: “The issue with which I have been mainly
concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an
isolated one." “There are several philosophical theses or dicta which
would I think need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are
sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable
to treatment of the same general kind." “An example which occurs to me is
the following: What is known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to
be the case.” “I must emphasise that I am not saying that this example is
importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for
all I know, it may be." “To put the matter more generally, the position
adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is
characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of philosophising." “I
am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre." “I am merely suggesting that to
embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with the facts."
“Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic NUANCES which we have detected,
we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what SORT of nuances they
are!” Causal theory, cause, causality, causation, conference, colloquium,
Stanford, 1980, Series IV (Associations), Carton 6-Folder 7, keywords: cause,
metaphysics, the abnormal/unusual implicatum, aetiology, aetiological
implicatum. H. P. Grice: the ætiological implicatum. Grice's explorations on
'cause' are very rich. He is concerned with some alleged misuse of 'cause' in
ordinary language. If as Hume suggests, to cause is to will, one would say that
"The decapitation of Charles I willed his death," which sounds harsh,
“if not ungrammatical, too!” Grice later relates 'cause' to the Greek 'aitia,'
as he should. He notes collocations like 'rebel without a cause.' For the
Greeks, or Grecians, as he called them, and the Griceians, it's a CAUSE TO
which one should be involved in elucidating. A "cause to..."
connects with the idea of 'freedom.' Grice was constantly aware of the threat
of MECHANISM, and his idea was to provide philosophical room for the idea of
'finality,' which is NOT 'mechanistically derivable.' This leads him to
discussion of overlap and priority of, say, a physical-cum-physiological versus
a psychological theory explaining this or that piece of rational behaviour.
Grice can be Wittgensteinian when citing Anscombe's translation: No
psychological concept without the behaviour the concept is brought to
explain. It is best to place his later treatment of cause with his
earlier one in “Causal Theory.” It’s surprising Grice does not apply his
example of a philosopher’s mistake to the ‘causal’ bit of his ‘causal theory.’
Grice states the philosophical mistake as follows: "For an occurrence to
be properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or
unusual." This is an example Grice lists in "Causal theory" but
NOT in "Prolegomena."“For an occurrence to be properly said to have a
cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual." A similar commentary to
his example on 'responsible'/condemnable applies: The objector may stick with
the fact that he is only concerned with PROPER utterances. Surely Grice wants
to embrace a pre-Humeian account of causation, possible Aristotelian --
KEYWORD: Aitiologia. — where EVERYTHING has a cause, except, for Aristotle,
God! What are his attending remarks? Grice writes: “The issue with which I have
been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly
not an isolated one." “There are several philosophical theses or dicta
which would I think need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are
sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable
to treatment of the same general kind." “One example which occurs to me is
the following.” “For an occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it must
be something abnormal or unusual." “I must emphasise that I am not saying
that this example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have been
criticizing, only that, for all I know, it may be." “To put the matter
more generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a
type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing." “I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre." “I am
merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision
with the facts." “Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic NUANCES
which we have detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what
SORT of nuances they are!” Re: responsibility/condemnation – cfr. Mabbott,
“Flew on punishment,” Philosophy, 30, 1955. And also Hart. At Corpus, Grice
enjoyed his tutor Hardie’s resourcefulness in the defence of what may be a
difficult position, a characteristic illustrated by the an incident which
Hardie himself once told Grice about himself. “Hardie had parked his car and
gone to a cinema.”“Unfortunately, Hardie had parked his car on top of one of
the strips on the street by means of which traffic-lights were, at the time,
controlled by the passing traffic.” “As a result, the lights are jammed, and it
requires *four* policemen to lift Hardie’s car off the strip.” “The police
decides to prosecute.” Grice indicated to Hardie that this hardly surprised him
and asked him how he fared. “‘Oh,’ Hardie says, ‘I got off.’” Then Grice asks
Hardie how on earth he managed that! “Quite simply,” Hardie answered. “I just
invoked Mill’s method of difference.” “The police charged me with causing an
obstruction at 4 p.m.” “I told the police that, since my car was parked at 2
p.m., it could not have been *my* car which caused the obstruction at *4* p.m.”
This relates to an example in "Causal Theory" that he Grice does not
discuss in "Prolegomena," but which may relate to H. L. A. Hart, and
closer to Grice, to J. D. Mabbott's essay, "A. G. N. Flew on punishment,"
in Philosophy, vol. 30. Grice states the philosophical mistake as follows:
"For an action to be properly described as one for which the agent is
responsible, it must be thc sort of action for which people are
condemned." As applied to Hardie. Hardie was IRRESPONSIBLE? In any case, while
condemnable, he was not! Grice writes: “The issue with which I have been mainly
concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an
isolated one." “There are several philosophical theses or dicta which
would I think need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are
sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable
to treatment of the same general kind." “An example which occurs to me is
the following: For an action to be properly described as one for which the
agent is responsible, it must be the sort of action for which people are
condemned." “I must emphasise that I am not saying that this example is
importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for
all I know, it may be." “To put the matter more generally, the position
adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is
characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing." “I
am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre." “I am merely suggesting that to
embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with the facts."
“Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic NUANCES which we have detected,
we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what SORT of nuances they are!”
The modal example (“What is actual is NOT also possible”) discussed under
“Indicative conditonals,” 1967. H. P. Grice on Macbeth’s
implicature: seeing a dagger as a dagger. Grice elaborates on this in
"Prolegomena," but the austerity of "Causal theory" is
charming, since he does not give a quote or source. OBVIOUSLY: Witters! Grice
writes: Witters might say "You can*not* see a knife *as a knife*, though
you may see what is *not* a knife as a knife." Grice writes: “The issue
with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but
it is certainly not an isolated one." “There are several philosophical
theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined in order to see whether
or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been
discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind." “An
example which occurs to me is the following: "You can*not* see a knife *as
a knife*, though you may see what is *not* a knife as a knife."" “I
must emphasise that I am not saying that this example is importantly similar to
the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for all I know, it may
be." “To put the matter more generally, the position adopted by my
objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of
more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing." “I am not condemning
this kind of manoeuvre." “I am merely suggesting that to embark on it
without due caution is to risk collision with the facts." “Before we rush
ahead to exploit the linguistic NUANCES which we have detected, we should make
sure that we are reasonably clear what SORT of nuances they are!” Is this a
dagger which I see before me,/The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch
thee./I have thee not, and yet I see thee still./Art thou not, fatal vision,
sensible/To feeling as to sight? or art thou but/A dagger of the mind, a false
creation,/Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?/I see thee yet, in form as
palpable/As this which now I draw./Thou marshall'st me the way that I was
going;/And such an instrument I was to use./Mine eyes are made the fools o' the
other senses,/Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,/And on thy blade
and dudgeon gouts of blood,/Which was not so before. There's no such thing:/It
is the bloody business which informs/Thus to mine eyes./Now o'er the one
halfworld/Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse/The curtain'd sleep;
witchcraft celebrates/Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,/Alarum'd by
his sentinel, the wolf,/Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy
pace./With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design/Moves like a ghost.
Thou sure and firm-set earth,/Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for
fear/Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,/And take the present horror from
the time,/Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:/Words to the heat
of deeds too cold breath gives.[a bell rings] I
go, and it is done; the bell invites me./Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a
knell/That summons thee to heaven or to hell. The Moore example is used both in
"Causal Theory" and "Prolegomena." But the use in
"Causal Theory" is more austere: PHILOSOPHICAL MISTAKE: Malcolm:
"When Moore said he knew that the objects before him were human hands, he
was guilty of misusing the word "know"." Grice writes: “The
issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine
point, but it is certainly not an isolated one." “There are several
philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined in order
to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have
been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind." “An
example which occurs to me is the following: "When Moore said he knew that
the objects before him were human hands, he was guilty of misusing the word
"know"." "I must emphasise that I am not saying that this
example is importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing,
only that, for all I know, it may be." “To put the matter more generally,
the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre
which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing." “I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre." “I am
merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision
with the facts." “Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic NUANCES
which we have detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what
SORT of nuances they are!” So SURELY Grice is MEANING: "I know that the
objects before me are human hands" as uttered by Moore is possibly TRUE!
Grice was amused by the fact that while at Madison, Wisc., Moore gave the
example: "I KNOW that behind those curtains there is a window."
"ACTUALLY he was WRONG, as he soon realised when the educated Madisonians
corrected him with a roar of unanimous laughter!" “You see, the lecture
hall of the University of Wisconsin at Madison is a rather, shall we say,
striking space.” “The architect designed the lecture hall with a parapet
running around the wall just below the ceiling, cleverly rigged with *indirect*
lighting to create the illusion that sun light is pouring in through windows
from outside.” “So, G. E. Moore comes to give a lecture one sunny day.”
“Attracted as he was to this eccentric architectural detail, Moore gives an
illustration of certainty as attached to common sense.” “Pointing to the space
below the ceiling, Moore utters.” "We know more things than we think we
know.” “I *know*, for example, that the sunlight shining in from outside proves
..." “At which point he was somewhat startled (in his reserved
Irish-English sort of way) when his audience burst out laughing!” “Is that a
proof of anything?”
1962. Some remarks about the
senses, in Studies in the Way of Words, in Part II, Explorations in
semantics and metaphysics, Essay, 1989, from R. J. Butler, Analytic
Philosophy, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 133-53, The H. P. Grice Papers,
Series II (Essays), BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University
of California, Berkeley. Keywords: the objects of the five senses. An
interesting piece in that it was commissioned by Butler, who knew Grice from
his Oxford days. Grice cites O. P. Wood and R. Albritton. Grice is concerned
with a special topic in the philosophy of perception, notably the identification
of the traditional 'five' senses: vision, audition, taste, smell, and
tact. He introduces what is regarded in the philosophical literature as the
first 'thought-experiment,' in terms of the senses that Martians may have. They
have two pairs of eyes: are we going to allow that they 'see' with both pairs?
Grice introduces a sub-division of seeing: a Martian x-s an object with his
upper pair of eyes, but he y-s an object with the lower pair of eyes. In his
exploration, he takes a 'realist' stance, which respects the 'ordinary'
discursive ways to approach issues of perception. A second interesting point is
that in allowing this to be reprinted in Butler's "Analytic
philosophy," Grice is demonstrating that 'analytic philosophers' should
NOT be obsessed with 'ordinary language.' Butler's compilation, a rather dry
one, is meant as a response to the more linguistic oriented ones by G. N. Flew
(Grice's first tutee at St. John's, as it happens), also published by
Blackwell, and containing pieces by Austin, and company. One philosopher who
took Grice very seriously on this was Coady, in his "The senses of the
Martians." Grice provides a serious objection to his own essay in
“Retrospective Epilogue” “We see with our eyes.” I.e. ‘eye’ is teleologically
defined. He notes that his way of DISTINGUISHING the senses is hardly an
established thesis.
1962. Grice
at Cornell. The Cornell Seminar. Grice's Seminar at Cornell. H.
P. Grice (1966). The Cornell Seminar, The Grice Papers, Series III (Doctrines),
Carton 5-Folder 1, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: philosophy of action. Historically
important in that they predate his Harvard William James lectures which made of
him a household name in New-World philosophy. Harman cites a seminar by Grice
on trying at Brandeis, 1962.
1964.
Logic and conversation, Oxford, rev. 1967, conversational implicature, 1965,
The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 1-Folders 21-23
and Carton 4-Folder 9, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: logic, conversation,
implicature, principle of conversational helpfulness, desideratum of
conversational clarity, desideratum of conversational candour, principle of
conversational self-interest, principle of conversational
benevolence. Reprinted in revised form as Part I of Studies in the
Way of Words. Variations on a theme by Grice: "Make your
contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the
accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are
engaged." Variations on a theme by Grice. "I wish to
represent a certain subclass of non-conventional implicaturcs, which I shall
call conversational implicaturcs, as being essentially
connected with certain general features of discourse; so my next step is to try
to say what these features are." "The following may provide a first
approximation to a general principle. Our talk exchanges do not normally
consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if
they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative
efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common
purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. This purpose
or direction may be fixed from the start (e.g., by an initial proposal of a
question for discussion), or it may evolve during the exchange; it may be
fairly definite, or it may be so indefinite as to leave very considerable
latitude to the participants (as in a casual conversation). But at each stage,
SOME possible conversational moves would be excluded as conversationally
unsuitable. We might then formulate a rough general principle which
participants will be expected (ceteris paribus) to observe, namely: Make your
conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it
occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you
are engaged. One might label this the Co-operative
Principle." "We might then formulate a rough general principle
which participants will be expected (ceteris paribus) to
observe, namely: "Make your contribution such as is required,
at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the
talk exchange in which you are engaged." One might label this the
Cooperative Principle." Strictly, the principle itself is not
co-operative: conversants are. Less literary variant: Make your move
such as is required by the accepted goal of the conversation in which you are
engaged. But why “LOGIC” and conversation? "Logica" had been
part of the 'trivium' for ages -- "Although they called it 'dialectica,'
then." Grice on the seven liberal arts. Moved by P. F.
Strawson's treatment of the 'formal' devices in "Introduction to Logical
Theory," Grice targets these, in their 'ordinary-discourse' counterparts.
Strawson indeed characterizes Grice as his ‘logic’ tutor – Strawson was
following a P. P. E., and his approach to logic was practical. His ‘philosophy’
tutor was Mabbott. For Grice, with a M. A. Lit. Hum. the situation was
different. He knew that the Categoria and De Interpretatione of his beloved
Aristotle were part of the Logical Organon which had been so influential in the
history of philosophy. Grice attempts to reconcile Strawson's observations
with the idea that the 'formal' devices reproduce some sort of 'explicatum,' or
'explicitum,' as identified by Whitehead and Russell in "Principia
Mathematica." In the proceedings, Grice has to rely on some general
features of discourse, or conversation as a rational co-operation. The
alleged divergence between the 'ordinary-language' operators and their 'formal'
counterparts is explained in terms of the conversational implicata,
then. I.e. the content of the psychological attitude that the addressee A has
to ascribe to the utterer U to account for any divergence between the formal
device and its alleged 'ordinary-language' counterpart, while still assuming
that U is engaged in a co-operative transaction. The utterer and his
addressee are seen as caring for the mutual goals of conversation -- the
exchange of information and the institution of decisions -- and judging that
conversation will only be profitable (and thus reasonable and rational) if
conducted under some form of principle of 'conversational helpfulness.' "The
observation of a principle of conversational helpfulness is
reasonable (rational) along the following lines: anyone who cares
about the goals that are central to conversation/communication (such as giving
and receiving information, influencing and being influenced by others) must be
expected to have an interest, given suitable circumstances, in participating in
a conversation that will be profitable ONLY on the assumption that it is
conducted in general accordance with a principle of conversational
helpfulness." In titling his seminar "Logic and
Conversation," Grice is thinking Strawson. After all, in the seminal
"Introduction to Logical Theory," that every Oxonian student was
reading, Strawson had the cheek to admit that he never ceased to learn logic
from his tutor, Grice. Yet he elaborates a totally anti Griceian view of
things. To be fair to Strawson, the only segment where he acknwoledges Grice's
difference of opinion is a brief footnote, concerning the 'strength' or lack
thereof, of this or that quantified utterance. Strawson uses an adjective that
Grice will seldom do, 'pragmatic'. On top, Strawson attributes the adjective to
'rule.' For Grice, in Strawson's wording, there is this or that 'pragmatic
rule' to the effect that one should make a stronger rather than a weaker
conversational move. Strawson's Introduction was published BEFORE Grice aired
his views for the Aristotelian Society. In this seminar then Grice takes the
opportunity to correct a few misunderstandings. Important in that it is
Grice's occasion to introduce the principle of conversational helpfulness as
generating implicata under the assumption of rationality. The lecture makes it
obvious that Grice's interest is methodological, and not 'philological.' He is
not interest in conversation per se, but only as the source for his principle
of conversational helpfulness and the notion of the conversational implicatum,
which springs from the distinction between what an utterer implies and what his
expression does, a distinction 'apparently denied by Witters and all too
frequently ignored by Austin.' 'Logic and conversation,' an Oxford
seminar, 1964, keywords: implicatum, principle of conversational helpfulness,
eywords: conversational implicature, conversational implicatum. "Conversational
Implicature" Grice's main invention, one which trades on the
distinction between what an utterer IMPLIES and what his expression
does. "A distinction apparently denied by Witters, and all too
frequently ignored by, of all people, Austin." Grice is implicating
that Austin's sympathies were for the 'subjectification' of "Linguistic
Nature." Grice remains an obdurate individualist, and never loses
sight of the distinction that gives rise to the conversational implicatum,
which can very well be hyper-contextualised, idiosyncratic, and perfectly
particularised! His Oxonian example: "I can very well mean that
my tutee is to bring me a philosophical essay next week by uttering "It is
raining."" As Grice notes: “Since the object of the present exercise is
to provide a bit of theory which will explain, for a certain
family of cases, why is it that a particular implicature is
present, I would suggest that the final test of the adequacy
and utility of this model should be: – can it be used to construct
[an] explanation[…] of the presence of such [an]
implicature[…], and – is it more comprehensive and more
economical than any rival? b) [is] the no doubt pre-theoretical explanation[…]
which one would be prompted to give of such [an] implicature[…]
consistent with, or better still [a] favourable pointer[…] towards the
requirements involved in the model?” “Far otherwise: whoever disputes with you
will find those protagonists of heresy, the Stoics, Cynics, and Peripatetics,
shattered with their own arms and their own engines [emphasis
mine]; for their [heathen] followers, if they resist the doctrine and spirit of
Christianity, will, under your teaching, be caught in their own
familiar entanglements, and fall headlong into their own toils;
the barbed syllogism of your arguments will hook the glib
tongues of the casuists, and it is you who will tie up their slippery
questions in categorical clews, after the manner of [a] clever
physician[…], who, when compelled by reasoned thought, prepares antidotes for
poison even from a serpent.”“qvin potivs experietvr qvisqve conflixerit
stoicos cynicos peripateticos hæresiarchas propriis armis propriis qvoqve
concvti machinamentis nam sectatores eorum Christiano dogmati ac sensvi si
repvgnaverint mox te magistro ligati vernaculis implicaturis in
retia sua præcipites implagabvntur syllogismis tuæ propositionis vncatis
volvbilem tergiversantvm lingvam inhamantibvs dum spiris categoricis lubricas
qvæstiones tv potivs innodas acrivm more medicorvm qui remedivm contra venena
cum ratio compellit et de serpente conficivnt.” If Grice lectured on
“Logic and Conversation” on implicature he must have thought that Strawson’s
area was central. Yet, as he had done in “Causal theory” and as he will at
Harvard, Grice kept collecting philosophers’ mistakes. So it’s best to see
Grice as a methodologist, and as using “logic and conversation” as an
illustration of his favourite manoeuvre, indeed, central philosophical
manoeuver that gave him a place in the history of philosophy. Restricting this
manoeuvre to just an area minimises it. On the other hand, there has to be a
balance: surely ‘logic and conversation’ is a topic of intrinsic interest, and
we cannot expect all philosophers – unless they are Griceians! – to keep a
broad unitarian view of philosophy as avirtuous whole!
(“Philosopher, like virtue, is entire. – Destructive implicature to it: “Mr.
Puddle is our man in aesthetics” implicates He is not good at it). What is
important to Grice is that the mistakes of these philosophers (notably Strawson!)
arise from some “linguistic phenomena,”or, since we must use singular
expressions this or that “linguistic phenomenon.” Or as Grice puts it, it is
this or that ‘linguistic phenomenon’ which provides the MATERIAL for the
philosopher to make his mistake! So, to solve it, his theory of conversation as
rational co-operation is posited – technically, as a way to EXPLAIN (never
merely describe, which Grice found boring) these phenomena – his principle of
conversational helpfulness and the idea of a conversational implicatum. The
latter is based not so much on rationality per se, but on the implicit/explicit
distinction that he constantly plays with, since his earlier semiotic-oriented
explorations of Peirce. But back to this or that linguistic phenomenon, while
he would make fun of Searle for providing this or that “linguistic phenomenon”
that “no philosopher would ever feel excited about,” Grice himself was a bit of
a master in illustrating this a philosophical point with this or that
“linguistic phenomenon” that would not be necessarily connected with
philosophy. He rarely quotes authors, but surely the section in “Causal theory”
where he lists seven philosophical theses (which are ripe for an
implicatum treatment) would be familiar enough for anybody to be able to drop a
name to attach to each! At Harvard, MOST of his examples of this or that
linguistic phenomenon are UN-authored (and sometimes he expands on his OWN view
of them, just to amuse his audience – and show how committed to this or that
thesis he was), but some are not unauthored. And they all belong to ‘the
linguistic turn’: He quotes from Gilbert Ryle (who thought he knew about
‘ordinary language’), Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin (he quotes him in great
detail, from “Pretending,” “Plea of excuses,” and “No modification without
aberration,”), P. F. Strawson (in “Introduction to Logical theory” and on
‘Truth’ for Analysis), H. L. A. Hart (as “I have heard him expand on this”), J.
R. Searle, and B. S. Benjamin. He implicates Hare (on ‘good’). Etc. When we
mention the ‘explicit’/’implicit’ distinction as source for the implicatum, we
are referring to Grice’s own wording in “Retrospective Epilogue” where he
mentions an utterer as conveying in “some EXPLICIT fashion” this or that, as
opposed to a ‘gentler’ way, via implicature, or implIciture, if you mustn’t! It
may be worth exploring how this connects with RATIONALITY. His point would be
that that an assumption that the rational principle of ‘conversational
helpfulness’ is in order allows Pirot 1 not just to convey “in a direct
explicit fashion” that p, but “in an implicit fashion” that q. Where “q” is the
implicatum. The principle of conversational helpfulness as GENERATOR of this or
that ‘implicata,’ to use Grice’s word (‘generate’). Surely, “He took off his
boots and went to bed; I won’t say in which order” sounds HARDLY in the vein of
conversational helpfulness – but provided Grice does not see it as ‘logically
incoherent,’ it is still a rational (if not reasonable) thing to say. The
‘point’ may be difficult to discern, but you never know. The utterer may be
conveying, “Viva Boole!” Grice’s point about ‘rationality’ is mentioned in his
later “Prolegomena,” on at least two occasions. “Rational behaviour” is the
phrase he uses (as applied first to ‘communication’ and then to ‘discourse’)
and in stark opposition with a convention-based approach he rightly associates
with Austin.
1966.
Certainty, Descartes on clear and distinct perception, in Studies
in the Way of Words, Part II, Explorations on semantics and metaphysics,
Descartes on 'clear and distinct perception,' in Studies in the Way of
Words, Part II: Explorations on Semantics and metaphysics, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 1, Folder 20, and Series V (Topical),
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: Descartes, clear and distinct perception,
certainty. Grice found Descartes very funny -- in a French way! H. P.
Grice is interested in contesting A. J. Ayer and other Oxford philosophers, on
the topic of a criterion for 'certainty.' In so doing, Grice choses
Descartes's time-honoured criterion of 'clarity' and 'distinction,' as applied
to perception. Grice does NOT quote Descartes in French! In the
proceedings, Grice distinguishes between two 'kinds' of certainty apparently
ignored by Descartes: (a) OBJECTIVE CERTAINTY: Ordinary-language
variant: "It is certain that p," whatever "it" refers
to. (b) SUBJECTIVE CERTAINTY: Ordinary-language variant: "I
am certain that p." "I" being, of course, Grice, "in
my bestest days, of course!" There are further items on Descartes in
the Grice Collection, notably in the last series, of topics arranged
alphabetically. Grice never cared to publish his views on Descartes until
he found an opportunity to do so when compiling his Studies in the Way of
Words. Grice is NOT interested in an exegesis of Descartes's thought. He
doesn't care to give a reference to any edition of Descartes's oeuvre. But he
plays with 'certain'. "It is certain that p" is objective certainty,
apparently. "I am certain that p" is subjective certainty, rather.
Oddly, Grice will turn to UNcertainty as it connects with intention in his
British Academy lecture. Grice's interest in Descartes connects with
Descartes's search for a criterion of 'certainty' in terms of 'clarity' and
'distinction' of this or that perception. Having explored the philosophy
of perception with Warnock, it's only natural he wanted to give Descartes's
rambles a second and third look! 1966. Descartes on clear and distinct
perception. H. P. Grice (1966). Descartes on clear and distinct
perception, in Studies in the Way of Words, Part II, Semantics and Metaphysics,
Essay, "Descartes on clear and distinct perception and Malcom on
dreaming," The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 8, Folder
26, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keyword: perception, Descartes, clear and distinct perception,
Malcolm, dreaming. Descartes meets Malcolm, and vice versa. Descartes
on 'clear and distinct perception,' in Studies in the Way of Words,
Carton 6, Folders 27-28, "Descartes on clear and distinct
perception.” Grice, H. P. (1966). Descartes on clear and distinct
perception, in Studies in the Way of Words, Part II, Semantics and Metaphysics,
Essay, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 6, Folders 27 and 28,
BANC MSS 90/135c, The University of California, Berkeley. Grice gives a short
overview of Cartesian metaphysics for the BBC third programme. The
best example, Grice thinks, of a meetaphysical snob is
provided by Descartes, about whose idea of certainty Grice had
philosophised quite a bit, since it’s in total contrast with
Moore’s! Descartes
is a very scientifically-minded philosopher, with very clear ideas about the proper direction for science. Descartes,
whose middle name seems to have been “Euclid,” thinks that mathematics,
and in particular geometry, provides
the model for a scientific procedure, or
method. And this determines all of
Descartes’s thinking in two ways. First, Descartes
thinks that the fundamental method in science is
the axiomatic-deductive method of geometry, and this Descartes
conceives (as Spinoza morality “more
geometrico”) of as rigorous reasoning from
a self-evident axiom (“Cogito, ergo sum.”). Second, Descartes thinks
that the subject-matter of physical science, from mechanics to medicine, must be fundamentally the same as the subject-matter of geometry! The only characteristics that the
objects studied by geometry poses are spatial characteristics. So
from the point of view of science in general, the only important features of things in the physical world were also their spatial characteristics,
what he called ‘extensio,’ ‘res extensa.’ Physical science in general is a kind
of
dynamic,
or kinetic, geometry. Here we have an exclusive preference for a certain type of scientific method, and a certain type of scientific explanation: the method is deductive, the type of explanation mechanical. These
beliefs about the right way to do science are exactly reflected in Descartes's
“ontology” – one of the two branches of metaphysics; the other is philosophical
eschatology, or the study of categories), and it is reflected
in his doctrine, that is, about what “really”
exists. Apart from God, the divine substance, Descartes
recognizes just two kinds of substance, two types of real entity. First, there
is material substance, or matter; and the belief that
the only scientifically importantcharacteristics of things in the physical world are their spatial characteristics goes over, in the language of “metaphysics,”into the doctrine that these are their only
characteristics. Second, and to Ryle’s horror, Descartes recognizes the mind or
soul, or the mental substance, of which the essential characteristic
is thinking; and thinking itself, in its pure form at least, is
conceived of as simply the intuitive grasping of this
or that self-evident axiom and this or that of
its deductive consequence. These restrictive doctrines about reality and knowledge naturally call for adjustments elsewhere in our
ordinary scheme of things. With the help of the
divine substance, these are duly provided.
