GRICE and WARNOCK on the implicatures of metaphysics and logic

Speranza

As Grice and Warnock remarked, one is not accustomed in philosophy nowadays to the
assumption that one is either a Platonist or a Nominalist.

These venerable names, with their deceptive suggestion of
clear and sharp opposition, are no longer regarded as profit-
able banners under which to attack philosophical problems
and opponents, nor as party titles exhausting the possibilities
of disagreement. However, disputes couched in exactly
these terms are still keenly waged among mathematical
logicians. It is said that there is, attached to the study of
mathematical logic, a different and in some ways more
important enquiry t called Ontology : and that leading ques-
tions in this enquiry are, for example ; what abstract entities
there are in addition to the concrete objects with which we
are all familiar ; or whether, on a more radical view, there
may be no abstract entities at all. The central ontological
question is, it seems, the question whether there are abstract
entities. It is commonly supposed that there is no difference of
principle (though certainly there are very many differences of
some sort) between properties, relations, concepts, numbers,
classes ; that all of them are in some way reducible to
classes, and so that the admission of these lets in all the rest.
And accordingly as one does or does not make this admission,
one is a Platonist or a Nominalist.

1 This is an extensively revised version of a paper originally published in
the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for 1950-51. That paper was very
defective, being confused at many points, in some passages irrelevant, and
written also in a rather disagreeable polemical tone. The present version,
though still directed at the same targets, is milder, shorter, and, I hope, much
clearer. I am most grateful to the editor for allowing me the opportunity to
make these changes.

75



y6 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

It is, as one would expect, exceedingly difficult to come
to grips with this debate, since the doctrines between which
one is to choose are so curiously worded. Do we believe
that there is a 'reality behind linguistic forms' ? Surely we
do. But Professor Quine regards this as the thin end of the
Platonic wedge, 1 which we must be prepared to extrude if
we wish to 'renounce abstract entities'. Are we willing, or
not, to make this renunciation ? But we do not know what
it is that we are invited to renounce. It would be both
arrogant and rash to assume that these queer-looking dis-
putes are quite without substance, but it does not appear at
first sight that any sensible choice could be made between
such alternatives.

Professor Quine has made numerous highly expert
attempts to sharpen the ontological issue for us. However,
in this paper I shall seek to show that the apparatus which
he brings to bear does not clearly or naturally apply to some
at least of the fields in which he has advocated its employ-
ment. I believe that some scrutiny of the logical symbolism
and logicians 1 devices which he uses, and some comparison
of these with certain features of ordinary language, will
reveal that the logician's apparent sharpening of the issue
involves in part the manufacturing of unnecessary problems,
and In part a distortion of what may be quite serious pro-
blems ; and I shall suggest that this may come about through
an insufficient sense of the perils involved in imposing the
neat simplicities of logic upon the troublesome complexities
of language. It is hardly necessary to say that 1 pick no
quarrel with mathematical logic itself, but only with some
of the peripheral uses to which its weapons are sometimes
put. The particular weapon which is, as I shall suggest,
importantly misused in the present case is the existential
quantifier.

A preliminary distinction should be made at once. The
central ontological question is, as I said above, the question
whether there are abstract entities. But this question is in
1 *On Universals', Journal of Symbolic Logic, September 1947.



METAPHYSICS IN LOGIC 77

an important sense secondary to the question whether some
given system of discourse implies that there are abstract
entities. The initial problem is said to be that of detecting
the ' ontologica! commitments J of a language or some depart-
ment of a language ; thereafter the different question can be
raised what language, and hence what commitments, one is
to adopt. It is not suggested that any strictly logical tests
will serve to answer the latter question, which seems to be
regarded as 'pragmatic' ; it is, however, claimed that the
question of ontological commitment falls within the purview
of the logician. As Quine puts it, 'perhaps we can reach no
absolute decision as to which words have designata and
which have none, but at least we can say whether or not a
given pattern of linguistic behaviour construes a word W as
having a designatum' ; I and one is held to be ontologically
committed to the existence of such entities as must be
designated by those expressions of one's language which
one takes to be designating expressions. A nominalistic
language will be such that all expressions in it which are
taken to have designative uses designate only concrete
objects ; a platonistic language will be such that it contains
expressions, construed as having designative uses, the desig-
nata of which must be abstract entities. The first pro-
blem, then, is that of deciding whether a given language or
part of a language is platonistic or nominalistic; and if
satisfaction were obtained on this point, it would be possible
to proceed to the further question, which is the proper sort
of language to use.

(l) 'WHAT IS THERE?'

Are there classes ? Do numbers exist ? Are there such
things as abstract entities ? Quine has on more than one
occasion boiled down such typical ontologists* questions to
the simple and uncompromising formula, 'What is there ?'

It needs no argument to show that this way of posing

1 'Designation and Existence *> Journal of Philosophy > 1939.
G



7 8 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

the question, perhaps never meant to be taken seriously, is
unprofitable; It appears to invite a quite indefinite and
possibly endless range and variety of answers. There is a
pen in my hand ; there is a pain in my ankle ; there is a
virtue in necessity ; there is general confidence in the dollar.
These are all correct expressions, and what they state may
well be true. It cannot be supposed, however, that to add
to such truths at random is the proper way to solve the
ontological problem. We are really more interested in the
question what kinds of things there are are there abstract
as well as concrete entities ? and even this question is, as
has been pointed out, strictly secondary to the question what
kinds of things we are committed to believing that there
are. So let us try to approach this latter question more firmly.

(2) DESIGNATION

One method of approach to the problem begins with
the unexceptionable assumption that, if a given expression
designates something, then there is something which it
designates ; or more cautiously, that if an expression has a
designative use, there is something which in that use it
designates. If, for example, 'Tito* has a designative use,
then there is such a person as Tito. It is taken for granted
that there are concrete objects, such presumably as Tito,
which may be designated ; it is a question whether ex-
pressions which, if they had designative uses, would desig-
nate abstract entities, are in fact taken to have designative
uses. If they are so taken, then we must hold that there are
abstract entities ; if not, not or at any rate not unless
they turn up in some other way.

We require, then, tests by which to decide what ex-
pressions are taken to have designative uses, and hence
what we must hold that there is to be designated. Quine
has more than once described two such tests, admitting
that they are not absolutely conclusive. I shall seek to show
that the case is worse than this.



METAPHYSICS IN LOGIC 79

The most important of these tests consists In an operation
called 'existential generalization'. Suppose I say

(i) Leeds is a City

Then, since there is in fact a city of which 'Leeds' is the
name, I am presumably entitled to state that there is some-
thing of which my statement is true. That is, I can safely
assert

(la) Something is a city. Or

(i) There is something which is a city. Or even

(ic) There is an x such that x is a city.
If on the other hand I had said

(2) Valhalla is mythological,

I would certainly wish to convey that there is actually no
such place ; and it is assumed that I must object to the
inference that there is something which is mythological. I
must not allow

(20) There is an x such that x is mythological,
since my point was that there is not a place called ' Valhalla'.
It is then argued that this difference between the logical
behaviour of 'Leeds' and 'Valhalla 1 can be attributed to the
fact that ' Leeds' is, and 'Valhalla* is not, taken to designate,
name, or refer to an actual place. It might seem, then, that
we have in this device a method of deciding in general
whether or not a given expression is regarded as having a
designative use, or (to put the point more insidiously) as
designating something.

Suppose then that we try to apply this test of existential
generalization to disputed cases say to 'appendicitis', or
'17', expressions which, it is held, must designate abstract
entities if they designate anything at all. We might say,
for instance,

(3) Appendicitis is painful. Or

(4) 1 7 is a prime number.

Now is there something of which each of these statements is
true ? Can we infer that something is painful, that some-
thing is a prime number ?



go ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

But here we encounter a curious difficulty. How can we
possibly decide whether or not to tolerate these inferences ?
The trouble is that

(30) There is something which is painful, and

Something is a prime number,



are wholly odd and mystifying sentences, for which it is
difficult to imagine plausible contexts of utterance. And
for this reason it seems impossible to pronounce generally on
the question of their admissibility.

But let us see what can be done. Suppose someone says,
'He is suifering from appendicitis'. I might, if I were un-
certain about this diagnosis, reply, ' Perhaps he is ; he is
certainly suffering from something 7 ; and it might turn out
in the end to be appendicitis. Or suppose I have worked
out a sum, and found the solution of it to be 17; but I forget
this, and later when I try to re-work the sum I get stuck.
In such a case I might well say, with an air of dogged be-
wilderment, 'Well, something was the right answer* per-
haps in order to insist that the sum does work out somehow,
is not insoluble. There are thus some cases at least in which
one might use 'something' where, if one had more or better
evidence, or exact knowledge, one would instead have said
'appendicitis' or ' 17' ; and so perhaps one would have no
reason to object, though one might be extremely puzzled,
If one were invited to reverse the usual procedure and to
replace 'appendicitis' or '17' by 'something'. One decides,
let us say, to accept existential generalization in these cases.

What does this prove ? It is supposed to prove that one
is thereby recognizing appendicitis and 17 as ' somethings',
entities, and, furthermore, as abstract, Platonic entities. But
surely it does not prove anything like this ; for at this point
one begins to encounter the invaluable non-simplicity of
ordinary speech. The difficulty is that * something' does not
behave in the way required in the logician's argument. For
if I inform a bored or inattentive listener that Valhalla is
mythological, it would be perfectly in order for him, if



METAPHYSICS IN LOGIC 81

questioned about our conversation, to say, 'He was telling
me that something or other was mythological 1 ; and this
use of 'something* would not be taken as evidence that he
thought there really was such a place, nor would his report
be condemned as self-contradictory. And if I say, secret-
ively, that I am imagining something, I do not thereby evince
belief in the actual existence of what I imagine. If one were
to use the queer-sounding sentences, * There is something
which is mythological 1 , or "There is something which I am
imagining', one would certainly perplex one's hearers ; but
the use even of these odd sentences cannot be said to be flatly
ruled out merely because the mythological does not, and the
imagined may not, actually exist. Still less (indeed in no
way) conclusive is the mere use of ' something *, without
1 there is', in sentences of a quite different construction.

It is in fact pretty obvious that one's readiness or reluct-
ance to use 'something' in the cases mentioned has really
no sort of connexion with the question whether or not one
supposes that diseases, numbers, etc., are abstract entities,
possible designata of abstract expressions. The word
'something' has an entirely different function. One is
ordinarily disposed to use the word 'something' in cases
where one does not know what in particular, or where for
some reason one does not wish to specify ; and there is no
sharp restriction upon the sorts of expressions which in such
cases one cannot or does not wish to use, so that one has
recourse to the use of 'something'. Hesitation in admitting
such sentences as (30) and (40) is indeed justified not,
however, because their admission would entail acceptance of
any philosophical doctrine, but because it would be very hard
to see when or why one might wish to say such things, or what
one could possibly be getting at if one did.

