Grice e Speranza

 

Grice e Speranza

J. L. Speranza

      His name was Hope, and he named his villa “Villa Speranza,” not realising that ‘speranza’ is hardly a cognate of the English surname ‘Hope,’ which is a misspelling of ‘hop’!

 

Abstract. J. L. Speranza has been engaged in the philosophy of H. P. Grice for some time. In these notes, Speranza’s avowed intention is to place Grice within the broader philosophical context, with special emphasis in the philosophy of language.

 

Keywords: implicature, meaning, signification.

 

When H. P. Grice started his serious study of philosophy, as he put it – Speranza never did! – Grice mentions the good fortune he had in having that Scot tutor, Hardie, to teach him how to argue. Speranza didn’t!

It was however early in his studies in philosophy that Speranza came across Grice.

It was early in my philosophical studies that I came across Grice – or rather, I should say, Austin. In the standard histories of philosophy – and such is a requirement in any philosophical curriculum – it is -isms that fascinate the historian. So Hartnack, for example, goes on to subdivide ‘ordinary-language philosophy’ as comprising Ryle’s senior group, and the junior group led by Austin.

So I knew what I was going for!

In the syllabus of most ‘philosophy of language’ courses there will be a unit or two on ‘meaning and intention’ – I came to regard this as ‘significatio,’ rather – followed perhaps by one on ‘implication versus implicature.’

But the systematic treatment of Grice is hardly necessary in any philosophy curriculum outside Oxford – or even especially WITHIN Oxford, since it was anathema in Grice’s generation to quote OTHER Oxford philosophers!

Grice went from Scholar at Corpus – four years – under Hardie, to become Senior Scholar at Merton – no tutor required! – and to accept, finally, a lectureship at St. John’s – before becoming a fellow. The lectureship went well and Grice was offered a fellowship soon after. This was of course, “Tutorial Fellow.” No such title would apply, say, to Grice’s later collaboration, D. F. Pears, since they only have Students at Christ Church – not fellows!

While the association to St. John’s is adamant – it is perhaps a little source of stress for Grice that he became ‘University Lecturer.’ This relates to Austin.

Austin instituted his New Play Group on Saturday Morning for full-time tutorial fellows in philosophy – and a few students, since Pears was there, if not Wood (who remained a faithful Ryleian). And the point is for these full-time or whole-time as Warnock’s old fashioned prose has it – tutorial fellows (or students) to be able to get away from the labours of having to see their scholars – their pupils – in Grice’s case, at St. John’s, and having to, well, TUTOR them! The best way to approach the Play Group is via the alphabet. There was Paul (that Grice cared to mention both in his “Prejudices and predilections” and in “Retrospective Epilogue – his obsession with sense data. There was Nowell-Smith, whom Grice describes as the straight man to Austin’s mockeries. There was Dick – whose daughter became a famous lesbian. There was Hamsphire, whom Grice loved. There was an Anglo-Jewish by the name of H. L. A. Hart, that Grice adored – Hare reviewed ‘Dark clouds mean a storm but there won’t me one’ in Philosophical Quarterly, BEFORE Strawson had cared to type the draft on ‘Meaning’ --. There were Grice’s collaborators Warnock, Pears, Thomson, Hare. Or I should say. There was Warnock. There was Pears. There was Thomson. There was Hare. And more

Being a University Lecturer meant that Grice’s lectures (the title is rather ironic at Oxford, since ‘to lecture’ is a term of abuse) could be attended by ANY member of the university, including a physicist!

It would be interesting to review his career in terms of what he called his ‘unpublications’ – ‘with a few publications thrown in for good measure.’

There is an early draft on “Negation and privation” which is an interesting choice. His affiliation with St. John’s was pretty minimal at that point, and the draft features his home address at Harborne!