It is not always obvious that the metaphysician's scheme involves this kind of “ontological”
preference, or favoritism, or prejudice, or snobbery this tendency, that is, to
promote one or two categories of entity to the rank of the real, or of the ultimately real, to the exclusion of others,
Descartes’s ‘entia realissima.’
1966.
Eudaimonia, "A philosophy of life," happiness, notes, Some
reflections about ends and happiness, in Aspects of reason, Clarendon,
Correspondence with R. O. Warner, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series I
(Correspondence), Carton 1, Folder 9, Series II (Essays), Carton 4, Folder 16,
Series V (Topical), Carton 7, Folder 6, and Carton 8, Folder 28, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley.
Keywords: ends, telos, happiness, Kantotle, eudaimonia, philosophical biology,
philosophical psychology, eudaemon, fairy godmother, Warner. H. P. Grice’s
fairy godmother. Grice took 'life' seriously: philosophical biology!
"Philosophy of life" is dated 1966 in P. G. R. I. C. E. H. P. Grice’s
fairy godmother. “Much the most plausible conjecture regarding what Greek eudaimonia
means, is namely that ‘eudaimonia’ is to be understood as the name for that
state or condition which one’s good daemon would, if he could, ensure for one.”
“And my good daemon is a being motivated, with respect to me, solely by concern
for my well-being or happiness." "To change the idiom,
"eudaemonia" is the general characterization of what a full-time and
unhampered fairy godmother would secure for you." Grice is concerned with
the specific system of ends that 'eudaimonia' consists for for both Kant and
Aristotle (or Kantotle for short). Grice borrows, but never returns, some
reflections by his fomer tuttee at St. John's, J. L. Ackrill. Ackrill's point
is about the etymological basis for 'eudaimonia,' from 'eudaimon,' or good
daemon, as Grice prefers. Grice thinks the metaphor should be disimplicated,
and taken quite 'literally.' Grice concludes with a set of ends that justify
our ascription of 'eudaimonia' to the agent. For Grice, as for Aristotle, and
indeed Kant (Kantotle, in short), a 'telos' and 'eudaimonia' are related in
subtle ways. For 'eudaimonia' we cannot deal with just ONE end, but a system of
ends (Although such a system may be a singleton). Grice specifies a subtle way
of characterising 'end' so that a particular ascription of an 'end' may ENTAIL
an ascription of 'eudaimonia.' Grice follows the textual criticism of his
former tutee, J. L. Ackrill, in connection with the Socratic point that
'eudaimonia' IS literally related to the 'eudaimon.' Warner has explored
Grice's concept of 'happiness,' notably in P. G. R. I. C. E. Warner was
especially helpful with Grice's third difficult Carus lecture, a metaphysical
defence of absolute value. Warner also connected with Grice in such topics as
the philosophy of perception (seen in an evolutionary light) and the
Kantotelian idea of happiness. In response to Warner's overview of Grice's
oeuvre for the festschrift (that Warner co-authored with Grandy), Grice refers
to the editors by the collective name of "Richards." While Grice felt
he had to use 'happiness,' he is always having Aristotle's 'eudaimonia' in
mind! The implicata of “Smith is happy" are more complex than Kantotle
thought! Austen knew! (“You decide if you’re happy!” — Emma). Ultimately, for
Grice, the rational life is the happy life! Grice took 'life' seriously:
philosophical biology! Grice is clear when reprinting the Descartes paper in
Studies (where he does quote from Descartes sources quite a bit, even if he
implicates he is “no Cartesian scholar” – what Oxonian would? --: it concerns
‘certainty.’ And certainty was originally Cantabrigian (Moore), but also
Oxonian, in parts (Ayer was saying that ‘to know’ is to ‘assure’ that one is
CERTAIN or sure. So he could connect. Grice will at various stages of his
development play and explore this AUTHORITATIVE voice of introspection:
incorrigibility and privileged access. He surely wants to say that a
declaration of an intention is authoritative. And he plays with “meaning,” too
when provoking Malcolm in a don recollection: Grice: I want you to bring me a paper
tomorrow. Strawson: You mean a newspaper? Grice: No, a philosophical essay.
Strawson: How do you KNOW? Are you CERTAIN you mean that? Grice finds not being
certain about what one means Strawsonian and otiose! (“Tutees!”). Grice loved
to place himself in the role of the philosophical hack, dealing with his
tutee’s inabilities, a whole week long – until he could find refreshment in
para-philosophy on the Saturday morning! Now, the LOGICAL form of ‘certain’ is
a trick. Grice would symbolize it as numbering of operators. If Pirot Psis p,
Pirot Psis Psis p, and Pirot Psis Psis Psis p, and so ad infinitum. This is a
bit like certainty. But not quite! When he explores TRUST, he considers
something like a backing for it. But does conclusive evidence yield certainty?
He doesn’t think so. Certainty, for Grice should apply to any psychological
attitude, state or stance. And it is just clever of him that when he had to
deliver that lecture at London he chose “INTENTION and ***UNCERTAINTY*** as its
topic, just to provoke! (Not surprisingly, the “Intention and Uncertainty”
piece opens with “the sceptic’s challenge.” And he won’t conclude that the
intender is CERTAIN. Only that there’s some good chance (p > 0.5) that
what he intends will get through! "When there is a will, there is a
way," “When there is a neo-Prichardian WILLing, there is a palaeo-Griceian
WAYing!" Perhaps by ‘know’ Moore means “CERTAIN.” Grice was amused by the
fact that Moore THOUGHT he knew that behind the curtains at the lecture hall at
the University of Wisconsin at Madison, there was a window, when there wasn’t.
He uses Moore’s misuse of ‘know’ – according to Malcolm – both in “Causal
theory” and “Prolegomena.” And of course this relates to the topic of the
sceptic’s implicature, 1946 above, with the two essays “Scepticism and Common
sense” and “Moore and Philosopher’s Paradoxes” reprinted (one partially) in
Studies.
1966. Dreaming, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 8, Folder 26, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Malcolm, dreaming,
Descartes, implicatum Grice dreaming. Malcolm argues in “Dreaming and
Skepticism” and in his Dreaming that the notion of a dream qua conscious
experience that occurs at a definite time and has definite duration during
sleep, is "unintelligible." This contradicts the views of
philosophers like Descartes (and indeed Moore!), who, Malcolm holds, assume
that a human being may have a conscious thought and a conscious experience
during sleep. Descartes claims that he had been deceived during sleep.
Malcolm’s point is that ordinary language contrasts consciousness and sleep.
The claim that one is conscious while one is sleep-walking is "stretching
the use of the term." Malcolm rejects the alleged counter-examples based
on sleepwalking or sleep-talking, e.g. dreaming that one is climbing stairs
while one is actually doing so is not a counter-example because, in such a
case, the individual is not sound asleep after all. "If a person is in any
state of consciousness, it logically follows that he is not sound asleep."
The concept of dreaming is based on our descriptions of dreams after we have
awakened in "telling a dream." Thus, to have dreamt that one has a
thought during sleep is not to have a thought any more than to have dreamt that
one has climbed Everest is to have climbed Everest. Since one cannot have an
experience during sleep, one cannot have a mistaken experience during sleep,
thereby undermining the sort of scepticism based on the idea that our experience
might be wrong because we might be dreaming. Malcolm further argues that a
report of a conscious state during sleep is unverifiable. If Grice claims that
he and Strawson saw a bigfoot in charge of the reserve desk at the Bodleian
library, one can verify that this took place by talking to Strawson and
gathering forensic evidence from the library. However, there is no way to
verify Grice’s claim that he dreamed that he and Strawson saw a bigfoot working
at the Bodleian library. Grice's only basis for his claim that he dreamt this
is that Grice says so after he wakes up. How does one distinguish the case
where Grice dreamed that he saw a bigfoot working at The Bodleian Library and
the case in which he dreamed that he saw a person in a bigfoot suit working at
the library but, after awakening, mis-remembered that person in a bigfoot suit
as a bigfoot proper? If Grice should admit that he had earlier mis-reported his
dream and that he had actually dreamed he saw a person in a bigfoot suit at The
Bodleian, there is no more independent verification for this new claim than
there was for the original one. Thus, there is, for Malcolm, no sense to the
idea of mis-remembering one’s dreams. Malcolm here applies one of Witter's
ideas from his “private language argument,": "One would like to say:
whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here
we can’t talk about ‘right’." For a similar reason, Malcolm challenges the
idea that one can assign a definite duration or time of occurrence to a dream.
If Grice claims that he ran the mile in 3.4 minutes, one could verify this in
the usual ways. If, however, Grice says he dreamt that he ran the mile in 3.4
minutes, how is one to measure the duration of his dreamt run? If Grice says he
was wearing a stopwatch in the dream and clocked his run at 3.4 minutes, how
can one know that the dreamt stopwatch is not running at half speed (so that he
really dreamt that he ran the mile in 6.8 minutes)? Grice might argue that a
dream report does not carry such a conversational implicata. But Malcolm would
say that just admits the point. The ordinary criteria one uses for determining
temporal duration do not apply to dreamt events. The problem in both these
cases (Grice dreaming one saw a bigfoot working at The Bodleian library and
dreaming that he ran the mile in 3.4 minutes) is that there is no way to verify
the truth of these dreamt events — no direct way to access that dreamt inner
experience, that mysterious glow of consciousness inside the mind of Grice
lying comatose on the couch, in order to determine the facts of the matter.
This is because, for Malcolm, there are no facts of the matter apart from the
dreamer’s report of the dream upon awakening. Malcolm claims that the empirical
evidence does not enable one to decide between the view that a dream experience
occurs during sleep and the view that they are generated upon the moment of
waking up. Dennett agrees with Malcolm that nothing supports the received view
that a dream involves a conscious experience while one is asleep but holds that
such issues might be settled empirically. Malcolm also argues against the
attempt to provide a physiological mark of the duration of a dream, for
example, the view that the dream lasted as long as the rapid eye movements. Malcolm
replies that "there can only be as much precision in that common concept
of dreaming as is provided by the common criterion of dreaming." These
scientific researchers are misled by the assumption that the provision for the
duration of a dream "is already there, only somewhat obscured and in need
of being made more precise." However, Malcolm claims, it is not already
there (in the ordinary concept of dreaming). These scientific views are making
“radical conceptual changes” in the concept of dreaming, not further explaining
our ordinary concept of dreaming. Malcolm admits, however, that it might be
natural to adopt such scientific views about REM sleep as a convention. Malcolm
points out, however, that if REM sleep is adopted as a criterion for the occurrence
of a dream, "people would have to be informed upon waking up that
they had dreamed or not." Malcolm does not mean to deny that people have
dreams in favour of the view that they only have waking dream-behaviour (Pears,
1961, 145). "Of course it is no misuse of language to speak of
‘remembering a dream’." His point is that since the concept of dreaming is
so closely tied to our concept of waking report of a dreams, one cannot form a
coherent concept of this alleged inner (private) something that occurs with a
definite duration during sleep. Malcolm rejects a certain philosophical
conception of dreaming, not the ordinary concept of dreaming, which, he holds,
is neither a hidden private something nor mere outward behaviour. Malcolm’s
account of dreaming has come in for considerable criticism. Some argue that
Malcolm’s claim that occurrences in dreams cannot be verified by others does
not require the strict criteria that Malcolm proposes but can be justified by
appeal to the simplicity, plausibility, and predictive adequacy of an
explanatory system as a whole. Some argue that Malcolm’s account of the
sentence “I am awake” is inconsistent. A comprehensive programme in
considerable detail has been offered for an empirical scientific investigation
of dreaming of the sort that Malcolm rejects. Others have proposed various
counterexamples and counter arguments against Malcolm’s account of dreaming.
Grice's emphasis is in Malcolm's easy way out with statements to the effect
that 'implicata' do or do not operate in dream reports. "They do in
mine!" Grice considers, “I may be dreaming” in the two essays opening the
Part II: Explorations on semantics and metaphysics in Studies in the Way of
Words.
1967. Logic
and conversation, repr. in Studies in the Way of Words, Part I, in
revised form (1987). The William James Memorial Lectures on Logic and
Conversation, Harvard. The William James Memorial Lectures on Logic and
Conversation, in Studies in the Way of Words, as Part I, "Logic and
Conversation." H. P. Grice (1967). The William James lectures on
logic and conversation, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays),
Carton 1, Folders 24, 25, and 26, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: logic, conversation,
implicature. A set of seven lectures, entitled as follows. Lecture 1,
'Prolegomena;' Lecture 2: 'Logic and Conversation;' Lecture 3: 'Further notes
on logic and conversation;' Lecture 4: 'Indicative conditionals;' Lecture 5:
'Utterer's meaning and intentions;' Lecture 6: 'Utterer's meaning,
sentence-meaning, and word-meaning;' and Lecture 7: 'Some models for
implicature.' "I hope they don't expect me to lecture on
James!" Grice admired James, but not vice versa. Grice entitled
the set as being "Logic and Conversation." That is the title, also,
of the second lecture. Grice keeps those titles seeing that it was way the
whole set of lectures were frequently cited, and that the second lecture had
been published under that title in Davidson and Harman, The Logic of
Grammar. The content of each lecture is indicated below. In the
first, Grice manages to quote from Witters. In the last, he
didn't! The original set consisted of seven lectures. To wit:
Prolegomena, Logic and conversation, Further notes on logic and conversation,
Indicative Conditionals, Utterer's meaning and intentions, Utterer's meaning,
sentence-meaning, and word meaning, and Some models for implicature. They were
pretty successful at Oxford. While the notion of an 'implicatum' had been
introduced by Grice at Oxford, even in connection with a principle of
conversational helpfulness, he takes the occasion now to explore the type of
rationality involved. Observation of the principle of conversational
helpfulness is rational (reasonable) along the following lines: anyone who
cares about the two central goals to conversation (give/receive information,
influence/be influened) is expected to have an interest in participating in a
conversation that is only going to be profitable given that it is conducted
along the lines set by the principle of conversational helpfulness. In
"Prolegomena" he lists Austin, Strawson, Hare, Hart, and himself, as
victims of a disregard for the implicatum. In the third lecture he introduces
his razor, "Senses are not to be muliplied beyond necessity." In
"Indicative conditionals" he tackles Strawson on 'if' as not
representing the horse-shoe of Whitehead and Russell. The next two lectures,
"Utterer's meaning and intentions" and "Utterer's meaning,
sentence-meaning, and word-meaning" refine his earlier, more austere,
account of this particularly Peirceian phenomenon. He concludes the lectures
with an exploration on the relevance of the implicatum to philosophical
psychology. Grice was well aware that many philosophers had become
enamoured with the series, and would love to give it a ‘continuous perusal.’
The set is indeed grandiose. It starts with a “Prolegomena” to set the scene:
He notably quotes himself in it, which helps, but also Strawson, which sort of
justifies the general title. In the second lecture, “Logic and Conversation,”
he expands on the principle of conversational helpfulness and the
explicitum/implicatum distinction – all very rationalist! The third lecture is
otiose in that he makes fun of Ockham: Senses are not to be multiplied beyond
necessity. The fourth lecture, on “Indicative conditionals,” is indeed on MOST
of the formal devices he had mentioned on Lecture II, notably the functors
(rather than the quantifiers and the iota operator, with which he deals in
“Presupposition and conversational implicature,” since, as he notes, they refer
to reference). THIS IS THE CENTRAL lecture of the set. In the fifth lecture, he
plays with ‘mean,’ and discovers that it is attached to the IMPLICATUM or the
IMPLICITUM. In the sixth lecture, he becomes a ‘nominalist,’ to use Bennett’s
phrase, as he deals with ‘dog’ and ‘shaggy’ in terms of this or that
‘resultant’ procedure – “don’t ask me what they are!” --. Finally, in “Some
models for implicature,” he attacks the charge of circularity, and refers to
“nineteenth-century explorations” on the idea of ‘thought without language’
alla Wundt. I don’t think a set of William James lectures had even been so
comprehensive!
1967.
Prolegomena, in Studies in the Way of Words, Part I, "Logic and
Conversation," Essay 1, the first William James lecture, ifs and cans, The
H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays) and Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folders
11-12, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: meaning, use, implicatum, Austin,
Strawson. A discussion of Oxonian philosophers of Grice's play
group, notably J. L. Austin, P. F. Strawson, H. L. A. Hart, and R. M. Hare. He
adds himself for good measure ("A causal theory of perception").
Philosophers, even at Oxford, have to be careful with the attention that is due
to 'general principles of discourse.' Grice quotes philosophers of an earlier
generation, such as Ryle, and some interpreters or practitioners of Oxonian
analysis, such as Benjamin and Searle. He even manages to quote from Witters's
"Philosophical investigations," on seeing a banana as a banana. There
are further items in the Grice collection that address Austin’s manoeuvre.
Austin on ifs and cans, 1970, Austin on ifs and cans, Ifs and cans, keywords:
conditional, power. Two of Grice's favourites. He opposed Strawson's
view on 'if.' Grice thought that 'if' was the horseshoe of Whitehead and
Russell, provided we add an IMPLICATUM to an ENTAILMENT. The 'can' is
merely dispositional, if not alla Ryle, alla Grice! 1970. Ifs and cans, keywords:
Austin, intention, disposition. Austin had brought the topic to the fore
as an exploration of free will. D. F. Pears had noted that 'conversational'
implicature may account for the conditional perfection ('if' yields 'iff'). Cf.
M. R. Ayers on Austin on 'if' and 'can.' If he calls it “Prolegomena,” he
is being jocular. “Philosophers’ Mistakes” would have been too provocative. B.
S. Benjamin erred, and so did Gilbert Ryle, and Ludwig Witters, and ‘my
friends’, J. L. Austin (the mater that wobbled), and in order of seniority, H.
L. A. Hart (“I heard him defend this about ‘carefully’ – ‘stopping at every
door in case a dog comes out at breakned speed’), R. M. Hare (To say “good” is
to approve), and Strawson (Introduction to Logical theory: “To utter “if p, q”
is to implicate some inferrability”, To say “True!” is to endorse – Analysis).
If he ends with Searle, he is being jocular. He quotes Searle from an essay in
“British philosophy” in Lecture I, and from an essay in “Philosophy in America”
in Lecture V. He loved Searle, and expands on the Texas oilmen’s club example!
We may think of Grice as a linguistic botanizer or a ‘meta-linguistic’
botanizer: his hobby was to collect philosophers’ mistakes, and he catalogued
them. In “Causal theory” he produces his first list of seven: 1: the pillar box
seems red to me; 2. You cannot see a dagger as a dagger; 3. Moore didn’t know
that the objects before him were his own hands; 4. What is actual is not also
possible. 5. For someone to be called ‘responsible,’ his action should be
condemnable; 6. A cause must be given only of something abnormal or unusual
(cf. aetiology). 7. If you know it, you don’t believe it. In the Prolegomena,
the taxonomy is more complicated. Examples A (the use of an expression, by
Ryle, Wittgenstein, Austin, Hart, and Benjamin), Examples B (Strawson on ‘and,’
‘or,’ and especially ‘if’), and Examples C (Strawson on ‘true’ and Hare on
‘good’ – the ‘performative theories’). But EVEN if his taxonomy is more
complicated, he makes it more SO by giving OTHER examples as he goes on to
DISCUSS how to assess the philosophical mistake (cf. his elaboration on
‘trying,’ “I saw Mrs. Smith cashing a cheque.” “Trying to cash a cheque, you
mean.” – or cf. his remarks on ‘remember,’ and ‘There is an analogy here with a
case by Wittgenstein.” In summary, he wants to say. THE PHILOSOPHER makes a big
mistake. He has DETECTED, I think it’s the word he used, some CONVERSATIONAL
NUANCE. Now he wants to EXPLOIT it. But BEFORE RUSHING AHEAD TO EXPLOIT the
conversational nuance he has detected, or identified, or collected in his
exercise of linguistic botanising, the philosopher should let us know with
CLARITY what type of a nuance it is. For Grice wants to know that THE NUANCE
depends on a general principle (of goal-directed behaviour in general, and MOST
LIKELY rational) governing discourse – that participants in a conversation
should be aware of, and not on some minutiae that has been identified by the
philosopher making the mistake, unsystematically, and merely descriptively, and
taxonomically, but without ONE drop of explanatory adequacy. The fact that he
directs this to his junior Strawson is the sad thing. The rest are all Grice’s
seniors! The point is of PHILOSOPHICAL interest, rather than other. And he
keeps citing philosophers (Tarski or Ramsey, in Lecture III to elaborate the
point about ‘true’ in “Prolegomena.” He never seems interested in ANYTHING but
an item being “of philosophical interest,” even if that means HIS and MINE! On
top, he is being Oxonian: “Only at Oxford my colleagues were so obsessed, as it
has never been seen ANYWHERE else, about the nuances of conversation. Only they
were all making a BIG mistake in having no clue as to what the underlying
theory of conversation as rational co-operation would SIMPLIFY things for them
– and how! If I introduce the explicatum as a concession, I shall hope I will
be pardoned!”
1967.
Logic and conversation, in Studies in the Way of Words, Part
I, "Logic and Conversation," Essay 2, from Davidson/Harman, The
Logic of Grammar, pp. 64-75, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays),
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. An elaboration of his Oxonian seminar on "Logic and
conversation." There's a principle of conversational helpfulness, which
includes a desideratum of conversational candour and a desideratum of
conversational clarity, and the sub-principle of conversational self-interest
clashing with the sub-principle of conversational benevolence. The whole point
of the manoeuvre is to provide a rational basis for a conversational
'implicatum,' as his term of art goes. Observation of the principle of
conversational helpfulness is rational/reasonable along the following lines:
anyone who is interested in the two goals conversation is supposed to serve --
give/receive information, influence/be influenced -- should only care to enter
a conversation that will be only profitable under the assumption that it is
conducted in accordance with the principle of conversational helfpulness, and
attending desiderata and sub-principles. Grice takes special care in listing
tests for the proof that an implicatum is 'conversational' in this rather
technical usage: a conversational implicatum is RATIONALLY calculable (it is
the content of a psychological state, attitude or stance that the addressee
assigns to the utterer on condition that he is being helpful), non-detachable,
indeterminate, and VERY cancellable, thus never part of the 'sense' and never
an 'entailment' of this or that piece of philosophical vocabulary. Logic and
conversation, in Davidson and Harman, The Logic of Grammar (1975), also in Cole
and Morgan (1975), repr. in a revised form in Grice (1989). H. P.
Grice (1967). Logic and conversation, the second William James lecture, keywords:
principle of conversational helpfulness, implicatum, cancellability. While
the essay was also reprinted by Cole and Morgan, Grice always cited it from the
Davidson's and Harman's two-column reprint in The Logic of Grammar. Most people
without a philosophical background first encounter Grice through this
essay. Philosophers usually get first acquainted with his "In
defence of a dogma," or "Meaning." In "Logic and
Conversation," Grice re-utilises the notion of an implicatum and the
principle of conversational helpfulness that he had introduced at Oxford
to a more select audience. Grice's idea is that the observation of the
principle of conversational helfpulness is rational (reasonable) along the
following lines: anyone who is concerned with the two goals which are
central to conversation (to give/receive information, to influence/be
influenced) should be interested in participating in a conversation that
is only going to be profitable on the assumption that it is conducted
along the lines of the principle of conversational helfpulness. Grice's
point is methodological. He is not at all interested in conversational
exchanges as such. Unfortunately, the essay starts "in media res,"
and skips Grice's careful list of Oxonian examples of 'disregard' for the
key idea of what a conversant IMPLICATES by the conversational move he
makes. His concession is that there is an EXPLICATUM or EXPLICITUM
(roughly, the logical form) which is beyond pragmatic constraints. This
concession is easily explained in terms of his overarching irreverent,
conservative, dissenting rationalism. This lecture alone had been read by
a few philosophers leaving them confused. I don’t know what Davidson and Harman
were thinking when they reprinted JUST THIS in “The logic of grammar.” I mean:
it’s obviously ‘in media res.’ Grice starts with the ‘logical devices,’ and
never again takes the topic up. Then he explores metaphor, irony, and
hyperbole, and surely the philosopher who bought “The logic of grammar” must be
left puzzled! He had to wait sometime to see the thing in full completion.
Oxonian philosophers WOULD, out of etiquette, HARDLY quote from ‘unpublished’
material! (Cohen had to rely on memory, and that’s why he got all his Grice
wrong! And so did Strawson in “If and the horseshoe.” Even Walker responding to
Cohen is relying on memory. FEW *philosophers* quoted from The logic and
grammar. At Oxford, everybody knew what Grice was up to. Hare was talking
‘implicature’ in Mind in 1967, and Pears was talking ‘conversational implicature’
in “Ifs and cans.” And Platts was dedicating a full chapter to “Causal Theory
of Perception.” It seems the Oxonian etiquette was to quote from “Causal
Theory.” It was obvious that Grice’s implication excursus had to read
‘implicature’! In a few dictionaries of philosophy, such as Hamlyn’s, under
‘implication,’ a reference to Grice’s locus classicus “Causal Theory” is made –
Passmore quotes from “Causal theory” in “Hundred years of philosophy.” Very few
Oxonians would care to buy a volume published in Encino!