The failure of existential generalization to do for us what
is required can be explained, in part, briefly as follows. In
manipulating the symbolism of logic, if I have the expression
' Fa', I am undoubtedly entitled to write down the expression
'(3x)Fx'; and in so far as the rules for the use of this



82 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

expression are fixed, there is no uncertainty as to what is
meant. But if I come across the expressions ' 17 is a prime
number' or ' Valhalla is mythological', I cannot be sure
that I am right if I say, * Something- is a prime number',
nor can anyone else be sure that I am wrong if I say, ' Some-
thing is mythological'. For the former sentence is doubt-
fully admissible as English, the latter might be intelligible
and true in suitable contexts. In any case it would be quite
impossible to say, simply on the basis of someone's readiness
to employ these sentences, that he was a Platonist or self-
inconsistent ; for in the ordinary language in which they
purport to be expressed, they simply would not have the
implications thus imputed to them.

But perhaps a yet more important consideration is this.
The test of existential generalization is most simply em-
ployed as a device for revealing how names of actual persons,
cities, etc,, may be made to function differently in some con-
texts from story-tellers' names for mythical or fictitious
persons and cities. But it is further supposed that the very
same device can be applied at once to the job of detecting
the existence or non-existenee of abstract entities. This
assumption appears to embody the supposition that the
question whether there are or are not abstract entities is
just like the question whether there is or is not a city called
4 Leeds ' ; that, if there are no abstract entities, then appendi-
citis, etc., belong in the same list as Pegasus, Apollo, Mr.
Pickwick; that, if '17' does not designate anything, it fails
to do so in the same way as 'Cerberus' fails.

Now here again it is surely in point to draw a contrast
between logic and language. If we have a form of discourse
already reduced to the pattern of quantificational logic, then
doubtless we can draw a simple distinction between ex-
pressions allowed to be ' substituends ' for bound variables,
and expressions debarred from such employment. But there
is no warrant for the belief that expressions in ordinary
language can be dichotomized in a similarly simple manner.
It seems almost too obvious that no one device could force



METAPHYSICS IN LOGIC 83

'Pegasus', '23', ' intelligence ', 'redness 1 , and 'republican-
ism' into a single bag. No doubt none of these designated
a concrete object, but they fail to do so If indeed they can
be said even to fail in ways that are utterly diverse.
' Pegasus J designates no concrete object, and it is true that
there is no such thing as Pegasus ; ' republicanism ' designates
no concrete object, but that there is no such thing as re-
publicanism is, of course, straightforwardly false ; ' 23 ' does
not designate a concrete object, but that there is no such
thing as 23 is so queer a remark that, unless further explained,
it must defy the assignment of any truth-value.

At this point a protest might also be entered against the
alleged dichotomy between concrete objects and abstract
entities. It is manifest that, unless this distinction is clear,
we do not clearly know what Platonism or Nominalism is,
and also that, unless it is exhaustive, we do not know that
these are necessary alternatives. But consider such a list as
the following: (i) 'gravitational field'; (2) 'the North
Pole' ; (3) 'the Heaviside layer' ; (4) 'the Common Law' ;
(5) 'shadows'; (6) 'rainbows'; (7) 'the Third Republic'.
Any of these expressions may occur in true or false state-
ments not in fiction or myth. There is such a thing as the
Common Law ; there are such things as rainbows ; there
was such a thing as the Third Republic, etc. None of these
things could be called a Universal; none has 'instances';
some require the definite article ; yet none would naturally
be called ' concrete ' ; and it is at least uncertain which, if
any, should be labelled 'particular'. What is referred to by
(2) or by (3) has a definite position ; shadows and rainbows
have dimensions ; and the Third Republic had a definite
duration. But shadows and rainbows, though visible, cannot
be touched, heard, or smelt; the Common Law cannot be
seen, and also has no position, shape, or size ; the Heaviside
layer can move, but cannot be seen or heard or felt to be
moving. And so on. Again, it may very well be that in the
symbolism of logic some clear distinction can be made
corresponding to that alleged between the abstract and the



84 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

concrete ; but that this is so, if it is so, settles nothing when
we return to ordinary words. The distinctions here are per-
haps not useless, but they are certainly neither precise nor
exhaustive. It surely follows that outside logic no
definite sense can be attached to the supposed assertions and
denials of the Nominalist, just as no definite results could be
obtained by the device of existential generalization.

The second test by which it has been hoped to identify
expressions having designative uses is the converse of existen-
tial generalization, and is called ' application'. We have
so far attempted to decide whether or not (say) 23 is an
entity, or is thought to be so, by asking whether what is true
of 23 is thereby true, or thought to be so, of an x, a some-
thing. It is now proposed that we take some formula which
we know to be true of all x's, and ask whether it is thereby
true of (say) appendicitis. Suppose we agree that, for all
values of x, x=x ; can we proceed to infer that appendicitis
= appendicitis ?

This is not much help. In addition to the over-simplifica-
tions already noted, there is here the further defect that the
conclusion to be drawn (or rejected) by application seems
merely fantastic. Why should such an expression as ' ap-
pendicitis = appendicitis' ever be written down, uttered,
asserted, or denied ? It says nothing whatever about any-
thing ; it is not a mathematical equation ; it does not look
like any sort of logicians 1 theorem. And if we were for any
reason persuaded to allow this sort of expression, it would
be hard indeed for the speaker of plain English to see why
any version of it should be, or indeed how it could be, denied.
Pegasus = Pegasus' looks odd, but not deniable ; there seems
to be nothing wrong with 'pink=pink', nor yet with 'if=if '.
If this is a test for designative use, then every expression
designates.

Let me say again, at some risk of being tedious, what I
think it is that goes wrong with, the logico-ontologist's argu-
ment. It is supposed that because, in the symbolism of logic,
certain distinctions can be clearly drawn and certain infer-



METAPHYSICS IN LOGIC 85

ences made, the same should be true of discourse in general ;
that since we can be clear what sorts of logicians 8 expressions
may be used, and how they may be used, in contexts of
existential quantification, it should be possible similarly to
discover the 'existential commitments* of ordinary talk.
This is, however, not so. For the expressions supposed
to correspond to the existential quantifier ('There is . . .',
c . . . exists 5 , "Something . . .', 'There is something
which . . .') are too diverse and intricate in their uses to
yield the necessary results; and the supposed distinction
between abstract and concrete entities is too wavering and
non-inclusive. The Nominalist, launched with this inappro-
priate equipment upon the field of ordinary discourse, is
obliged ('There is no such thing as appendicitis') to conduct
his campaign in a manner so exceedingly awkward that
doctors and other philosophical non-combatants must in-
evitably be assailed along with the Platonic army.

(3) FRAGMENTATION OF SENTENCES

I would next like to enter, consistently with my general
thesis, a mild protest against another logicians' practice,
doubtless innocent enough in many contexts, but liable to
cause much perplexity in the present case. Consider the
straightforward statement

(5) There is a prime number between 13 and 19.

This might indeed be called though for reasons given
below only with due caution an existential statement, so
that it should be a fair case for the use of the existential
quantifier. But even here the conventions of logicians are
fraught with some peril. For in their hands such a sentence
is apt to become, by accepted translation of the symbolism,

(50) There is something which is a prime number
and is between 13 and 19.

It is important to notice that into this transformed version



86 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

an 'and ' has mysteriously entered, so that the whole sentence
now appears to contain as a proper part the sentence, * There
is something which is a prime number', or 'There is a prime
number'. But how is this surprising appearance generated ?
It is of course an accepted rule of logic that from (gx)(Fx.Gx)
we may without qualms derive (3x)Fx ; there is no doubt
that the latter expression is well formed, or that it is entailed
by the former. From this, however, it does not follow that
the first half of (5) or (5*) is by itself an impeccable and
intelligible sentence in English ; on the contrary, it is clearly
not so. For if someone were to say, ' There is a prime number ' ,
and then stop, one would wait expectantly for the rest of his
observation; one would not suppose that he had already
come to the end of it. One does not assert bare Being. ' Go
on J , one might say, ' what about it ? ? And if he were merely
to repeat, ' There is a prime number', this being the whole of
his contribution, one would be left in bewilderment. What
can he be getting at ? Can he suppose that anyone has ever
said that there is not a prime number ? And even if someone
had ever said this, in what would the disagreement .have
consisted ? If one takes it for granted that the baffling frag-
ment, * There is a prime number' is really a proper part of a
conjunctive sentence and so could stand alone, it may seem
necessary since it has no ordinary use to invent some
curious sense for it, to interpret it as meaning something odd
that there is an object called a prime number, an Entity,
one of the things that are. Here indeed we seem to be tread-
ing Platonic ground ; but it is easy to see that by this path
at least we would never have got there, if the original plain
statement had not been broken in two. In general : Sen-
tences of English cannot usually be taken to pieces in the
way in which their corresponding formulae can be.

(4) EXISTENTIAL QUANTIFICATION

Let us now make a final and more head-on attack upon
the logico-ontologist's apparatus. It is sometimes said, with



METAPHYSICS IN LOGIC 87

a view to clarifying the issue, simply that we must admit
into our accepted ' universe of entities' ail those things which
we allow to be values of the bound variables of quantification.
We may discourse of classes, as Boole does, or of proposi-
tions, as in the prepositional calculus, without thereby com-
mitting ourselves to Platonism ; for we can discourse in these
ways without taking the fateful step of * quantifying over J a
class, or a proposition. If we take this crucial step, however,
we fall into the ontological grip of the existential quantifier.

Let us begin at a point where all seems reasonably clear.
We may, for example, wish to indicate that some algebraic
formula holds for all values, or for at least one value, of the
variable occurring in it ; and here ' values J has the familiar
sense of ' numerical values '. Dealing with integers we might
say, 'For all values of x, 2x is even', or 'For at least one
value of x, x=7~3'. And the first of these expressions
states that whatever integer we choose, if we multiply it by
2 we have an even number ; the second that there is at least
one integer equal to 7 minus 3.

But a statement of this latter kind has been thought to
raise a peculiar difficulty. It might be described as an
existential statement, and if so, do we not by making it
commit ourselves to the important view that a certain
number (in this case 4) exists ; and so, since a number is
presumably an abstract entity, to the acceptance of Plato-
nism ? Are we not thus trapped by the existential quantifier ?

To this there appear at once to be the following objections.
First, the existential statement in question, whether true or
false, can be shown to be true or false by purely mathematical
operations. In fact every schoolboy knows quite well that
it is true, even if he has never so much as heard of Plato,
and there could be no serious argument about it. Further,
even if one were to call for a full demonstration, one would
be offered no contentious philosophical arguments, but
only a bit of mathematics. The whole matter is entirely
remote from the arena both of Platonic and of anti-Platonic
philosophizing.



88 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

And in any case, second, the statement does not state
that the number 4 exists, but only that there Is an integer
equal to 7 minus 3 a very different matter. To say that
there is a number of a certain sort is not at all the same as
to mention a number and then assert that it exists. The
question whether there is an integer equal to 7 minus 3 is
closed, once we have said and if necessary shown that 4 is
such a number. Whether the number 4 itself exists is, if
there could be any such question at all, a quite different
question a different sort of question; and certainly we
do not answer it in the affirmative merely by answering
affirmatively the other question.

