H. P. Grice on "We see with our eyes"

Grice tested the playmates of his children, 

aged 7 and 9, with

"Nothing can be green and red all over".

Instead, Morley Bunker preferred philosophy 

undergrads. 

Ain't that boring?

To give examples,


Summer follows Spring.


was judged ANALYTIC -- by 

Morley-Bunker's informants, as cited by
Sampson, in "Making sense" (Clarendon) 

by highly significant majorities
in each
group of subjects, while

"We see with our eyes."


was given near-even split votes by each group.


Over all, the philosophers were somewhat 

more consistent
with each other than the non-philosophers.


But that global finding conceals results 

for individual
sentences that sometimes manifested 

the opposed tendency.
Thus


Thunderstorms are electrical disturbances 

in the atmosphere.


was judged ANALYTIC by a 

highly significant majority of the non-
philosophers, while a (non-significant) 

majority of the
philosophers deemed it SYNTHETIC"


In this case, it seems, philosophical training 

induces the
realisation that well-established results of 

contemporary
science are not necessary truths.


In other caes, conversely, cliches of 

current philosophical
education impose their own mental 

blinkers on those who
undergo it:


Nothing can be completely red and 

green all over.


was judged ANALYTIC by a 

significant majority of philosophers
but only by a non-significant majority 

of non-philosophers.


All in all, Morley-Bunker's results 

argue strongly against the
notion that our inability to decide 

consistently whether or
not some statement is a necessary truth 

DERIVES FROM LACK OF
SKILL IN "ARTICULATING" OUR 

UNDERLYING KNOWLEDGE OF THE
RULES OF OUR LANGUAGE.


Rather, the inability comes from the fact 

that the question
as posed is UNREAL. We CHOOSE to 

treat a given statement as
open to question or as unchalleangeable
in the light of the overall structure of 

beliefs which we have
INDIVIDUALLY EVOLVED in 

order to make sense of our INDIVIDUAL
EXPERIENCE.


Even the cases which seem "clearly" 

analytic or synthetic are
cases which individuals judge alike because 

the relevant
experiences are SHARED by the whole 

community,


but even for such cases one can invent 

hypothetical future
experiences which, if they should be 

realised, would cause us
to revise our judgements.


Nota Bene. This is not intended to call 

into question the
special status of the "truths of logic", 

such as either


Either it is raining or it is not.


Unlike Katz, I am inclined to accept 

the traditional view
according to which "logical particles"
such as "not" and "or" are distinct from the
bulk of the vocabulary in that
the former REALLY are governed by 

clear-cut inference rules.


I shall not expand on this point here.
(Sampson, op. cit. p.70ff).