1967. Further
notes on logic and conversation, in Studies in the Way of
Words, published in Peter Cole, Pragmatics, for Academic
Press, London, in Part I, "Logic and Conversation," Essay 3,
from P. Cole, Pragmatics, pp. 113-27, The H. P Grice Papers, Series
II (Essays), Carton 2, Folder 24, and Series V (Topical), Carton
7, Folder 13, 'Irony, Stress, and Truth,' BANC MSS 90/135c,
The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: Modified Occam's razor, implicature. The
essay had circulated since the Harvard days, and it was also reprinted by Peter
Cole in his Pragmatics for Academic
Press. "Personally, I prefer 'dialectica.'" -- Grice. This
is the third William James lecture at Harvard. It is particularly useful
for Grice's introduction of his 'razor,' "M. O. R.," or
"Modified Occam's Razor," jocularly expressed by Grice
as: "Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” An Englishing
of the Ockham's Latinate, "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter
necessitatem." But what do we mean 'sense'. Surely Occam was right
with his Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. We need to
translate that alla 'linguistic turn.' Grice jokes: "Senses are not be
multiplied beyond necessity." He also considers irony, stress, and truth,
which the Grice Papers have under a special folder in the Series V
(Topical). Three topics where the IMPLICATUM helps. "He is a
scoundrel" may well be the IMPLICATUM of "He is a fine
friend." But cfr. the pretense theory of irony. Grice, being a
classicist, loved the etymological connection. With Stress, he was
concerned with anti-Gettier uses of emphatic 'know': "I KNOW."
(Implicatum: I do have conclusive evidence"). "Truth" (or
"... is true") sprang from Grice's attention to that infamous Bristol
symposium between Austin and Strawson. Grice wants to defend Austin's
correspondence theory against Strawson's 'performative' approach. If
"... is true" IMPLICATES "someone previously affirmed
this," that does not mean a 'ditto' IMPLICATUM is part of the ENTAILMENT
of an "... is true" utterance. 1967 -- 1978. Further notes
on logic and conversation, in Peter Cole (1978), repr. in a revised form in
Grice (1989). H. P. Grice (1967). Further notes on logic and conversation, keywords:
Modified Occam's Razor, irony, stress, truth. The preferred citation
should be Grice 1967:III. This is originally the third William James
lecture, in a revised form. In that lecture, Grice introduced the
"M. O. R.," or Modified Occam's Razor: "Senses are not be
multiplied beyond necessity." The point is that
"ENTAILMENT-CUM-IMPLICATUM" does the job that MULTIPLIED
SENSES should not do! The Grice Papers contains in a different folder the
concluding section for that lecture, on irony, stress, and truth. Grice
went back to the Modified Occam’s razor, but was never able to formalise it! It
is, as he concedes, almost a ‘vacuous’ methodological ‘thingy’!
1967. Indicative
conditionals, the fourth William James lecture, in Studies in the Way
of Words. Indicative conditionals, in Studies in the Way of Words, Part I
("Logic and Conversation"), Essay IV, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 6-Folder 29, BANC
MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: unary functor, not, binary functor, and, or, if,
Cook Wilson. In "Prolegomena," Grice had quoted verbatim from
Strawson's infamous idea that there is a SENSE of inferrability with 'if.'
While the lecture covers much more than 'if' ("He only said 'if';"
"Oh, no, he said a great deal more than that!," the title was never
meant to be original. Grice in fact provides a rational justification for the
three connectives ("and," "or," and "if") and
before that, the unary functor "not." Embedding, Indicative
conditionals: embedding, 1971, "Not" and "If," Michael
Sinton on "Grice on Denials of Indicative Conditionals," keywords:
"not," "if." Strawson had elaborated on what he felt
was a divergence between Whitehead's and Russell's 'horseshoe,' and 'if.' Grice
thought Strawson's observations could be understood in terms of ENTAILMENT +
IMPLICATUM ("Robbing Peter to Pay Paul"). But problems, as first
noted to Grice, by L. J. Cohen, of Oxford, remain, when it comes to the scope
of the implicatum within the operation of, say, 'negation.' Analogous problems
arise with implicata for the other earlier dyadic functors, "and" and
"or," and Grice looks for a single explanation of the
phenomenon. The qualification 'indicative' is modal. "Ordinary
language" allows for 'if' utterances to be in modes other than the
imperative. "Counter-factual," if you need to be philosophical
krypto-technical, 'subjective' is you are more of a classicist! Grice took a
cavalier to the problem: Surely it won’t do to say “You couldn’t have done
that, since you were in Seattle,” to someone who figuratively tells you he’s
spend the full summer cleaning the Aegean stables. THIS IS THE CENTRAL PIECE of
the lectures. Grice takes good care of “not,” “and,” “or,” and concludes with
the “if” of the ‘title.’ For each, he finds a métier, alla Cook Wilson in
“Statement and Inference.” And they all connect with RATIONALITY. So he is using
material from his Oxford seminars on the principle of conversational
helpfulness. Plus Cook Wilson makes more sense at Oxford than at Harvard! The
last bit, citing Kripke and Dummett, is meant as jocular. What is important is
the ‘teleological’ approach to the operators. AND A NOTE SHOULD BE MADE ABOUT
DYADICITY. In “Prolegomena,” when he introduces the topic, he OMITS “not”
(about which he was almost obsessed!). He just gives an example for “and” (He
went to bed and took off his dirty boots”), one for “or” (the garden becomes
Oxford and the kitchen becomes London, and the implicatum is in terms, oddly,
of ‘ignorance’: “My wife is either in Town OR Country,”making fun of “Town AND
Country”), and “if”. His favourite illustration for “if” is Cock Robin: "If
the Sparrow did not kill him, the Lark did!” This is because Grice is serious
about the EROTETIC (i.e. question/answer) format Cook Wilson gives to things,
but he manages to bring Philonian and Megarian into the picture, just to
impress! MOST IMPORTANTLY, he introduces the SQUARE BRACKETS! He’ll use them
again in “Presupposition and Conversational Implicature” and turns them into
subscripts in “Vacuous Names.” This is CENTRAL. For he wants to impoverish the
idea of the implicatum. The explicitum is minimal, and any divergence is
syntactic-cum-pragmatic ‘import’. The scope devices are syntactic and
eliminable, and as he knows: what the eye no longer sees, the heart no longer
grieves for! The modal implicatum. Since Grice uses ‘indicative,’ for
the title of his third William James lecture ("Indicative
Conditionals") surely he implicates 'subjunctive' -- i.e. that someone
might be thinking that he should give an account of indicative*-cum-subjective*
'if.' This relates to an example Grice gives in “Causal Theory,” that he does
not reproduce in “Prolegomena." Grice states the philosophical mistake as
follows: “What is actual is *not* also possible.” Grice seems to be
suggesting that a subjective conditional would involve “one or other of the
modalities,” he is NOT interested in exploring! On the other hand, J. L. Mackie
has noted that Grice’s conversationalist hypothesis (Mackie quotes verbatim
from Grice’s “principle of conversational helpfulness”) allows for an
explanation of the subjective “if” that does not involve Kripke-type paradoxes
involving possible worlds, or other. In “Causal Theory,” Grice writes: “The
issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine
point, but it is certainly not an isolated one." “There are several philosophical
theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined in order to see whether
or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been
discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind."“An
examples which occurs to me is the following.’ "What is actual is *not*
also possible." “I must emphasise that I am not saying that [this example
is] importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that,
for all I know, [it] may be." “To put the matter more generally, the
position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre
which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of
philosophizing." “I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre." “I am
merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision
with the facts." “Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic NUANCES
which we have detected, we should make sure that we are reasonably clear what
SORT of nuances they are!”
1967. Utterer's meaning and intentions,
repr. in Studies in the Way of Words. H. P. Grice (1967).
Utterer's meaning and intentions, the fifth William James lecture, Part I,
"Logic and conversation," Essay 5, The Philosophical
Review, vol. 72 (issue 2), pp. 147-77, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series II (Essays) Carton 1, Folders 28, 29, and 30, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: utterer's meaning, intention. Grice is not an
animist. While he allows for natural phenomena to mean ("smoke means fire"),
'meaning' is best ascribed to some utterer, where this 'meaning' is nothing but
the intentions behind his utterance. This is the fifth William James
lecture. Grice was careful enough to submit it to "The Philosophical
Review," since it is a strictly philosophical development of the views
expressed in "Meaning" which Strawson had submitted on Grice's behalf
to the same "Review" and which had had a series of responses by
various philosophers. Among these philosophers is Strawson himself in "Intention
and convention in the the theory of speech acts," also in "The
Philosophical Review." Grice quotes from very many other philosophers
in this essay, including: J. O. Urmson, W. Stampe, P. F.
Strawson, S. R. Schiffer, J. R. Searle. P. F. Strawson is especially
relevant since he started a series of alleged counter-examples with his
infamous example of the 'rat-infested house.' Grice particularly treasured
Stampe's alleged counter-example involving his beloved bridge! Anita Avramides
wrote her Oxon D. Phil on that, under Strawson! This is Grice's occasion
to address some of the criticisms -- in the form of alleged counter-examples,
typically, as his later reflections on epagoge versus diagoge note -- by J. O.
Urmson, P. F. Strawson,and other philosophers associated with Oxford, such as
J. R. Searle, D. W. Stampe, and S. R. Schiffer. The final 'analysandum' is
pretty complex (of the type that he did find his analysis of "I am hearing
a sound" complex in "Personal identity" -- "hardly an
obstacle for adopting it!" --), it became yet another target of attack by
especially New-World philosophers in the pages of Mind, Nous, and other
journals. 1967. Utterer’s meaning and intentions, The
Philosophical Review, repr. in Grice (1989). Grice, H. P. (1967). Utterer's
meaning and intentions, The Philosophical Review, keywords:
utterer's meaning, intention. This is officially the fifth William James lecture.
Grice takes up the analysis of 'meaning' he had presented back in 1948 at the
Oxford Philosophical Society. Motivated mainly by Strawson's attack in
"Intention and convention in speech acts," that offered an alleged
counter-example to the sufficiency of Grice's analysis, Grice ends up
introducing so many intention that he almost trembled. He ends up seeing
'meaning' as a 'value-paradeigmatic' concept, perhaps never realisable in a
sublunary way. But it is the analysis in this particular essay where he is at
his formal best. He distinguishes between protreptic and exhibitive utterances,
and also modes of correlation (iconic, conventional). He symbolises the utterer
and the addressee, and generalises over the type of psychological state,
attitude, or stance, "meaning" seems to range (notably indicative vs.
imperative). He formalises the 'reflexive' intention, and more importantly, the
'overtness' of communication in terms of a self-referential recursive intention
that disallows any 'sneaky' intention to be brought into the picture of
meaning-constitutive intentions. U means by uttering x that *psi p iff
(E.phi) (Ef) (Ec): I. U utters x intending x to be such that anyone who has phi
will think that (i) x has f (ii) f is correlated in way c with psi-ing
that p (iii) (E.phi'): U intends x to be such that anyone who has phi'
will think, via thinking (i) and (ii), that U psi-s that p (iv) in view of
(3), U psi-s that p; and II. (operative only for certain substituends
for "*psi") U utters x intending that, should there actually be
anyone who has phi, he will, via thinking (iv), himself psi that p;
and III. It is not the case that, for some inference-element E, U
intends x to be such that anyone who has phi will both (i') rely on E in
coming to psi (or think that U psi-s) that p and (ii') think that (E.
phi'): U intends x to be such that anyone who has phi' will come to psi (or
think that U psi-s) that p without relying on E. Grice thought he had
dealt with “Logic and Conversation” enough! So he feels of revising his
“Meaning.” After all, Strawson had had the cheek to publish Grice’s Meaning and
then go on to criticize it in “Intention and Convention in Speech Acts.” So
this is Grice’s revenge, and he wins! He ends with the most elaborate theory of
‘mean’ that an Oxonian could ever hope for. And to provoke the informalists
such as Strawson (and his ‘disciples’ at Oxford – “led” by Strawson) he pours
existential quantifiers like the plague! He manages to quote from J. O. Urmson,
whom he loved! No word on Peirce, though, who had originated all this! His
implicature: “I’m not going to be reprimanted ‘in informal discussion’ about my
misreading Peirce at Harvard!” The concluding note is about ‘artificial
substitutes’ for iconic representation, and meaning as a ‘human institution.’
Very grand!
1967. Utterer's meaning,
sentence-meaning, and word-meaning, repr. in Studies in the Way of
Words. H. P. Grice (1967). Utterer's meaning, sentence-meaning, and
word-meaning, the sixth William James lecture, Part I, "Logic and
conversation," Essay 6, The Foundations of Language, pp.
225-42, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 1, Folder 27, BANC
MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: utterer's meaning, sentence-meaning, word-meaning. The
phrase 'utterer' is meant to provoke. Grice thinks that 'speaker' is too
narrow. "Surely you can mean by just UTTERING stuff!" This is
the sixth William James lecture, as published in "The Foundations of
Language." As it happens, it became a popular lecture, seeing that J. R.
Searle selected this from the whole set for his Oxford reading in philosophy,
"The philosophy of language.” It is also the essay cited by Chomsky in his
influential John Locke lectures. Chomsky takes Grice to be a 'behaviourist,'
even along Skinner's lines, which provoked a reply by Suppes, later reprinted
in P. G. R. I. C. E., or Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions,
Categories, Ends. (In The New World, the "H. P." was often given
in a more "simplified" form.). Grice wants to keep on playing.
In "Meaning," he had said "x means that p" is surely
reducible to utterer U means that p. In this lecture, he lectures us as to how
to proceed. In so doing he invents this or that procedure: some basic, some
resultant. When Chomsky reads the reprint in Searle's Philosophy of Language,
he cries: "Behaviourist! Skinnerian!" It was Suppes who comes to
Grice's defence. "Surely the way Grice uses expressions like 'resultant'
procedure are never meant in the strict 'behaviourist' way." Suppes
concludes that it is much fairer to characterise Grice as an 'intentionalist.'
1967. Utterer's meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning,' published in
The Foundations of Language, ed. by J. F. Staal. The H. P. Grice Papers, Repr.
in J. R. Searle, The Philosophy of Language, Oxford. H. P. Grice (1967).
Utterer's meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning, the sixth William James
Lecture, Foundations of Language, keywords: utterer's meaning,
sentence-meaning, word-meaning, resultant procedure, basic
procedure. Staal asked Grice to publish the sixth William James lecture
for a newish periodical publication of whose editorial board he was a member.
The fun thing is Grice complied! This is Grice’s shaggy-dog story. He does not
seem too concerned about ‘resultant’ procedures. As he’ll later say, “Surely I
can create Deutero-Esperanto and become its master!” For Grice, the primacy is
the idiosyncratic, particularized utterer in THIS or THAT occasion. He KNOWS a
philosopher CRAVES for generality, so he provokes the generality-searcher with
divisions and sub-divisions of ‘mean.’ But his heart does not seem to be there,
and he is just being overformalistic and technical for the sake of it. “I am
glad that Putnam, of all people, told me in an aside, “You’re being too formal,
Grice”. I stopped with symbolism since!”
1967. Some models for implicature,
in Studies in the Way of Words. H. P. Grice (1967). Some
models for implicature, the seventh William James lecture, Part I,
"Logic and Conversation," Essay VI, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library. A rather obscure exploration on the
connection of semiotics and philosophical psychology. Grice is aware that there
is an allegation in the air about a possible 'vicious' circle in trying to
define 'category of expression' in terms of a 'category of representation.' He
does not provide a solution to the problem which he'll take up in his
"Method in philosophical psychology," in his role of President of the
American Philosophical Association. It is THE IMPLICATURE behind the
lecture that matters, since Grice will go back to it, notably in the
Retrospective Epilogue. For Grice, it’s all rational enough. There’s a pirot,
in a situation, say of Danger – a bull --. He perceives the bull. The bull’s
attack CAUSES this perception. “Bull!,” the pirot screams, and causes in Pirot
2 a rearguard movement. So where is the circularity? Some pedants would have it
that “Bull” cannot be understood in a belief about a BULL which is about a
BULL. Not Grice! It is nice that he brought back ‘implicature,’ which had
become obliterated in the lectures, back to ‘title’ position! But it is also
noteworthy, that these are not explicitly RATIONALIST models for implicature.
He had played with a ‘model,’ and an explanatory one at that, for implicature,
in his Oxford seminar, in terms of a principle of conversational helpfulness, a
desideratum of conversational clarity, a desideratum of conversational candour,
and two sub-principles: a principle of conversational benevolence, and a
principle of conversational self-interest! Surely Harvard could be spared of
the details!
1969.
Vacuous names, in Davidson and Hintikka, Words and objections: essays
on the work of W. V. Quine. H. P. Grice (1969). Vacuous names, in
Davidson and Hintikka, Words and objections: essays on the work of W.
V. Quine, Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 118-45. The Grice Papers, Series II
(Essays), Carton 1, Folder 31, and Carton 2, Folders 1, 2, 3, and 4, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: vacuous name, identificatory, non-identificatory,
definite description. Grice's favourite vacuous name is
Bellerophon. This is an essay commissioned by Donald Davison and
Jaako Hintikka for "Words and objects: essays in the work of W. V.
Quine" for Reidel. "Words and objects" had appeared
(without Grice's contribution) as a special issue of "Synthese."
Grice's contribution, along with Quine's "Reply to H. P. Grice,"
appeared only in the reprint of that special issue for Reidel in
Dordrecht. Grice cites from various philosophers (and logicians -- this
was the time when logic was starting to be taught OUTSIDE philosophy
departments, or 'sub-faculties'), such as G. Myro, B. Mates, K. S.
Donnellan, P. F. Strawson, Grice was particularly proud to be able to
quote Mates "by mouth or book." Grice takes the opportunity, in
his tribute to Quine, to introduce one of two of his syntactical devices to
allow for conversational implicata to be given maximal scope. The device
in "Vacuous Names" is a subscription device to indicate the ordering
of introduction of this or that operation. Grice wants to give room for
utterances of a special 'existential' kind be deemed rational/reasonable,
provided the principle of conversational helfpulness is thought of by the
addressee to be followed by the utterer. "Someone isn't attending the
party organised by the Merseyside Geographical Society." "That
is Marmaduke Bloggs, who climbed Mt. Everest on hands and
knees." "But who, as it happened, turned out to be an invention
of the journalists at the Merseyside Newsletter." 1969. Vacuous
names, in Donald Davidson and Jaako Hintikka, Words and objections:
essays on the work of W. V. Quine, Dordrecht, Reidel. H. P. Grice (1969).
Vacuous names, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), BANC MSS 90/135c,
Berkeley. Keywords: identificatory use, non-identificatory use, subscript
device. Davidson and Hintikka were well aware of the 'New-World' impact of the
'Old-World' ideas displayed by Grice and Strawson in their attack to
Quine. Quine had indeed addressed Grice's and Strawson's 'sophisticated'
version of the paradigm-case argument in "Word and Object."
Davidson and Hintikka arranged to publish a special issue for a periodical
publication, to which P. F. Strawson had already contributed. It was only
natural, when Davidson and Hintikka were informed by Reidel of their interest
in turning the special issue into a separate volume, that they would approach
the other infamous member of the dynamic duo! Commissioned by Donald
Davidson and J. Hintikka for Words and objections: essays on the work
of W. V. Quine. Grice introduces a subscript device to account for
'implicata' of utterances like "Marmaduke Bloggs won't be attending
the party; he was invented by the journalists." In the later section,
he explores identificatory and non identificatory uses of 'the' without
involving himself in the problems Donnellan did! Some philosophers,
notably Ostertag, have found the latter section the most intriguing bit, and
thus Ostertag cared to reprint the section on Descriptions for his edited MIT
volume on the topic. The essay is structured very systematically with an
initial section on a calculus alla Gentzen, followed by implicata of vacuous
names such as "Marmaduke Bloggs," to end with definite descriptions
(repr. by Ostertag) and psychological predicates. It’s best to focus
on a few things here. First his imaginary dialogues on MARMADUKE BLOGGS,
brilliant! Second, this as a preamble to his “Presupposition and conversational
implicature.” There is a quantifier phrase (‘the’) and two uses of it: one is
an IDENTIFICATORY use (“the haberdasher is clumsy,” or “THE haberdasher is
clumsy,” as Grice prefers) and then there’s a derived, NON-IDENTIFICATORY use:
‘the’ haberdasher (whoever she was!) shows her clumsiness. The use of the
numeric subscripts were complicated enough to delay the publication of this.
The whole thing was a special issue of a journal. Grice’s contribution came
when Reidel turned that into a volume. Grice later replaced his numeric
subscript device by square brackets. Perhaps the square brackets are not subtle
enough, though. Grice’s contribution, ‘Vacuous Names,’ (later reprinted in
part in Ostertag’s volume on Definite descriptions) concludes with
an exploration of “the” phrases, and further on, with some intriguing remarks
on the subtle issues surrounding the scope of an ascription of a predicate
standing for a psychological state or attitude. Grice’s choice of an
ascription now notably involves an ‘opaque’ (rather than ‘factive,’ like
‘know’) psychological state or attitude: ‘wanting,’ which he symbolizes as
“W.” Grice considers a quartet of utterances: Jack wants someone to
marry him; Jack wants someone or other to marry him; Jack
wants a particular person to marry him, and There is
someone whom Jack wants to marry him.
Grice notes that “there are clearly at
least *two* possible readings” of an utterance like our (i): a first
reading “in which,” as Grice puts it, (i) might be paraphrased by (ii).”
A second reading is one “in which it might be paraphrased by
(iii) or by (iv).” Grice goes on to symbolize the phenomenon
in his own version of a first-order predicate calculus. ‘Ja wants that p’ becomes
Wjap where ‘ja’ stands for the individual constant “Jack” as a
super-script attached to the predicate standing for Jack’s psychological state
or attitude. Grice writes: “Using the apparatus of classical predicate logic,
we might hope to represent,” respectively, the external reading and the
internal reading (involving an intentio secunda or intentio
obliqua) as (Ǝx)WjaFxja
and Wja(Ǝx)Fxja. Grice then
goes on to discuss a slightly more complex, or oblique, scenario involving this
second internal reading, which is the one that interests us, as it involves an
‘intentio seconda.’Grice notes: “But suppose that Jack wants a specific
individual, Jill, to marry him, and this because Jack has been
“*deceived* into thinking that his friend Joe has a highly delectable sister
called Jill, though in fact Joe is an only child.” (The Jill Jack eventually
goes up the hill with is, coincidentally, another Jill,
possibly existent). Let us recall that Grice’s main focus of the whole essay
is, as the title goes, ‘emptiness’! “In these circumstances, one is inclined to
say that (i) is true only on reading (vii),” where
the existential quantifier occurs within the scope of the
psychological-state or -attitude verb, “but we cannot now
represent (ii) or (iii), with ‘Jill’ being vacuous, by (vi),” where the
existential quantifier (Ǝx) occurs outside the
scope of the psychological-attitude verb, want, “since [well,] Jill
does not really exist,” except as a figment of Jack’s imagination. In a
manoeuver that I interpret as ‘purely intentionalist,’ and thus favouring by
far Suppes’s over Chomsky’s characterisation of Grice as a mere ‘behaviourist,’
Grice hopes that “we should be provided with distinct representations
for two familiar readings” of, now: Jack wants Jill to marry
him and Jack wants ‘Jill’ to marry him. It is at this point that Grice applies
a syntactic scope notation involving sub-scripted numerals, (ix)
and (x), where the numeric values merely indicate the order of introduction of
the symbol to which it is attached in a deductive schema for the predicate
calculus in question. Only the first formulation represents the internal reading
(where ‘ji’ stands for ‘Jill’): W2ja4F1ji3ja4 and
W3ja4F2ji1ja4. Note
that in the second formulation, the individual constant for “Jill,”
‘ji,’ is introduced prior to ‘want,’ – ‘ji’’s sub-script is 1, while
‘W’’s sub-script is the higher numerical value 3. Grice notes: “Given that Jill
does not exist,” only the internal reading “can be true,” or
alethically satisfactory. Grice sums up his reflections on the representation
of the opaqueness of a verb standing for a psychological state or attitude like
that expressed by ‘wanting’ with one observation that further marks him as an
intentionalist, almost of a Meinongian type. He is willing to allow for
‘existential’ phrases in cases of ‘vacuous’ designata, provided they occur
within opaque psychological-state or attitude verbs, and he thinks that by
doing this, he is being faithful to the richness and exuberance of ‘ordinary’
discourse, while keeping Quine happy. As Grice puts it, “we should also have
available to us also three neutral, yet distinct, (Ǝx)-quantificational forms (together with their
isomorphs),” as a philosopher who thinks that Wittgenstein denies a
distinction, craves for a generality! “Jill” now becomes “x.” W4ja5Ǝx3F1x2ja5, Ǝx5W2ja5F1x4ja3, Ǝx5W3ja4F1x2ja4.
As Grice notes, since in (xii) the individual variable ‘x’ (ranging over
‘Jill’) “does not dominate the segment following the ‘(Ǝx)’ quantifier, the formulation does not display
any ‘existential’ or de re, ‘force,’ and is suitable therefore for
representing the internal readings (ii) or (iii), “if we have to allow, as we
do have, if we want to faithfully represent ‘ordinary’ discourse, for the
possibility of expressing the fact that a particular person, Jill, does not
actually exist.” At least Grice does not write, “really,” for he knew that Austin
detested a ‘trouser word’! Grice concludes that (xi) and (xiii) “will be
derivable” from each of (ix) and (x), while (xii) will be “derivable only” from
(ix). Grice had been Strawson’s logic tutor at St. John’s (Mabbott was teaching
the grand stuff!) and it shows!
1969. Logico-semantic
paradoxes. H. P. Grice (1969). Logico-semantic paradoxes, The Grice
Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c. Keywords: logico-semantic
paradox. Some of the paradoxes of entailment, entailment and
paradoxes.
1970. Presupposition and
conversational implicature, in Peter Cole, Radical pragmatics, Academic Press,
London, 1981, pp. 183-97, repr. in a revised form in Grice, Studies in the Way
of Words, in Part II, Explorations in semantics and metaphysics, Essay, --
Presupposition and implicature -- The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays),
Carton 2, Folder 25, and Series V (Topical), Carton 9, Folder 3, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley.
Keywords: presupposition, conversational implicature, implicature, Strawson. H.
