Grice's theory as ultimately 'ad-hoc'

We are discussing this vis a vis the CarnapGrice project.

The reference being to:


MacKay, Alfred F. 1972. Professor Grice's Theory of Meaning. Mind, 81, 57-66.

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MacKay is writing as a methodologist, and concerned with the very manoeuvre of Grice on meaning. He is particularly concerned with the flurry of 'alleged' counterexamples referred to in Grice 1969.

Grice lists the following authors as having aimed at presenting a counterexample to his views:

J. O. Urmson
D. W. Stampe
S. R. Schiffer
J. R. Searle
P. F. Strawson

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in each case, Grice is victorious. Why? Well, McKay suggests, 'because his theory is essentially ad hoc'. For each new clause that the 'alleged' counter-example provokes, the only motivation, McKay, in this rather uncharitable reading, suggests is the 'overcoming' of the counterexample.

McKay never put forwarded his own views on meaning, and the reserach of this Mind paper draws from sharing with Grice a round table at Oberlin. He makes an important point that helps us appreciate Grice's methodology. And while it is perfectly true we submit that there is also an 'internal' logic going on.

Grice was good at this: he could SEE through the eyes of his critics. Take the first alleged counterexample, by Urmson. Urmson proposed a case where the intended effect on the addressee was NOT the result of a reason, but just a cause. His example was that of a bribe. Grice readapts it to a scenario of physical torture! -- The need to qualify the 'reason' (as well as 'cause') aspect was only CONTINGENTLY associated with Urmson's observation. The inner logic of Grice's analysis leads in that direction.

The next big counterexample was Strawson's, in 1964. The details of the Strawson manoeuvre are interesting per se since they echo some of the manoeuvres of Quine against Carnap. But all in all, Grice accepted the example by Strawson in 1964 as really pointing to a drawback in his original analysis of 1948. As it stood, it did not discriminate between forms of overt communication (which we associate with our ouse of "mean") from cases of persuasion of a more covert nature. Stampe, Schiffer, and Searle followed the Strawson line. The way by Grice to counterattack is Grice's own. He would NOT appeal to 'convention' or the openness of the 'linguistic' rule. Instead he kept adding an utterer's intention -- which McKay finds ad hoc. This particular intention, however, while superficially readable as "to block a counterexample" is imbued with Grice's important idea that everything in communication is 'above board', to which he returned in his discussion of Strand 5 in the Retrospective Epilogue ("in communication in a certain sense all must be pulbic" -- Gri89:367).