However, it seems, I suppose, tempting to argue that, if
there is an integer equal to 7 minus 3, and 4 is such a number,
then at least there must be such a number as 4. This I take
to be odd, rather trivial, but presumably true. But even
this does not either require or license us to say that the
number 4 exists \ for the phrases 'There is . . .', 'There is
such a thing as . . .', and '. . . exists' are not, as they are
so often assumed to be, synonymous and interchangeable.
Consider

(6) There are tigers in Africa.

(?) Tigers still exist.

(8) There are such things as tigers.

First, clearly (6) would sound odd and incomplete if we
omitted from it the words 'in Africa'. It would then be, in
fact, a mere fragment of a sentence, just as * There is a prime
number* was a fragment of a sentence. Sentence (7) is per-
fectly natural, in as much as it contains the word 'still', and
thus would be understood as conveying the information that
tigers are not extinct. f Tigers exist ' would be by compari-
son queer ; it is not easy to see why anyone should want to
say such a thing, though perhaps it might be intelligible
enough in some suitable context. I think that (8) would
usually be understood as a denial of the idea that tigers are
fictitious or mythological beasts, employed to distinguish



METAPHYSICS IN LOGIC Bg

tigers from phoenixes and unicorns. It might have other
uses, but this would be typical enough.

Now it is no doubt the case that the seriously made
statement 'There are tigers in Africa* would not be true
unless (a) tigers still existed, were not extinct, and (3) there
were such things as tigers, non-fictitious , non-mythological.
But it is equally clear that to say that there are tigers in
Africa is not to say that tigers still exist, nor is it to say that
there really are such animals. Of course there are con-
nexions, but there are also marked differences, between these
three statements ; the situations, questions, counter-asser-
tions, etc., which would naturally call for their utterance are
quite distinct.

Consider next

(9) There are shadows on the moon.

There is no doubt that this is both intelligible and true. But
in this case there seems to be no plausible counterpart to
sentence (7). What could be meant by saying that shadows
(or, the shadows) exist ? There is no question of shadows
being or not being extinct of their still, or perhaps no
longer, existing. Certainly we should not say that the
shadows on the moon do not exist ; this would be too much
like saying that they are not really there (but are really seas,
or due to defects of eyesight, etc.). But if we say that the
shadows on the moon exist, or in general that shadows
exist, might we not appear to be suggesting that shadows
lie about on things as sheets do that perhaps they could
be taken up and erected for shelter ? After all, a shadow
is in many ways more like the absence of something than the
presence of anything ; in a way, there is nothing there
when we say there's a shadow. And so, if someone were to
ask whether shadows exist, we should not know what he had
in mind, we should feel reluctant to answer either yes or no.
We do not in fact use the word * exist' in talk about shadows.
What then of * There are such things as shadows* ? The
most plausible use that I can think of for this is an ironic



90 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

one, calling attention to the obvious addressed, for in-
stance, to a painter who always leaves the shadows out of
his pictures. Similarly, one might say 'There are such
things as tigers* as an ironically phrased reason for not
spending the night in the open. These remarks are clearly
quite unlike the enigmatic 'Shadows exist ', or ' Tigers exist'.

In this connexion numbers, classes, properties, etc. re-
semble shadows rather than tigers. We can say * There is
a number which, multiplied by 3, gives 21'; but we feel
wholly baffled by the question whether this number is,
whether it exists, whether numbers exist. No one surely
supposes that numbers might be extinct, or that they figure
only in legend and fiction ; and every one knows that there
is such a subject as arithmetic, that in this sense there are
such things as numbers. Of course one does not wish to
deny that numbers exist one does not use the word
'exist' at all, in talk about numbers.

The expressions I have been considering are of course
familiar ones, and it is really pretty obvious that they have
different uses. However, employment of the existential
quantifier is liable to blind the logician's eye to just such
points as these. To this one device is given the job of sym-
bolizing such phrases as 'There is . . .', 'There is such a
thing as . . .', '. . . exists', and even 'Some . . .', 'At
least one . . .', and 'There is something which . , .'. Be-
cause all these phrases are ordinarily dealt with by the use
of the existential quantifier, it is easy to assume that they
are interchangeable, all really the same; it may even be
naively supposed that logic has somehow proved that they
are really the same, and that one must be wrong if neverthe-
less one insists that they are different. (Too often the boot
gets on the wrong foot in this way as if a map-maker
should complain that the mountains were inaccurate.) It is
of course possible that/0r some purposes perhaps for most
of the purposes of logicians the phrases in question are
not relevantly different, and so that a single symbolic device
may be more or less workable. If there is, say, a green



METAPHYSICS IN LOGIC 91

book on my table, then it is at any rate true, for what It Is
worth, that there is something of which I could say i It is a
green book J ; that there is at least one book which is green ;
that there is such a thing as a green book ; even, perhaps,
by stretching matters a little, that some books are green and
that a green book exists. But for many other purposes the
differences between these locutions will remain of vital
importance. It will often be highly important to remember
that where, for example, it is intelligible and true to say
'There is such a thing as x', to say that there is x or that x
exists may be unintelligible, and even if not unintelligible
will usually be different. Those who use expressions of the
sorts supposed to correspond to the existential quantifier are
not all saying the same kind of thing, nor can there be any
single philosophical position to which they are committed
by their readiness to use such expressions. The proper
understanding of these expressions- is not assisted, but on
the contrary rendered almost impossible, by the lavish intro-
duction of quantifiers. For thus the harmless will constantly
be transformed into the peculiar ; progress will be held
up by unnecessary questions, needless scruples, and false
dilemmas ; and in the obscurity Plato's ghost will seem
to be lurking.

I have been arguing in this paper that the efforts of the
logician to clarify problems of ontology fail, since the devices
employed all turn on notions of quantificational logic, par-
ticularly on the use of bound variables and the existential
quantifier ; and that this apparatus has little or no clear
application to the ordinary words and idioms in which the
problems are initially expressed. I need finally to defend
this argument against the charge of irrelevance. Professor
Quine has recently written l that t the philosophical devotees of
ordinary language are right in doubting the final adequacy
of any criterion of the ontological presuppositions of ordinary
language', since 'the idiomatic use of " there is" in ordinary

1 From a Logical Point of View, p. 1 06.



92 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

language knows no bounds comparable to those that might
reasonably be adhered to in scientific discourse painstakingly
formulated in quantificational terms '. However, he observes
that this is a minor affair, since the enquiry into ontological
commitments is properly concerned, not with ordinary lan-
guage at all, but with 'one or another real or imagined
logical schematization of one or another part or all of
science J . If so, it would of course follow that my argument,
though within its own limits possibly sound, has been sub-
stantially beside the point. Now one way in which I might
seek to ward off this charge would be by maintaining, first,
that most of the last ten years' literature of ontology embodies
no such awareness as Quine now expresses of the limitations
of symbolism in application to ordinary language; and
second, that there is also little evidence in that literature of
any particular concern with science, except for one or two
brief statements that some unspecified science is the subject
ultimately in view. However, to adopt either of these
courses would involve much rather acrimonious citation of
texts, with much risk of distortion, misconstruction, and mis-
understanding ; it would be a mere exercise in post mortem
polemics. In any case I think that it is more to the point
to make a counter-charge of irrelevance. If it is true that
ontology in its modern dress can get firmly to grips only
with scientific discourse really or imaginedly schematized,
then certainly it can have little relevance, if any, to philo-
sophical problems about universals, concepts, etc. abstract
entities in general, the supposed subject-matter of the
enquiry. For these problems arose from, can be posed,
clarified, discussed, and (in their way) settled in, quite
ordinary, unregenerate language ; they can neither be con-
fined to, nor settled in, language of any specially regimented
pattern. If one cannot deal with philosophical problems of
ontology upon the field of discourse in general, one cannot
deal with them at all ; one can only pass them by. This
itself, if admitted, would be a useful conclusion to reach.
At least it would be clear that there are problems which we



METAPHYSICS IN LOGIC 93

cannot look to the logician to settle for us, and that the old
problems of ontology remain among them.

Perhaps after all this is really to say no more than that
they are philosophical and not logical problems. But in
uttering this highly charged platitude, I suspect that one can
only be pretending to have arrived at an absolutely uncon-
troverslal terminus.

GRICE AND FLEW on Philosophy and Language

Speranza

Grice and Flew propose
to attack a miscellany of popular miscon-
ceptions, trying Incidentally to illuminate various possibly
puzzling- practices. A very typical passage from Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics will serve as a text:

We must also grasp the nature of deliberative excellence
vj3ov\ia and find whether it is a sort of knowledge, or of
opinion, or of skill at guessing ixjro"xia, or something different
from these in kind. Now it is not knowledge : for men do not
investigate l^rovai matters about which they know, whereas
deliberative excellence is a sort of deliberation, and deliberating
implies investigating and calculating. But deliberation is not the
same as investigation : it is the investigation of a particular sub-
ject [t.e. conduct A. FJ. Nor yet is it skill at guessing : for
this operates without conscious calculation, and rapidly, whereas
deliberating takes a long time. . . . Correctness cannot be predi-
cated of knowledge, any more than can error, and correctness of
opinion is truth (Bk. VI, ch. ix: 1142 a 32 ff.).

Objections', (i) 'But imagine that a man knew that
there was a body buried in his back garden, and neverthe-
less joined with the police in their investigations : would that
not be investigating a matter about which he already knew? J

(ii) 'But surely it is sometimes all right to speak of
erroneous knowledge: as when sarcastically I say: "He
knew the winner of the two-thirty: but he knew wrong "?'

1 This paper was originally commissioned by the Philosophical Quarterly as
a cross between a survey of work of a certain sort published since the end of the
Second German War and an apologia 'pro philosophia nostra contra murmurantes.
Hence it was to a quite exceptional degree both polemical in tone and burdened
with footnotes. For this reprinting the tone has been softened and the burden
lightened a little. But the former is considerably sharper and the latter very
much heavier than they would be if I had been writing now and for this present
purpose.

i



2 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

Replies: (i) 'No, it would in his case, but not that of
the police, only be pretending to investigate, a matter of
"investigating" (in inverted commas, making the protest
that this is a bogus case of investigation). To anyone
who knows that the man knows that the body is there,
and yet sincerely persists in saying that that man is
investigating, and not pretending to investigate or
"investigating" (in snigger quotes): what else can we
say but "You just do not know the meaning of the word
1 investigate '"?'

(ii) 'You are quite right, of course: but your excep-
tion is one which, properly understood, only helps to
reinforce Aristotle's thesis. For the whole sarcastic point
of the use of the expression "knew wrong" and of saying
"he 'knew'" (in that sniggering inverted comma tone of
voice) depends absolutely on the (logical) fact that "He
knows p" entails "p"; that it is incorrect to say "He
knows p" unsarcastically if you or he to your knowledge
have reason to doubt p. 1 And, again, if anyone has reason
to doubt p (or, still better, knows not p) ; and yet sincerely
and unsarcastically insists "He (there) knows p" : what else
can we say but "Either you do not know the meaning of
the word ' know ' and are ignorantly misusing it ; or else you
have your own peculiar use for the word which I wish you
would explain and try to justify" ? 7

Notes : (i) It is appropriate to build our basic example
here upon a passage of the Nicomachean Ethics : since
most of the avant-garde of Oxford philosophy since the war
(Austin, Hart, Hare and Urmson, for instance) are soaked
in this book ; and there is a very strong analogy between
their work and it.