P. Grice: “The loyalty examiner won’t summon you, don’t worry.” Grice's
cancellation could be pretty subtle! “Well, the loyalty examiner will not be
summoning you at any rate.” "If," Grice notes, "is is a matter
of dispute whether the government has a very undercover person who interrogates
those whose loyalty is suspect and who, if he existed, could be legitimately
referred to as the loyalty examiner; and if, further, I am known to be very
sceptical about the existence of such a person, I could perfectly well say to a
plainly loyal person,” “Well, the loyalty examiner will not be summoning you at
any rate," “without, I would think, being taken to imply that such a
person exists." "Further, if I am well known to disbelieve in the existence
of such a person, though others are inclined to believe in him, when I find a
man who is apprised of my position, but who is worried in case he is summoned,
I could try to reassure him by saying,” “The loyalty examiner won’t summon you,
don’t worry." "Then it would be clear that I said this because I was
sure there is no such person." The lecture given in 1970 was variously
reprinted, but 1970 should remain the preferred citation. There are divergences
in the various drafts, though. The original source of this exploration
was a seminar. Grice is interested in re-conceptualising Strawson's manoeuvre
regarding 'presupposition' as involving what Grice disregards as a metaphysical
concoction: the truth-value gap. In Grice's view, based on a principle of conversational
'tailoring' that falls under his principle of conversational helpfulness --
indeed under the desideratum of conversational clarity ("be perspicuous
[sic]") -- 'The king of France is bald' ENTAILS there is a king of France;
while 'The king of France ain't bald' merely IMPLICATES it. Grice much
preferred Collingwood's to Strawson's presuppositions! Grice thought, and
rightly, too, that if his notion of the conversational implicatum was to gain
Oxonian currency, it should supersede Strawson's idea of the
'prae-suppositum.' Strawson, in his attack to Russell, had been playing
with Quine's idea of a 'truth-value gap.' Grice shows that neither the
metaphysical concoction of a truth-value gap nor the philosophical tool of the
'prae-suppositum' is needed: "The king of France is bald" ENTAILS
'There is a king of France." "The king of France ain't bald” on the
other hand, merely IMPLICATES it, as a perfectly adequate cancellation, abiding
with the principle of conversational helpfulness" is in the offing:
"The king of France ain't bald. What made you think he is? For starters,
he ain't real!" Grice credits Hans Sluga for having pointed out to him the
way to deal with "the" formally. Grice opts for the
Whiteheadian-Russellian standard rendition, in terms of the iota operator.
Grice's take on Strawson is a strong one. "The king of France is
bald" entails there is a king of France. “The king of France ain't
bald" does not; only implicates it. Grice knew he was not exactly robbing
Peter to pay Paul, or did he? It is worth placing the 1970 lecture in context.
Soon after delivering in the New World his exploration on the implicatum, Grice
has no better idea than to promote Strawson's philosophy in the New World.
Strawson will later reflect on the colder shores of the Old World, so we know
what Grice had in mind! Strawson's main claim to fame in the New World (and at
least Oxford in the Old World) was his "On referring," where he had
had the cheek to say that by uttering, "The king of France is not
bald," the utterer IMPLIES that there is a king of France. Strawson later
changed that to "the utterer PRESUPPOSES." So Grice knew what and who
he was dealing with! Grice and Strawson had entertained Quine at Oxford, and
Strawson was particularly keen on that turn of phrase he learned from Quine,
'the truth-value gap.' Grice, rather, found it pretty repulsive: “Tertium
exclusum!" So, Grice goes on to argue that by uttering 'The king of France
is bald,' one of the ENTAILMENTS of the proposition explicitly conveyed is
indeed 'There is a king of France.' However, in its negative co-relate, things
change. By uttering 'The king of France ain't bald,' the utterer merely
IMPLICATES (in a pretty cancellable format) that he believes there is a king of
France. ("The king of France ain't bald: there's no king of
France!"). The loyalty examiner is like the King of France, in ways! The
piece is crucial for Grice’s re-introduction of the SQUARE BRACKET device: [The
king of France] is bald; [The King of France] ain’t bald. Whatever falls within
the scope of the square brackets is to be read as having attained
“common-ground status” and therefore, out of the question, to use Collingwood’s
jargon! Grice was VERY familiar with Collingwood on presupposition, meant as an
attack on Ayer. Collingwood’s reflections on presuppositions being either
relative or absolute may well lie behind Grice’s metaphysical construction of
absolute value!
1970. The
Urbana lectures. H. P. Grice (1970). The Urbana Lectures, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series II, Carton 2, Folders 5, 6, 7, and 8, and Series V (Topical),
Carton 8-Folder 20, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: semantics The Grice Collection also
contains a folder for "Odd ends: Urbana and non-Urbana." Grice
continues with the elaboration of a formal calculus. He originally baptised it
"System Q" in honour of Quine. At a later stage, Myro will
re-name it "System G," in a special version, "System GHP,"
a highly powerful/hopefully plausible version of System G," "in
gratitude to Grice." Odd Ends: Urbana and Not Urbana. H. P.
Grice (1970). Odds and ends: Urbana and not Urbana, or not-Urbana, or Odds and
ends: Urbana and non Urbana, or Oddents, urbane and not urbane, keywords:
semantics, Urbana lectures. The Urbana lectures were on language and
reality. Grice kept revising them, as these items show.
1970. Language
and reality, The University of Illinois at Urbana, The Urbana Lectures. H.
P. Grice (1970). Language and reference, Language and reality, The Urbana
lectures, University of Illinois at Urbana, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V
(Topical), Carton 7, Folder 19, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University
of California, Berkeley. Keywords: language, reference, reality Grice
favours a transcendental approach to communication. Our beliefs worth
communicating have to be true. Our orders worth communicating have to
refer to our willings.
1970. The
'that'-clause. H. P. Grice (1970). Davidson on saying that, 'Davidson's
"On saying that,"' The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton
6, Folder 26, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: 'that'-clause. Grice had
explored 'that'-clauses with Staal. He was concerned about the viability of
Davidson's initially appealing etymological approach to the 'that'-clause in
terms of 'demonstration.' Grice had presupposed the logic of 'that'-clauses
from a much earlier stage ("Those spots mean that he has measles.").
The folder contains a copy of Davidson's essay, "On saying that."
1980. The 'that'-clause. H. P. Grice (1970). The 'that'-clause, with
J. F. Staal, The Grice Papers, Series III (The Doctrines), Carton 6, Folder 3,
BANC, MSS 90/135c. Keywords: 'that'-clause. The 'that'-clause was
brought to the fore by Davidson, who, consulting the Oxford English Dictionary,
reminds philosophers that the English 'that' is VERY cognate with the German
idiom. More specifically, 'that' is a DEMONSTRATIVE, even if the syntax,
in English, hides this fact in ways which German syntax doesn't. Grice
NEEDS to rely on 'that'-clauses for his analysis of 'mean,' 'intend,' and
notably 'will.' He finds that Prichard's genial discovery was the license
to use 'willing' as pre-facing a 'that'-clause. This allows Grice to deals
with 'willing' as applied to a third person ("I will that he'll win the
chess match."). Philosophers who disregard this 'third-person' use
may indulge in introspection and subjectivism when they shouldn't!
1970. Intention
and subjectivity, Perspectivism. H. P. Grice (1970). Intention and subjectivity
-- 'Subjective' conditions and intentions, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V
(Topical), Carton 9, Folder 15, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: intention,
subjective condition. Cf. his dispositional account to 'intending.' A
subjective condition takes into account the intender's, rather than the ascriber's,
point of view: Marmaduke Bloggs intends to climb Mt. Everest on hands and
knees. Bloggs might reason: Given my present state, I should do what is
fun. Given my present state, the best thing for me to do would be to do
what is fun. For me in my present state it would make for my well-being,
to have fun. Having fun is good (or, a good). Climbing a mountain would be
fun. Climbing the Everest would be/make for climbing fun. So, I shall
climb the Everest. Even if a critic insisted that a practical syllogism is
the way to represent Blogg's finding something to be appealing, and that it
should be regarded as a respectable evaluation, the assembled propositions
don't do the work of a standard argument. The premises do not support or yield
the conclusion as in a standard argument. The premises may be said to yield the
conclusion, or directive, for the particular agent whose reasoning process it
is, only on the basis of a subjective condition: that the agent is
in a certain subjective state, e.g. feels like going out for dinner-fun.
Rational beings (the agent at some other time, or other individuals) who do not
have that feeling, will not accept the conclusion. They may well accept as true
‘It is fun to climb Everest’, but will not accept it as a directive unless they
feel like it now. Someone wondering what to do for the summer might think that
if he were to climb Everest he would find it fun or pleasant, but right now she
does not feel like it.That is in general the end of the matter. The alleged
argument lacks normativity. It is not authoritative or directive unless there
is a supportive argument that he needs/ought to do something diverting/pleasant
in the summer. A practical argument is different. Even if an agent did not feel
like going to the doctor, an agent would think ‘I ought to have a medical check
up yearly, now is the time, so I should see my doctor’ to be a directive with
some force. It articulates a practical argument. Perhaps the strongest
attempt to reconstruct an (acceptable or rational) thought transition as a
standard arguments is to treat the subjective condition, ‘I feel
like having climbing fun in the summer’, as a premise, for then the premises
would support the conclusion. But the individual, whose thought transition we
are examining, does not regard a description of his psychological state as a
consideration that supports the conclusion. It will be useful to look more
closely at a variant of the example to note when it is appropriate to
reconstruct thinking in the form of argument. Bloggs, now hiking with a friend
in the Everest, comes to a difficult spot and says: ‘I don’t like the look of
that, I am frightened. I am going back’. That is usually enough for Bloggs
to return, and for the friend to turn back with him. Bloggs’s action of turning
back, admittedly motivated by fear, is, while not acting on reasons,
nonetheless rational unless we judge his fear to be irrational. Bloggs’s subjective
condition can serve as a premise, but only in a very
different situation. Bloggs resorts to reasons. Suppose that, while his friend
does not think Bloggs’s fear irrational, the friend still attempts to dissuade
Bloggs from going back. After listening and reflecting, Bloggs may say ‘I am so
frightened it is not worth it. I am not enjoying this climbing anymore’. Or ‘I
am too frightened to be able to safely go on’. Or ‘I often climb the Everest
and don’t usually get frightened. The fact that I am now is a good indication
that this is a dangerous trail and I should turn back’. These are reasons,
considerations implicitly backed by principles, and they could be the initial
motivations of someone. But in Bloggs’s case they emerged when he was
challenged by his friend. They do not express his initial practical reasoning.
Bloggs was frightened by the trail ahead, wanted to go back, and didn’t have
any reason not to. Note that there is no general rational requirement to
always act on reasons, and no general truth that a rational individual would be
better off the more often he acted on reasons. Faced with his friend’s
objections, however, Bloggs needed justification for acting on his fear. He
reflected and found reason(s) to act on his fear. Grice plays with
‘subjectivity’ already in “Prolegomena.” Consider the use of ‘carefully.’
Surely we must include the agent’s own idea of this. Or consider the use of phi
and phi’ – surely we don’t want the addressee to regard himself under the same
guise with which the utterer regards him. Or consider “Aspects of Reason”:
Nixon must be appointed professor of theology at Oxford. Does HE feel the need?
1970. Probability
and life, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9, Folder 4, BANC
MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley.
Keywords: life, probability. Evolutionary account of the pirot's adaptability
to its changeable environs. Grice borrows the notion of probability from
Davidson, whose early claim to fame was to provide the logic of the
notion. Grice abbreviates probability by "Pr." and compares it
to a boulomaic operator, "De." for desirability. A rational
agent must calculate both the probability and the desirability of his
action. For both probability and desirability, the degree is crucial.
Grice symbolises this by 'd': probability in degree d; probability in degree
d'. The topic of life Grice relates to that of adaptation and surival, and
connects with his genitorial programme of creature construction
("pirotology."): life as continued operancy.
1970. Heterological,
Russell and heterologicality, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical),
Carton 9, Folder 8, BANC, MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: Russell, heterological, Grelling, Thomson. H.
P. Grice and J. F. Thomson go ‘heterological.’ Grice was fascinated by Baron
Russell's remarks on 'heterological.' And its implicata! Grice was
particularly interested in Russell's philosophy because of the usual Oxonian
antipathy towards his type of philosophising. Being an irreverent
conservative rationalist, Grice found in Russell a good point for
dissent! If paradoxes were always sets of propositions or arguments or
conclusions, they would always be meaningful. But some paradoxes are
semantically flawed and some have answers that are backed by a pseudo-argument
employing a defective “lemma” that lacks a truth-value. Grelling’s
paradox, for instance, opens with a distinction between autological and
heterological words. An autological word describes itself, e.g.,
‘polysyllabic’ is polysllabic, ‘English’ is English, ‘noun’ is a noun,
etc. A heterological word does not describe itself, e.g., ‘monosyllabic’
is not monosyllabic, ‘Chinese’ is not Chinese, ‘verb’ is not a verb,
etc. Now for the riddle: Is ‘heterological’ heterological or
autological? If ‘heterological’ is heterological, since it describes
itself, it is autological. But if ‘heterological’ is autological, since it
is a word that does not describe itself, it is heterological. The common
solution to this puzzle is that ‘heterological’, as defined by Grelling, is not
what Grice a genuine predicate -- ""Gricing" is!"In other
words, “Is ‘heterological’ heterological?” is without meaning. "That
does not mean that an utterer, such as Baron Russell, may implicate that he is
being very witty by uttering the Grelling paradox!" There can be no
predicate that applies to all and only those predicates it does not apply to
for the same reason that there can be no barber who shaves all and only those
people who do not shave themselves. Grice seems to be relying on his
friend at Christ Church, J. F. Thomson in “On Some Paradoxes”, in the same
volume where Grice published his “Remarks about the senses,” Analytical
Philosophy, R. J. Butler (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 104–119. Grice
thought that Thomson was a “genius, if ever there is one!” Plus, Grice thought
that, after St. John's, Christ Church was the second most beautiful venue in
the 'city' of dreaming spires. "On top, it is what makes Oxford a city,
and not, as villagers call it, a 'town'!
1970. Grice's
Frege, Frege: words and sentences, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V
(Topical), BANC MSS 90/135c, Berkeley. Keywords: Frege, Fregean sense,
Fregeian sense, Farbung, aber, "She was poor but she was honest.” Freges
Farbung, Grices Implikatur. Frege was the topic of Dummett's
explorations. A tutee of Grice's once brought Dummett's "Frege"
to a tutorial and told Grice that he intended to explore this. "Have
you read it?" "No I haven't," Grice answered. And after a pause,
he went on: "And I hope I won't." "Hardly promising," the
tutee thought. Some authors, including Grice, but alas, not Frege, have
noted some similarities between Grice's notion of a 'conventional' implicature
and Frege's schematic and genial rambles on 'colouring.' "Aber
Farbung," as Frege would state! Grice was more interested in the idea of a
"Fregeian" sense, but he felt that if he had to play with Frege's
'aber' he should! One of Grice's metaphysical construction-routines (Humeian
projection) is aimed at the generation of concepts, in most cases the 'rational
reconstruction' of an intuitive concept displayed in 'ordinary
discourse.' "We arrive at something like a Fregeian sense!"
Grice exclaimed, with an intonation of "Eureka!" almost. And then he
went back to Frege. Grice's German was good, so he could read Frege,
"in the vernacular." For fun, he read Frege to his children (Grice's,
not Frege's): "In einem obliquen Kontext," Frege says," Grice
says, "kann ja z. B. die Ersetzung eines „aber" durch ein „und",
die in einem direkten Kontext keinen Unterschied des Wahrheitswerts ergibt,
einen solchen Unterschied bewirken." "I'll make that easy for you,
darlings: 'und' is 'and,' and 'aber' is 'but.' "But surely, Papa, 'aber'
is not cognate with 'but'!" "It's not. That's Anglo-Saxon, for you.
'But' is strictly Anglo-Saxon short for 'by-out;' we lost 'aber' when we sailed
the North Sea." Grice went on: "Damit wird eine Abgrenzung von Sinn
und Färbung (oder Konnotationen) eines Satzes fragwürdig." "I. e. he
is saying that "She was poor but she was honest" only CONVENTIONALLY
IMPLICATES that there is a contrast between her poverty and her honesty."
"I guess he heard the ditty during the War?" Grice ignored that
remark, and went on: "Appell und Kundgabe wären ferner von Sinn und
Färbung genauer zu unterscheiden. Ich weiß so auf interessante
Bedeutungs Komponenten hin, bemüht sich aber nicht, sie genauer zu
differenzieren, da er letztlich nur betonen will, daß sie in der Sprache der
Logik keine Rolle spielen." "They play a role in the lingo,"
that is!" "What do?" "Stuff like 'but'.” "But surely
they are not RATIONAL conversational implicata!?" "No, dear, just
conventional tricks you can ignore on a nice summer day!" Grice however
was NEVER interested in the CONVENTIONAL implicatum. He identifies it because
he felt he must! Surely, the way English speakers learn to use stuff like, “on
the one hand,” and “on the other,” (or how Grice learned how to use “men” and
“de” in Greek), or “so,” or “therefore,” or “but” versus “and,” is just to
allow that he would STILL use the verb ‘imply’ in such cases – but surely he
wants ‘conversational’ to stick with ‘rationality’: ‘conversational maxim’ and
‘converational implicatum’ ONLY apply to things which can be justified
transcendentally, and not idiosyncrasies of usage!
1971.
Intention and uncertainty, Proceedings of The British Academy, vol.
57, pp. 263-79, also published separately as an offprint, Intention and
disposition, 1946, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 2,
Folders 9 and 10, and Series V (Topical), Carton 6, Folder 30,, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: intention, uncertainty, Prichard, willing, willing to
vs. willing that, D. F. Pears, Davidson, disimplicature, Hart, Hampshire,
certainty, decision, Ansombe, Kenny, disposition, Ryle. I shan’t but I’m not certain
I won’t – H. P. Grice. How *un*certain can Grice be? This is the Henriette Herz
British Academy lecture, and as such published in The Proceedings of the
British Academy. Grice calls himself a neo-Prichardian (after the Oxford
philosopher) and cares to quote from a few other philosophers -- some of whom
he was not necessarily associated with: such as Kenny and Anscombe, and some of
whom he was, notably D. F. Pears. Grice's motto: "Where there is a
neo-Prichardian willing, there is a palaeo-Griceian way!" Grice quotes
Pears, of Christ Church, as the philosopher he found especially congenial to
explore areas in what both called 'philosophical psychology,' notably the
tricky use of 'intending' as displayed by a few philosophers even in their own
circle, such as Hampshire and Hart in "Intention, decision, and
certainty." The title of Grice's lecture is meant to provoke that
pair of Oxonian philosophers Grice knew so well and who were too ready to bring
in 'certainty' in an area that requires deep philosophical
exploration. This is the Henriette Herz Trust annual lecture.
It means it's delivered annually by different philosophers, not always Grice!
Grice had been appointed a FBA in 1966, but he took his time to deliver his
lecture. With your lecture, you implicate, "Hi!" Grice, and
indeed Pears, were motivated by Hampshire's and Hart's essay on intention and
certainty in "Mind." Grice knew Hampshire well, and had actually
enjoyed his "Thought and Action." He preferred Hampshire's
"Thought and action" to Anscombe's "Intention." "Trust
Oxford being what it is that TWO volumes on intending are published in the same
year! Which one shall I read first?" Eventually, neither -- immediately.
Rather, Grice managed to unearth some sketchy notes by Prichard (he calls himself
a neo-Prichardian) that Urmson had made available for the Clarendon Press --
notably Prichard's essay on 'willing THAT.' "Only a genius like
Prichard will distinguish 'will to' (almost unnecessary) from 'will that' (so
crucial)." For Grice, '... wills that ...', unlike '... wills to...', is
properly generic, in that "p," that follows the 'that'-clause, need
NOT refer to the subject of the sentence. "Surely I can will that Smith
wins the match!" But Grice also quotes Anscombe (whom otherwise would not
count, although they did share a discussion panel at the American Philosophical
Association) and Kenny, besides Pears. Of Anscombe, Grice borrows (but
never returns) the 'direction-of-fit' term of art (actually Austinian). From
Kenny, Grice borrows (AND returns) the concept of 'voliting.' His most
congenial approach was Pears's. Grice had of course occasion to explore
‘disposition’ and ‘intention’ on earlier occasions. Grice is especially
concerned with a 'dispositional' analysis to 'intending.' He will later
reject it in "Intention and uncertainty." But that was Grice for
you! Grice is especially interested in distinguishing his views from RYLE's
over-estimated dispositional account of intention, which Grice sees as
'reductionist,' and indeed 'eliminationist,' "if not boringly
'behaviourist,' even in analytic key!" The logic of 'dispositions' is
tricky, as Grice will later explore in connection with 'rationality' (rational
propension or propensity) and metaphysics (the 'as if' operator). While
Grice focuses on UNcertainty, he is being funny! He knew that Oxonians
like Hart and Hampshire were OBSESSED with ‘certainty’. “I was so
surprised that Hampshire and Hart were claiming decision and intention are
psychological states about which the agent is 'certain,' that I decided
on the spot that that could certainly be a nice topic for my British Academy
lecture!" Grice granted that in some cases, a declaration of an intention
can be authorative in a certain ‘certain’ way (“i.e. as implicating
‘certainty’”). But Grice wants us to consider: “Marmaduke Bloggs intends
to climb Mt. Everest.” “Surely he can’t be certain he’ll
succeed.” Grice used the same example at the American Philosophical
Association, of all places. To amuse Grice, Davidson, who was present,
said: “Surely that’s *just* an implicature!” "*Just*?!' Grice
was almost furious in his British guarded sort of way. “Surely not
*just*!” D. F. Pears, who was also present, tried to reconcile: “If I
may, Davidson, I think Grice would take it that, if ‘certainty’ is implicated,
the whole thing becomes too social to be true.” They kept discussing
implicature versus entailment. “Is ‘certainty’ ENTAILED then?,” Davidson
asked. “No, DISIMPLICATED!” was Grice’s curt reply. The next day, he
explained to Davidson that he had invented the concept of ‘disimplicature’ just
to tease him, and just one night before, while musing in the hotel room! Talk
of ‘UNcertainty” was thus for Grice intimately associated with his concern
about the misuse of ‘know’ to mean ‘certain, especially in the exegeses that
Malcolm made popular about, of all people, G. E. Moore! (vide “Scepticism and
common sense” and “Moore and philosopher’s paradoxes” above, and “Causal
Theory” and “Prolegomena” for a summary of Malcom’s misunderstanding Moore!
1971. Entailment, The American
Philosophical Association, joint symposium held by the American Philosophical
Association and the Association for Symbolic Logic, symposium with Dana Scott
and Robert K. Meyer. Dec. 27, 1971, Sixty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American
Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, Statler Hilton Hotel, New
York. H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson on G. E. Moore’s entailment. Grice
takes a look at Strawson's unpublication. 1971. Entailment, Paradoxes of
entailment, Entailment and paradoxes, Joint symposium held by The Association
for Symbolic Logic and the American Philosophical Association, The Statler
Hilton, New York, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series IV (Associations), Carton 6,
Folder 4, and Series V (Topical), Carton 6, Folder 33, BANC MSS 90/135c, The
Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keyword: entailment,
paradoxes of entailment, paradox. The symposium was held in New York with Dana
Scott and R. K. Meyer. The notion had been "mis-introduced" (according
to Strawson) in the philosophical literature by G. E. Moore. Grice is
especially interested in the "ENTAILMENT + IMPLICATUM" pair. A
philosophical expression may be said to be co-related to an ENTAILMENT (which
is rendered in terms of a reductive analysis). However, the use of the
expression may co-relate to this or that IMPLICATUM which is rendered
'reasonable' in the light of the addressee's assumption that the utterer is
ultimately abiding by a principle of conversational helfpulness. Grice thinks
many philosophers take an IMPLICATUM as an ENTAILMENT when they surely
shouldn't! Grice was more interested than Strawson was in G. E. Moore's coinage
of 'entailment' for logical consequence. As an analyst, Grice knew that a true
conceptual analysis needs to be reductive (if not reductionist). The prongs the
analyst lists are thus 'entailments' of the concept in question. Philosophers,
however, may misidentify what is an entailment for an implicature, or vice
versa. Initially, Grice was interested in the second family of cases. With his
coinage of 'disimplicature,' Grice expands his interest to cover the first
family of cases, too. Grice remains a philosophical methodologist. He is not so
much concerned with any area or discipline or philosophical concept per se
(unless it's rationality), but with the misuses of some tools in the philosophy
of language as committed by some of his colleagues at Oxford. While
'entailment,' was, for Strawson 'mis-introduced' in the philosophical
literature by Moore, 'entailment' seems to be less involved in paradoxes than
'if' is. Grice connects the two, as indeed his tutee Strawson did! As it
happens, Strawson's "Necessary propositions and entailment
statements" is his very first published essay, with "Mind," a
re-write of an unpublication unwritten elsewhere, and which Grice read. The
relation of 'consequence' may be considered a meta-conditional, where paradoxes
arise. Grice's Bootstrap is a principle designed to impoverish the
metalanguage so that the philosopher can succeed in the business of pulling
himself up by his own! Grice then takes a look at Strawson’s very first
‘publication’ (an unpublication he had written elsewhere). Grice finds Strawson
thought he could “provide a simple solution to the so-called “paradoxes of
entailment.” At the time, Grice and Strawson were pretty sure that nobody then
accepted, “if indeed anyone ever did and did make," the identification of
the relation symbolised by the horseshoe with the relation which G. E. Moore
calls "entailment". p ⊃ q,
i. e. ~ (p Λ ~q), is rejected as an analysis of “p entails q” because it
involves this or that allegedly paradoxical implicatum, as that any false
proposition entails any proposition and any true proposition is entailed by any
proposition. It is a commonplace that C. I. Lewis's amendment had consequences
scarcely less paradoxical in terms of the implicate! For if p is impossible
(i.e. self-contradictory), it is impossible that p and not-q. And if q is
necessary, ~q is impossible and it is impossible that p and ~q. I.e., if “p
entails q” means “it is impossible that p and ~q” *any* necessary proposition
is entailed by any proposition and any self-contradictory proposition entails
any proposition. On the other hand, Lewis's definition of entailment (i.e. of
the relation which holds from p to q whenever q is deducible from p) obviously
commends itself in some respects. Now, it is clear that the emphasis laid on
the "expression-mentioning" character of the intensional contingent
statement by writing ‘p Λ ~q’ is impossible instead of ‘It is impossible that p
and ~q’ does not avoid the alleged paradoxes of entailment. But it is equally
clear that the addition of some provision does avoid them: Strawson
proposes that one should use "... entails ..." such that no necessary
statement and no negation of a necessary statement can significantly be said to
entail or be entailed by any statement. I. e. the function “p entails q” cannot
take necessary or self-contradictory statements as arguments. The expression “p
entails q” is to be used to mean “‘p ⊃ q’
is necessary, and neither ‘p’ nor ‘q’ is either necessary or
self-contradictory,” or “‘p Λ ~q’ is impossible and neither ‘p’ nor ‘q,’ nor
either of their contradictories, is necessary.” Thus, the paradoxes are
avoided. For: Let us assume that p1 expresses a contingent, and q1 a necessary,
proposition. ‘p1 and ~q1’ is now impossible because ‘~q1’ is impossible. But
‘q1’ is necessary. So, by that provision, ‘p1’ does NOT entail ‘q1.’ We may
avoid the paradoxical assertion that p1 entails q2 as merely falling into the
equally paradoxical assertion that “‘p1’ entails ‘q1’ is necessary.” For: If q
is necessary, “‘q’ is necessary” is, though true, not necessary, but a
*contingent* *intensional* statement. Hence: “~(‘q’ is necessary)” is, though
false, possible. Hence “p1 Λ ~ (‘q1’ is necessary)" is, though false,
possible. Hence "p1" does NOT entail "’q1’ is necessary.” Thus,
by adopting the view that an “entailment” statement (and other intensional
statements) are non-necessary, and that no necessary statement or its
contradictory can entail or be entailed by any statement, Strawson thinks he
can avoid the paradox that a necessary proposition is entailed by any
proposition, and indeed all the other associated paradoxes of entailment. Grice
objected that Strawson’s cure was worse than Moore’s disease! The denial that a
necessary proposition can entail or be entailed by any proposition (and,
therefore, that necessary propositions can be related to each other by the
entailment-relation) is too high a price to pay for the solution of the
paradoxes. And here is where Grice’s implicature is meant to do the trick! Or
not!