The idea however is to produce a logical construction of ‘not’ – i. e. an analysis (‘philosophical analysis’ was in anyone’s lips, Grice says – of an utterance (or sentence – Grice wasn’t that fastidious then) involving ‘not’. He has two. One involving sensorial experiences, which he deems secondary, since they are what Broad called psycho-somatic – a purely introspective one. The one Grice choses is “Someone is NOT hearing a noise.” In Grice’s construction, the sentence becomes equivalent to the REJECTION of a related sentence, without the ‘not’: “Someone is hearing a noise.” It is to THIS sentence that Grice’s ‘person’ projects an attitude of rejection – not just ANY rejection, but the rejection that he KNOWS it!

“Negation and privation” was followed by “Personal identity.” It is listed in Edwards’s Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, but Perry would no know that! When the now defunct University of California Press – an Americanism – accepted Perry’s proposal, Grice’s “Personal identity” was reprinted some decades since its first appearance in the pages of “Mind.” And if Grice chose “Mind” as the journal to which he submitted “Personal identity” the reason is out there to see. It may count as one of those ‘Critical Studies’ thing, since the first reference is to Ian Gallie’s previous, and recent, essay on selves and substances in the annals of analytic philosophy. “Mind” was still subtitled “a journal of PSYCHOLOGY and philosophy,” and under Moore’s editorship.

Grice will go back to the topic at various stages. It was clear that, like “Negation and privation,” we have Grice the constructivist here, since, again, he is proposing a ‘logical construction’—the phrase is Broad’s – of sentences (or utterances, but he wasn’t so fastidious then) involving three types of “I” – or ‘someone’, as Grice prefers – “I’m not an ego-ist!” – somatic: “I was hit by a cricket bat”; psycho-somatic: “I am thinking of Hitler” and purely psychic: “Someone IS hearing a noise.” The interesting bit is that he spends a few paragraphs on Locke, on the identity of HUMAN and PERSON, which will become the topic of his speculation decades later – the transubstantiation, indeed, of a human into a person!

Drafted to the Navy, Grice did his best, and came out alive – and kicking – and with a title of ‘Captain, Royal Navy.” And then it was back to Oxford.

Having married, he was not allowed to sleep at St. John’s, but St. John’s was generous enough to offer him a flat on Woodcock Road.

So it was pupils, pupils, and more pupils. Instead, he had a lot of respect for them, and came to be known as “Godot” – as pupils would pile up up the stairs. There was another tutor in philosophy at St. John’s, which helped, with things like Strawson – who ‘had’ both!

The other tutor, like Grice’s own tutor, was a Scot – good old Mabb, as Grice called it – or Mabbot for long! Like Hardie, he was more of a Ryleian, if anything at all!

One thing that may fascinate the scholar at Oxford is that in those days attending a seminar may well mean attending a JOINT seminar. This is a trick. Isn’t it difficult enough to have to deal with ONE lecturer?

However, Grice was happy to list all the other English philosophers with whom he shared a ‘seminar,’ as those things were called. It is mandatory for a scholar to attend at least three a week!

The first collaborator Grice will mention is Strawson – “my former pupil” – so that’s fine and dany. Quine attended one of these, and was surprised at how little room they allotted to open session. “That IS an interesting point, about which I suppose I shall have an answer in two weeks – since next week’s is Strawson’s week!”

The best way to classify these joint seminars would be by surname of collaborator – but hey! So he also gave a joint seminar or two with THOMSON. Grice here cares to specify the topic: philosophy of action. THOMSON was the epitome of the hot-bed of Ordinary Language Philosophy until he married Judith Jarvis and left for a technological institute overseas!

Then there was the joint seminars with G. J. Warnock – on which Grice kept all the notes. Warnock was a sort of a genius in an Anglo-Irish sort of way. Their seminars, of course, were on ‘The philosophy of perception’. Sayers attended one. “Grice mumbled and did his best to drive his audience away. For the most part, he succeeded, including myself.”

Then there were the joint seminars, on “The philosophy of action”, again, with D. F. Pears. But Pears and Grice, unlike Thomson, were more into what Grice will later call ‘philosophical psychology,’ so expect those seminars to be full of references to Grice’s description of Pears’s introspective accounts of Grice’s intendings and willings – not in that order!

