GRICE E CICERONE

 GRICE E CICERONE

Notes on Buckner – alla Grice

 

J. L. Speranza, for The Grice Club

 

In Existence and illusion: a semantic account of perception (Bloomsbury, London), D. E. Buckner, of Bristol, etc. expands on some fascinating stuff.

Bristol brings echoes of Grice. His — Grice’s — father not doing well in business – as Buckner well knows – it was Mabel Mary Felton Grice, Grice’s mother, who felt like opening a miniature school on the main street of their home in ‘affluential’ Harborne – then Warwickshire, originally Staffordshire – and kept Grice as a pupil until he was sent to … Clifton – a stone’s throwaway from Bristol.

Anyway, perception perceptively fascinated Grice. But what fascinates ME about Buckner’s ‘semantic account of perception’ is the Aristotelian-cum-scholastic twist to it — coupled with the big features of both EXISTENTIA, as Cicero would have it, and illusion!

Grice only managed to get to Oxford through a classics scholarship. He still had no idea about what philosophy was. Oxford did not offer a degree in philosophy, not that Grice would have cared about that. But he later recalled having been pretty fortunate in getting Hardie as his adjudicated tutor (Grandy/Warner – the title of Grice’s memoir was meant to be titled, “Prejudices and predilections; which become, The life and opinions of H. P. Grice”, by H. P. Grice, of course!

Philosophy was then offered only upon completion of five terms into your programme — B. A. Lit. Hum. — and it was. For only ONE term, Grice was adjudicated a different tutor, who complained to Hardie about Grice’s obstinacy to the point of perversity. During the pre-war years – where Grice passed from pupil (still a member of the university, you know) of Corpus, to scholar at Merton, to fellow at St. John’s – his philosophizing did include a bit of ‘perceptual stuff.’ All the material is now deposited in The H. P. Grice Papers. One is a typescript on ‘Negation’ where he considers two example sentences: “This is not red” and “Someone is not hearing a noise”. The second is influenced by his having read Ian Gallie, “Is the self a substance?” where Gallie refers to the philosophical ‘introspective’ use of ‘I’ in sentences like ‘I am hearing a noise’ — but I may be aurally hallucinating, you know!

It was after the War that Ordinary-Language Philosophy was taking its course. And when it comes to perception, it was all about Grice’s getting on well with G. J. Warnock, quite his junior. The Oxford syllabus would offer joint seminars by these two on Perception. What is an Oxford seminar? It needs a title: H. P. Grice and G. J. Warnock, “The Philosophy of Perception.” It needs to be structured in lectures – or ‘classes’. Grice had been appointed a University Lecturer – sponsored by St. John’s – which meant his ‘lectures’ — usually joint ones — were open to any member of the university.

Warnock had been active in his interactions with Austin and would eventually publish Austin’s lectures on ‘Sense and Sensibilia.’ But what matters at this point is that Austin himself being so engrossed with perception for his own weekly classes, he would NOT care discuss the topic in those circumstances which he chose to ‘socialize.’ These ‘circumstances’ were what Grice calls the Play Group. As a matter of fact, Hampshire has made it clear the thing. There were in history TWO Play Groups – the terms are Hampshire’s --. The ‘old’ Play Group, and the ‘new’ Play Group. “Grice never attended the old Play Group.’ Grice gives the reason: he had been born on the wrong side of the tracks, and therefore did not interact with the Thursday evenings at All Souls that had Ayer, Austin, Berlin, Hampshire, Woozley, and a few others, and which Berlin claims, pompously, that it was the true origin of ordinary-language philosophy! 

At the ‘new’ Play Group (Hampshire’s words), Grice would socialize with both Austin and Warnock. The credentials were simple: you had to be a ‘whole-time,’ as Warnock puts it, tutorial fellow in philosophy, younger than Austin, and get on well with him. 

But perception was then not discussed – since Austin had to deal with that WEEKLY for ‘any member of the university’ that would care to attend. 

Part of Warnock’s interest — a very IRISH Warnock’s interest — in publishing the notes posthumously was that Austin spent some time with Warnock’s book on Bisop Berkeley on esse = percipi. Austin had quite an attitude towards books – or published stuff in general --. And it is not sensible to expect that Austin cared to know of Warnock’s OTHER views other than those ‘in Warnock’s book’ on Berkeley!

At any rate, ‘philosophy of perception’ was something that no Oxonian pupil in philosophy could dodge. So Grice and Warnock offered their views. The material remains unpublished. There is a reference to ‘H. P. Grice’ in a paper on ‘Seeing’ by Warnock in The Aristotelian Society, though.

When Warnock became the editor of the influential Readers in Philosophy published by the Oxford University Press, he managed to get a volume on The Philosophy of Perception. And knowing Grice well, and to avoid any stress on him, rather than saying, ‘Hey – if you excuse me the Americanism – why don’t you give me some of your stuff on ‘seeing’ we’ve been working on?’, Warnock opted for a safer route. And keeping in mind this attitude Warnock seemed to share with Austin about published stuff, what Warnock did was to INCLUDE Grice’s old presentation for the Aristotelian Society – a symposium with White held at Cambridge, and chaired by Braithwaite – on ‘The Causal Theory of Perception.’ Warnock adds the introductory editorial: ‘an ingenious and resourceful contribution.’