1971. Formal
semantics, Summer institute on philosophy of language, UC/Irvine, formal
semantics, Summer institute on philosophy of language, UC/Irvine.
1972. Reply
to G. E. M. Anscombe, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton
4-Folder 26, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: intention, Anscombe. Anscombe's
views were often discussed by Oxonian philosophers. She had brought Witters to
the "Dreaming Spires," as it were. Grice was especially
connected with Anscombe's reflections on 'intention.' While Grice favoured
an approach such as Hampshire, in "Thought and Action," he borrows a
few points from Anscombe, notably that of 'direction of fit' (originally
Austin's). Grice explicitly refers to Anscombe in "Intention and
uncertainty," and in his reminiscences he hastens to add that Anscombe
would never attend any of Austin's Saturday mornings, as neither would Dummett.
1972. Potching
and cotching obbles. H. P. Grice (1972). Pirotese, The H. P. Grice Papers,
Series V (Topical), BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University
of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Pirotese, creature construction,
philosophical psychology. Grice was fascinated by Carnap's
"pirots" which karulise elatically. Grice adds 'potching' for
something like 'perceiving' and 'cotching' for something like
'cognising.'
1973.
Modality, probability, and desirability, probability, desirability, and mode
operators, conference on Implicature, The Grice Papers, Series II, Carton
2-Folder 11, and Series V (Topical), Carton 8-Folders 14-15, BANC MSS 90/135c,
The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords:
modality, probability, desirability. Grice had been freely using the very
English 'mood' until J. M. E Moravsik, of all people, corrected
him: "What you mean ain't a 'mood.'" "I shall call it
'mode' just to please you, J. M. E." A version of this essay was
presented in a conference whose proceedings were published, except for Grice's
essay, due to 'technical complications,' viz. his idiosyncratic use of
idiosyncratic symbology! By 'mode' Grice means indicative or imperative.
Following Davidson, Grice attaches probability to the indicative, via the
doxastic, and desirability to the indicative, via the boulomaic. He
also allows for mixed utterances. Probability is qualified with a suboperator
indicating a degree d; ditto for desirability, degree d'. In some of the
drafts, Grice kept using 'mode' until Moravsik suggested to him that 'mode' was
a better choice, seeing that Grice's 'modality' had little to do with what
other authors were referring to as 'mood.' Probability, desirability, and
modality. H. P. Grice (1977). Modality, desirability, and probability, keywords:
modality, probability, desirability He would use 'mode
operator.' Modality is the more correct term, for things like 'should,'
'ought,' and 'must,' in that order. One sense. The doxastic modals are
correlated to probability. The boulomaic modals are correlated to
desirability. There is probability to a degree d. But there is also
desirability to a degree d. They both combine in Grice's attempt to
show how Kant's categorical imperative reduces to the
hypothetical. Kant uses 'modality' in a way that Grice disfavours,
preferring 'modus.' Grice is aware that Kant's use of 'modality' is qua
category (Kant's reduction to four of Aristotle's original ten
categories).
1973. The power structure of the soul, with Judith Baker, The H. P. Grice Papers. Keywords: soul, power structure. Grice preferred 'soul' to 'mind,' since it was truer to his 'philosophical PSYCHO-logy!
1974. Yet
more misunderstanding, towards an analysis of 'intending,' Davidson on
intending, reply to Donald Davidson on 'Intending,' The H. P. Grice Papers,
Series II (Essays), Carton 2-Folders 17-18, BANC MSS 92/135c, The
Bancroft Library, The University of California at
Berkeley. Keywords: intention, intending, believing, implicature,
disimplicature, Davidson. Grice's response to Davidson's pretty unfair use
of Grice's notion of conversational implicature in Davidson's analysis of
intention caught a lot of interest. D. F. Pears loved Grice's reply. Implicatum
here is out of the question -- disimplicatum may not. Grice just saw that his
theory of conversation is TOO SOCIAL to be true when applied to 'intending.'
The doxastic condition is one of the ENTAILMENTS in an ascription of an
intending. It cannot be cancelled as an implicatum can. If it CAN be cancelled,
it is best seen as a DISIMPLICATUM, or a loose use by an utterer meaning less
than what he says or explicitly conveys to more careful conversants. Grice
and Davidson were members of "The Grice and Davidson Mutual Admiration
Society." Davidson, not being Oxonian, was perhaps not acquainted
with Grice's polemics at Oxford with Hart and Hampshire (where Grice sided with
Pears, rather). Grice and Pears hold a 'minimalist' approach to
'intending.' On the other hand, Davidson makes what Grice sees as 'the
same mistake' again of BUILDING 'certainty' into the concept. Grice finds
that to apply the idea of a conversational IMPLICATUM at this point is 'too
social to be true.' Rather, Grice prefers to coin the conversational
DISIMPLICATUM: Marmaduke Bloggs intends to climb Mt Everest on hands and
knees. The utterance above, if merely reporting what Bloggs thinks, may involve
a 'loose' use of "intends." The certainty on the agent's part on
the success of his enterprise is thus cast with doubt. Davidson was
claiming that the agent's belief in the probability of the object of the
agent's intention was a mere conversational IMPLICATUM on the utterer's
part. Grice responds that the ascription of such a belief is an ENTAILMENT
of a strict use of 'intend,' even if, in cases where the utterer aims at a
conversational DISIMPLICATUM, it can be 'dropped.' The addressee
will still regard the utterer as abiding by the principle of conversational
helpfulness. D. F. Pears was especially interested in the Davidson-Grice
polemic on intending. 1974. Disimplicature. H. P. Grice (1974).
Disimplicature, keywords: disimplicature. Strictly, a section of his reply
to Davidson. If Grice's claim to fame is 'implicature,' he finds
'disimplicature' an intriguing notion to capture those occasions when an
utterer means LESS than he says. His examples include: a loose use of
'intending' (without the entailment of the doxastic condition), the uses of
'see' in Shakespeareian contexts ("Macbeth saw Banquo," "Hamlet
saw his father on the ramparts of Elsinore") and the use of "is"
to mean "seems" ("That tie is blue under this light, but green
otherwise," when both conversants know that a change of colour is out of
the question. He plays with "You're the cream in my coffee" being an
utterance where the disimplicature (i.e. entailment dropping) is total.
"Disimplicature" does not appeal to a new principle of conversational
rationality. It is perfectly accountable by the principle of conversational
helpfulness, in particular, the desideratum of conversational candour. In everyday explanation we exploit, as Grice notes,
“an immense richness in the family of expressions that might be thought of as
the ‘wanting family.’ This ‘wanting’ family includes expressions like
"want,” "desire,” "would like to,” "is eager to,” "is
anxious to,” "would mind not…,” “the idea of ... appeals to me,” is
thinking of,” etc.' As Grice remarks, “The likeness and differences within this
“wanting” family demand careful attention.” In commenting on
Davidson's treatment of wanting in 'Intending', Grice notes: “It seems to me
that the picture of the soul suggested by Davidson's treatment of wanting is
remarkably tranquil and, one might almost say, computerized. It is the picture
of an ideally decorous board meeting, at which the various heads of sections
advance, from the standpoint of their particular provinces, the case for or
against some proposed course of action. In the end the chairman passes
judgement, effective for action; normally judiciously, though sometimes he is
for one reason or another over-impressed with the presentation made by some
particular member. My soul doesn't seem to me, a lot of the time, to be like
that at all. It is more like a particularly unpleasant department meeting, in
which some members shout, won't listen, and suborn other members to lie on
their behalf; while the chairman, who is often himself under suspicion of
cheating, endeavours to impose some kind of order; frequently to no effect,
since sometimes the meeting breaks up in disorder, sometimes, though it appears
to end comfortably, in reality all sorts of enduring lesions are set up, and
sometimes, whatever the outcome of the meeting, individual members go off and
do things unilaterally.” Could it be that Davidson, of the New World, and
Grice, of the Old World, have different ‘idiolects’ regarding ‘intend’? Could
well be! It is said that the New World is prone to hyperbole, so perhaps in
Grice’s more cautious use, ‘intend’ is RESTRICTED to the conditions HE wants it
to restrict it too! Odd that for all the generosity he displays in “Post-war
Oxford philosophy” (“Surely I can help you analyse YOUR concept of this or
that, even if my use of the corresponding expression does not agree with
yours”), he goes to attack Davidson, and just for trying to be nice and apply
the ‘conversational implicatum’ to ‘intend’! Genial Grice!
1975. Super-relation,
super-relatives, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder
16, BANC MSS 90/135c. The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: super-relative. Very Super.
1975.
Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre, in The
Conception of Value, Clarendon, Presidential address to the
American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division), Proceedings and
addresses of the American Philosophical Association, pp. 23-53, The H.
P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 2-Folders 19-21, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: philosophical psychology, pirotology,
immanuel. Grice's "Method" is reprinted in The
Conception of Value. Grice was forever grateful to Carnap for
having coined 'pirot.' "Or having thought to have coined.
Apparently, someone had used the expression before him to mean some sort of
exotic fish." Grice wasn't sure what his presidential address to the
American Philosophical Association will be about. He chose "the
banal" (i.e. the 'ordinary-language' counterpart of something like a
'need' we ascribe to a squirrel to gobble nuts) and the 'bizarre': the philosopher's
construction of 'need' and other 'psychological,' now theoretical
terms. In the proceedings, Grice creates the discipline of
'pirotology.' He cares to mention very many philosophers: Aristotle, D. K.
Lewis, G. Myro, L. Witters, F. R. Ramsey, G. Ryle, and a few others! The
essay became popular when, of all people, Ned Block, cited it as a
programme in 'functionalism,' which it is! Grice's method in functionalist
philosophical psychology. Introduces pirotology as a creature-construction
discipline. Repr. in The Conception of Value, it reached a wider audience.
The essay is highly subdivided, and covers a lot of ground. Grice starts by
noting that, contra Ryle, he wants to see psychological predicates as
theoretical concepts. The kind of theory he is having in mind is 'folksy.' The
first creature he introduces to apply his method is Toby, a squarrel, that is a
reconstructed squirrel. Grice gives some principles of pirotology. Maxims of
rational behaviour compound to form what he calls an immanuel, of which The
Conversational Immanuel is a part. Grice concludes with a warning against the
Devil of Scientism, but acknowledges perhaps he was giving much too credit to
Myro's influence on this! 1975. Method in philosophical psychology: from
the banal to the bizarre, in The Conception of Value, Clarendon,
repr. from The Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical
Association. H. P. Grice (1975). Method in philosophical psychology:
from the banal to the bizarre, Proceedings and Addresses of the American
Philosophical Association, keywords: philosophical psychology, pirotology. The
IMMANUEL section is perhaps the most important from the point of view of
conversation as rational co-operation. For he identifies THREE types of
generality: formal, applicational, and content-based. Also, he ALLOWS for there
being different types of ‘imannuels.’ Surely one should be the conversational
immanuel. Ryle would say that one can have a manual, yet now know how to use
it! And there’s also the Wittgenstein-type problem: how do we say that the
conversationalist is FOLLOWING the immanuel? Perhaps the statement is too
strong – cfr. ‘following a rule’ – and Grice’s problems with resultant and
basic procedures, and how the former derive from the latter! This connects with
Chomsky, and in general with Grice’s antipathy towards ‘constitutive’ rules!
1975.
The criteria of intelligence, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series III (The
Doctrines), Carton 5-Folder 29, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: intelligence,
criteria. In "Aspects of reason," he mentions 'flat'
rationality, and certain other 'talents' that are more difficult for the philosopher
to conceptualise, such as 'nose' (i.e. intuitiveness), acumen, tenacity, and
such. Grice's approach is 'pirotological.' If Locke had used 'intelligent'
to refer to Prince Maurice's parrot, Grice wants to find criteria for
'intelligent' as applied to his favourite type of 'pirot,' rather
("intelligent, indeed rational.")
1976.
Meaning, revisited, in Studies in the Way of Words, Part II: Explorations in
semantics and metaphysics, Essay, from N. V. Smith, Mutual knowledge,
Croom Helm, London, pp. 223-43, Remnants of meaning, Meaning revisited,
revisited, notes on Schiffer, philosophical psychology and meaning, meaning and
philosophical psychology, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton
1-Folders 17-18, and Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder 9 BANC MSS 90/135c, The
Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords:
philosophical psychology, meaning. This is a bit like H. P. Grice: implicatum,
revisited. An axiological approach to meaning. Strictly a reprint of Grice
(1976), which should be the preferred citation. The date 1976 is given by Grice
himself, and he knew! Grice also composed some notes on Remnants on meaning, by
Schiffer. This is a bit like Grice's meaning re-revisited. S. R. Schiffer had
been Strawson's tutee at Oxford as a Rhode Scholar in the completion of
his D. Phil. on 'Meaning' (later published by Clarendon). Eventually, Schiffer
grew sceptic, and let Grice know about it! Grice did not find Schiffer's
arguments totally destructive, but saw the positive side to them. Schiffer's
arguments should remind any philosopher that the issues he is dealing are
profound and bound to involve much elucidation before they are solved. This is
a bit like H. P. Grice: implicatum, revisited. "Meaning revisited"
(an ovious nod to Evelyn Waugh's Yorkshire-set novel) is the title H. P. Grice
chose for a contribution to a symposium at Brighton organised by N. V. Smith.
"Meaning revisited" (although Grice has earlier drafts entitled
"Meaning and philosophical psychology") comprises three sections. In
the first section, Grice is concerned with the application of his "M. O.
R.," or "Modified Occam's Razor" now to the very lexeme,
"mean." Cf. How many 'senses' does 'sense' have? Cohen: The
"Senses" of Senses. In the second part, Grice explores an
'evolutionary' model of creature construction reaching a stage of non-iconic
representation. Finally, in the third section, motivated to solve what he calls
a 'major' problem -- versus the 'minor' problem concerning the transition
from 'utterer's meaning' to 'expression meaning' -- Grice attempts to
construct 'meaning' as a 'value-paradeigmatic' notion. A version was indeed
published in the proceedings of the Brighton symposium, by Croom Helm, London.
Grice has a couple of other drafts with variants on this title: philosophical
psychology and meaning, psychology and meaning. He kept, meaningfully, changing
the order! It is not arbitrary that Grice's fascinating exploration is in three
parts. In the first, where he applies his Modified Occam's razor to
"mean," he is revisiting Stevenson. "Smoke means fire" and
"I mean love," don't need different 'senses' of 'mean.' And Stevenson
was right when using 'scare' quotes for the "Smoke 'means' fire"
utterance. Grice was very much aware that that, the rather obtuse terminology
of 'senses', was exactly the terminology he had adopted in both
"Meaning" and the relevant William James lectures (V and VI) at
Harvard! Now, it's time to revisit and to echo Graves, say, 'goodbye to all
that'! In the second part he applies pirotology. While he knows his audience is
not philosophical -- it's not Oxford -- he thinks they still may get some
entertainment! We have a pirot feeling pain, simulating it, and finally
uttering, "I am in pain." In the concluding section, Grice becomes
Plato. He sees 'meaning' as an 'optimum,' i.e. a value-paradeigmatic notion
introducing 'value' in its guise of 'optimality.' Much like Plato thought
'circle' works in his idiolect. Grice played with various titles, in the Grice
Collection. There's 'philosophical psychology and meaning.' The reason is
obvious. The lecture is strictly divided in sections, and it's only natural
that Grice kept drafts of this or that section in his collection. In Studies in
the Way of Words, Grice notes that he re-visited his "Meaning re-visited"
in 1980, too! And he meant it! Surely, there is no way to understand at least
the FOUR stages of Grice’s development of his ideas about meaning (1948, 1967,
1976 and 1987) without Peirce!
1976.
The categorical imperative, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton
6-Folder 24, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keyword: categorical imperative. An exploration
of the logical form of Kant's concoction. Grice is interested in its
conceptual connection with the 'hypothetical' imperative, in terms of the type
of connection between the protasis and the apodosis. Grice spends the full
second Paul Carus lecture on the conception of value on this. Grice is
aware that the topic is central for Oxonian philosophers such as R. M. Hare (a
member of Austin's Play Group, too), who will regard the UNIVERSABILITY of an
imperative as a mark of its categorial, indeed, moral status. He would
refer to conversational maxims as contributing to a CONVERSATIONAL IMMANUEL, if
it can be shown that, qua items under an overarching principle of
conversational helpfulness, each displays qualities associated with conceptual,
formal, and applicational generality.
1976. Philosophical
psychology, philosophical psychology and meaning, meaning and philosophical
psychology, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folders 24-25,
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: philosophical psychology, meaning. Meaning
is perhaps the psychological state, attitude, or stance, per
excellence. Grice coins "M-intention" for the bunch of
intentions a rational 'meaner' must mean before he even EXPLICATES
something! While not explicitly, Grice wants to supersede Peirce's merely
taxonomic approaches to the thing, more in the vein of Ogden and Richards.
1977. Practical reason, The H. P.
Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder 1, BANC MSS 90/135c, The
Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. "Practical
Reason." Keyword: reason, practical reason. Grice prefers the
idiom of 'soul.' There's the ratiocinative soul. Within the ratiocinative,
there's the executive soul and the merely administrative soul. Cicero had to
translate Aristotle into 'prudentia,' every time Aristotle talked of
'phronesis.' Grice was aware that Kant's terminology can be confusing.
Kant had used "pure" reason for reason in the doxastic
realm. Kant's critique of practical reason is HARDLY symmetrical to his
critique of 'doxastic' reason. Grice, with his 'aequi-vocality' thesis of
'must' ("must" crosses the doxastic-boulomaic divide), Grice is being
more of a symmetricalist.
1977.
Epagoge, epagogic, Mill's induction, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V
(Topical) Carton 7-Folder 31, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Mill,
induction. Grice loved to reminisce an anecdote concerning his tutor
Hardie at Corpus when Hardie invoked Mill's principles to prove that
Hardie was not responsible for a traffic jam. In drafts on word
play, Grice would speak of not bringing "more Grice to your
Mill." Mill's System of Logic was part of the reading material for
his degree in Lit. Hum. at Oxford, so he was very familiar with it. Mill
represents the best of the English empiricist tradition. Grice kept an
interest on inductive methodology. In his "Life and opinions" he
mentions some obscure essays by Kneale and Keynes on the topic. Grice was
interested in Kneale's 'secondary induction,' since Grice saw this as an application
of a construction routine. He was also interested in Keynes's notion
of a 'generator property,' which he found metaphysically intriguing.
Induction. Induction -- Mill's Induction, keywords: induction, deduction,
abduction, Mill. More Grice to the Mill. Grice loved Hardie's playing with
Mill's Method of Difference with an Oxford copper. He also quotes Kneale and
Keynes on induction. Note that his seven-step derivation of 'akrasia' relies on
an 'inductive' step!
1977. The
Immanuel Kant Memorial Lectures, Aspects of reason,
Clarendon, Stanford, redelivered as The John Locke lectures, repr.
in Aspects of Reason, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, The
Grice Collection contains previous drafts of this. H. P. Grice
(1977). Aspects of Reason, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays) Carton
2-Folders 29-30, and Series IV (Associations), Carton 6-Folders 5-6, and Series
V (Topical), Carton 7-Folders 21-22, and Carton 9-Folder 6, BANC MSS 90/135c,
The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keyword:
reasoning. While each of the four lectures credits their own entry below,
it may do to reflect on Grice's overall aim. Grice structures the lectures in
the form of a philosophical dialogue with his audience. The first lecture
is intended to provide a bit of 'linguistic botanising' for 'reasonable,' and
'rational.' In later lectures, Grice tackles 'reason' qua noun. The
remaining lectures are meant to explore what he calls the
"Aequi-vocality" thesis: "must" has only ONE SENSE that
crosses what he calls the 'doxastic' 'boulomaic' divide. He is especially
concerned -- this being the Kant lectures -- with Kant's attempt to reduce
the categorical imperative to a 'counsel of prudence.' Kant re-introduces the
Aristotelian idea of 'eudaimonia.' While a further lecture on 'happiness'
as the pursuit of a system of ends is NOT strictly part of the either the
Kant or the Locke lectures, it relates, since eudaimonia may be
regarded as the goal involved in the relevant imperative. Aspects
of reason, Clarendon. Carton 6, Folders 5-6, Stanford -
"Some Aspects of Reason.” The Immanuel Kant Memorial Lectures. H. P.
Grice (1977). Aspects of reason, Clarendon, "Some aspects of
reason," The Immanuel Kant Memorial Lectures, Stanford, keywords: reason,
reasoning, reasons. The lectures were also delivered as the John Locke
lectures. Grice is concerned with the reduction of the categorical
imperative to the hypothetical imperative. His main thesis he calls the
"AEQUI-vocality" thesis: "must" has only ONE sense,
that crossed the 'boulomaic/doxastic' divide. Aspects of reason,
Clarendon. H. P. Grice (1977). Aspects of reason, Clarendon,
-- John Locke lecture notes, keywords: reason. On aspects of reason.
Including extensive language botany on 'rational', 'reasonable,' and indeed
'reason' (justificatory, explanatory, and mixed). At this point, Grice
notes that linguistic botany is INDISPENSABLE towards the construction of a
more systematic explanatory theory. It is an exploration of a range of uses
of 'reason' that leads him to his "Aequi-vocality" thesis that 'must'
has only one sense! 1977. Aspects of reason, Stanford. Carton
5, Folders 10-13, The Kant Lectures, Stanford. 1977. Aspects of reason and
reasoning, in Grice, Aspects of Reason, Clarendon. The John
Locke Lectures "Aspects of Reason.” H. P. Grice (1977). Aspects
of reason, The Kant Lectures, Stanford, Clarendon. The H. P. Grice Papers, keywords:
reason, happiness. While Locke hardly mentions 'reason,' his friend
Burthogge does, and profusely! It was slightly ironic that Grice had
delivered these lectures as the Rationalist Kant lectures at Stanford. He
was honoured to be invited to Oxford. Officially, to be a John Locke lecture
you have to be *visiting* Oxford. While Grice was a fellow of St. John's,
he was still most welcome to give his set of lectures on reasoning at the
Sub-Faculty of Philosophy. He quotes very many authors, including Locke!
In his "proemium," Grice notes that while he was rejected the Locke
scholarship back in the day, he was extremely happy to be under Locke's aegis
now! When preparing for his second lecture, he had occasion to revise some
earlier drafts dated 1966. 1966. Reasons. H. P. Grice (1966). Aspects
of reason, Clarendon, Reasons, The H. P. Grice Papers, keywords: reason,
reasons. Linguistic analysis on 'justificatory,' 'explanatory' and 'mixed'
uses of 'reason.' While Grice knows that the basic use of 'reason' is qua
verb (reasoner reasons from premise P to conclusion C), he spends some time in
exploring 'reason' as noun. Grice found it a bit of a roundabout way to
approach rationality. However, his distinction between 'justificatory' and
'explanatory' 'reason' is built upon his linguistic botany on the use of
'reason' qua noun. Explanatory reason seems more basic for Grice than
'justificatory' reason. Explanatory reason EXPLAINS the rational agent's
behaviour. Grice is aware of Freud and his 'rationalizations.' An
agent may invoke some 'reason' for his acting which is not
'legitimate.' An agent may convince himself that he wants to move to
Bournemouth because of the weather; when in fact, his reason to move to
Bournemouth is to be closer to Cowes and join the yacht club there.
1977. Reason and reasoning, the
first Kant lecture, Stanford, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The
Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: reason,
reasoning. H. P. Grice’s enthymeme. Grice, the implicit reasoner! As the title
of the lecture implies, Grice takes the verb, "to reason," as
conceptually prior. A reasoner reasons, briefly, from a premise to a
conclusion. There are types of reason: flat reason and gradual reason. He
famously reports Shropshire, another tutee with Hardie, and his proof on the
immortality of the human soul. Grice makes some remarks on 'akrasia' as key,
too. The first lecture is then dedicated to an elucidation, and indeed attempt
at a 'conceptual' analysis in terms of intentions and doxastic conditions
reasoner R intends that premise P yields conclusion C and believes his
intention will cause his entertaining of the conclusion from his entertaining
the premise. One example of particular interest for a study of the use of
'conversational reason' in Grice is that of the connection between IMPLICATUM
AND REASONING. Grice entitles the sub-section of the lecture as "Too Good
to Be Reasoning" which is of course a joke. Cf. "too much love will
kill you,” and “There's no such thing as too much of a good thing”
(Shakespeare, As you like it). Grice notes: "I have so far been
considering difficulties which may arise from the attempt to find, for all
cases of actual reasoning, reconstructions of sequences of utterances or
explicit thoughts which the reasoner might plausibly be supposed to think of as
conforming to some set of canonical patterns of inference." "I turn
now to a DIFFERENT class of examples, with regard to which the problem is not
that it is difficult to know how to connect them with canonical patterns, but
rather that IT IS ONLY TOO EASY (or shall I say 'trivial') to make the
connection." "Like some children (not many), some cases of reasoning
are too well behaved for their own good." "Suppose someone says to
me." It is VERY INTERESTING that Grice gives 'conversational examples.'
A: Jack has arrived. "I reply: FIRST EXAMPLE: B: "I conclude
from that that Jack has arrived." "Or he says (iii).” (iii) A: Jack
has arrived AND Jill has *also* arrived. “And I reply (iv).” iv. SECOND
EXAMPLE: "I conclude that Jill has arrived."(via Gentzen's
conjunction-elimination). "Or he says (v).” v. My wife is at home.