There were seminars with Austin. One on ‘De Interpretatione,’ that Ackrill attended. “Greek to me,” he would later say. The result was that Clarendon accepted Ackrill’s proposal to translate Peri Hermeneias into Anglo-Saxon murdering Plato’s and Aristotle’s parlance into talk of ‘making a statement’ or failing to make one!

With Austin Grice had a menage a trois, as we call them, since the two joined R. M. Hare to give a seminar on Aristotle’s Ethics.

There was a joint seminar with Woozley of the old school, if ever there was one – a member of Austin’s OLD play group. Woozley gave joint seminars with Grice on ‘scepticism.’

And so on.

When it came to publishing – it was all Strawson’s fault. The least thing Grice wanted to do with his draft on ‘Meaning’ – a mere exercise in dialectic meant to impress the Philosophical Society (Oxford philosophical society, that is) into Grice’s taking care of the recent title published by Yale University Press – of all University Presses – by Stevenson on Ethics and language. But 9 years later, Strawson asked Grice for the draft, had his wife typed it, and submitted it to an AMERICAN journal: the Philosophical Review!

Grice’s Philosophical Review experiment collected a lot of criticism. But he never cared. Some of the criticism he did care to publish in his revision of the analysis in The Philosophical Review – a sort of critical notice, sort of thing. If one checks the list of names he gives, one notices only one Englishman: J. O. Urmson. Grice loved Urmson, and Urmson loved Grice. There are various cross-references among them. Grice would keep using Urmson as a defendant of paradigm-case arguments – and Urmson would play with the principle of appositeness, and the rules of evidence, and so forth. But by this time, he had encountered Implicature.

Grice was proud of having presented Miss Implicature at Cambridge, of all places, in “The causal theory of perception.” However, American publishing being what it is – stingy! – he had to elapsed that long excursus on implicature – “So what the reader gets is the idea of IMPLICATURE as applied to ‘it seems to me as if that pillar box is red” – in the Harvard University Press reprint of the Aristotelian Society contribution.

Warnock was a bit more careful, when reprinting the WHOLE symposium in his The Philosophy of Perception – only that A. R. White never quite knew what to do with Miss Implicature!

It was Butler, fresh from Oxford, who thought of having a collection by Blackwell on Analytic Philosophy, and Grice contributed with “Some remarks about the senses.” However, this remained pretty local, since nobody other than an Oxonian would read a Blackwell title!

Hot-bed of ordinary language philosophy Grice calls it – due to not just Austin, but Pears. Pears, an aristocrat, wanted to reach the masses, and had Grice and Strawson record a lecture on “Metaphysics” and publish it with Macmillan. The “Radio Days” notice has two typos: it states that it is a discussion BETWEEN Grice, Strawson, and Pears – only that ‘among’ is Austin’s choice! Pears, Fellow of Corpus, the “Radio Days” note goes on.

If the revision of “Meaning” – “Utterer’s meaning” was published in The Philosophical Review, another continuation of that research he published for “Foundation of Language”: “Utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning” – “an essay whose title I almost always get it wrong in recollection,” he would say.

By that time, while Oxford made him – Oxford left him – and the rest is history.

While still part of the scene, Grice found out – upon the death of Austin – that a whole generation lacked a leader, so he offered himself. They would meet at Corpus. But of course, we can distinguish a few features between Austin’s new play group and Grice’s own. They games were not restricted to full-time or whole-time tutorial fellows. Grice’s own ‘scholars’ if we can use that name to mean someone from ANYWHERE who is at Oxford to pursue a degree ABOVE that of the B. A. – and more!

When he came back to Oxford to deliver the John Locke lectures, the format was un-Oxonian. The lectures are open to members of non-the university, or non-members of the university. Grice was an exception in that he was a honorary fellow – but he cared to mention in the Proemium, that he always had a thing AGAINST Locke, having Grice been refused the really valuable John Locke Scholarship – TWICE!

