Grice e Speranza

 It seems curious than early enough, in his "Causal Theory of Perception," Grice never seemed to have been interested in providing a systematic theory of conversation as rational co-operation.

Rather, he lists a couple of 'philosophical theses, or dicta' -- with an eye to improv them! No names of English Oxonian philosophers dropped.

When he gave the 'Prolegomena' to 'Logic and Conversation', Englishmen who were Oxonian philosophers -- and their names -- started to drop. The oldest of course Ryle. Followed by Austin. And then by other members of the Play Group, notably Strawson and Hart. 

In these 'Prolegomena', Grice is conscious that he cannot provide a good case with an eye to correct their fellow philosophers -- well, he includes his own 'Causal Theory of Perception' as a suspect example, too! -- unless he totters into a theory of conversation as rational cooperation.

Let's see if we can reformulate the former in the term of the latter.

For each case, Grice would say that the philosopher has to failed to focus on what a CONVERSATIONALIST 'signifies'. And when we rephrase the thesis in THOSE terms, the philosopher may still have misidentified the 'shade' of meaning -- the 'nuance' as Grice calls it in "Causal Theory of Perception." Notably, between what the conversationalist 'signifies' by EXPLICITLY conveying -- centrally 'signifying' -- or 'dicta,' proper -- AND what the conversationalist 'signifies' by some other, weaker, defeasible, implicit, uncentral kind of way.

Let's consider the cases in terms of the Oxonian philosophers Grice mentions.

RYLE -- Grice makes fun of him when Ryle in his book, no less, on "The Concept of Mind", which had philosophers at Oxford, such as O. P. Wood REVERING him -- goes on to lecture other philosophers on some 'unwittingly extension' of the 'sense' of 'VOLUNTARY" by this or that philosopher.

Grice's reply: Surely it is perfectly find to use 'voluntary' even if the agent was NOT at fault!

Second case: Austin. Grice loved Austin because he could mock him twice. Not so much for the specifics, but for the generalities -- no aberration without modification, or vice versa. The adverb is the same 'voluntarily' now. Austin claims that the 'significance' is no significance!

Grice's reply:

It is perfectly fine to add 'voluntarily' to any verb you please -- the monkey was voluntarily tossing off. Austin's mistake is to distinguish between what a conversationalist signifies centrally -- by using an utterance of an expression that features 'voluntarily' -- and what he implicates -- 'signifies implicitly' in a conversational cancellable way. Austin is focusing on THIS nuance of conversational meaning when he shouldn't!

At this point Grice needs the theory of conversation as rational cooperation. Because his idea is not just that the conversationalist's significance is BASIC, but that the 'significance' of an EXPRESSION is to be analysed ultimately in terms of the 'conversationalist's significance' -- Not a cup of tea that Austin would be willing to swallo -- he revering His Mother Tongue to the point of exhaustion!

As for Hart, it's all a joke -- since Hart only SAID in conversation that one has to be 'carefully' about 'carefully.' By the same token, Grice might have reported a conversation he had with the green-grocer's. 'The greengrocer keeps misuing the plural form and the scare quotes!"

The third member of the Play Group would be Grice himself -- he WAS happy with the result in "Causal Theory of Perception." So the fact that he gives the reference to the supplementary volume of the Aristotelian Society is just for the show -- or easy reference, if you wish!

So we come to the FOURTH member: not a colleague, like Austin, but his own PUPIL: Strawson. And not a member of the Establishment pre-Austin, like Ryle.

Grice manages to find his pupil at FAULT twice. The first is about 'if' -- which Grice correlates to 'and' and 'or' -- Interestingly, 'She is in the kitchen or in the bedroom' is one of the four examples in that interlude on implication in 'Causal Theory.' But at this point he manages to quote verbatim from Introduction to Logical Theory.

The other fault is Strawson's Analysis essay on 'Truth', where he says some ridiculous things 'which obviously pertain to the realm of what a conversationalist implicitly signifies!

Grice is again setting the record, by relying on published sources -- except Hart (in conversation), "The Concept of Mind," the reprint of Austin's essay in Philosophical Papers, ed. by Urmson and Warnock, Strawson's book Introduction, and Strawson's essay in Analysis.

Note incidentally, that by stating, ‘ed. Urmson and Warnock,’ Grice is implicating: how do THESE two – members of the play group – feel about this? Urmson and Warnock remained at Oxford forever associated with Austin, due mainly to their curatorial nuances with How to do things with words (Urmson) and Sense and Sensibilia (Warnock). But the volume to which Grice refers is the set of “Philosophical Papers” – never essays, pompous! – by both four hands! Neither Urmson nor Warnock would care to provide an answer to the criticism by Grice on Austin’s piece on the lack of theoretical recognition for the idea of a conversationalist’s significance!

 

Little wonder Grice stopped lecturing at Oxford for a while until he came back as a foreigner to give the Locke Lectures!