1 See J. L. Austin's classic 'Other Minds' in Logic and Language, Vol. II
(ed. A. Flew, Blackwell, Vol. I, 1951, Vol. II, 1953), and also in of S. E.
Toulmin's 'Probability', Chapter VIII below. I shall use LL 3 I and LL, II
as abbreviations for Logic and Language, First and Second Series, respectively.
I apologize for the frequency of these references : but those wishing to look up
some of the articles mentioned here will presumably be glad to reduce the
number of volumes with which they have to deal; while certainly no one will
wish to have repeated anything I have said before.



PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE 3

When someone like Ryle says 'We don't say* or 'We
can't say' or uses any of the semi-equivalent expressions of
the material mode of speech ; and we can think of occasions
on which we might and do intelligibly and not incorrectly
say precisely what he says we cannot say : it is a good rule
to consider whether these exceptions do not in fact actually
reinforce the point he is really concerned to make, or whether,
if not, they are really relevant to it, involving the same use
of the word. No one is infallible, and certainly not Ryle in
this matter, but we should allow for the fact that a self-
contradictory or otherwise logically improper expression may
get a piquancy precisely as such ; and can thus acquire a
use, a point, which depends entirely on the fact that it is a
misuse, and is thus parasitical on the logico-linguistic rule
to which it is an exception. 'He knew but he knew wrong',
'bachelor husband', and 'the evidence of my own eyes' all
get their piquancy in this way.

(A) ' But Aristotle was not concerned with mere words :
whereas your replies to objections involve nothing else.' A
closer look at the example will show that and how this anti-
thesis is here crucially misleading. The replies are not about
words in the way in which protests at the replacement of
'men (and women)' or 'people' by '(male and female) per-
sonnel' are about words. 1 Nor do they concern English
words to the exclusion of equivalents in Greek or Chocktaw.
Nor do they even concern words as opposed to non-verbal
signs doing the same jobs. (Consider the camp-fire version
of 'Underneath the spreading chestnut tree', of which our
late King was so fond, in which gestures replace some of the
words.) Rather they are about the uses of certain words,
the jobs they do, the point of employing them : their -mean-
ing^ and the implications which they carry.

Thus it would be no more necessary to mention the
particular Ehglish words 'investigate' and 'know' in trans-
lating the replies into another language than it is to mention
ts- and emar^^ in rendering Aristotle's argument from

1 'God created personnel in his own image' (Sir Alan Herbert)



4 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

the Greek. Though English-speaking philosophers some-
times speak of correct or standard English this must not be
mistaken to imply that they are concerned with English as
opposed to other languages (usually: but see (B) below). 1
The replies, like Aristotle's theses and the objections to them,
are all equally concerned with logic as much as with lan-
guage. The whole enquiry is logical rather than philological,
an examination of the 'informal logic' 2 of two workaday
concepts. Hence the fashion for expressions such as 'the
logic of (our) language \ 'logic and language ', 'the logic of
" probable '", 'the logical behaviour of " God "-sentences',
and even 'logical geography' is not necessarily just a point-
less irritating fad ; though nothing we have to say will do
anything to justify 'The Logic of British and American
Industry' or 'The Logic of Liberty' when used of enquiries
neither in the linguistic idiom nor even conceptual.

(B) This suggests why philosophers given to talking about
correct English 'seem to take little account of the existence
of other languages whose structure and idiom are very
different from English ... but which seem equally if not
more capable of engendering metaphysical confusion'. 3
Being, like their colleagues, concerned with conceptual
matters, their protests against the misuse of English are not
primarily motivated by a concern for correct English as
opposed to faultless Eskimo. But the matter should not be
allowed to rest there. The existence of other natural lan-
guages whose structure, idiom, and vocabulary are not
completely congruent with those of our own is philosophically
relevant in at least three ways.

(i) They provide concepts not available in the stock of
our language group. Notoriously there are in all languages
words untranslatable into English : no English words, that
is, have precisely the same use. And many of the concepts

1 Cf. L. J. Cohen, * Are Philosophical Theses relative to Language ? ' in
Analysis, 1949.

z G. Ryle, 'Ordinary Language', Philosophical Review, 1953.
3 PQ t 1952, p. 2 (top),



PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE 5

concerned are of philosophic interest ; eitfaeT directly in
themselves ; or indirectly because it is necessary to master
them in order to understand some philosopher who used or
discussed the concept in question. Perhaps the best examples
are ethical, such as vflpis, dpcTij, or tabu.

(ii) Different languages offer different temptations. J. S.
Mill must have been beguiled into his disastrous argument
from what is in fact desired to what is in morals desirable
by the 'grammatical' analogy between English words like
'audible 1 and c visible ' and the English word 'desirable'. 1
(There might be a language in which there was no such
morphological analogy between a class of words meaning
' able as a matter of fact to be somethinged ' and one meaning
'ought as a matter of value to be somethinged'.) The mis-
construction of 'infinity' as being the word for a gigantic
number is made attractive by the morphological analogy
between the expression 'to infinity' and such as 'to one
hundred'. If we always said 'for ever' or 'indefinitely'
instead of 'to infinity', and if 'aleph-nought' did not happen
to sound like the word for a colossal number, then this
temptation would disappear. 2 It has been said that it is
hard to make Hegel's dialectic plausible or even intelligible
in English for the lack of any word with ambiguities parallel
to those of the German aufheben* Kant, in a significantly
phrased passage, noted:

The German language has the good fortune to possess expres-
sions which do not allow this difference [between the opposites of
das Ubel and das Bose A. F.] to be overlooked. It possesses two
very distinct concepts, and especially different expressions, for that
which the Latins express by a single word bonum.*

While the Greek way of forming abstract noun substitutes

1 Utilitarianism (Everyman), p. 32 (bottom) : Mill argues from this morpho-
logical analogy, explicitly. Though even here it is doubtful if this was more
than the occasion for a mistake, the true cause of which was the quest for a
'scientific ethics'.

2 See P.A.S., Supp. Vol. XXVII, pp. 42-3 and 47-8, for a recent example
of this howler and its criticism.

3 T. D. Weld on, The Vocabulary of Politics (Pelican, 1953), p. 107.
* Critique of Practical Reason, trans. T. K, Abbott, p. 150.



6 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

from the neuter of the definite article and the adjective does
something, though not of course very much, to explain the
attractions for Plato of the Theory of Forms. 1

(iii) The existence of natural languages with radically
different logical characteristics gives the opportunity for
logical explorations of ways of thinking far more diverse
than those embraced in most of these singly : for, as it were,
logico-linguistic travel, which can broaden the mind and
stimulate the imagination and so provide benefits of the sort
which alert people are able to get from physical travel.

Consider, for example, the analogy between the recog-
nition of the legitimate existence of non-Euclidean geometries
which helps to undermine rationalist hopes of a quasi-
geometrical deductive system of knowledge about the world
based on self-evident necessary premises; and the realiza-
tion that there actually are natural languages to which the
subject-predicate distinction can scarcely be applied, which
are not saturated with the concept of cause, and which pro-
vide words to pick out different differences and likenesses
from those which English, and indeed most European lan-
guages, are equipped to mark. To realize this is to discredit
ideas that the subject-predicate distinction must be inextri-
cably rooted in the non-linguistic world, 2 that the notion of
cause is an indispensable category of thought, 3 and that
language must reflect the ultimate nature of reality. 4 Of
course, it is theoretically possible to imagine other conceptual
systems and categories of concept. 5 But this is excessively

1 For some of the many more worthy attractions see D. F. Pears, 'Uni-
versals', in LL, II. For Aristotle's battle against the temptations of this idiom,
in which he had to express his definition of goodness, see the early chapters of
Me. Eth., Bk. I. r

2 This point was originally made by Sayce; and reiterated by Russell,
Analysis of Mind, p. 212.

3 See articles by D. D. Lee mentioned below, though her interpretation of
Trobriand thought is disputed.

* See Republic, 596 A 6-8 for a suggestive admission : 'We have been in the
habit, if you remember, of positing a Form, wherever we use the same name in
many instances, one Form for each many'.

5 Cf. the 'language games' of Wittgenstein, imaginary truncated languages
used as diagrams in Philosophical Investigations : and the Newspeak of George
Orwell's 1984, Appendix.



PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE y

difficult, as witness the calibre of some of the philosophers
who have assumed or even asserted contingent, though per-
haps admirable, characteristics of their particular languages
to be necessities of thought. In any case there is actual
material waiting to be studied, 1 and there is much to be
said for the use of real, as opposed to imaginary, examples
in philosophy. It can add vitality to discussion and help
to break down the idea that philosophical training and
philosophical enquiry can have no relevance or value in the
world outside our cloistered classrooms.

(C) The use of a word is not the same as, though it is
subtly connected with, the usage of that word. The former
(see above) is language-neutral : if we enquire about the
use of 'table' then we are simultaneously and equally con-
cerned with the use of 'tavola' and other equivalents in
other languages ; with, if you like, the concept of table.
The latter is language-specific : if we enquire about the
usage of 'table' then we are concerned with how that par-
ticular English word is (or ought to be) employed by those
who employ that word, and not 'tavola*.

But the two are crucially related. No word could be said
to have a use except in so far as some language group or
sub-group gives it a use and recognizes as correct the usage
appropriate to that use : for the sounds we use as words are
all, intrinsically and prior to the emergence of any linguistic
conventions about them, almost equally suitable to do any
linguistic job whatever. Whereas a knife, say, could not be
used, or even misused, as a tent, ' glory' might have been
given the use we have in fact given to 'a nice knock-down
argument ' .

The uses of words depend subtly on the correct usages
of words. Humpty Dumpty can only be accused of misusing
' glory 1 because the accepted, standard, correct usage of
Lewis Carroll's language group was radically different from

1 See LL, II, p. 3 : to the references given there in the second note can be
added D. D. Lee in Psychosomatic Medicine, Vol. XIII, 1950, and in The Journal
of Philosophy y 1949.



8 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

his private usage. It was perverse, ill-mannered, misleading,
and endangered the possibility of linguistic communication,
thus wantonly and without explanation to flout the linguistic
conventions. (No doubt, like contemporary 'prophets of a
new linguistic dispensation', 1 he regarded such linguistic
conventions as 'preposterous restrictions upon free speech*. 2 )
Furthermore, as academic philologists 3 and people concerned
with maintaining and increasing the efficiency of the Eng-
lish language 4 (and others) have often urged, what is cor-
rect usage of any language group depends ultimately upon
actual usage. It is because use depends on correct usage
while this in turn depends ultimately upon actual usage
that changes in actual usage can enrich or impoverish the
conceptual equipment provided by a language. If a new
usage Is established by which a new use is given to a word,
a use not previously provided for, then to that extent the
language concerned is enriched. 5 Whereas if an old usage
whereby two words had two different uses is replaced by a
new one in which one of them loses its job to become a mere
synonym of the other, then similarly there is a proportionate
impoverishment. Since the actual usage of any language
group or sub-group is never in fact completely static, both
processes are usually going on, and together constitute a
considerable part of the history of any language. ('The
history of language ... is little other than the history of
corruptions': Lounsbury was writing as a grammarian,
but the same is true from a logical point of view ; though
'corruption' must be taken as value-neutral here.)