I doubt Grice would have cared about the philosophy of perception HAD IT NOT BEEN for this friendly interaction with Warnock. “How clever language is!” Warnock quotes — in his ‘Saturday mornings’ — Grice as exclaiming, after they had been through what they called ‘the syntax of illusion’ – the topic of Buckner’s essay. ‘For it [language] made’ for them ‘distinctions but also assimilations’ just for them. The topic involves ‘seeing’ since it was their source of wonder what ‘visum’ is hardly used in English in sentences like ‘I see the visum of a cow’. 

Grice would later philosophise on TACT and VISION. Tact, like Aristotle would agree, is BASIC. You hardly doubt what you touch. VISION comes second. VISION carries a METIER or function – for survival. So we perceive ‘objects’ – Grice – not having read Kant in Kant’s vernacular – is pretty free about the use of ‘object’ to mean ‘thing.’ 

Unlike Buckner, Grice never did the Scholastics in Latin (de re, res, realia) and Aristotle’s idiom for ‘thing’ is too pragmatic to be taken seriously: pragma.

So the idea is that if a pirot – as Grice calls, after Carnap, any human being in some state of evolution – or any other living creature in a previous state, if not one in a post-ceding state (an angel, or God) – interacts with another pirot, he is bound to say ‘That apple is red.’ Colour words are a trick. But the idea here would be ‘That apple is EDIBLE,’ not rotten. Perception then is a guide for joint survival. ‘Feel free to eat the apple.’

In the hey day of ordinary-language philosophy, Grice and Warnock were not really ‘allowed’ to go big – Grice just does by quoting Price on Perception – ‘The Causal Theory of Perception’ is a chapter in Price’s book — the only reference Grice gives in his own ‘The Causal Theory of Perception’ essay. 

What Grice and Warnock, as fashions went, *were* ALLOWED to do is ‘linguistic botany’ and going through the dictionary.

It it at this point that Grice and Warnock become obsessed with the EXPRESSION of reports of perception. Warnock has one essay on ‘What is seen.’

Philosophers at this time gathered by generation, so it is a bit of surprise to find a footnote in Grice’s OTHER essay on perception, “Some remarks about the senses,” crediting O. P. Wood for a point, or two. Wood was associated with Ryle’s group, not Austin’s. But Wood states that he always enjoyed interacting with Grice! The point may refer to The Molyneaux Problem!

When it comes to the ‘vocabulary’ of the philosophy of perception then, Grice hardly goes to Aristotle. There is really no need, since English seemed rich enough for him. 

Just considering ‘see,’ Grice was not just happy with his idea of the conversational implicature attached to it – besides the Mooreian entailment associated with its factiveness — but he even coined the idea of a conversational DIS-implicature for cases of … illusion. 

Thus, he would say that – if we know we’ve just been to a Shakespeare play, Grice can very well say to Warnock that Hamlet saw that his [Hamlet’s, not Grice’s or Warnock’s] father was looking for trouble – ‘even if Hamlet’s father was nowhere to be seen’. Mutatis mutandis for Macbeth and Banquo – the example in Studies in the Way of Words.

Buckner is into well other issues, but I thought I’d ring the Griceian bell!

References

Austin, J. L. (1960). Philosophical papers, ed. by J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford University Press.

Austin, J. L. (1962). Sense and sensibilia, reconstructed from the manuscript notes by G. J. Warnock. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Berlin, I. Essays on Austin. Oxford: Blackwell.

Cox, J. R. Seeing, in Sibley.

Grice, H. P. (1938). Negation and privation. The H. P. Grice Papers.

Grice, H. P. (1941). Personal identity, Mind. Repr. in J. R. Perry, Personal identity, University of California Press, Berekely.

Grice, H. P. (1950). Vision. The H. P. Grice Papers.

Grice, H. P. (1961). The Causal Theory of Perception – symposium with A. R. White. The Aristotelian Society, chaired by R. B. Braithwaite. The Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.

Grice, H. P. (1962). Some remarks about the senses, in R. J. Butler, Analytic Philosophy, repr. in Grice, WoW

Grice, H. P. (1987). A retrospective on Grice-Warnock on perception, The H. P. Grice Papers.

Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press.

Grice, H. P. and G. J. Warnock (1950). Seminar on the philosophy of perception, University of Oxford.

Hampshire, S. N. (1946). The New Play Group and the Old. The S. N. Hampshire Papers.

Orton, Joe (1973). What the butler saw.

Price, H. H. Perception. Oxford.

Sibley, Perception.

Warnock, G. J. (1955). Seeing. The Aristotelian Society.

Warnock, G. J. (1969). The philosophy of perception. Oxford Readings in Philosophy.

Warnock, G. J. (1983). Language and Morality. Oxford: Blackwell.