The Critique of Conversational Reason. It is not easy to summarise Grice’s advancements to what we my call the critique of conversational reason. In his lectures on ‘conversation’, he would speak of ‘the conversational game,’ its ‘conversational rules,’ its ‘conversational moves,’ and so on. The Kantian references are mainly taken in jest. Notably with Grice’s introduction of the phrase, ‘conversational category.’ He was never sure how many categories there were, nor did he care. But the the idea of a ‘conversational category’ allowed him to have this or that ‘conversational maxim’ as hanging from a ‘principle of conversational helpfulness’, which was his bet at ‘conversation’ as ‘rational cooperation. He was well aware that the cooperation thesis was independent from the more general, and indeed, pretty dull idea, that conversation is a ‘rational activity.’ As it sometimes isn’t – but don’t go to Grice for having underestimated the aesthetics, or the moral, or this or other point of conversational activity – not his field!

His identified a ‘fundamental question’ when it comes to this principle of conversational helpfulness. To wit: its basis. And he proceeds by offering a transcendental argument that had felt slightly circular to Graham and others. The idea is that given this or that ‘conversational goal’, which is now shared, the principle of conversational helpfulness and the set of this or that conversational maxim will follow.

Grice was aware that the universality or alleged universality of his programme – strictly, the universalisability of the principle of conversational helpfulness from this or that conversational maxim – was bound to be trick, as it was for Kant. Hegel would speak of the ‘cunning of reason.’ Similarly, Grice had a response for anyone who’d care to attack the cunning of conversational reason.

The idea is of the universal in the concrete. Rather than go to Malasia, the idea is to check the universalisability among Oxford pupils who ARE BOUND by this or that conversational maxim.

It may safely be said that upon Austin’s demise – and after a short period of grieving – Grice was ready to take on Austin. So the key concept of conversational implicature springs from Grice’s attempts to make it very obvious that Austin – but also Strawson, and people who SHOULD know – kept ignoring or confusing different category shifts.

The idea is that of an utterer who conveys that p. Centrally convey that p. Grice hastens to add ‘centrally’ since ‘He has beautiful handwriting’ hardly centrally conveys that ‘He is hopeless at philosophy’ as uttered by a philosophy don at Collections. What Grice conveys by uttering ‘He has beautiful handwring’ is that he has beautiful handwriting. So there follows a Platonic dichotomy here: what the utterer conveyed – never mind naturally, as by blushing, etc – gets subdivided into centrally and non-centrally. Within the non-centrally (implicitly conveyed) Grice’s focus, qua philosopher, is on what is CONVERSATIONALLY implicated, because it connects nicely with his idea of an overall Conversational Imperative and this or that conversational maxim.

What Austin would be ignoring – if not Strawson – would be the category shift, from ascribing this ‘conveying’ not to the uttererer, but to his utterance – or even worse, to a TYPE of this utterance or that!

But ouside Oxford, few really cared. Philosophers kept ignoring those fine distinctions. And they still do – especially those pupils who get accepted at St. John’s!

Or shall I say, beyond St. John’s: ANY philosophy scholar is bound to find H. P. Grice’s portrait in the Philosophy Room at Merton – where he belonged!

 

References:

 

Ackrill, J. L. Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione.

Austin, J. L. (1960). Philosophical papers, edited by J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

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

Austin, J. L. (1960). How to do things with words, edited by J. O. Urmson. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Bosanquet, Bernard.

Bostock, D. J.

Duncan-Jones, A. E. (1958). Fugitive propositions, Analysis.

Ewing, C. (1938). Meaninglessness. Mind.

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

Grice, H. P. (1941). Personal identity.

Grice, H. P. (1948). Meaning.

Grice, H. P. (1950). Intentions and dispositions.

Grice, H. P. (1959). Post-war Oxford philosophy

Grice, H. P. (1961). The causal theory of perception

Grice, H. P. (1962). Some remarks about the senses.

Grice, H. P. (1962). Negation.