To come at the matter from a new angle : consider how
the historical theologian studies the concept of nephesh in
Israel. He has and can have no other method but the

1 PQ, 1952, p. 12. 2 PQ f 1952, p. 2.

3 To the point here would be references given by P. L. Heath, PQ, 1952,
p. 2, n.

See Sir Alan Herbert's What a Word! Sir Ernest Gowers' Plain Words
and ABC of Plain Words, etc.

5 This point is developed by F. Waismann in his 'Analytic-Synthetic', and
stressed to a point at which some might complain that it encouraged anarchic
Humpty-Dumptyism (Analysis, 1950, Vol. X ff.).



PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE 9

examination of the occurrences of the word ' nephesh ' In his
texts : the attempt to discover from a survey of usage what
was its use, what job this word did in the vocabulary of the
people who employed it. Or, again, consider how Professor
H. J. Paton objects decisively to the translation oiabgeleitet as
' deduced' because 'an examination of Kant's usage will show
that it seldom or never means this' (The Categorical Impera-
tive, p. 134, .). Or consider how the cryptographer tries to
discover the meaning of an unknown element in a code. He
has and can have no other method but a similar examination
of its occurrences, hoping by a study of usage to hit upon
its use, its meaning. Appeals to use and usage in creative
philosophy can be regarded as a belatedly explicit application
of the tried and necessary methods of the historians of ideas.
Before passing to section (D), various minor points:
First, 'linguistic conventions' here means those by which
we use ' pod * rather than ' pid ' or ' nup * to mean pod ; and
so forth. Second, 'language group or sub-group' is not
here a precise expression. It is intended to cover the users
of recognized languages, of their dialects, of jargons and
private languages of all kinds, down to and including in-
dividuals who develop terminologies private to themselves
and their readers and interpreters, if any. Our point is one
about the presuppositions of linguistic communication.
Third, not all features of the usage of a word will be relevant
to questions about its use : that the personal pronouns ' I ',
'he', and 'she* are subject to radical morphological trans-
formation in other cases is of concern to Fowler, but not to
the philosopher ; for their use would be unaffected if usage
were to send these transformations the way of other unneces-
sary case-indications. But this is a matter for caution, for
it is hard to be sure without examination what will turn out
to be relevant : Fowler would be concerned with the spread of
the usage which makes * contact ' a transitive verb ; but per-
haps this change also subtly affects the notion of contact. 1

1 On the analogous difficulty of knowing in advance the 'logical breaking
strains of concepts ' see Kyle's Inaugural, Philosophical Arguments (Oxford, 1945).



io ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

Fourth, it is possible for people to communicate, in a way
which depends partly on words (or other conventional signs),
in spite of misusing many of the words (or other conventional
signs) they employ : for the intelligent appreciation of con-
text (in the widest sense) can do much to compensate for
such deficiencies. But to the precise extent to which it needs
to, communication is thereby not depending upon words (or
other conventional signs). Fifth, this stress on use derives
mainly from Wittgenstein : the idea is present unexploited
in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus : 'In philosophy the
question " For what purpose do we really use that word . . . ? "
constantly leads to valuable results' (6.211, cf. also 3.328,
3.326, and 5.47321); and it became the slogan ' Don't ask for
the meaning^ ask for the use' in the early thirties after his
return to Cambridge. 1 The explicit concern with correct usage
as the determinant of use seems to derive mainly from J. L.
Austin. 2

(D) Notoriously there is often a gap between actual and
correct usage. It is possible for some usage which is (even
much) more honoured in the breach than the observance to
be one which defaulters are prepared to acknowledge as
correct, mainly because certain people and reference books
are recognized as generally authoritative : there is still, in
Britain at any rate, no question as to what is the correct
usage of such non-technical Jogical terms as * refute', 'imply',
and 'infer', but it seems most unlikely that the actual usage
of the majority even of first-year university students con-
forms with it. This gap is of the greatest importance to
anyone who wishes to understand 'what is at the bottom of
all this terminological hyperaesthesia, and all the whistle-
blowing and knuckle-rapping and scolding that goes along
with it '.3

(i) It enables a piece of 'logical geographizing', telling

1 See the Philosophical Investigations > especially ad init, for his own account
of the reasons for this maxim.

2 See M. Weitz, 'Oxford Philosophy', Philosophical Review, 1953: and
P.A.S., Supp. Vol. XVIII, for Austin's first characteristic publication.

3 PQ t 1952, p. 5 (top).



PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE 11

us only what most of us in a way know, making no distinction
not already provided for in familiar words, to be an exercise
in precisification of thought and in improvement of usage
for all those who work through it ; and not merely for those,
like the students mentioned above, whose word training has
been conspicuously deficient. Consider the effects of de-
scribing the differences and analogies between threats,
promises^ and predictions ; to draw example from a recent
Oxford examination paper. Though often such examina-
tions of present correct usage will show that we need not
only to bring our actual usage more into line with correct
usage, but also to go further by suggesting improvements.
* Essential though it is as a preliminary to track down the
detail of our ordinary uses of words, it seems that we shall
in the end always "be compelled to straighten them out to
some extent' (Austin). 1

(ii) It gives ground for hope that "philosophers, including
always and especially ourselves, who misuse or tolerate the
misuse of certain words and expressions, 2 or who give or
accept incorrect accounts of their rationes applicandi> may
be led by suitable attention to their correct usage and actual
use to realize and remedy their mistakes. This phrase
ratio applicandi is modelled deliberately upon the ratio
decidendi of the lawyers : the principle under which all
previous decisions can be subsumed and upon which, as the
fiction has it, they were in fact made. For just as it is per-
fectly possible to make decisions consistent with such a
principle without having actually formulated it : so it is
possible, and even usual, to be able to apply a word cor-
rectly in unselfconscious moments, without being able to
discern its ratio applicandi^ or even to do so when positively
in error about it ; though of course anyone making such a
mistake will have some inclination to misuse the word.

(iii) But it also makes it possible to misrepresent present

* 'How to Talk' in P,A.S., 1952-3, p. 227.

2 For some subtle and very important examples of a sensitivity to ordinary
correct usage see G. J. Warnock's Berkeley ', especially in chaps. 7-10.



12 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

correct usage as nicer, more uniform, and more stable than
it in fact is : ' the assumption being that the necessary
rules and regulations are already embodied in ordinary par-
lance, requiring only inspection, or the production of a few
trivial examples, to make clear what is allowable and what
is not 3 . 1 To do this is especially tempting perhaps for
philosophers in strong reaction against the contempt shown
by many of their mathematically minded colleagues for the
rich and subtle instruments provided by all but the most
beggarly of the natural languages to those willing and able
to use them with care and skill (see (v) below). The extent
to which the 'logical geographers' have in fact succumbed
has perhaps been exaggerated ; but it is well to be on
guard.

(iv) It is this alone which makes it possible to speak at
all of misuses When philosophers are attacked for misusing
an ordinary, or even an extraordinary, word this is rarely
an 'attempt to convict perfectly respectable philosophers of
illiteracy, or of the perpetration of ungrammatical gibber-
ish*, but rather 'what is complained of is not lack of
grammar , even \$ic\ in the text-book sense, but incoherence
or absence of meaning* (my italics); even though some
(like Wittgenstein who perhaps discovered it) given to
pressing 'the familiar and overworked analogy between
logical and grammatical rules' 2 occasionally omit the pre-
fix 'logical' where the context makes clear that it is logical
grammar that is at issue. The point is, usually, that the
philosopher under attack has somehow been misled into
misusing a word in a way which generates paradox, con-
fusion, and perplexity. Hume was scandalized that a con-
troversy 'canvassed and disputed with great eagerness since
the first origin of science and philosophy' had 'turned
merely upon words'. 3 But the skeleton solution he sug-
gested depended, fairly explicitly, upon recalling to mind
with the help of simple concrete examples, just what the

1 PQ, 1952, p. 6. * PQ, ibid,

3 Enquiry concerning Human Understanding , VIII, pt. i.



PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE 13

ordinary use of the word 'free' actually is: and that it is
not its ordinary job (not what it ordinarily means), nor yet
any part of its ordinary job (nor yet part of what it implies)*
to attribute to actions unpredictability in principle, 1 If this
is so then it is not contradictory to say that some action was
both predictable and performed of the agent's own free will :
always assuming, of course, that the key words are being
used in their ordinary senses. And in any case complaints
about 'pseudo-problems', 2 'a petty word-jugglery J , 3 or the
tendency 'for philosophers to encroach upon the province
of grammarians, and to engage in disputes of words, while
they imagine they are handling controversies of the deepest
importance and concern' 4 all miss the point. For Hume is
broaching a conceptual solution to a philosophical problem,
which cannot thereby lose whatever importance it may have
had before.

Such a brief outline example may suggest facile crudity :
'a very simple way of disposing of immense quantities of
metaphysical and other argument, without the smallest
trouble or exertion'.' 5 This is inevitable perhaps in the terse
cartoon simplicity needed in incidental illustrations but the
suggestion could scarcely survive : either an examination of
such contributions to the free-will problems as R. M. Hare's
'The Freedom of the Will 7 , 6 W. D. Falk's 'Goading and
GuildingV and H. L. A. Hart's ' Ascription of Responsibility
and Rights ' ; 8 or an awakening to the fact that no one has
asked to be excused from dealing with whatever arguments
may be deployed in support of such philosophers' misuses.
(We give these examples because they are concerned with
the problem we have chosen as an illustration : but of course

1 His views had been substantially anticipated : by Hobbes, Leviathan,
chap, xxi, and in his *Of Liberty and Necessity' ; and no doubt by many others
long before.

. 2 See JLL, II, pp. 5-6 for an attack on this once popular misdescription of
philosophical problems; Ryle, Concept of Mind, p. 71 (top), lapses by writing
'largely spurious problems'.

3 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. T. K. Abbott, p. 188.

4 Hume, E.P.M., App. iv. s pQ } 1952, p. i

6 P.A.S., Supp. Vol. XXV. 7 Mind, 1953. * LL, I.



14 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

the rest of this book provides many others.) Perhaps Kant
was discouraged from recognizing the merit in Hume here
by Hume's own misleading talk about mere words as well
as by the aggressive way in which he misrepresented a good
start as the end of the affair. Certainly we find him two
pages later very grudgingly conceding part of Hume's point,
but insisting that at any rate transcendental freedom cannot
thus be reconciled with scientific determinism. 1

(v) After so much has been said about misuses and mis-
constructions, it must be mentioned that interest originally
directed at the uses of words only inasmuch as this brought
out what were misuses and misconstructions, is sometimes,
by a familiar psychological process, partly diverted to the
study of use for its own sake. Before suggesting that, how-
ever psychologically understandable, such interests do not
become a philosopher in his working hours we should cast
our minds back to Aristotle and reflect whether all his
studies of the concepts of moral psychology were in fact
wholly directed to some ulterior end even within philosophy ;
or, more generally, ask ourselves whether an interest in
concepts is not one of the things which makes a philo-
sopher.