"And I reply (vi).” vi. THIRD EXAMPLE: "B: I reason from that that
SOMEONE (viz. your wife) is at home." Grice: "Is there not something
very strange about the presence in my three replies of the verb
"conclude" (in example I and II) and the verb "reason" (in
example III)?" MISLEADING, BUT ALETHICALLY FINE, professor! "It is
true, of course, that if instead of my first reply I had said (vii) vii. So
Jack has arrived, has he? "the strangeness would have been removed."
"But here “so" serves not to indicate that an inference is being
made, but rather as part of a not that otiose way of expressing surprise."
“One might just as well have said (viii).” viii. Well, fancy that! "Now,
having spent a sizeable part of my life EXPLOITING it, I am NOT UNaware of the
truly fine DISTINCTION between a statement's being false (or axiologically
satisfactory), and its being true (or axiologically satisfactory) but otherwise
CONVERSATIONALLY or pragmatically misleading or inappropriate or pointless,
and, on that account and by such a fine distinction, a statement, or an
utterance, or conversational move which it would be improper (in terms of the
reasonable/rational principle of conversational helfpulness) in one way or
another, to make." GRICE'S REACTION TO HIS OWN DISTINCTION: entailment is
in sight! "But I do NOT find myself lured by the idea of using that
distinction here!" Because ENTAILMENT, rather than IMPLICATUM is entailed.
Or because EXPLICATUM, rather than IMPLICATUM is involved. "Suppose,
again, that I were to break off the chapter at this point, and switch suddenly
to this argument." ix. I have two hands (here is one hand and here is
another). If had three more hands, I would have five. If I were to have double
that number I would have ten, and if four of them were removed six would
remain. So I would have four more hands than I have now. "Is one happy to
describe this performance as reasoning?" Depends who's one and what's
happy!? "There is, however, little doubt that I have produced a
canonically acceptable chain of statements." So surely that's reasoning,
if only conversationally misleadingly called so! "Or suppose that, instead
of writing in my customary free and easy style, I had framed my remarks (or at
least the argumentative portions of my remarks) as a verbal realization, so to
speak, of sequences of steps in strict conformity with the rules of a
natural-deduction system of first-order predicate logic." "I give,
that is to say, an updated analogue of a medieval disputation."
Implicature: Gentzen is Ockham! "Would those brave souls who continued to
read be likely to think of my performance as the production of reasoning, or
would they rather think of it as a CRAZY FORMALISATION of reasoning conducted
at some previous time?" Depends on 'crazy' or 'formalisation.' One is
reminded of GRICE: If you cannot formalise, don't say it; STRAWSON: Oh, no! If
I can formalise it, I shan't say it! Grice: "The points suggested by this
stream of rhetorical questions may be summarized as follows." (1)
"Whether the samples presented FAIL to achieve the title of "reasoning",
and thus be DEEMED 'reasoning,' or whether the samples achieve the title, as we
may figuratively put it, by the skin of their teeth, perhaps does not very
greatly matter." "For whichever way it is, the samples seem to OFFEND
against something (different things in different cases, I'm sure) very central
to our conception of reasoning." "So central that Moore would call it
entailment!" (2) "A mechanical application of a ground rule of
inference, or a a concatenation thereof, is reluctantly (if at all) called
reasoning." "Such a mechanical application may perhaps legitimately
enter into (i.e. form individual steps in) authentic reasonings, but they are
not themselves reasonings, nor is a string of them." (3) "There is a
demand that a reasoner should be, to a greater or lesser degree, the author of
his reasonings." "Parroted sequences are not reasonings when
parroted, though the very same sequences might be reasoning if not
parroted." *Piroted* sequences are another matter! (4) "Some of the
examples I gave are deficient because they are aimless or pointless."
"Reasoning is *characteristically* addressed to this or that problem: a
small problem, a large problem, a problem within a problem, a clear problem, a
hazy problem, a practical problem, an intellectual problem; but a
problem!" (5) "A mere flow of ideas minimally qualifies (or can be
deemed) as reasoning, even if it happens to be logically respectable."
"But if it is directed, or even monitored (with intervention should it go
astray, not only into fallacy or mistake, but also into such things as
conversational irrelevance or otiosity!), that is another matter!" (6)
"Finicky over-elaboration of intervening steps is frowned upon, and in
extreme cases runs the risk of forfeiting the title of reasoning."
"In conversation, such over-elaboration will offend against this or that
conversational maxim, against (presumably) some suitably formulated maxim
conjoining informativeness." As Grice noted with regard to ix. That pillar
box seems red to me. That would be 'baffling' if the addressee fails to detect
the 'communication-point.' An utterance is supposed to INFORM, and what is (IX)
meant to inform its addressee? "In thought, it will be branded as pedantry
or neurotic caution!" If a distinction between brooding and conversing is
to be made! "At first sight, perhaps, one would have been inclined to say
that greater rather than lesser EXPLICITness is a merit. "Not that
INexplicitness -- or IMPLICATUM-status, as it were -- is bad, but that, other
things being equal, the more explicitness the better." "But now it
looks as if proper explicitness (or EXPLICATUM-status) is an Aristotelian
*mean*, or mesotes, and it would be good some time to enquire what determines
where that mean lies." "The burden of the foregoing observations
seems to me to be that the provisional account of reasoning, which has been
before us, leaves out something which is crucially important." "What
it leaves out is the conception of reasoning, as I like to see conversation, as
an purposive activity, as something with goals and purposes." "The
account or picture leaves out, in short, the connection of reasoning with the
will!" "Moreover, once we avail ourselves of the great family of
additional ideas which the importation of this conception would give us, we
shall be able to deal with the quandary which I laid before you a few minutes
ago." "For we could say (for example) that R reasons (informally)
from p to c just in case R thinks that p and intends that, in thinking c, he
should be thinking something which would be the conclusion of a formally valid
argument the premisses of which are a supplementation of p." "This
will differ from merely thinking that there exists some formally valid
supplementation of a transition from p to c, which I felt inclined NOT to count
as (or deem) reasoning." "I have some hopes that this appeal to the
purposiveness or goal-oriented character of authentic reasoning or good
reasoning might be sufficient to dispose of the quandary on which I have
directed it." "But I am by no means entirely confident that this is
the case, and so I offer a second possible method of handling the quandary, one
to which I shall return later when I shall attempt to place it in a larger
context." "We have available to us (let us suppose) what I might call
a 'hard way' of making inferential moves." "We in fact employ this
laborious, step-by-step procedure at least when we are in difficulties, when
the course is not clear, when we have an awkward (or philosophical) audience,
and so forth." "An inferential judgement, however, is a normally
desirable undertaking for us only because of its actual or hoped for
destinations, and is therefore not desirable for its own sake (a respect in
which, possibly, it may differ from an inferential capacity)." "Following
the hard way consumes time and energy." "These are in limited supply
and it would, therefore, be desirable if occasions for employing the hard way
were minimized." "A substitute for the hard way, the quick way, which
is made possible by habituation and intention, is available to us, and the
capacity for it (which is sometimes called intelligence, and is known to be
variable in degree) is a desirable quality." "The possibility of
making a good inferential step (there being one to be made), together with such
items as a particular inferer's reputation for inferential ability, may
determine whether on a particular occasion we suppose a particular transition
to be inferential (and so to be a case of reasoning) or not." "On
this account, it is not essential that there should be a single supplementation
of an informal reasoning which is supposed to be what is overtly in the
inferer's mind, though quite often there may be special reasons for supposing
this to be the case." "So Botvinnik is properly credited with a case
of reasoning, while Shropshire is not!"
1977. Reason
and reasons, Aspects of reason, Clarendon, the second Kant lecture,
The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University
of California. Keywords: reason, reasons, justificatory reason,
explanatory reason, justificatory-cum-explanatory reason. Drawing from his
recollections of an earlier linguistic botany on 'reason' (Grice, 1966), Grice
distinguishes between 'justificatory' reason and 'explanatory' reason. There is
a special case of 'mixed' reason, 'explanatory-cum-justificatory.' The lecture
can be seen as the way an exercise that Austin took as 'taxonomic' can lead to
explanatory adequacy, too!
1977.
Practical and alethic reasons, Aspects of reason, Clarendon, the
third Kant lecture, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library. Keywords: practical reason, alethic reason, protrepic,
exhibitive. The boulomaic (or volitive) is a part of the soul; so is the
doxatic (or judicative). Grice plays with co-relative operators: desirability
versus probability. Grice invokes the 'exhibitive'/'protreptic' distinction he
had introduced in the fifth William James lecture, now applied to psychological
attitudes themselves.
1977. Further remarks on practical and alethic reasons, Aspects of reason, Clarendon, the fourth Kant lecture, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: practical reason, alethic reason, counsel of prudence, categorical imperative, happiness, probability, desirability, modality. Grice's attempt is to tackle the Kantian problem in the Grundlegung: how to derive the categorical imperative from a counsel of prudence. Under the assumption that the protasis is "Let the agent be happy," Grice does not find it obtuse at all to construct a universalisable imperative out of a mere 'motive'-based counsel of prudence. Grice has an earlier paper on 'pleasure' which relates.
1977.
The type-token distinction, form, type, and implication, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folder 1, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keyword: type-token
distinction. Grice was not enamoured with the 'type'/'token' or 'token'/'type'
distinction. His thoughts on 'logical form' were provocative: "If you
can't put it in logical form, it's not worth saying." Strawson
infamously reacted, but with a smile: "Oh, no! If you CAN put it in
logical form, it's not worth saying." Grice refers to the type-token
distinction when he uses “x” for ‘token’ and “X” for type. Since J. F. Bennett
cared to call Grice a “meaning-nominalist” we shouldn’t CARE about “Xs” anyway!
He expands on this in "Retrospective Epilogue."
1977. Philosophy,
Carton 5, Folders 14-15, Philosophy, miscellaneous, with J.
Baker, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 8, Folder 1,
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: philosophy, Baker. Grice would give joint
seminars on philosophy with J. Baker. Oddly, Grice gives a nice example of
‘philosopher’ in 1967, “Addicted to general reflections about life.” In the
context where it occurs, Grice’s implicature is Stevensonian. If Stevenson had
said that an athlete is usually tall, a philosopher WILL occasionally be
inclined to reflect about life in general – a birrelist -! His other
definition: “Engaged in philosophical studies” seems circular. At least the
previous one defines philosophy by other than itself! Cfr. Quixote to Sancho:
“You are quite a philosopher” meaning ‘stoic,’ actually!
1977. Freedom,
teleology, and ethics, Kantian, Kant's ethics, Aristotle's ethics, The H. P.
Grice Papers, Series III (The Doctrines), Carton 5-Folders 16-17, and Series V
(Topical), Carton 8-Folders 16-17, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The
University of California, Berkeley. P. G. R. I. C. E. cites “Kant’s
ethics,” and it is under this that most of Grice’s material on Kant should be
placed -- with a caveat to the occasional reference to Kant’s epistemology,
elsewhere. 1980. Aristotle's ethics. H. P. Grice (1980). Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics" and "Aristotle's Ethics," keywords:
Aristotle, ethics. From Hardie. 1980. Freedom in Kant's Grundlegung, freedom
and morality in Kant's Grundlegung, 'Freedom and Morality in Kant's
Foundations,' Series II (Essays), Carton 2, Folders 26, 27, and 28.
Keywords: Grundlegung, freedom, autonomy. Grice
would refer to this, as Kantians do, as the Grundlegung. Grice was never
happy with 'eleutheria,' qua Greek philosophical notion. "To literal to be
true? By "Foundations," Grice obviously means Kant's essay.Grice preferred
to quote Kant in English. The reason being that Grice was practising
"ordinary-language" philosophy; and you cannot expect much
'linguistic botany' in a language other than your own! Kant was not too
'ordinary' in his use of German, either! The English translations that
Grice used captured, in a way, all that Grice thought was worth capturing in
Kant's philosophy. Kant was not your 'standard' philosopher in the
programme Grice was familiar with: Lit. Hum. Oxon. However, Kant was
popular in The New World, where Grice lectured profusely. 1980. Kant's
ethics, Carton 5, Folders 5-6, Kant's Ethical Theory. An exploration
of the categorial imperative and its reduction to the hypothetical
one. 1980. KANT’S ETHICS. Carton 5, Folder
8, Philosophy, Kant, With J. Baker. Notably the categorical
imperative. Cf. Carton 5, Folder 9, "Kant's Ethics.”
The crucial belief about a thing in itself that Kant thinks only practical
reason can justify concerns FREEDOM. Freedom is crucial because, on Kant’s
view, any moral appraisal presupposes that a human is free in that he has the
ability to do otherwise. To see why, consider Kant’s example of a man who
commits a theft (5:95ff.). Kant holds that for this man’s action to be
morally wrong (condemnable), it must have been within his voluntary control (he
is deemed responsible) in a way that it was within his power at the time NOT to
have committed the theft. If it is NOT within his control at the time,
while it may be useful to punish him in order to shape his behaviour or to
influence others, it nevertheless would be incorrect to say that his action is
morally wrong. Moral rightness and wrongness apply only to a free agent
who controls his action and has it in his power, at the time of his action,
either to act rightly or not. According to Kant and Grice, this is just
common sense. On these grounds, Kant rejects a type of compatibilism, which he
calls the “comparative concept of freedom” and associates with Leibniz. Kant
has a specific type of compatibilism in mind. There may be types of
compatibilism that do not fit Kant’s characterization of that view. On the
compatibilist view, as Kant understands it, an agent is free whenever the cause
of his action is within him. So an agent is not free only when something
external to him pushes or moves him, but he is free whenever the proximate
cause of his body’s movement is internal to him as an “acting being”
(5:96). If we distinguish between an involuntary convulsion and a
voluntary bodily movement, a free action is just a voluntary bodily movement. Kant
and Grice ridicule this view as a “wretched subterfuge” that tries to solve an
ancient philosophical problem "with a little quibbling about
words." This view, Kant and Grice say, assimilates freedom to “the
freedom of a turnspit,” or a projectile in flight, or the motion of a clock’s
hands (5:96–97). Grice's favourite phrase was the otiose English 'free
fall.' And he knew all the Grecian he needed to recognise the figurative
concept of 'eleutheria' as applied to 'ill' as "VERY FIGURATIVE, almost
implicatural!" The proximate cause of this movement is internal to the
turnspit, the projectile, and the clock at the time of the movement. This
cannot be sufficient for moral, rational responsibility. Why not? The
reason, Kant and Grice say, is ultimately that the cause of this movement
occurs in time. Return to the theft example. A compatibilist would say
that the thief’s action is free because its proximate cause is inside him, and
because the theft is not an involuntary convulsion but a voluntary
action. The thief decides to commit the theft, and his action flows from
this decision. According to Kant, however, if the thief’s DECISION is a
NATURAL phenomenon that occurs in time, it must be the effect of some cause
that occurred in a previous time. This is an essential part of Kant’s (if not
Grice's -- Grice quotes Eddington) Newtonian worldview and is grounded in the a
priori laws (specifically, the category of cause and effect) in accordance with
which our understanding constructs experience. Every event has a cause that
begins in an earlier time. If that cause too is an event occurring in
time, it must also have a cause beginning in a still earlier time, etc.
Every natural event occurs in time and is thoroughly determined by a causal
chain that stretches backwards into the distant past. So there is no room
for freedom in nature, which is deterministic in a strong way. The root of the
problem, for Kant, if not Grice, is time. For Grice it's SPACE and time!
Again, if the thief’s choice to commit the theft is a natural event in time, it
is the effect of a causal chain extending into the distant past. But the
past is out of his control now, in the present. Once the past is past, he
cannot change it. On Kant’s view, that is why his action would not be in
his control in the present if it is determined by events in the past.
Even if he could control those past events in the past, he cannot control them
now. But in fact past events were not in his control in the past either if they
too were determined by events in the more distant past, because eventually the
causal antecedents of his action stretch back before his birth, and obviously
events that occurred before his birth are not in his control. So if the
thief’s choice to commit the theft is a natural event in time, it is not now
and never was in his control, and he could not have done otherwise than to
commit the theft. In that case, it would be a mistake to hold him morally
responsible for it. Compatibilism, as Kant and Grice understand it, therefore
locates the issue in the wrong place. Even if the cause of the action is
internal to the agent, if it is in the past – e. g., if the action today is
determined by a decision the agent made yesterday, or from the character I
developed in childhood, it is not within the agent's control now. The real
issue is not whether the cause of the action is internal or external to the
agent, but whether it is in the agent's control now. For Kant, however, the
cause of action can be within the agent's control now only if it is not in
time. This is why Kant and Grice think that transcendental idealism is
the only way to make sense of the kind of freedom that morality
requires. For transcendental idealism allows that the cause of a action
may be a "thing in itself" outside of time: namely, the agetn's
noumenal self, which is free because it is not part of nature. No matter what
kind of character the agent have developed or what external influences act on
him, on Kant’s view every intentional, voluntary action is an immediate effect
of the agent's noumenal self, which is causally undetermined (5:97–98).
The agent's noumenal self is an uncaused cause outside of time, which therefore
is not subject to the deterministic laws of nature in accordance with which
understanding and pure reason constructs experience. Many puzzles arise on this
picture that Kant does not resolve, and Grice tries. E.g. if
understanding constructs every appearance in the experience of nature, not only
an appearance of an action, why is the agent responsible only for his action
but not for everything that happens in the natural world? Moreover, if I
am not alone in the world but there is another noumenal self acting freely and
incorporating his free action into the experience he constructs, how do two
transcendentally free agents interact? How do you integrate one's free
action into the experience that the other's understanding constructs? In spite
of these unsolved puzzles, Kant holds that we can make sense of moral appraisal
and responsibility only by thinking about human freedom in this way, because it
is the only way to prevent natural necessity from undermining both. Since Kant
invokes transcendental idealism to make sense of freedom, interpreting his
thinking about freedom leads us back to disputes between the two-objects and
two-aspects interpretations of transcendental idealism. On the face of
it, the two-*objects* interpretation seems to make better sense of Kant’s view
of transcendental freedom than the two-aspects interpretation. If morality
requires that the agent be transcendentally free, it seems that his true self,
and not just an aspect of his self, must be outside of time, according to
Kant’s argument. But applying the two-*objects* interpretation to freedom
raises problems of its own, since it involves making a distinction between the
noumenal self and the phenomenal self that does not arise on the two-aspects
view. If only one noumenal self is free, and freedom is required for moral
responsibility, one's *phenomenal* self is not morally responsible. But how are
the noumenal self and the phenomenal self related, and why is punishment
inflicted on the phenomenal self? It is unclear whether and to what extent
appealing to Kant’s theory of freedom can help to settle disputes about the
proper interpretation of transcendental idealism, since there are serious
questions about the coherence of Kant’s theory on either interpretation!
"Which is good," Grice would end his lecture with!
1978.
Ethics of virtue, arête, virtus, vitium, Aristotle, virtue, Philippa Foot on
virtues and vices, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder
29. Keywords: Philippa Foot, virtue, vice, virtue ethics, virtus, vitium,
arete, kakon, flourishing. Grice admired Foot's ability to make the right
conceptual distinction. Foot is following a very Oxonian tradition best
represented by the work of G. J. Warnock. Of course, Grice was
over-familiar with the 'virtue' vs. 'vice' distinction, since Hardie had
instilled it on him at Corpus! For Grice, 'virtue' and 'vice' (and the
mesotes), display an interesting 'logical' grammar, though. Grice would say
that 'rationality' is a virtue; fallacious reasoning is a vice. Some
things Grice takes more of a moral standpoint about. To cheat is neither
irrational nor unreasonble: just plain 'repulsive.' As such, it
would be a 'vice' -- mind not getting caught in its grip! Grice is concerned
with 'vice' in his account of 'akrasia' or 'incontinentia.' If agent A KNOWS
that doing x is 'virtuous,' yet decides to do ~x, which is 'vicious,' A is
being 'akratic.' For Grice, akratic behaviour applies both in the doxastic
and the boulomaic realm. And it is part of the philosopher's job to
elucidate the conceptual intricacies attached to it. 1. pf(A,!p) V
pr(A,p). 2. pf(A and B,!p) V pr(A and B,p). 3. pf(A and B and C, !p)
V pr(A and B and C, p). 4. pf(all things before pirot,!p) V pr(all things
before pirot,p). 5. pf(ATC,!p) V pb(ATC,p). 6. !p V |- p. 7.
Reasoning pirot wills !p V Reasoning pirot judges p.
1978. Onto-genesis,
The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder
10, "Semantics of Children's Language," BANC MSS 90/135c, The
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: semantics, children's
language, ontogenesis, ontology, phylogeny, developmental pragmatics, learning,
acquisition. Interesting in that he was always enquiring his
children's playmates: "Can a sweater be red and green all over? No stripes
allowed!"
1979.
Proem to the John Locke Lectures, aspects of reason, Clarendon, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series II (Essays), BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University
of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Locke, Locke scholarship, Locke
lecture, Oxford, town and gown. H. P. Grice’s Town and Gown. A special note, or
rather, a very moving proem, on Grice's occasion of delivering his lectures on
'Aspects of reason and reasoning' at Oxford as the John Locke Memorial Lectures
at Merton. Particularly apt in mentioning, with humility, his having failed,
*thrice* [sic] to obtain the John Locke lectureship (Strawson did, at once!),
but feeling safe under the aegis of "that great English philosopher"
(viz. Locke! always implicated, never explicited) now. Grice starts the proem
in a very moving, shall we say, emotional, way: “I find it difficult to convey
to you just how happy I am, and how honoured I feel, in being invited to give
these lectures.” Difficult, but not impossible. “I think of this university and
this city [it has a cathedral], which were my home for thirty-six years, as my
spiritual and intellectual parents." The almost majestic plural is Grice's
implicature to the 'town and gown'! "[W]hatever I am was originally
fashioned here;" I never left Oxford, Oxford made me, "and I find it
a moving experience to be, within these splendid and none too ancient walls,
once more engaged in my old occupation of rendering what is clear
obscure," by flouting the desideratum of conversational clarity and the
conversational maxim, 'avoid obscurity of expression,' under 'be perspicuous
[sic]!'. Grice's implicature on "none too ancient" seems to be addressed
to the TRULY ancient walls that saw "Athenian dialectic"! On the
other hand, Grice's funny variant on the 'obscurum per obscurius' -- what G. P.
Baker found as Grice’s skill in rendering an orthodoxy into an heterodoxy!
Almost! By 'clear' Grice implicates Lewis and his 'clarity is not enough!'. “I
am, at the same time, proud of my mid-Atlantic [two-world] status, and am,
therefore, delighted that the Old World should have called me in, or rather
recalled me, to redress, for once, the balance of my having left her for the
New.” His implicature seems to be: “Strictly, I never left?” Grice concludes
his proem: “I am, finally, greatly heartened by my consciousness of the fact
that that great English philosopher, under whose aegis I am now speaking, has
in the late afternoon of my days extended to me his Lectureship as a gracious
consolation for a record threefold denied to me, in my early morning, of his
Prize. I pray that my present offerings may find greater favour in his sight
than did those of long ago.” They did! Even if Locke surely might have found
favour to Grice’s former offerings, too, I'm sure!
1980. Correspondence
with R. Wyatt, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series I (The Correspondence of H.
P. Grice), Carton 1-Folders 10-12, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Grice, Wyatt.
1980.
Mentalism, modest mentalism, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series III (Doctrines),
Carton 5-Folder 30, BANC, MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: mentalism, philosophical
psychology. Grice would seldom use 'mind' (Grecian 'nous') or 'mental'
(Grecian 'noetikos' vs. 'aesthetikos'). His sympathies go for more over-arching
Grecian terms like the very Aristotelian 'soul,' (anima), i. e. the psyche and
the psychological.
1980. From Zeno to Socrates, topics for pursuit, Zeno, Socrates, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series III (The Doctrines), Carton 5, Folder 31, MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Zeno, Socrates. Grice's review of the history of philosophy ("Philosophy is but footnotes to Zeno.")
1980. Semantics, phonetics, syntax, and semantics, with J. F. Staal, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series III (The Doctrines), Carton 6-Folders 1-2, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: semantics. Staal is particularly good at this type of 'formalistic' philosophy, which was still adequate to reflect the subtleties of 'ordinary language.
1980. Pirots, basic Pirotese, sentence semantics and syntax, pirots and obbles, methodology, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 8-Folders 30-33, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: pirot, pirotese, pirotology, semantics, syntax, obble, creature construction, the genitorial programme. It all started when Carnap claimed to know that pirots karulise elatically. Grice as engineer. Pirotese is the philosopher's engaging in pirotology. Actually, pirotese is the lingo the pirots parrot. "Pirots karulise elatically." But not all of them. Grice finds that the pirotological talk allows to start from zero. He is constructing a language, "(basic) Pirotese," and the philosophical psychology and world that that language is supposed to represent or denote. An obble is a pirot's object. Grice introduces potching and cotching. To potch, in Pirotese, is what a pirot does with an obble: he perceives it. To cotch is Pirotese for what a pirot can further do with an obble: know or cognise it. Cotching, unlike potching, is factive.
1980. Semantics, language semantics, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folder 20, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: semantics, Tarski. Language semantics, alla Tarski.
1980. A
philosopher's prospectus, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton
4-Folder 14, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: prospectus.
1980. A seminar with Grice, seminar, Grice seminar, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series IV (Doctrines), Carton 5-Folders 2 and 8, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley.
1980. A philosophical talk, Philosophy, with J. Baker, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series IV (Associations), Carton 5-Folders 3-4, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley.