Grice, H. P. (1965). Logic and conversation.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Logic and conversation

Grice, H. P. (1967). Prolegomena.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Logic and conversation.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Further notes on logic and conversation.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Indicative conditionals.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Utterer’s meaning and intentions.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Some models of implicature.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Ill-will

Grice, H. P. (1967). Other

Grice, H. P. (1967). Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice

Grice, H. P.

Grice, H. P. (1971). Intention and uncertainty. Proceedings of the British Academy. Annual Philosophical Lecture. Sold separately.

Grice, H. P. (1975). Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre.

Grice, H. P. (1977). Aspects of reason and reasoning.

Grice, H. P. (1977). Reasons and reasons.

Grice, H. P. (1977). Alethic reasons.

Grice, H. P. (1977). Some remarks about ends and happiness.

Grice, H. P. (1977). Presupposition and conversational implicature.

Grice, H. P. (1982). Meaning revisited.

Grice, H. P. (1983). The conception of value.

Grice, H. P. (1983). Objective value.

Grice, H. P. (1983). Objective and relative value.

Grice, H. P. (1983). Absolute value.

Grice, H. P. (1986). Actions and events. The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.

Grice, H. P. (1987). Retrospective epilogue.

Grice, H. P. (1987). Conceptual analysis and the province of philosophy.

Grice, H. P. (1987). Philosophical eschatology and Plato’s Republic.

Grice, H. P. (1988). Aristotle on the multiplicity of being. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.

Grice, H. P. Descartes on clear and distinct perception

Grice, H. P. and Judith Baker. Akrasia.

Grice, H. P. and P. F. Strawson (1956). In defence of a dogma.

Grice, H. P., P. F. Strawson, and D. F. Pears, ‘Metaphysics.’

Ogden, C. K. and I. A. Richards (1923). The meaning of meaning: a study of symbolism. London: Allen and Unwin

Pears, D. F. Philosophy of mind. London: Duckworth.

Prichard, Willing, edited by J. O. Urmson. Oxford. The Clarendon Press.

Ramsey, F. P. The foundations of mathematics

Robinson, W. Definition

Ryle, Gilbert (1946). The concept of mind.

Speranza, J. L. Grice’s Cratylus

Speranza, J. L. Grice’s Sextus Empiricus.

Speranza, J. L. The feast of conversational reason.

Speranza, J. L. Conversational impenetrability.

Speranza, J. L. The critique of conversational reason.

Speranza, J. L. The Conversational Immanuel.

Speranza, J. L. Robbing Peter to pay Paul: H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson.

Speranza, J. L. Way of Things, Way of Ideas, Way of Words, Way of Conversations!

Speranza, J. L. This and That – Join H. P. Grice’s Play-Group!

Strawson, P. F. (1952). Introduction to logical theory. London: Methuen.

Strawson, P. F. (1986). If and >. In G. R. I. C. E. Grounds Ratio Intentio Categoria End. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Stout, G. F. Voluntary action. Mind.

Urmson, J. O. Philosophical analysis between the two wars.

Warnock, G. J. Language and morality. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wollaston,

NAME INDEX

Ackrill, J. L.

Austin, J. L.

Bradley, F.

Cooper, D. E.

Flew, A. G. N.

Grice, H. P.

Hampshire, S. N.

Hart, H. L. A.

Holdcroft, D

Keynes, N. Theory of Probability

Kneale, W. Theory of Probability

Nowell-Smith, P. H. – see under Smith

Over, D. E.

Peacocke, C. A. B.

Pears, D. F.

Quinton, A. M.

Sainsbury, R. M.

Speranza, J. L.

Strawson, P. F.

Thomson, J. F.

Urmson, J. O.

Warnock, G. J.

Wiggins, D. G. P.

Wilson, J. C.

Wood, O. P.

Woozley, D.

 

SUBJECT INDEX

Subject – used by H. P. Grice as a better rendition of ‘substance’ – “I am a subject, and I engage in inter-subjective activity with Strawson – but I’m not really a substance: coffee is!