But whatever are the rights and wrongs about ulterior
and ultimate ends and whatever the jurisdictional pro-
prieties, disputes about these here turn out to be largely
unnecessary. For in elucidating the ordinary uses (as
opposed to philosophers' suspected misuses) of some of the
rather limited range of words around which our contro-
versies tend to cluster, 2 it has been noticed that the concep-
tual equipment provided by ordinary (here opposed par-
ticularly to technical) language is amazingly rich and subtle ;
and that even the classical puzzles cannot be fully resolved
without elucidating not merely the formerly fashionable elite
of notions but also all their neglected logical hangers-on.

1 Loc, cit. p. 190.

2 See Waismann, 'Language Strata' in LL, II, and Ryle, 'Ordinary Lan-
guage ', for suggestions about this clustering.



PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE 15

In formulating and attacking free will puzzles, philosopher
with the outstanding exception of Aristotle, have been
inclined to concentrate on a few ideas : free will, compulsion,
choice, necessity, responsible, and one or two others. Whereas
we have available in our ordinary vocabulary of extenuation
and responsibility a great range of notions, which it would
be wise to master and exhaust before thinking of adaptation
or invention : * automatically, by mistake, unintentionally,
by force of habit, involuntarily, unwillingly, on principle,
under provocation, to mention a few. Philosophers have
tended to ignore all this richness and variety, assuming that
it could all be satisfactorily assimilated to a few most favoured
notions. But to do this is clumsy and slovenly. While pro-
posals to jettison ordinary language in favour of new-minted
terms overlook the crucial primacy of the vernacular :
ordinary, as opposed to technical, language is fundamental
in the sense that the meaning of terms of art can only be
explained with its aid ; and it is a perennial complaint
against such lovers of jargon as Kant and the Scholastics
that this essential work is so often botched, skimped, or
altogether neglected. The upshot of all this is that it is im-
probable that the elucidation of the logic of any term at all
likely to engage any philosopher's attention will fail some
day to find application to some generally recognized philo-
sophical problem, however 'pure' his own interests may have
been : the implied comparison with the pure scientific re-
search which so frequently finds unexpected and unintended
application is suggestive and, up to a point, apposite. It is
to such often seemingly indiscriminate interest in the uses
of words that we owe such fruitful logical explorations of
neglected territory as R. M. Hare's 'Imperative Sentences', 2
and J. L. Austin on performatory language in ' Other Minds '.
Contrast the old 'fetich of the indicative sentence' (Ryle)

1 Not that such adaptation or invention, may not be called for : see P. D.
Nowell-Smith in The Rationalist Annual, 1954, for suggestions designed to
accommodate the discoveries of psychoanalysis.

2 Mind, 1949: and incorporated with additions and improvements into
his The Language of Morals.



16 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

formulated by Hobbes : ' In philosophy there is but one kind
of speech useful . . . most men call it proposition, and [it]
is the speech of those that affirm or deny, and expresseth
truth and falsity* (Works, Vol. I, p. 30).
If one quoted

Others apart sat on a hill retired
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate ;
Fixt fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost

(Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. II)

to those who have learnt most from Austin, the reply would
be that the Devils in Pandemonium found no end precisely
because they insisted on ' reasoning high'; that they should
have begun with a meticulous and laborious study of the
use of 'free will* and all the terms with which it is logically
associated. Such an examination, which is certainly no
quick and easy matter, is, as Austin has said, if not the be
all and end all, at least the begin all of philosophy.

(E) A derisive brouhaha has been raised about the
notion of 'Standard English 5 'Why it should have been
thought to deserve consideration as a philosophical prin-
ciple it is by no means easy to imagine 7 . 1 Those who have
emphasized the frequent philosophical importance of ' unex-
plained and unnoticed distortions of standard English' and
'deviations from standard English to which no sense has
been attached ' 2 have not, of course, been claiming that
there is or ought to be an absolute, unchanging, universal,
inflexible standard of correctness applicable to all users of
the English language, past, present, and to come. The
strange idea that they have seems to derive: partly from
failing to appreciate the force of the emphasis on uses, etc.
(see (A) and (C) above) ; partly from a significant though
perhaps seemingly trivial misrepresentation, whereby a con-
cern for 'Standard English' is attributed to those who have

* PQ, 1952, pp. 2 and 3. * LL, I, p. 9.



PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE 17

in fact written of ' standard English ' ; l and partly from, the
sheer errors that standards must necessarily be universal,
inflexible, unchanging, and absolute. These last may be
dispelled by the reflection that makers of cars may offer
fresh standard models yearly, different ones for different
markets, and with a standard choice of fittings and colours
for each. About standards such as these there is presum-
ably nothing normative, whereas with standard linguistic
usage there certainly is. For, for the reasons already given
(see (C) ad init.\ everyone ought in general to conform with
the usage accepted as correct by the language group or
sub-group of which his linguistic and non-linguistic be-
haviour makes it reasonable to presume he is, tacitly or
explicitly, claiming membership. This is not to say that
usage ought to be absolutely rigid, uniform, and static
among all users of any language ; this would be to impose
an embargo on improvisation and innovation, growth and
decay.

It is common enormously to exaggerate the amount of
variation in usage which there in fact is. People often write
as if usage were so fluid, irregular, and varied that it must
be impossible to say anything about the meaning of any
word, except perhaps as employed by one particular person
on one particular occasion. As we have argued above (in
(C)) and elsewhere, 2 if this were in fact the case, verbal com-
munication would be impossible. These exaggerations, like
the linguists' analogue that different languages are all so
very different that there is no equivalent of any word at all
in any other language, arise from the understandable and
inevitable preoccupation of philologists with differences and
changes, and of translators with their more intractable diffi-
culties. They are perhaps encouraged by vested interests, in
obfuscation generally, and in the pretence that knowledge of
foreign languages is even more important than it actually is.

1 Compare JPQ, 1952, pp. 2 and 3 with LL } I, p. 9, of which it purports to
be a criticism.

2 LL> II, pp. 8-9 : on ( the unwitting allies of a revolution of destruction 1 .



18 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

(F) Ryle has so recently distinguished again between,
and redeployed some of the arguments in favour of, the
various policies which have sometimes been confused to-
gether as 'the appeal to ordinary language' that there is
no need here to develop at length the relations and differ-
ences between these. 1 First, appealing to the ordinary use(s)
of terms to elucidate philosopher's possible misuses. Second,
appealing for plain English as opposed to jargon and high
abstraction in philosophical prose. Not that anyone is sug-
gesting an embargo on technical terms and abstraction :
only a bias against, except where they prove essential. Third,
concentrating upon everyday as opposed to technical con-
cepts and their problems. Yet the fact that a large proportion
of classical problems centre round such notions as cause,
mistake, evidence, knowledge, ought, can, and imagine is
no reason at all for neglecting those which arise from
p si-phenomena, collective unconscious, transubstantiation,
economic welfare, and infinitesimal. But whereas (most of)
the former group can be tackled with no knowledge other
than that minimum common to all educated men, even to
understand the latter one must acquire some smattering of
the disciplines to which the notions belong. Fourth, a protest
'that the logic of everyday statements and even ... of
scientists, lawyers, historians, and bridge-players cannot in
principle be adequately represented by the formulae of formal
logic'. 2 Oxford philosophers who incline to all four policies
together may be thought of as trying to preserve a balance :
between this 'formalizer's dream* that non-formalized lan-
guage really is, or ought to be replaced by, a calculus; 3
and the Humpty Durnpty nightmare that there is, at least
in those parts of it which most concern philosophers, no logic
or order at all.

1 'Ordinary Language', loc. cit. 2 Ryle, loc. cit,, p. 184.

3 Though there has been a long tradition of this sort of thing, e.g. Leibniz's
characteristic a universalis and similar ideas in his century. Nowadays it is
usually a matter of an over-estimation of the philosophic value of the techniques
of symbolic logic ; found in the Vienna Circle, in Russell, and to-day particularly
prevalent in the U.S.A.



PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE ig

One pattern of argument, a particular application of the
first policy, demands special attention. Talk, mainly de-
riving from Moore, of the Plain Man and his Common
Sense, has now been largely replaced by emphasis upon the
ordinary uses of words. But many philosophers have been
as reluctant to abandon their reasoned paradoxes because
they offend the Plain Man in his capacity as arbiter of
ordinary language as they were to abdicate in face of Moore's
protests on behalf of his common sense. And not without
reason. The clue to the whole business now seems to lie In
mastering what has recently been usefully named, The Argu-
ment of the Paradigm Case. 1 Crudely : if there is any
word the meaning of which can be taught by reference to
paradigm cases, then no argument whatever could ever prove
that there are no cases whatever of whatever it is. Thus,
since the meaning of 'of his own freewill' can be taught by
reference to such paradigm cases as that in which a man,
under no social pressure, marries the girl he wants to marry
(how else could it be taught ?) : it cannot be right, on any
grounds whatsoever to say that no one ever acts of his own
freewill. For cases such as the paradigm, which must occur
if the word is ever to be thus explained (and which certainly
do in fact occur), are not in that case specimens which might
have been wrongly identified : to the extent that the mean-
ing of the expression is given in terms of them they are, by
definition, what ' acting of one's own freewill ' is. As Runyon
might have said : If these are not free actions they will at
least do till some come along. A moment's reflexion will
show that analogous arguments can be deployed against
many philosophical paradoxes.

What such arguments by themselves will certainly not
do is to establish any matter of value, moral or otherwise :
and almost everyone who has used them, certainly the pres-
ent writer, must plead guilty to having from time to time
failed to see this. For one cannot derive any sort of value
proposition : from either a factual proposition about what
1 By J.O, Urmson in * Some Questions concerning Validity*, Chapter VI, below,



20 ESSAYS IN CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

people value; or from definitions, however disguised, of
value terms. This applies to any sort of value : indeed we
might distinguish a Special (in ethics) from a General (any-
where) Naturalistic Fallacy. 1 There is a world of difference
between saying that it is reasonable in certain circumstances
to act inductively (which is a value matter, one of commend-
ing a certain sort of behaviour) ; and saying that most people
regard it as reasonable so to act (which is a factual matter,
one of neutrally giving information about the prevalence of
that kind of ideal). Thus that too short way with the
problem of induction, which tries to deduce that induction
is reasonable from the premise that people regard it as so
or even that they make inductive behaviour part of their
paradigm of reasonableness, will not do. It is necessary for
each of us tacitly or explicitly actually to make our personal
value commitments here. Most of us are in fact willing
to make that one which is involved in making inductive
behaviour part of our paradigm of reasonableness. But
as philosophers we must insist on making it explicitly and
after examining the issues. Mutatis mutandis the same
applies to attempts to derive ethical conclusions simply from
what we (as a matter of fact) call reasonable behaviour or
good reasons to act ; without the introduction of an explicit
commitment to accepted moral standards. These must
involve versions of the (Special) Naturalistic Fallacy. 2

To see the power, and the limitations, of the Argument
of the Paradigm Case is to realize how much of common
sense can, and how much cannot, be defended against
philosophical paradoxes by simple appeal to the ordinary
use of words ; and why.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE

1 This is the fallacy of trying to deduce valuational conclusions from purely
factual premises which in its Special form was first named by G. E. Moore.

