Strands and Monsters

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We are considering a few monsters (were they ten? -- no they were TWELVE -- Grice speaks of a twelfth-fold antipathy for "Minimalism" --

things like


Nominalism
Extensionalism
Physicalism
Phenomenalism
Mechanism
Scepticism

etc.


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On the other hand there are 16 strands in Grice. He himself dwells with 8 in WoW, but we have duplicated them to allow for the richness of his input other than in WoW.


Now:

The question.

Hypothesis.


FOR EACH STRAND, as per CarnapGrice pdf by JonesSperanza, there is a monster.

Consider

Strand 1: Philosophy of perception. The causal problem. What monster is here involved? Mechanism. Also "Physicalism" and "Phenomenalism" for Grice notes that a thesis of the strand involves the alleged reduction of a material-object statement to its sense-datum counterparts.

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It's easier to proceed with strands other than the ones Grice recognised.

Strand 9, for example. Value. What is the monster here? Positivism. I.e. the idea that value does NOT belong in the world.


Strand 10, for example. Reason. What is the monster here? Scepticism. Because the concern with reason in Grice is an attempt to bridge Hume's fork, and that there IS such a thing as 'practical reason'.



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So we see that for each strand, for it to have relevance, we need to identify it or mate it with a monster (or countermonster).

Grice was clear about the logic of this:

He was intolerant of intolerance.

He thought that to proscribe value, or practical reason, or abstract entities, or intention, or free will, or absolute value, or pragmatics, etc. form a philosophical explanation involved a reduction: a 'minimalism'. We were offered explanations which were more MINIMAL than they needed be.

Example.

Strand 9: value. Monster: Positivism, Scepticism. There is no value in the world. It is a world of matters of fact. So the minimalist explanation, alla Hume, goes that what is of value reduces to a 'desire'. The 'ought' becomes an 'is' -- the 'is' of desire. Just by adopting 'value' as a 'primitive' though, or a possible explanans, we avoid the reduction.

As a philosopher, like Carnap, Grice was onto the foundations. So he would not have been happy with, say, introducing abstract entities, value, pragmatic, practical reason just by fiat.

His philosophy is one of 'constructivism'. He proposes so-called 'rational reconstructions'. To even TALK about them in a world transfigured by Jacques Derrida and his ideal of de-constructionaism is enough to see how conservatively irreverent (or irreverently conservative) Grice, and we trust, Carnap, could be.