1980. Kantotle, friendship, Aristotle, Aristotle's Ethica Nichomachaea, Aristotle's ethics, Aristotle on friendship, aporia, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 5- Folder 7, and Carton 6-Folder 16-18, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Aristotle, ethics. Grice was 'very fortunate' to have Hardie as his tutor. He overused Hardie's lectures on Aristotle, too, and instilled them on his own tutees! Keywords: Aristotle, friendship. Grice is concerned with Aristotle's rather cryptic view of the friend (philos, amicus) as the 'alter ego.' In Grice's cooperative, concerted, view of things, a friend in need is a friend indeed! Grice is interested in Aristotle finding himself in an aporia. In Nicomachean Ethics IX.ix, Aristotle poses the question whether the happy man will need friends or not. Kosman correctly identifies this question as asking not whether friends are necessary in order to achieve eudaemonia, but "why we require friends even when we are happy." The question is not why we need friends to become happy, but why we need friends when we are happy, since the eudaemon must be self-sufficient. Philia is required for the flourishing of the life of practical virtue. Aristotle’s solution to the aporia here, however, points to the requirement of friendships even for the philosopher, in his life of theoretical virtue. Aristotle’s solution to the aporia in Nicomachean Ethics IX.ix is opaque, and the corresponding passage in Eudeiman Ethics VII.xii is scarcely better. Aristotle thinks he has found the solution to this aporia. "We must take two things into consideration, that life is desirable and also that the good is, and thence that it is desirable that such a nature should belong to oneself as it belongs to them. If then, of such a pair of corresponding series there is always one series of the desirable, and the known and the perceived are in general constituted by their participation in the nature of the determined, so that to wish to perceive one’s self is to wish oneself to be of a certain definite character,—since, then we are not in ourselves possessed of each such characters, but only in participation in these qualities in perceiving and knowing—for the perceiver becomes perceived in that way in respect in which he first perceives, and according to the way in which and the object which he perceives; and the knower becomes known in the same way— therefore it is for this reason that one always desires to live, because one always desires to know; and this is because he himself wishes to be the object known."
1967. Trust and rationality, rationality and trust, trust, trust, metaphysics, and value, with J. Baker, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folders 5 and 20, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: trust, rationality. Trust and rationality are pre-requisites of conversation. Cf. Grice's desideratum of conversational candour, subsumed under the over-arching principle of conversational helpfulness (formerly 'conversational benevolence-cum-self-interest'). Grice thinks that the principle of conversational benevolence has to be weighed against the principle of conversational self-interest. The result is the overarching principle of conversational helpfulness. Clarity gets in the picture. The desideratum of conversational clarity is a reasonable requirement for conversants to abide by. Grice follows some of Warnock's observations. The logical grammar of 'trust' (and indeed 'candour') is subtle, especially when we are considering the two sub-goals of conversation: giving and receiving information/influencing and being influenced by others. In both sub-goals, trust is paramount. The explorations of trust had become an Oxonian hobby, with authors not such like Warnock, but B. A. O. Williams, and others. Keywords: trust, metaphysics, value. Trust as a corollary of the principle of conversational helpfulness. The logical grammar of 'trust' is an interesting one. Grice used to speak of 'candour.' In a given conversational setting, assuming the principle of conversational helpfulness is operating, the utterer U is assumed by the addressee A to be 'trustworthy.' There are two dimensions for trust, which relate to the TWO goals which Grice assumes the principle of conversational helpfulness captures: -- giving and receiving information, and influencing and being influenced by others. In both sub-goals, trust is key. In the doxastic realm, trust has to do, not so much with 'truth' (with which the expression is cognate) but 'evidence.' In the boulomaic realm, 'evidence' becomes less crucial. Grice mentions attitudes of the boulomaic type that are not usually judged in terms of evidential support. However, in the 'boulomaic' realm, utterer will be assumed as 'trustworthy' if the conative attitudes he displays are 'sincere.' Cf. 'decency.' A cheater for Grice is not 'irrational,' just repugnant!
1980.
Philosophical psychology, needing, wanting, willing, intending, wants and
needs, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folders 30-31, BANC
MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: want, need, wanting, needing, philosophical
psychology, soul. "Want" etymologically means
"absence;" "need" should be preferred. The squarrel
(squirrel) Toby NEEDS intake of nuts, and you'll soon see gobbling them! There
is not much philosophical bibliography on these two 'psychological states'
Grice is analysing. Their logic is interesting: (i) Smith wants to play
cricket. (ii) Smith NEEDS to play cricket. Grice is concerned
with the propositional content attached to the 'want' and 'need'
predicate. "Wants that" sounds harsh; so does "need
that." Still, there are propositional attached to (i) and (ii):
"Smith plays cricket." Grice took a very cavalier attitude to what
linguists spend their lives analysing. He thought it was surely NOT the
job of the philosopher, especially from a prestigious university such as
Oxford, to deal with the arbitrariness of grammatical knots attached to this or
that English verb. He rarely used "English," but stuck with 'ordinary
language.' Surely, he saw himself in the tradition of Kantotle, and so,
aiming at grand philosophical truths: not conventions of usage, even his
own! 1. Squarrel Toby has a nut, N, in front of him. 2. Toby is short on
squarrel food (observed or assumed), so, 3. Toby wills squarrel food (by
postulate of Folk Pyschological Theory θ connecting
willing with intake of N). 4. Toby prehends a nut as in front (from (1) by
Postulate of Folk Psychological Theory θ ,
if it is assumed that "nut" and "in front" are familiar to
Toby). 5. Toby joins squarrel food with gobbling, nut, and in front (i.e. Toby
judges gobbling, on nut in front, for squarrel food (by Postulate of Folk
Psychological Theory θ with
the aid of prior observation. So, from 3, 4 and 5, 6. Tobby gobbles; and since
a nut *is* in front of him, gobbles the nut in front of him.
1980.
Diagoge/epagoge, Grice's audio-files, the audio-files, audio-files of various
lectures and conferences, some seminars with R. O. Warner and J. Baker, The H.
P. Grice Papers, Series IV (Associations), Audio files of various lectures and
conferences, Carton 10 -- No Folders -- BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library,
The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: epagoge,
diagoge. A previous folder in the collection contains the transcripts.
These are the audio-tapes themselves, obviously not in folders. “The kind
of metaphysical argument which I have in mind might be said, perhaps, to
exemplify a ‘dia-gogic’ as opposed to ‘epa-gogic’ or inductive approach to
philosophical argumentation.” “Now, the more emphasis is placed on
justification by elimination of the rival, the greater is the impetus given to
refutation, whether of theses or of people.” “And perhaps a greater
emphasis on a ‘dia-gogic’ procedure, if it could be shown to be justifiable,
would have an eirenic effect.”
1980. Semantics, sentence semantics, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder 11, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Truth-conditional, constructivist. While Grice is NOT concerned about the 'semantics' of utterer's meaning (how could he, when he analyses '... means ...' in terms of '... intends ...', he *is* about the semantics of SENTENCE meaning. Grice's second stage ('expression' meaing) of his programme about meaning begins with specifications of 'means' as applied to 'x,' a token of 'X.' He is having Tarski's and Davidson's elaborations of schemata like “"p" means that p.” "Snow is white" means that snow is white, and stuff! Grice was especially concerned with combinatories, for both unary and dyadic operators, and with multiple quantifications within a first-order predicate calculus with identity.
1980. Propositions as classes of propositional complexes, Proposition and propositional complex, sentence semantics and propositional complexes, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder 12, BANC MSS 90/135c, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: propositional complex. H. P. Grice's propositional complex. Grice was keen on the concept of a 'propositional complex,' which allowed him NOT to commit to the abstract entity of a 'proposition,' if the latter is regarded as an extensional family of 'propositional complexes' (Paul saw Peter; Peter was seen by Paul). The topic of a propositional complex was one that Grice regarded as Oxonian in nature. C. A. B. Peacocke had struggled with the same type of problems, in his various essays on the theory of content. Only a perception-based account of content in terms of 'qualia' gets the philosopher out of the vicious circle of introducing linguistic entities to clarify psychological entities and vice versa. One way to discharge the obligation to give an account of a proposition is would involve, as its central idea, focusing on a primitive range of ‘simple’ statements, the formulation of which would involve no connective or quantifier, and treating each of these as ‘expressing’ a ‘propositional complex,’ which in such cases would consist of a sequence whose elements would be, first, a general item (a set or an attribute, according to preference) and, second, an ordered sequence of objects which might, or might not, instantiate or belong to the first item.”“The propositional complex associated with the sentence, ‘Grice is wise,’ might be thought of consisting of a sequence whose first ('general') member would be the set of wise persons, or (alternatively) the attribute wisdom, and whose second ('instantial' or 'particular') member would be Grice or the singleton of Grice; and the sentence, 'Strawson loves Grice', could be represented as expressing a propositional complex which is a sequence whose first element is love (considered either extensionally as a set or non-extensionally as an attribute) and whose second element is a sequence composed of Strawson and Grice, in that order.”“We can define a property of ‘factivity’ or ‘alethic satisfactoriness’ which will be closely allied to the notion of truth.”“A (simple) propositional complex will be factive or alethically satisfactory just in case its two elements (the general and instantial elements) are related by the appopriate predication relation, just in case (for example) the second element is a member of the set (possesses the attribute) in which the first element consists.”“A proposition may now, alla Chomsky, be represented as each consisting of a family of propositional complexes.”“The conditions for family unity may be thought of either as fixed or as variable in accordance with the context.”
1980.
Rationality and akrasia, emotion and akrasia, emotions and incontinence, The H.
P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 6-Folder 32, BANC MSS 90/135c, The
Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: akrasia,
emotion. The concept of 'emotion' needs a philosophical elucidation. Grice
was curious about a linguistic botany for that! Akrasia for Grice covers both
boulomaic and doxastic versions. The boulomaic version may be closer to the
concept of an emotion. Grice quotes from A. J. P. Kenny's essay on
"emotion." But Grice is looking for more of a linguistic botany. As
it happens, Kenny's essay has Griceian implicata. Kenny was a Fellow of St.
Benet's, and completed his essay on emotion under A. M. Quinton (who would
occasionally give seminars with Grice), and examined by two members of Grice's
Play Group: D. F. Pears and P. L. Gardiner. Kenny connects an emotion to a
'feeling,' which brings us to Grice on 'feeling boringly byzantine'!
1980.
Trust, decency, and rationality, Rationality, trust, and decency, The H. P.
Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 6-Folder 18, BANC, MSS 90/135c, The
Bancroft Library. Keywords: trust, decency, rationality. Grice's idea
of 'decency' is connected to his explorations on 'rational' and 'reasonable'.
To cheat may be neither unreasonable nor rational. It's just
repulsive! Indecent, in other words. In all this, Grice is concerned
with 'ordinary language,' and treasures Austin's question to Warnock (when
Warnock was looking for a fellowship at Austin's college): "Warnock:
what would you say the difference is between (i) and (ii)?" i. Smith
plays cricket rather properly. ii. Smith plays cricket rather
incorrectly. "They spent the whole dinner over such
subtleties!" "And Warnock fell in love with
Austin." Grice's explorations on 'trust' are Warnockian in character too.
For Warnock, in "Object of morality," trust is key, indeed, the very
object of morality. Grice started to focus on trust in his Oxford seminars on
the implicatum. There is a desideratum of conversational candour. And a subgoal
of the principle of conversational helpfulness is that of giving and receiving
'information.' "False 'information' is just no information." Grice
loved that Latin dictum, "tuus candor."
1980.
In the tradition of Kantotle, Kantotle, Immanuel Kant, Kant, Kant's ethics,
Kant, mid-sentences, freedom, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series III (The
Doctrines), Carton 5-Folders 14-18, and Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folders
14-18, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: Kant, freedom, ethics. Grice was especially
concerned with Kant's having brought back the old Greek idea of 'eleutheria'
for philosophical discussion.
1980. Philosophy,
lectures, Berkeley group, team notes, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series III (The
doctrines), Carton 5-Folder 26, and Series V (Topical), Carton 6-Folder 21,
MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Keywords: philosophy
1980. Kant's
ethics, Kant, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series III (The Doctrines), Carton
5-Folders 19-21, and Folder 23, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Kant, ethics. Grice knew how
to teach ethics. He taught Kant as if he were teaching Aristotle, and vice
versa. His students would say, "Here come [sic] Kantotle!". Grice was
obsessed with Kantotle. He would teach one or the other as an ethics
requirement. Back at Oxford, the emphasis was of course Aristotle, but he was
aware of some trends to introduce Kant in the Lit.Hum. curriculum, not with
much success! Strawson had done his share with Kant's "pure" reason
in "The bounds of sense," but White professors of moral philosophy
were usually not too keen on Kant's "pratical" reason!
1980. Metaphysics
and the language of philosophy, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series III (Doctrines),
Carton 5-Folder 24, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: metaphysics, philosophical method. Grice had
been interested in the methodology of 'metaphysics' since his Oxford
days. He counts as one memorable experience in the area his participation
in two episodes for the BBC Third Programme on "The nature of
metaphysics" with the organiser, D. F. Pears, and his former tutee, P. F.
Strawson on the panel. Grice was particularly keen on Collingwood's views on
metaphysical presuppositions, "both absolute and relative!"
1980. Freedom,
implicature-free, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series III (The Doctrines), Carton
5-Folder 25, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library. Keywords: freedom,
Kant, implicature'free. The topic of 'freedom' fascinated Grice, because it
merged the practical with the theoretical. Grice sees the conception of
freedom as crucial in his elucidation of a rational being. "Conditions of
freedom" are necessary for the very idea, as Kant was well aware. "A
thief who is FORCED to steal is just a 'thief'." Grice would engage in a
bit of language botany, when exploring the ways the adjective 'free' is used,
'freely,' in 'ordinary language': 'free fall,' 'alcohol-free,' 'sugar-free,'
and his favourite: 'implicature-free.' Grice's more systematic reflections deal
with 'pirotology, or 'creature construction'. A vegetals, for example is less
free than an animal, but more free than a stone! And Humans are more free than
non-human. Grice wants to deal with some of the paradoxes identified by Kant
about freedom, and he succeeds in solving some of them. There is a section on
freedom in "Action and events" for The Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly where he expands on 'eleutheria' and notes the idiocy of a phrase
like 'free fall.'
1980. Grice's Frege, Frege, Words, and Sentences, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folder 2, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Frege, Farbung, aber. Frege was one of Grice's obsessions. A Fregeian sense is an explicatum, or implicitum, a concession to get his principle of conversational helpfulness working in the generation of conversational implicata, that can only mean progress for philosophy! "Fregeian senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity." The employment of the routine of Humeian projection may be expected to deliver for us, as its result, a concept – the concept(ion) of value, say, in something like a Fregeian ‘sense,’ rather than an object. There is also a strong affinity between Frege's treatment of 'colouring' (of the German particle "aber," say) and Grice's idea of a convetional implicatum ("She was poor, BUT she was honest,/and her parents were the same,/till she met a city feller,/and she lost her honest name," as the vulgar Great War ditty went). Grice does not seem interested in providing a philosophical exploration of conventional implicata, and there is a reason for this. Conventional implicata are NOT essentially connected, as conversational implicata are, with RATIONALITY. Conventional implicata CANNOT be 'calculable.' They have less of a philosophical interest, too, in that they are NOT cancellable. Grice sees cancellability as a way to prove some (contemporary to him, if dated) "ordinary-language" philosophers who analyse an expression in terms of 'sense' and 'entailment,' where a cancellable conversational implicatum is all there is (to it). He mentions B. S. Benjamin in "Prolegomena" (and is very careful in noting how Benjamin misuses a Fregeian sense. In his "Causal Theory," Grice lists another mistake: "What is known to be the case is not believed to be the case." Grice gives pretty few example of a conventional implicatum: 'therefore,' as in Jill's utterance: "Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave." This is interesting because "therefore" compares to "so" which P. F. Strawson, in P. G. R. I. C. E., claims is the ASSERTED counterpart to "if." But Strawson was never associated with the type of linguistic botany that Grice was. Grice also mentions the idiom, "on the one hand/on the other hand," in some detail in "Retrospective Epilogue": "My aunt was a nurse in the Great War; my sister, on the other hand, lives on a peak at Darien."
1980. Kant's Grundlegung, Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics, Kant's foundation of the metaphysics of morals, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 7, Folders 3-4, MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keyword: Grundlegung. While Grice can't read Kant in German, he uses the English vernacular. Note the archaic 'metaphysic' sic in singular. More Kant.
1980. Semantics, grammar and semantics, with R. O. Warner, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folder 5, BANC MSS 90/135c The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Truth-conditional semantics and implicata.
1980. Teleology and unified science, teleology, the unity of science and teleology, unity of science and teleology, Hands Across the Bay and Beanfest, value, metaphysics, and teleology, finality, final cause (telos-aitia), with A. D. Code, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series IV (Associations), Carton 6-Folder 9, and Series V (Topical), Carton 6-Folder 38 and Carton 9-Folder 23, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: unity of science, teleology, unified science, value, metaphysics, telos, finality, mechanism, final cause (telos-aitia), Code. H. P. Grice’s métier. "Unity of science" was a very "New-World" expression that Grice did not quite buy. Grice was brought up in a world, the "Old World," indeed, as he calls it in his "Proem" to the John Locke lectures, of C. P. Snow's 'two cultures.' At the time of Grice's philosophising, philosophers such as Peter Winch (who indeed quotes fro Grice) were contesting the idea that science is unitary, when it comes to the explanation of rational behaviour. Since a philosophical approach to the explanation of rational behaviour, including conversational behaviour (to account for the conversational implicata) is his priority, Grice needs to distinguish himself from those who propose a 'unified' science, which Grice regards as eliminationist and reductionist. Grice is ambivalent about 'science' and also playful ("philosophia regina scientiarum"). Grice seems to presuppose, or implicate, that, since there is the devil of scientism, science cannot get at teleology The devil is in the physiological details, which are irrelevant. The language Grice uses to describe his pirots as goal-oriented, aimed at survival and reproduction, seems 'teleological' and somewhat 'scientific,' though. But he means that ironically! As the scholastics use it, 'teleology' is a science, the science of 'telos,' or finality (cf. Aristotle on 'telos aitia,' causa finalis. The unity of science is threatened by teleology, and vice versa. Unified science seeks for a 'mechanistically derivable' teleology. But Grice's sympathies lie for 'detached' finality. Grice is obsessed with the Greek idea of a 'telos,' as "slightly overused" by Aristotle. Grice thinks that some actions are 'for their own sake.' "What is the telos of Oscar Wilde?" "Can we speak of Oscar Wilde's métier?" If a tiger is to tigerise, a human is to humanise, and a person is to personise. Grice thought that teleology is a key philosophical way to contest mechanism, so popular in The New World. Strictly, and Grice knew this, 'teleology' is constituted as a 'discipline.' "One term that Cicero was unable to translate!" For the philosopher, 'teleology' is that part of philosophy that studies the realm of the 'telos.' Informally, 'teleological' is opposed to 'mechanistic'. Grice is interested in the mechanism/teleology debate, indeed jumps into it, with a goal in mind! Grice finds some New-World philosophers too mechanistic-oriented, in contrast with the more 'two-culture' atmosphere he was familiar with at Oxford! Code is the Aristotelian, and he and Grice are especially concerned in the idea of 'causa finalis.' For Grice only detached finality poses a threat to Mechanism, as it should!
1980. Benevolentia,
metaphysics and ill-will, malevolentia, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V
(Topical), Carton 7-Folder 28. Keyword: Ill-will, goodwilll. A conceptual
elucidation. Interesting from a historical point of view seeing that Grice had
introduced a principle of conversational benevolence (i.e. conversational
goodwill) as early as 1964! Malevolentia was over-used by Cicero, translating
the Grecian.
1980. Myth,
method and myth, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton
7-Folder 30, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: myth, method. A philosopher should be
allowed, as Plato was, to use a myth, if he thinks his tutee will thank him for
that! Grice loved to compare his "Oxonian dialectic" with Plato's
"Athenian" (strictly, "Academic") "dialectic."
Indeed, there is some resemblance between Plato's and Grice's use of 'myth' for
philosophical methodological purposes. Grice especially enjoyed a 'myth' in his
programme in philosophical psychology. In this, he was very much being a
philosopher. Non-philosophers usually criticise this methodological use of a
'myth,' but they would, wouldn't they?
1980. Kant's
ethics, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series III (The Doctrines), Carton
5-Folders 27-28, MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: Kant, ethics. Why was Grice attracted
to Kant's theory? First, the logical analysis of the imperatives. Second, as he
explored the Grundlegung, the metaphysical foundation of freedom, and finality.
While teleology is usually NOT associated with Kant, Grice did!
1980. Philosophy,
conferences, discussion, The American Philosophical Association, transcripts by
Randall Parker, from the audio-tapes contained in Carton 10 within the same
series IV (Associations), miscellaneous, Beanfest, transcripts and
audio-cassettes, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series IV (Associations), Carton
6-Folder 8, and Folder 10, and Series V (Topical), Carton 8-Folders 4-8,
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Unfortunately, Parker typed ‘carulise’ for ‘karulise.’ Or
not.
1980.
Theory-theory, metaphysics and theorising, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series
II (The Essays), Carton 4-Folders 3-4, Series III (The Doctrines), Carton
5-Folder 31, and Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folder 29, and Carton 9-Folder
14, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: metaphysics, theorising,
theory-theory, eschatology, Plato, Socrates, Thrasymachus. Grice
was keen to theorise on theorising. He thought that Aristotle's 'first
philosophy' (prote philosophia) is best rendered as
"Theory-theory"! Grice kept using Oxonian English spelling,
'theorising,' except when he did not! Grice calls himself 'folksy': his
theories, even if subject to various types of Ramseyfication, are 'popular' in
kind! And ceteris paribus! Metaphysical construction is disciplined
and the best theorising the philosopher can hope for! The way Grice
conceives of his “Theory-theory” is interesting to revisit. A route by which
Grice hopes to show the centrality of metaphysics (as 'prote philosophia')
involves taking seriously a few ideas. First, that, if any region of
enquiry is to be successful as a rational enterprise, its deliverance
must be expressable in the shape of one or another of the possibly different
types of theory. Second, a characterisation of the nature and range of a
possible kind of theory θ is
needed. Third, such a body of characterisation must itself be the outcome
of rational enquiry, and so must itself exemplify whatever
requirement it lays down for any theory θ in general. Fourth, the characterisation must itself be
expressible as a theory θ, to be called ("if you like," Grice politely puts it!)
“theory-theory,” or meta-theory, θ2.. Now,
the specification and justification of the ideas and material presupposed
by any theory θ,
whether such account falls within the bounds of Theory-theory, θ2 would be properly called
'prote philosophia' ('first philosophy') and may turn out to relate to what is
generally accepted as belonging to the subject matter of metaphysics. It
might, for example, turn out to be establishable that any theory θ has to relate to a certain
range of this or that subject item, has to attribute to each item this or that
predicate or attribute, which in turn has to fall within one or another of the
range of types or categories. In this way, the enquiry might lead to recognised
metaphysical topics, such as the nature of being, its range of application, the
nature of predication and a systematic account of categories. 1980.
Metaphysics, philosophical eschatology, and Plato's Republic, Thrasymachus,
social justice, Socrates, along with notes on Zeno, and topics for pursuit,
repr. in Part II, Explorations in semantics and metaphysics to Studies in
the Way of Words. Keywords: metaphysics, philosophical eschatology, Plato's
Republic, Socrates, Thrasymachus, justice, moral right, legal right, Athenian
dialectic. Philosophical eschatology is a sub-discipline of metaphysics
concerned with what Grice calls a 'category shift.' Grice, having applied such
a technique to Aristotle's aporia on 'philos' ('friend') as alter ego, uses it
now to tackle Socrates's view, against Thrasymachus, that 'right' applies
primarily to 'morality,' and secondarily to 'legality.' Grice has a specific
reason to include this in his “Studies in the Way of Words.” Grice’s exegesis
of Plato on justice displays Grice's take on the fact that metaphysics needs to
be subdivided into ontology proper and what he calls 'philosophical
eschatology,' for the study of things like 'category shift’ and other
construction routines. The exploration of Plato’s “Politeia” thus becomes an
application of Grice’s philosophically eschatological approach to the item
'just,' as used by Socrates ('morally just') and Thrasymachus ('legally just').
Grice has one specific essay on Aristotle (published in The Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly). So he thought Plato merited his own essay, too!
Grice's focus is on Plato's exploration of 'dike.' Grice is concerned with a
neo-Socratic (versus neo-Thrasymachean) account of 'moral' justice as
conceptually (or axiologically) prior to 'legal' justice. In the proceeding, he
creates 'philosophical eschatology' as the OTHER branch to metaphysics, along
with good ol' ontology. To say that 'just' crosses a categorial barrier
(from the moral to the legal) is to make a metaphysical, strictly
eschatological, pronouncement. The H. P. Grice Papers locate the Plato essay in
Series II, the Socrates essay in Series III, and the Thrasymachus essay, under
'social justice,' in Series V. Grice is well aware that in his account of
'fairness,' Rawls makes use of his ideas on 'personal identity.' The
philosophical elucidation of 'fairness' is of great concern for Grice. He had
been in touch with such explorations as Nozick’s and Nagel’s along
anti-Rawlsian lines. Grice's ideas on rationality guide his exploration of
'social justice.' Grice keeps revising the 'Socrates' notes. The Plato essay he
actually dates 1988. As it happens, Grice's most extensive published account of
Socrates is in this commentary on Plato's Republic: a 'eschatological'
commentary, as he puts it. In an entertaining fashion, Grice has Socrates, and
neo-Socrates, exploring the logic and grammar of 'just' against the attack by
Thrasymachus and neo-Thrasymachus. Grice's point is that, while the legal
'just' may be conceptually PRIOR to the moral 'just,' the moral 'just' is
evaluationally or axiologically prior.
1980. Value
systems, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folders
25-27, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: value system. The idea of a system of values (cf.
'system of ends') is meant to unify the goals of the agent in terms of the
pursuit of 'eudaemonia.'
1980. Semantic
theory, semantics, syntax and semantics, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V
(Topical), Carton 9-Folders 17-18, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: syntax,
semantics. Especially the former. Grice loved two devices of the
syntactic kind: subscripts and square brackets (for the assignment of
'common-ground status'). Grice is a conservative (dissenting
rationalist) when it comes to syntax and semantics. He hardly uses 'pragmatics'
albeit in a loose way ('pragmatic import,' 'pragmatic inference'), but was
aware of Morris's triangle. Syntax is presented along the lines of Gentzen,
i.e. a system of 'natural deduction' in terms of inference rules of
introduction and elimination for each formal device. Semantics pertains
rather to Witters's truth-values, i.e. the assignment of a
satisfactory-valuation: the true and the good.
1980. Philosophical
explanation, the why, the 'that' and the 'why,' metaphysics,
description/taxonomy vs. theoretical explanation, The H. P. Grice Papers,
Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder 19, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library,
The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: explanation,
description, 'why,' 'what'. Taxonomy, is worse than explanation,
always. Grice is exploring the 'taxonomy-description' vs. explanation
dichotomy. He would often criticise 'ordinary-language' philosopher Austin for
spending too much valuable time on linguistic botany, 'without an aim in his
head.' Instead, his inclination, a dissenting one, is to look for the 'big
picture of it all,' and disregard a piece-meal analysis. Conversation is a
good example. While Austin would subjectify 'Language' (Linguistic Nature),
Grice rather places rationality squarely on the behaviour displayed by utterers
as they make conversational moves that their addressees will judge as
'rational' along specific lines. Observation of the principle of
conversational helpfulness is RATIONAL (reasonable) along the following lines:
anyone who cares about the two goals which are central to conversation, viz.
giving and receiving information, and influencing and being influenced by
others, is expected to have an interest in taking part in a conversation which
will only be profitable (if not possible) under the assumption that it is
conducted along the lines of the principle of conversational helpfulness. Grice
is not interested in conversation per se, but as a basis for a THEORY that
explains the MISTAKES 'ordinary-language' philosophers are making. The case of
"What is known to be the case is not believed to be the case."
