One bete too many

Jones writes:

"When last "the conversation" (between Grice and Carnap) through which Speranza and I were approaching the Eternal City was in progress, the principle avenue along which progress was envisaged lead Carnap down the gauntlet provided by Grice's numerous betes noires. My own difficulty in progressing this line was that for many of the betes we seemed to have little material from Grice to clarify exactly what it was he abhorred. This particularly difficult because it seemed that the central thread in these abhorrences was minimalisation, and that positivism, even the relatively giving positivism of Carnap, does involve a lot of this."

Yes. Grice mentions the many (12) beasts (betes noires, in French) but adds that they are ALL offspring (as it were) from Minimalism. And in "Reply to Richards" he provides an 'economical' argument against Minimalism _in toto_, rather than, alas, caring to deal with each bete noire independently.

Jones:

"My own pet thesis was that if one could probe Grice's mind one would find that what he abhorred was various dogmatic minimalisms, and that he might be persuaded to find some value in the more liberal pluralistic minimalisms in which Carnap mostly engaged. Making this thesis stick is not so easy, particularly in relation to minimalisms on which Grice wrote little. I have therefore in my more recently thoughts on this felt that other avenues might be more productive. There are of course the threads identified in the retrospective epilogue, whose primary merit is that they compiled with hindsight to reflect what he actually wrote about. There is one that seems to me at present to be of particular interest.
It is a topic which was very important to both, on which there is at first glance an irreconcilable gulf, but on which it seems to me that a conversation might well show that the gulf is illusory and that resolving the apparent conflict might be illuminating. This is "meaning"."

---- Yes. Jones was posting something on Russell Dale's history of 'meaning' (PhD disseration for New York Univ, under Schiffer) which relates.

--- I noted in my reply to Jones, elsewhere, that it's best to trace Grice's study ("Meaning") to his seminar material on Peirce. This in various pretty basic ways. Jonathan Bennett, on the other hand, in his "Linguistic Behaviour", makes the wrong connections.

He notes

1956 Grice/Strawson. In defense of a dogma
1957 Grice. Meaning

---- Bennett takes Grice's "Meaning" to be a reply to "In defense of a dogma". The latter was involved with the 'vicious' circle of semantic notions. And while G/S provide a behaviourist way out of the circle, it is "Meaning" which attempts to reduce the 'semantic' to the psychological (via reductive rather than reductionist analysis).

On the other hand, with S. R. Chapman, in her _Grice_, I now tend to think (it's good to change one's exegesis every now and then) that Grice was insulted by the overuse of technicisms in Peirce. If you have read Peirce you know what I mean: the icon, the symbol, the index, and what have you.

Grice thought it would be best to reduce all that to "proper" (i.e. ordinary) English, and speaks of

"... means..."

instead. The rest is history!

---- There is the connection with Stevenson, too, which may have bearing with Carnap. From Peirce we get to Morris. And Stevenson was involved in that group (Unity of Science). So, there was more like this 'complex' "research paradigm" springing form Peirce that Grice is considering. Carnap fits well in (vide his early, "Introduction to semantics", and his constant lip-servicing, if that's the word, pragmatics, as well -- and cfr. Jones and my research on Carnap's brief manifesto for pragmatics as the science of utterance, assertion, and belief, elsewhere).

Jones:

"The gulf has already been apparent between Speranza and I, for the kind of semantics which is of primary interest to Carnap, and to myself, and which comes down from Frege, is something which is completely divested of "psychologism", in which meanings have nothing whatever to do with minds or mental entities (unless minds are the subject matter of the language under analysis). Grice on the other hand builds his conception of semantics on speakers intentions (insofar as I understand it, which is not so much!)."

It IS complex. Back in the day, Grice was THOUGHT as having providing the ultimate reduction of the 'semantic' to the psychological. This was important for careful minds. E.g. Fodor (not one) would rather have a Language of Thought installed in one's brains. But a Griceian cannot just postulate a 'meaningful sentence' as the object of one's propositional attitude ("Jones believed that it is raining"). So, Grice would consider things like:

Jones uttered, "It is raining"
By uttering "It is raining", Jones meant that it was raining. I.e. By uttering "It is raining", Jones intended Speranza to believe that Jones believed that it was raining.

The odd thing is that this convinced Speranza thoroughly. ("I was disarmed by the inability of Speranza to check with the facts. He came to believe that I believed,
and intended Speranza to believe that I believed, that it was raining, by my merely having uttered, "It is raining". The odd implicature is that I never said _where_").

Jones:

"This looks like tough ground for a constructive conversation but I think that when you think about the distinct interests of the two philosophers there is reason for the different attitudes, and possibilities for reconciliation appear. Frege's interest was specifically in the language of mathematics. Subsequent philosophers may have applied his ideas more widely, but Frege's anti-psychologism is to the best of my knowlege specific to the language of mathematics. It is mathematical concepts which he seeks to divest of the psychological elements which were common among mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics in his day. And in this he has been successful, almost all mathematicians today, and probably most philosophers have a completely non-psychological understanding of mathematical concepts."

I would tend to think he was perhaps opposing, say, Mill, System of Logic. I've never read a more psychologist book than that! And of course, Mill thought that 2+2=4 is syntethic a posteriori! Grice would often joke with more grice to the mill. I once did a study (whose mimeo I must have somewhere and which I should scan, with H. Arlo Costa) on the mentalism (so-called) in Mill and Grice. I was amazed by the proto-Griceian views in Mill's analysis of syncategorematic particles like "however" and "but". A great author!