* Compare R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals, with S. E. Toulrnin, The
Place of Reason in Ethics, and see Hare and J. Mackie on the latter in PQ 1951
and AJP 1951, respectively. T. D. Weldon in The Vocabulary of Politics gives a
crisp example of the false move involved, pp. 42-3. I have tried to say something
myself about it in 'The Justification of Punishment', Philosophy, 1954,

The paradigm-case argument -- GRICE and URMSON on some questions concerning validity

Speranza

In "Studies in the Way of Words", Grice refers to Urmson's use of the "paradigm-case argument'.

The programme of Grice's and Urmson's project is, more or less, as follows:

A) First of all they outline a method of "argument "which is often used in the work of philosophers, and which they take to be a "perfectly legitimate" type of argument in its proper place and
when used for its proper purpose.

This method of "argument" we may call the appeal to the standard example, or to the "paradigm case".

By the "paradigm-case argument", the philosophical doubt whether something is really an X is exposed as being in some way "improper" or "absurd" by means of a demonstration that the thing in question is a standard -- or as Plato would prefer, "paradeigmatic" -- case by reference to which the expression 'E ' has to be understood, or a doubt whether anything is "E" is exposed by showing that certain things are standard cases of what "E" in question is designed to describe.

B) In the second place, Grice and Urmson show how the "paradigm-case argument" has been
applied by some philosophers to the problems of the validity of deductive, inductive, and ethical argument, here, as later, with special reference to the latter two.

As a first rough approximation one can say that the "paradigm-case argument" has been used to show that at least some arguments in each field must be valid since they are standard examples of validity in their sphere, by reference to which validity in that sphere must be elucidated, so that to query
their validity must be absurd and improper.

C) Thirdly, Grice and Urmson try to show that because of the evaluative element in the meaning of 'valid ' the argument from standard cases cannot be applied to these fields without considerable
modification, and that after such necessary modification the argument does not prove all that many who have used it have wished to prove, though it is not entirely without weight.

In particular, when thus modified the argument leads to a better formulation of the problems which it fails to solve.

This is no mean achievement in such difficult fields.

(A) THE NATURE OF THE "PARADIGM-CASE ARGUMENT"


Suppose that someone looking at a pillar-box expressed a doubt whether it was really red.

He might indeed express doubts whether it was really red because he thought that the light was unusual, or that his eyes were bad, or something of that sort.

But suppose that he expresses doubt for none of these reasons but doubts whether "red" can properly apply to this sort of thing.

We would then be at a loss and probably ask him what (on earth) he MEANT by "red" if he was unwilling to call this red, or say that by *red* we meant being of just some such colour as this ' If we do not call this red then what would we ?'

Thus, using a simple form of the argument from standard examples, we can make him see that
there is something absurd in his question, since there is no better way of showing what the word 'red' means than by pointing to things of this colour.

Now a slightly more sophisticated example to show what is here meant by the argument from standard examples.

In his popular book, The Nature of the Physical World, in an
attempt to bring out in a vivid fashion the difference between
the scientific and everyday description of such things as
desks, Eddington said in effect that desks were not _really_
solid.

Susan Stebbing, in her book Philosophy and the
Physicists, used the argument from standard examples to
show that this way of putting things involved illegitimate
mystification.

This Langer did by simply pointing out that if
one asked what we ordinarily mean by "solid" we immediately
realize that we mean something like 'of the consistency of
such things as desks'.

Thus she showed conclusively that
the novelty of scientific theory does not consist, as had been
unfortunately suggested, in showing the inappropriateness of
ordinary descriptive language.

Two comparatively trivial uses of the argument from
standard examples have been given to illustrate its character.
Obviously to give more subtle examples would require much
space, and at present we are concerned only with what the
argument is, not with showing that it is valuable or important.

But as Grice and Urmson attack what they
consider to be illegitimate uses of the argument it would be
as well to say now that, usually in conjunction with other
techniques if this type of argument can be used to clear up
a number of vexatious philosophical problems.

In par-
ticular, it can be used time and time again to show that
problems have traditionally been incorrectly formulated ;
and every philosopher knows how important correct formulation of problems is.

It is to be hoped that enough has been said to show the
general character of the argument from standard cases. A
full discussion is not possible in the space available.

(B) THE PARADIGM-CASE ARGUMENT AS APPLIED TO "VALID"

Grice and Urmson then set out the use of this argument to solve some
major problems about validity ; in the first instance this must
be done as persuasively as is consistent with extreme brevity.

As Grice and Urmson think that these uses of the argument are, in part, illegitimate, their argumentation will at this stage embody error : but we cannot expose error until we have it before us, pre-
ferably in an attractive guise.

Grice and Urmson first apply the argument to deductive reasoning, since it is instructive to compare
its use here with other uses; we shall then apply it to in-
ductive and ethical reasoning, which are for us now the
central issues.

The reader is asked to bear in mind through-
out this section that I am putting a case, not expressing my
own opinions.

(a) Deductive reasoning

Logicians, in so far as they have been concerned to understand the nature of reasoning and not to produce abstract calculi or * languages *, have not been producing arbitrary fiats for us to obey when they have put forward principles of valid inference.

Nor again, do these principles present themselves as truths independent of actual reasoning.

The logician is attempting to make explicit principles of validity already
implicit in our judgments of the validity or invalidity of actual
arguments.

Thus it is not the case that the validity of the
syllogistic arguments is determined by their conformity to the
rules of the syllogism.

It would be more correct to say that
suggested rules of the syllogism are to be accepted only if
they recognize as valid what we would in any case recognize
as valid, and nothing" else.

Rules of inference and principles
of validity have to be abstracted from standard examples of
valid arguments.

A suggested rule is refuted if it makes
valid a standard example -of an invalid argument, or vice
versa.

This being so, it is simply meaningless to ask whether
the standard examples of valid deduction are really valid,
or to ask whether any deductive arguments are valid.

The
meaning of "valid" with regard to deductive argument is
determined by these standard examples they are the ulti-
mate standard and court of appeal.

To ask whether a tricky
argument is or is not valid is in the end to ask whether it is
like the standard examples of valid arguments or not,
though our direct appeal may be to principles.

(b) Inductive reasoning

Perhaps no one has wished to query the validity of
straightforward deduction, so that our last paragraph may
have seemed to stress the obvious.

But we may argue
similarly with regard to inductive reasoning ; and the general
validity of inductive reasoning has indeed been questioned ;
this is the celebrated problem of induction.

Now sometimes
when the general validity of induction has been questioned
the doubters have indeed had an independent criterion by
to judge it ; they have relied on the principles of valid
deduction.

But this is clearly an error.

For inductive arguments are supposed to be inductive, not deductive, whereas
if they answered to the criteria of deductive reasoning they
would be deductive.

A perfectly good cat would
get low marks at a dog show,
and be none the worse for that.

But
if we abandon the irrelevant criteria of deductive validity,
how are we able to condemn all inductive reasoning as
invalid?

Whence come our principles of judgment ?

Do
we not come near to the evident absurdity of saying that all
men are abnormal, all perception illusory?

When we in fact
regard an inductive argument as invalid it is because it
differs importantly from those which we regard as valid ; a
contrast is intended.

Here then, it appears, as in the case of deductive reasoning, we must start from the standard examples of valid and
invalid argument and elicit from them our principles of in-
ductive validity.

It is not required that the scientific reasoning
of a Newton or a Pasteur should conform to text-book canons
but that text-book canons should be based on a study of them.


Except by reference to such examples no meaning can be
attached to the term ' valid' in the sphere of inductive argu-
ment.

If the validity of such examples is denied, by what
standards is it being judged ? If the irrelevant standards of
deduction have not been dragged in, then surely there are no
standards available.

These examples set the standard.

That is how the argument runs with regard to induction.

The problem whether any inductive arguments are valid is held
up as absurd, and with it the traditional problem of induction.

(To check Grice's and Urmson's exposition of this argument readers are be referred to a few
expositions of it.

It is given in extenso in * Bertrand Russell's Doubts about Induction*, by Paul Edwards, Mind, 1949 (reprinted in Logic and Language >
Vol. I).

For shorter versions see, e.g. the last chapter of An Introduction to Logical Theory, by P. F. Strawson, and A. J. Ayer's introduction to British Empirical Philosophers, pp. 26-7).


(c) Ethical reasoning

It is clear that we can use an exactly similar technique
to prove that it is absurd to doubt generally the validity of
ethical reasoning.

Some writers on ethics have suggested
that it is impossible to distinguish valid and invalid arguments about moral matters C. L. Stevenson maintained this quite recently in his "Ethics and Language" (1944) -- cited by Grice, in "Meaning" (1948).


But it appears that just as inductive argument has been condemned
for failing to conform to the standards of deductive reasoning,
so ethical reasoning is condemned for not conforming to the
standards of either deductive or inductive reasoning.

But
why should it ?

Yet if we do not use such irrelevant standards
of criticism we can surely not condemn ethical reasoning in
general in this way.

For our conception of what is valid
and what is invalid in ethical reasoning must be derived
from a study of ethical reasoning we have here, as in
other spheres, standard examples of valid and invalid argu-
ment. 'Valid' and "invalid " must be used to mark a dis-
tinction within moral reasoning.

It is no more possible for
all ethical arguments to be invalid than for all men to be
small men.

We learn how to use the expression 'valid
argument' with regard to ethics by hearing it applied to
some arguments and not to others.

Our task as philosophers
is to make explicit the principles which we already implicitly
have for distinguishing valid from invalid arguments.

To
query whether any ethical argument is valid is to ask a
pseudo-question, not to raise a serious philosophical pro-
blem.

As S. N. Hampshire said in Mind, 1949, p. 471:

'If the procedure of practical deliberation
does not conform, either in its intermediate
steps or in the form of its conclusions,
with any forms of argument acknowledged as respectable in
logical text-books, this is a deficiency of the logical text-books."


(C) CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE FOREGOING
ARGUMENTS

So far we have been concerned to present a reasonably
plausible version of the argument from standard examples
as applied to the question of the general validity of certain
types of argument. I shall now try to show

(a) that the arguments that we have just considered only
appear to be proper examples of the argument from standard
cases because they have been mis-stated.

(b) that when recast in a more correct form they are
indeed the prolegomena to some very important philosophical
investigations, but by no means dispose of the major philo-
sophical problems, as many who have used them have thought
they would. It will, however, be shown that they do require a
change in the traditional formulation of these problems.

(a) The arguments we have been considering are mis-stated

If we ask, absurdly, whether such things as desks are
solid, then the reply can be given that the meaning of 'solid'
is determined by its application to just such things.

As an
explanation of what we mean by 'solid' it would not be
wrong to say 'of the consistency of such things as desks'.


Now if the argument from examples is to be applied to
validity its main contention will be, put in its most succinct
form, that 'valid' means 'like these standard examples in
certain essential respects' and that 'invalid 1 means 'like
these other standard examples in certain essential respects'.