1981.
Philosophy, miscellaneous, topics, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton
8-Folders 9-13, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: philosophy. Grice was a 'meta-linguistic
botanist.' His point was to criticise 'ordinary-language' philosophers
criticising philosophers. Say: Plato and Ayer say that 'episteme' is a kind of
'doxa.' The 'contemporary,' if 'dated,' ordinary-language philosopher detects a
nuance, and embarks risking collision with the conversational 'facts' or data:
rushes ahead to EXPLOIT the nuance without clarifying it, with wrong dicta
like: "What I known to be the case I don't believe to be the case."
Surely, a cancellable implicatum generated by the rational principle of
conversational helpfulness is all there is to the nuance. Grice knew that unlike
the 'ordinary-language' philosopher, he was not providing a taxonomy or
description, but a theoretical EXPLANATION!
1982. Reflections
on morals, meta-ethics, ethics, with J. Baker, ethics, North Carolina notes,
The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 4-Folders 17-25, and Series
V (Topical), Carton 6-Folders 34-36, and Carton 9-Folder 7, BANC MSS 90/135c,
The Bancroft library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: morals, meta-ethics. Grice's explorations on
morals are language based. With a substantial knowledge of the classical
languages ("that are so good at verb systems and modes like the optative,
that English lacks"), Grice explores modals like "should,"
(Hampshire) "ought to" (Hare) and, "must" (Grice --
'necessity'. Grice is well aware of R. M. Hare's reflections on the 'neustic'
qualifications on the 'phrastic.' The "imperative" has usually been
one source for the philosopher's concern with the language of
morals. Grice attempts to balance this with a similar exploration on
'good,' now regarded as the 'value-paradeigmatic' notion par
excellence. We cannot understand, to echo Strawson, 'the concept of a
person' unless we understand the concept of a GOOD person, i.e. the
philosopher's conceptION of a good person. Morals is very Oxonian.
There were in Grice's time only *three* chairs of philosophy at Oxford: the
three W: The Waynflete chair of metaphysical philosophy, The Wykeham chair
of logic (not philosophy, really), and The White chair of moral
philosophy. Later, the Wilde chair of philosophical psychology was
created. Grice was familiar with Austin's cavalier attitude to morals as
White's professor of moral philosophy, succeeding Kneale. When R. M. Hare
succeeds Austin, Grice knows that it is time to play with the neustic implicatum! Grice's
approach to morals is very 'meta-ethical' and starts with a fastidious (to use
Blackburn's characterisation, not mine!) exploration of 'modes' related to
propositional phrases involving 'should,' 'ought to,' and 'must.' For
Hampshire, 'should' is the moral word par excellence. For Hare, it is
'ought.' For Grice, it is only "MUST" that preserves that sort
of necessity that, as a Kantian rationalist, he is looking for. However, Grice
hastens to add that whatever he'll say about the 'practical' or boulomaic
"MUST" must also apply to the 'doxastic' "must," as in
"What goes up must come down." That he did not hesitate to use
'necessity' operators is clear from his axiomatic treatment, undertaken with A.
D. Code, on Aristotelian categories (izzing and hazzing).
1982. Correspondence
with J. Baker, The Grice Papers, Series I (The Correspondence of H. P. Grice,
IA), Carton 1-Folder 2, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Grice, Baker. Grice collaborated
with Baker mainly on work on ethics seen as an offspring, alla Kant, of
philosophical psychology. Akrasia was one such topic. Baker contributes to P.
G. R. I. C. E. ("Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions,
Categories, Ends"), a festschrift for Grice, with an essay on the purity,
and alleged lack thereof, of morally evaluable motives. Do one's motives have to
be pure? For Grice morality cashes out in 'interest,' or desire. Baker also
contributes to a volume on Grice's honour published by Palgrave, Meaning
and analysis: essays on H. P. Grice. Baker is the organiser of a
symposium on the thought of H. P. Grice for the American Philosophical
Association, the proceedings of which are published in The Journal of
Philosophy, with J. F. Bennett as chair, and contributions by Baker, R. Grandy,
and comments by R. Stalnaker and R. Warner.
1982.
The alethic-pratical divide, The Kantian problem, miscellaneous, value
sub-systems, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folders
25-27, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: Kant's problem. More than a value may co-ordinate in
a system. One such is 'eudaemonia' (cf. 'system of ends'). Kant's problem is
the reduction of the categorical imperative to the hypothetical
imperative. For Kant, a value tends towards the subjective. Grice,
rather, wants to offer a 'metaphysical' defence of 'objective'
value. Grice called the manual of conversational maxims the Conversational
Immanuel.
1982.
Axiology, value and rationalism, values and rationalism, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder 28, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: value,
rationalism, axiology. As opposed to 'relativism,' which denies the
rational basis to attitude ascriptions. Grice is concerned with the
absence of a thorough discussion of 'value' by English
philosophers. Continental philosophers, by comparison, have a special
discipline, 'axiology,' for it! Similarly, a continental-oriented
tradition Grice finds in The New World in philosophers of a pragmatist bent,
such as Carus. Grice wants to say that 'rationality' is a value, because
it is a faculty that a creature (human) displays to adapt and survive to his
changing environments. The implicature of the title is that values have been
considered in the English philosophical tradition, almost alla Nietzsche, to
belong to the realm 'irrational.' Grice grants that axiological implicatum
rests on a PRE-rational propension.
1982.
Rationality and akrasia, in M. Hintikka and B. Vermazen, Actions and
events: essays on the work of Donald Davidson, Clarendon, with a reply by
Davidson, 1985, Davidson on weakness of the will, akrasia, incontinence, the
paradox of akrasia, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton
2-Folders 22-23, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: akrasia, incontinence, incontinentia,
philosophical psychology, rationality. "We shouldn't be saying this,
but we are saying it!" Grice prefers 'akrasia,' but he is happy to
use Cicero's translation, also negative, of this: 'incontinentia,' "as if
'continentia' were a virtue!". For Grice, the alleged paradox of
'akrasia,' both alethic and practical, has to be accounted for by a theory of
rationality from the start, and not be deemed a 'stumbling block.' Grice is
interested in both the common-or-garden 'boulomaic' version of akrasia,
involving the volitive 'soul'' -- in term of desirability -- and 'alethic' or
doxastic 'akrasia,' involing the judicative soul proper -- in terms of
probability.
1982.
Axiology, objective value, the conception of value, Clarendon, objectivity and
value, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 8-Folder 18, BANC MSS
1990/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: relative value, objective value. Some background
for his third Carus lecture. He tries to find out what J. L. Mackie means when
he says that a value is ultimately 'subjective'. What about inter-subjective,
and constructively 'objective'?
1982.
Axiology, The rational motivation for objective value, The conception of value,
Clarendon, objective value, rational motivation, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series
V (Topical), Carton 8-Folder 19, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The
University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: value, axiology,
rationality, objective value. Many notions are value-paradeigmatic. The
most important of all philosophical notions, that of 'rationality,' presupposes
objective value as one of its motivations. For Grice, 'ratio' can be
understood 'cognoscendi' but also 'essendi.' "Rational motivation"
involves both types of 'ratio.'
1983. Axiology, The
conception of value, Clarendon, The Paul Carus Lectures. H. P.
Grice (1983), Clarendon, Oxford, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II, Carton
2-Folders 12-16, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of
California, Berkeley. Keywords: objectivity, value, relative value,
absolute value, metaphysics, relative and absolute value, categorical
imperative. H. P. Grice: the axiological implicatum. While Grice rarely used
'axiology,' he should! A set of three lectures, which are
individually identified below. "I love Carus!” Grice was undecided as to what
his Paul Carus lectures were be on. He explores 'meaning' under its
'value' "optimality" guise in "Meaning
revisited." Grice thinks that a 'value-paradeigmatic' notion allows
him to respond in a more apt way to what some critics were raising as a
possible 'vicious circle' in his approach to 'semantic' and 'psychological'
notions. The Carus lectures are then dedicated to the 'construction,' alla
Hume, of a 'value-paradeigmatic' notion in general, and value
itself. Grice starts by quoting Austin and J. L. Mackie, of Oxford. The
lectures are intended to a general audience, provided it is a *philosophical*
general audience! Most of the second lecture is Grice's subtle exploration
of Kant's categorical imperative, with which he had struggled in the last John
Locke lecture on aspects of reasoning, notably the 'reduction' of the
categorical imperative to this or that 'counsel of prudence' with an implicated
protasis to the effect that the agent is aiming at 'eudaemonia.' The
three Paul Carus Lectures, Objectivity and value, Relative and absolute
value, and Metaphysics and value. There were three Paul Carus lectures.
The first lecture, "Objectivity and value," is a review of J. L.
Mackie's Inventing right and wrong; the second lecture, "Relative
and absolute value," is an exploration on the categorical imperative, and
its connection with a prior hypothetical imperative; the third lecture,
"Metaphysics and value," is a metaphysical defence of absolute value.
The collective citation should be identified by each lecture separately, and
this is done below.
1983. Objectivity and value, the first Paul Carus lecture, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: objectivity, value, Axiology -- Value and objectivity, the first Paul Carus lecture, in The Conception of Value, Clarendon, H. P. Grice (1983). Value and objectivity, the first Paul Carus Lecture, keywords: value, objectivity, J. L. Mackie. A discussion of J. L. Mackie's Inventing right and wrong. In the proceedings, Grice quotes the 'artless sexism' of J. L. Austin in talking about the 'trouser words' in Sense and Sensibilia. Grice tackles all the distinctions Mackie had played with: objective/subjective, absolute/relative, categorical/hypothetical.
1983.
Axiology, Relative and absolute value, the second Paul Carus lecture, in The
Conception of Value, Clarendon, The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: relative value, absolute value. An
exploration on Paton on the categorical imperative. Grice had previously
explored the logical form of hypothetical imperatives in the Kant (and
later Locke) lectures, notably in Lecture IV, "Further remarks on
practical and alethic reasons." Here he considers topics related to Hare's
tropic-clistic neustic-phrastic quartet. What does it mean to say that
a command is conditional? The two successors of Grice's post as
Tutorial Fellow at St. John's, G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, will tackle the
same issue with humour, in "Sense and nonsense," published by
Blackwell (too irreverent to be published by the Clarendon). Is the logical
form of a maxim, p horseshoe !q, or !(p horseshoe q), etc.
1983. Axiology,
Metaphysics and value, the third and last Paul Carus lecture, in The
Conception of Value, Clarendon, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays),
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: metaphysics, value. A metaphysical defence of
absolute value. The topic fascinated Grice, and he invented a few
routines to cope with it. Humeian projection rationally reconstructs the
intuitive concept 'being of value.' Category shift allows to put a value
such as Banbury's disinterestedness in grammatical subject position. But the
most important routine is that of Trans-Substantion (or Metousiosis): a
human reconstructs as a rational personal being, and alla Kantotle,
whatever he judges is therefore 'of absolute value.' The issue involves
for Grice the introduction of a final cause: 'the final cause of a tiger is 'to
tigerise,' the final cause of a reasoner is to reason! And this entails
absolute value, now metaphysically defended.
1983.
Relative and absolute value, Absolute value, Values, Morals, Absolutes, and the
Metapysical, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder
24, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Keywords: relative and absolute value, metaphysics,
axiology. The absolute, versus the relative, is constructed OUT of the
relative, thought. There is hardly a realm of UNconstructed reality. Grice
is especially concerned with J. L. Mackie's rather cavalier attitude towards
the relative and the absolute. Surely the 'absolute' IS a construction out
of the 'relative.' Grice takes a Kantotelian attitude. We designate a
proper judge, the ratiocinative part of the soul of a personal being. Whatever
is 'relative' to this particular creature attains, ipso facto, 'absolute
value.' Grice proposes a reduction of 'what is valuable-ABSOLUTE' to 'what
is valuable-RELATIVE,' and succeeds!
1984.
Reply to Richards, in Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions,
Categories, Ends, Clarendon, ed. R. E. Grandy and R. Warner, pp. 45-108,
Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P.
Grice, Festschrift and Warner Notes, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II
(Essays), Carton 4-Folders 27-30, and Series V (Topical), Carton 6-Folder 37,
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley.
Keywords: autobiography. “The life and opinions of H. P. Grice,” by H. P.
Grice! P. G. R. I. C. E. had been in the works for awhile. Knowing this, Grice
is able to start his auto-biography, to which he later adds a specific 'reply'
to a few objections by the editors. The 'Reply' is divided in neat sections.
After a preamble displaying his gratitude for the volume in his honour,
he turns to his 'prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and
opinions of H. P. Grice. The third section is a reply to the editors's overview
of his work. This reply itself is itselfsubdivided into questions of meaning and
rationality, and questions of "Metaphysics, philosophical psychology, and
value." As the latter reprinted in "The conception of value,"
Clarendon, it is possible to cite this sub-section from the 'Reply' as a
separate piece. Grice originally entitles his essay in a brilliant manner,
echoing the style of an English non-conformist, almost: "Prejudices and
predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice." With
his "Richards," a nice Welsh surname, Grice is playing with the first
name of both Grandy and Warner. Grice is especially concerned with what
'Richards' see as a commitment on Grice's part to the abstract entity of a
'proposition.' Grice also deals with the alleged insufficiency in his
conceptual analysis of 'reasoning.' He brings for good measure a point about a
potential 'regressus ad infinitum' in his account of a chain of intentions
involved in meaning and communicating in general. While one of the drafts is
titled 'Festschrift,' not by himself, strictly, it is not a festschrift in that
the name is hidden behind the acronym: P(hilosophical) G(rounds of) R
(ationality:) I(ntentions,) C(ategories,) E(nds). Notably on the philosophy of
perception. Also on the conception of value, especially that tricky third
lecture on a metaphysical foundation for objective value. Grice was
supposed to reply to the individual contributors, but does not. “I cancelled
the implicatum!” However, we may identify in his oeuvre points of contacts of
his own views with the philosophers who contributed. Most of this material is
reproduced verbatim, indeed, as the second part of his "Reply to
Richards," and it was a philosophical memoir of which Grice was rightly
proud! The life and opinions are, almost in a joke on Witters, distinctly
separated. Under 'Life,' Grice convers his conservative, irreverent rationalism
making his early initial appearance under the influence of his non-conformist
father, and fermented at his tutorials with Hardie at Corpus, and his
associations with J. L. Austin's Play Group on Saturday mornings. Under
'Opinions,' Grice mainly expands on 'ordinary-language' philosophy and his way
to the City of Eternal Truth. "Metaphysics, Philosophical Psychology,
and Value, in The Conception of Value, is thus part of his
"Prejudices and predilections." The authors Grice quotes are many and
various. Grice spends some delightful time criticising the critics of
'ordinary-language' philosophy such as Bergmann and Gellner. He also quotes
from Jespersen! And Grice includes a reminiscence of the bombshells brought from
Vienna by Freddie Ayer, the enfant terrible of Oxford philosophy. He recalls an
air marshal at a dinner with Strawson recalling Cook Wilson's adage, 'What we
know we know.' And more besides!
1983. Universalia, Universals, with M. Friedman, Group, Partial Working, Copy, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series V (Associations), Carton 6-Folder 11-12, and Series V (Topical), Carton 9-Folder 21-22, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: universalia, universalium, universalium ante re, universalium in re. Universalia as abstrata. Grice's concern with 'universalia' can be traced back to his reading of Aristotle's "Categoriae." Other than the 'substantia prima,' it may be said that anything else -- attribute, etc. -- belongs in the realm of 'universalia.’ As such, univeralia are not spatio-temporal continuants. However, Grice's category shift allows a 'universalium' as a subject of discourse. The topic is approached formally by means of the notion of 'order.' First-order predicate calculus' ranges over individuals, in Strawson's use of the term. A higher-order predicate calculus ranges over 'predicates' and beyond -- as such, a 'universaliu' can only be formalised in higher-order calculi. This is Grice's attempt to approach the Aristotelian and mediaeval problem in pragmatic key. Higher categories as Universalia. This is Grice doing history of philosophy. His main concern is with a 'universalium in re' as an abstract entity. He proposes an exploration of 'universalium in re' as a response to Extensionalism, so fashionable, he thinks, in the New World, within what he calls "The School of Latter-Day Nominalists."
1985. Correspondence
with P. Suppes, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series I (The Correspondence of H.
P. Grice, Sub-Series A), Carton 1-Folders 7-8, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Grice, Suppes,
utterer's meaning. Suppes was involved in the P. G. R. I. C. E., and
contributes an excellent "The Primacy of Utterer's Meaning," where he
addresses what he rightly sees as an unfair characterisations of Grice as a
behaviourist by three philosophers: Yu, Biro, and Chomsky. Biro was able to
reply to Suppes's commentary on Grice as proposing a reductive but not reductionist
analysis of meaning. Suppes rightly characterises Grice as an
'intentionalist,' rather, and using such jargon as 'basic procedure in one's
repertoire' as 'informal' and 'colloquial.'
1980. The Philosophy of Bealer, Bealer, Correspondence with G. P. Bealer, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series I (The Correspondence of H. P. Grice, 1A), Carton 1-Folder 4, and Series V (Topical), Carton 6-Folder 20, MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: Grice, Bealer, content. G. P. Bealer is one of Grice's most brilliant tutees! The Grice collection contains a full folder of correspondence with Bealer. Bealer refers to Grice in his influential Clarendon essay on content. Bealer is concerned with how 'pragmatic inference' may intrude in the ascription of a psychological state, attitude, or stance. Bealer loves to quote from Grice on definite descriptions "in Russell and in the vernacular," the implicature being that Russell is impenetrable!
1986. Actions and events, The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 3-Folders 1-5 and Series V (Topical), Carton 7-Folders 23 and 32, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: action, event, Davidson, logical form, freedom, cause. How do we define a Griceian action? How do we define a Griceian event? – H. P. Grice. This is Grice's examination and criticism of Davidson, as a 'scientific' realist, followed by a Kantian approach to freedom and causation. Grice is especially interested in 'the logical form,' or explicitum, so that he can play with the implicatum! One of his favourite examples: "He fell on his sword," having tripped as he crossed the Galliae. Grice manages to quote from many and varied authors (some of which you would not expect him to quote) such as Reichenbach, but also Robinson (of Oxford), von Wright and Eddington! Grice offers a 'linguistic botanic' survey of 'free' ("sugar-free," "free fall", "implicature-free") which some have found inspirational. His favourite is Finnegan's “alcohol-free." “His obvious implicature is that everything is alcohol-laden.” Grice kept a copy of Davidson's 'The logical form of action sentences,' since surely Davidson, Grice thought, is making a primary philosophical point. Horses run fast; therefore, horses run. A Davidsonian problem, and there are more to come! Smith went fishing. Grice's category shift invites us to see Smith's fishing as the grammatical subject of an 'action sentence.' Cf. indeed the way to cope with entailment in 'The horse runs fast; therefore, the horse runs.' Grice's "Actions and events" is Davidsonian in motivation, but Kantian in method, one of those actions by Grice to promote a Griceian event! Davidson had published, Grice thought, some pretty influential (and provocative, anti-Quineian) stuff on 'actions' and 'events,' or 'events and actions,' actually, and, worse, he was being discussed at Oxford, too, over which Grice always keeping an eye on! Davidson's point, tersely put, is that while “p.q” (e.g. “It is raining, and it is pouring”) denotes a concatenation of *events*, "Smith went fishing" denotes an 'action,' which is a kind of 'event,' if you are following him (Davidson, not Smith). However, Davidson is fighting against the intuition, if you are a follower of Whitehead and Russell, to symbolise the "Smith is fishing" as “Fs” — where 's' stands for Smith and F for 'fishing.' The logical form of a report of an 'event' or an 'action' seems to be slightly more complicated. Davidson's point specifically involves 'adverbs,' or adverbial modifiers, and how to play with them in terms of entailment. “The horse runs fast; therefore, the horse runs.” "Symbolise that!," as Davidson told Benson Mates! But Mates had gone to the restroom. Grice explores all these and other topics and submits the thing to "The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly." Grice quotes, as isn't his wont, from many and various philosophers, not just Davidson, whom he saw every Wednesday, but others he didn't, like Reichenbach, Robinson, Kant, and, again even a physicist like Eddington. Grice concludes that Davidson is into 'hypothesis,' or 'suppositio,' while he is, as he should, into 'hypostasis,' or 'substantia'!
1987. Conceptual analysis and the
province of philosophy, Studies in the Way of Words, Part II: Explorations in
semantics and metaphysics, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), BANC MSS
90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords:
conceptual analysis, philosophy. How many angels can dance on a needle’s point?
A needless point? This is Grice's update to his "Post war Oxford
Philosophy." More generally concerned with the province of philosophy in
general and conceptual analysis beyond 'ordinary language.' It can become
pretty technical. Note the Roman overtone of 'province'! Grice is implicating
that the *other* province is perhaps science. Grice likes to play with the idea
that a conceptual enquiry need not be philosophical. Witness the very opening
to "Logic and Conversation," 'Prolegomena': “Surely not all inquiries
need be philosophical!" In fact, a "claim to infame" of Grice at
the Play Group is having once raised the infamous, most subtle, question, what
is it that makes a conceptual enquiry philosophically interesting or
importance? As a result, Austin and his 'kindergarten' spent three weeks
analysing the distinct inappropriate implicata of things like "highly
depressed" to no avail! Grice's moralising implicature in retelling the
story is that since then he realised (as he hoped Austin knew) that there is
*no way* he or any philosopher can *dictate* to others, or himself, what is it
that makes a conceptual enquiry philosophically interesting or important!
1987. Retrospective epilogue, to Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard University Press, London, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 3-Folders 22-26 and Carton 4-Folders 1-2, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: latitudinal unity, meaning, conversational implicata, conversation as rational co-operation. Grice takes the opportunity of the compilation by Harvard of his 'studies in the way of words' to review the idea of philosophical progress in terms of eight different 'strands' which display, however, a consistent and distinctive unity. Grice keeps playing with 'valediction,' 'valeditory', 'prospective' and 'retrospective,' and the different drafts are all kept in The Grice Papers. In the 'Retrospective Epilogue' he provides input for his eight strands, and concludes with a fairy tale about his fairy godmother, G*! As he notes, Grice had dropped a few words in the 'preface' explaining the ordering of essays in the compilation. He mentions that he hesitated to follow Bennett's suggestion that the ordering of the essays be thematic and chronological. Rather, Grice chooses to publish the whole set of seven William James lectures as Part I. Part II is organised more or less thematically, though. In the "Retrospective Epilogue," Grice takes up the idea in the "Preface" that two ideas (Theme A and Theme B) underlie his Studies: that of meaning, and that of assertion. The "Retrospective Epilogue" is thus an exploration on these eight 'strands' he identifies in his own philosophy. Grice’s choice of ‘strand' should not mislead. For Grice, philosophy, like virtue, is entire. All the strands therefore show some 'latitudinal,' and, he hopes, 'longitudinal' unity. By these two types of 'unity,' Grice means the obvious idea that all sub-disciplines of philosophy (philosophy of language, philosophy of perception, philosophical psychology, etc.) interact or overlap, and that a historical regard for one's philosophical predecessors is a must.
1987. 'Preface'
to Studies in the Way of Words, Foreword, Preliminary
valediction, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 9-Folder 2,
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California,
Berkeley. Grice quotes from J. F. Bennett. More importantly, Grice focuses
on the 'assertion'/'non-assertion' distinction. He overlooks the fact that for
his beloved 'imperative utterances,' asserting is out of the question. He needs
a dummy to stand for both psychological attitudes, as in 'conveying
explicitly.' The explicatum or explicitum sometimes does the trick; sometimes
it doesn't!
1988. Studies in the way of words, Harvard University Press, London, The Grice Papers, Series II (Essays), Carton 3-Folders 7-21, BANC, MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: implicature, rationality. The title Grice eventually chooses for his compilation of essays is a tribute to Locke. The 'studies' are organised in two parts: "Logic and Conversation" and "Explorations in semantics and metaphysics." It also includes a Foreword and a very rich "Retrospective Epilogue." From Part I, The William James lectures, only three had not been previously published: "Prolegomena," "Indicative Conditionals," and "Some models for implicature." From Part II, a few essays had not been published before, but Grice is careful to date them.
1988. Linguistic
behaviour, correspondence with J. F. Bennett, of Oxford, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series I (The Correspondence of H. P. Grice -- IA), Carton 1-Folder 1,
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley.
Keywords: Grice, Bennett, "Linguistic Behaviour." Bennett quotes
Grice in his "Linguistic Behaviour." Grice quotes Bennett in the
"Foreword" to Studies in the Way of Words. Bennett has an earlier
essay on Rationality, which evidences that the topic is key in Grice's
Oxford.
1988. General
correspondence, The H. P. Grice Papers, Series I (The Correspondence of H. P.
Grice, IB: General), Carton 1-Folders 10-14, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Keywords: philosophical
correspondence Grice was not precisely a good correspondent. In the Oxford
manner, he preferred face-to-face interaction. He treasured his Saturday
mornings under Austin's guidance, and he himself led the Play Group after
Austin's demise.
1988. Grice
on Grice, Essays on Grice, H. P. Grice Griceana, Griceiana, The H. P. Grice
Papers, Series I (The Correspondence of H. P. Grice, IB: General), essays on
Grice, Carton 1-Folder 15, BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft Library, The
University of California, Berkeley. Keyword: secondary literature.
As one (even at Oxford) might expect, Grice is cited by various Oxford
philosophers! Perhaps the first to cite Grice in print is his tutee, P. F. Strawson,
in Introduction to Logical Theory. Early on, H. L. A. Hart quotes Grice on
meaning in his review of Holloway's Language and Intelligence for The
Philosophical Quarterly, before Grice's "Meaning" had been published.
Obviously, once Grice's and Strawson's "In defense of a dogma" and
Grice's "Meaning" were published by The Philosophical Review,
Grice is discussed profusely. References to his 'implicature' start to appear
in the literature at Oxford in the mid-1960s.
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