H. P. Grice, "Do's and don'ts"

We have, in all, then, three varieties of acceptability statement (each with alethic and practical sub-types), associated with the modals "It is fully acceptable that . . . " (non-defeasible), 'it is ceteris paribus acceptable that . . . ', and 'it is to such-and-such a degree acceptable that . . . ', both of the latter pair being subject to defeasibility. (I should re-emphasize that, on the practical side, I am so far concerned to represent only statements which are analogous with Kant's Technical Imperatives ('Rules of Skill').)

I am now visited by a temptation, to which of course I shall yield, to link these varieties of acceptability statement with common modals; however, to preserve a façade of dignity I shall mark the modals I thus define with a star, to indicate that the modals so defined are only candidates for identification with the common modals spelled in the same way. I am tempted to introduce 'it must* be that' as a modal whose sense is that of 'It is fully acceptable that' and 'it ought* to be that' as a modal whose sense is that of 'It is ceteris paribus (other things being equal) acceptable that'; for degree-variant acceptability I can think of no appealing vernacular counterpart other than 'acceptable' itself. After such introduction, we could allow the starred modals to become idiomatically embedded in the sentences in which they occur; as in "A bishop must* get fed up with politicians", and in "To keep his job, a bishop ought* not to show his irritation with politicians". end p.78 But I now confess that I am tempted to plunge even further into conceptual debauchery than I have already; having just, at considerable pains, got what might turn out to be common modals into my structures, I am at once inclined to get them out again. For it seems to me that one might be able, without change of sense, to employ forms of sentence which eliminate reference to acceptability, and so do not need the starred modals. One might be able, to this end, to exploit "if-then" conditionals (NB 'if . . . then', not just 'if') together with suitable modifiers. One might, for example, be able to re-express "A bishop must* get fed up with politicians" as "If one is a bishop, then (unreservedly) one will get fed up with the politicians"; and "To keep his job, a bishop ought* not to show his irritation with politicians" as "If one is to keep one's job and if one is a bishop, then, other things being equal, one is not to show one's irritation with politicians". Of course, when it comes to applying detachment to corresponding singular conditionals, we may need to have some way of indicating the character of the generalization from which the detached singular non-conditional sentence has been derived; the devising of such indices should not be beyond the wit of man. So far as generalizations of these kinds are concerned, it seems to me that one needs to be able to mark five features: (1) conditionality; (2) generality; (3) type of generality (absolute, ceteris paribus, etc., thereby, ipso facto, discriminating with respect to defeasibility or indefeasibility); (4) mode; (5) (not so far mentioned) whether or not the generalization in question has or has not been derived from a simple enumeration of instances; because of their differences with respect to direction of fit, any such index will do real work in the case of alethic generalities, not in the case of practical generalities. So long as these features are marked, we have all we need for our purposes. Furthermore, they are all (in some legitimate and intelligible sense) formal features, and indeed features which might be regarded as, in some sense, 'contained in' or 'required by' the end p.79 concept of a rational being, since it would hardly be possible to engage in any kind of reasoning without being familiar with them. So, on the assumption that the starred modals are identifiable with their unstarred counterparts, we would seem to have reached the following positions. (1) We have represented practical and alethic generalizations, and their associated conditionals, and with them certain common modals such as 'must' and 'ought', under a single notion of acceptability (with specific variants). (2) We have decomposed acceptability itself into formal features. (3) We have removed mystery from the alleged logical fact that acceptable practical 'ought' statements have to be derivable from an underlying generalization. (4) Though these achievements (if such they be) might indeed not settle the 'univocality' questions, they can hardly be irrelevant to them. I suspect that, if we were to telephone the illustrious Kant at his Elysian country club in order to impart to him this latest titbit of philosophical gossip, we might get the reply, "Big deal! Isn't that what I've been telling you all along?"