Which arguments are suitable standard cases and what
respects are relevant will of course depend on whether we
are considering deductive, inductive, or ethical arguments.
But this is a mistaken contention, not merely in detail but in
principle, and for a very simple reason.

The reason is that
to call an argument valid is not merely to classify it logically,
as when we say it is a syllogism or modus ponens ; it is at
least in part to evaluate or appraise it ; it is to signify approval
of it.

Similarly to call an argument invalid is to condemn
or reject it.

Therefore while it is plausible to say that
'solid 1 means the same as *of the consistency of certain
standard objects such as desks', it cannot be said that 'valid'
means the same as ' of the same logical character as certain
standard arguments such as a syllogism in Barbara'.

In the
former case we are legitimately equating the meaning of two
classificatory expressions, in the second we are illegitimately
equating the meaning of a classificatory expression, pure and
simple, with an expression which is, at least in part s evaluative
in its meaning.

Grice and Urmson take it that once stated it is obvious that "valid"  is an
evaluative expression.

To speak of a good argument is in most contexts equivalent to speaking of a valid argument, for
example.

It would be ridiculous if, when asked to produce an argument to support a position which I had taken up, were to enquire whether valid or invalid arguments would be preferred.

It seems that any detailed argument on this pont would be otiose.

What we can more importantly do is to consider how the arguments under review can be restated when amended in the light of the point just made and then to ask of them how much they prove in the more correct form.

As a preliminary to the restatement of the argument we must first say something in general about the logic of evaluative terms.

Shortness of space compelled Grice and Urmson to put this portion of their argument very dogmatically, for which fact an apology is undoubtedly due to the reader.

For Urmon's arguments in
support of Urmson's views  the reader is referred elsewhere.
(Urmson,  'On Grading 1 in Mind, 1950 (reprinted in Logic and Language, Vol. II).

Some evaluative expressions claim only to indicate a personal preference, as, for example, when we say that we like something.

One is not compelled to give reasons for liking something, and, if one does, one's reasons are at the worst odd, not improper.

But some evaluative expressions clearly claim a more general validity.

If instead of saying that we like something we say that it is good then reasons are demanded,
are counted as good or bad reasons, and may be argumentatively countered by reasons against.

In general it would seem that the straightforward use of such terms as "good" in
a given field presupposes a set of agreed standards of goodness
in that field amongst those who use it ; giving reasons for or
against a thing being good is to show that it conforms to these
standards.

Thus in a given circle the standards for goodness
in apples may be a certain taste, size, shape, keeping qualities,
absence of worm-holes, etc. ; then to give reasons for saying


"This apple is good."

is to show that it has these characters.

If I sell as good apples which fall far short of the accepted
standards I am liable to get into trouble.

If I do not know
what standards are being used when they speak of good
apples, then in a good sense I do not fully understand them,

There is thus a close logical connexion between an evaluative
expression and the accepted standards for its appropriate use.

But this cannot be identity of meaning, for no evaluation can
be identical in meaning with a description.

Here the analytic-synthetic distinction breaks down, in spite of Grice's and Strawson's attempts to the contrary (vide their "In defense of a dogma", The Philosophical Review, repr. in Grice, "WoW" -- Studies in the Way of Words).

It is surely clear that Valid* is one of those evaluative
terms which, like 'good', claim to show more than a personal
preference. It is more specialized than 'good' in its application, as are * brave' and 'intelligent'.

It is used only to evaluate arguments and then only from a certain point of view
an Invalid argument might indeed be preferable for the persuasion of stupid people, and as a valid argument may have
false premises validity never can involve total satisfactoriness,


But it seems that in its logical character validity resembles
goodness very closely, and when the context is clear we often
use 'valid' and 'good' indifferently.

If there is this resemblance, then we may expect there to be factual criteria or
standards for its use, whether implicit or explicit, and these
criteria will have a close logical connexion not amounting to
identity of meaning with the evaluative term itself.

Let us see
if we can reformulate our arguments from standard examples
in a way which does justice to this logical situation.

If amongst a certain group of people the evaluative distinction between valid and invalid arguments is recognized,
whether the arguments in question be deductive, inductive,
or ethical, then we shall expect to find criteria of validity
which are generally accepted by the group.

Otherwise they
will not be able to use the distinction but only at the best to
argue about how to use it.

If we want to know what these
standards are, we can only find out what these standards or
criteria are if we examine what are agreed to be valid and
invalid arguments and elicit the criteria from them.

Even if
a list of theoretically agreed standards Is already available we
shall still have to check this list against actual practice if we
want to know what the standards actually are ; the argument
from standard examples must teach us that this is the final
court of appeal on the question what the standards are. If it
teaches us nothing else. So, as a reformulation of the argument from standard examples, we can at least say this : if we
can elicit from the usage of a group a set of criteria for the
validity of a certain kind of argument, then it is pointless to
ask whether for that group there is any distinction between
valid and invalid arguments of the kind in question, or to say
that there is no such distinction for them ; for we already
know what the distinction is. But, we can now add, we ourselves are a group which makes such distinctions, so that it is
pointless to ask whether we have, or to deny that we have,
criteria for the validity and invalidity of all these kinds of
argument. Even if we have not yet been able to make these
criteria explicit, none the less the fact that we do succeed in
all these fields in using the Words ' valid' and 'invalid' in an
intelligible way, the fact that there are standard cases of
validity which outside his study no one would deny, shows
that the doubt when expressed in the study is absurd or at
least incorrectly formulated.

What does this argument in fact show ?

Now that we have reformulated the arguments with which we are concerned, or rather indicated a general way of re-
formulating them without elaborating each in turn, what
value can we attach to them ?

Will they convince the philosophical sceptic ?

When we have elicited the standards for counting an apple
good which are current in a group taste, size, absence of
worm-holes, etc., we can no longer ask whether it is possible
for that group to distinguish good and bad apples. But we
can perfectly properly ask why they use these standards and
whether we ourselves have any good reason for using them
a question which in the case of apples is not very difficult to
answer. We may note* too, that the question may be asked in
two quite different spirits. We may ask in a spirit of genuine
doubt whether we should accept these standards, and whether
there are any good reasons for doing so, or we may be quite
happy in the employment of these standards but ask why we
employ them in a spirit of philosophical enquiry.

It is surely clear that in the same way when we have
elicited our standards of validity we shall still be faced with
the further question ; granted that this is the way in which
we distinguish between valid and invalid arguments in this
field, what good reason have we for evaluating arguments in
this way ? Once again s the question can be asked in a spirit
of genuine doubt or as a philosophical enquiry. It is an unfortunate fact that philosophers have continually cast their
question in the form of scepticism, when it is quite clear that
in fact they have no thought of abandoning the distinction.
Now it is a fact of usage that when someone is sceptical of
standards he often formulates his query, not in the form 'Are
there good reasons for using these criteria of goodness ? ', but
in the form 'Are these things really good ?' And so we get
the question ' Are these arguments really valid ? ' One cannot
say that this is incorrect, as those who employ the argument
from standard examples often say, but one can deplore it.

We have the first order question whether, say, an apple is
good, and the second order question why we count such apples
good. It appears that we have the same two questions with
regard to the validity of arguments. We can ask of a par-
ticular argument whether it is good (valid), to which the
answer will sometimes be that it is a paradigm of good arguments.


But we can also ask why we count such arguments
good, and there seems to be nothing improper in asking such
a question, however much we may deplore the pseudo-sceptical
form in which it is often phrased. Professor Ayer has said (in British Empirical Philosophers, pp. 26-7): "in the case of any belief about a matter of fact what
counts as good evidence is inductive evidence. So to raise
the general question whether inductive evidence is good, is to
ask whether what counts as good evidence really Is good evi-
dence ; and I do not think that this question is significant".
This may be correct, so long as we are clear that being inductive Is a criterion of, not what is meant by, good evidence.
But the question still remains why we count inductive evidence
as good evidence ; probably those who ask the question
which Ayer regards as meaningless have In fact been asking
this significant question In a misleading way.

Our arguments show, then, that there is something very
misleading about the formulation of some traditional pro-
blems, and many philosophers have been misled by such
formulations. It is wrong to ask whether Inductive or ethical
arguments are ever valid. But it would appear to be possible
to reformulate these questions to run : * Why do we count as
valid those arguments, inductive or ethical, which we do count
as valid ? ' When so reformulated the questions are quite
proper. It is therefore a mistake to think that the arguments
we have considered dispose of these basic problems, for they
remain.

It is worth noticing that the serious muddles which have
arisen elsewhere have not risen in the case of deductive argument. It is true that some authors have spoken as though
'valid* were here a logical term of the same type as 'disjunctive 1 , but this has not often caused trouble. In the case
of deductive argument the higher order question has never, or
hardly ever, been formulated in the misleading way: 'Are
deductive arguments ever valid', but in the form 'Why are
they counted valid ? J , and in a spirit of philosophical enquiry.
We may not be entirely satisfied with any answer to this
question which has been given, but most discussion of the
topic has been sane, and some of it has surely advanced the
frontiers of knowledge. It is the ridiculous way in which
the higher order question has been put that has prevented
similar sanity with regard to ethics and induction.

The argument from standard examples does not then do
what it was intended to do in the field of validity, at least by
some who have used it. But it does compel us to reformulate
the traditional problems in a healthier way.

This is no matter of pedantry.

In philosophy the correct formulation of problems is half the battle.

To move from the question,

Are any inductive arguments valid?

 to the question,

What good reasons can be given for rating arguments of a certain type
higher than arguments of another type?

is to make a real
advance s before any answer is found.

Above all, we get away
from bogus doubt into methodical philosophical research.
Above all, these arguments compel us to take seriously the
need for a careful analysis of the nature of the inductive,
ethical, and other types of argument that we actually use.
We cannot ask for the reasons for the use of the criteria of
validity that we do use without an actual examination of these
criteria. In the past there has been too much a priori argument about the * possibility of induction * based on equally a
priori notions of what inductive arguments were actually
like.

It is a merit of those philosophers whose arguments we
have been considering that they have seen the need for a careful examination of the forms of our arguments, even if it has
often been a defect that they have not seen that further
enquiries remain.

My main contention has been that the attempt to discuss
the question of validity by means of an argument from
standard examples is misconceived, leading to the attempted
dismissal of genuine philosophical questions. There is indeed
no important philosophical question * Why do we call things
of the consistency of desks solid ? *

If we assimilate the
logical character of validity to that of solidity we are tempted
not to notice, or to dismiss as absurd, the question ' Why do
we count arguments of this and that sort as valid ? ' The
evaluative character of Valid' is here overlooked.

Thus exaggerated claims have been made for the force of these argu-
ments. Such problems as the central 'problem of induction'
have been thought to vanish into thin air. But I have also
wished to claim that these arguments have not been simply
misconceived. There are two problems : what are the criteria
for validity of arguments in a given field, and why do we
employ these criteria. As a result of these arguments we reach
a better formulation of the second problem, and the need for
a thorough examination of the first becomes apparent.

 If it is wrong to deny the existence of the second problem, it is at
least as wrong to fail to notice the autonomy of the first.