----

Jones:

"Carnap's interest was in formal language for science, and the ideals of mathematical formulation and that of objectivity in science make the same kind of conception of semantics seem appropriate for languages in which scientific theories can be formalised. To this we might add, that these languages are intended for publication rather than discussion, they are not primarily spoken but written languages, and cannot depend upon the kind of contextual clues which may contribute significantly to oral discourse."

This is ironic, in a sort of way, if one is reminded of the 'infamous' Vienna Circle. Apparently, they just gathered to TALK! Ayer enjoyed those conversations, even if his German was minimal. And so did who would later came out as a bit of a traitor to the whole Vienna Circle ideals: an American chap with a Manx surname (W. V. Orman).

---- Grice of course loved to TALK too. So there is a parallel between the unwritten, conversational, doctrines of the Vienna Circle (I never knew WHERE they met. I suppose the university. Odd: I would have selected a pub in downtown) and Grice's Play Group meetings.

Grice did meet in pubs. Notably "Lamb and Flag" and the more prestigious "Eagle and Child" (or "Bird and baby" as Grice called it). They are close enough to St. John's. The meetings were systematically on Saturday mornings. I would not have attended if I had been in the Oxford of the day, since, my last tutorial finished on Friday, I would have taken the FIRST TRAIN to London, and stay there till, say, Monday night, or whenever my next tutorial would be. Although perhaps Mondays I would have golfed?).

---

So, while there is this idea of _publication_, etc. (and Warnock recollects in his "Saturday mornings" how unBritish 'publication' was considered then. "We really didn't care to publish our views. We were proud of our parochialism") philosophy is indeed about the conversation -- 'endless conversation' as I think Richard Rorty has it. On the way to the City of Eternal Truth, of course.

Jones goes on:

"The relevant context is the literature, or some narrowly circumscribed part of it. Grice on the other hand, was of course trying to understand how ordinary spoken language works. In this case, it will much less often be the case that a sentence has some definite objective meaning. Add to this, Carnap's explicit denial that one could expect to deliver a formal semantics for natural languages. It is arguable therefore, that the different attitudes toward meaning are not in conflict, that they represent the different realities of distinct kinds of language."

A note about Grice's manoeuvres. I tend to think, and like to self-convince me about this, that the whole manoeuvre of the 'conversational implicature' was a technical point that Grice wanted to make about a certain outdated mode of doing philosophy. Recall he presented WoW:I-VI at Harvard 1967, and the Prolegomena all deal with specimens from:

Ryle
Austin
Wittgenstein
Strawson
Hart
Hare

and so on. So, 'conversational implicature' is meant to elucidate an analysis of philosophical theses put forward by philosophers. He wasn't really, Grice wasn't, on the trivialities of "She hasn't been to prison yet". Rather, on say, why 'material implication' doesn't do, in Strawson's view, to mirror the behaviour of 'if'.

It is LINGUISTS and other scientists (so-called) -- e.g. psycholinguists, ethnomethodologists of conversation, etc. -- which naturally focus on what Grice's theory is obviosuly about. But recall that for Grice, the point was in the application. The fun, he said in "Further notes", not in the WoW reprint, is when one cashes out implicature for its philosophical price, as it were.

---- It is true that in Oxford seminars between 1961 and 1967, on, boringly, "Logic and Conversation" he WAS BUILDING on a rationality-based account of minimal conversational exchanges. So a case can be made for a purely theoretical interest by Grice on this matters. But as a matter of history, it all started -- as he says in WoW:Retr. Ep., strand 6 -- out of Grice's discomfort with "later Wittgensteinian" rejections of sense-data ("The pillar box seems red to me, looks as if it is red; and, by Golly, this should surprise not even Witters, since the 'bloody' thing _is_ red!")

Jones:

"Furthermore, it seems to me now that if Carnap wished to continue his opposition to certain kinds of metaphysics, then a prime target would be the metaphysics of Kripke, and that because Kripke seems to suppose himself to be obtaining objective metaphysical truths in ordinary language without adopting any special terminology, especially without making use of specific philosophical notions of necessity (which is what Carnap does), then one part of an argument against this could be to deny that ordinary language does have any such concepts."

Kripke, oddly, can have a sense of humour. I pity the man after all the complications he was having with the American Philosophical Association (I'm not sure if Kripke does not call that Association a 'bete noire'). In his book, "Seas of Language", Dummett quotes from Kripke. "Seas of language". Kripke's quote refers to

"Socrates is called "Socrates""

--- see how deep the seas of language can go. Ditto, Grice refered to the 'berths' of language (Grice Club, search engine). So on a charitable view, one can see Grice's and Kripke's attempts to be such of reconstructing, say, 'logical form' out of its "pretty good guide" (in Russell's words): grammar.

----

Jones:

"In such an argument, the kind of attention to the realities of ordinary language which we find in Grice would be helpful. There is some similarity here with the contribution of Grice on the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, for Grice's contribution here with Strawson, is to the effect that no failure in precise enunciation of the distinction by philosophers can undermine the practical efficacy of related notions in ordinary language."

Indeed. And they DO provide a criterion: a behavioural one. Since they are working in the context of "ordinary language philosophy" the point is often not stressed strongly enough. But they DO propose:

"I just can't understand what the dickens you are talking about!" -- as an apt conversational reply to an analytically false 'conversational move' ("My neighbour's three-year child is an adult").

Versus:

"Incredible to some, but for some reason, I DO believe you!" (as an apt answer to the synthetically false, "My neighbour's three year child understands Russell's theory of types". Note that in this scenario, G/S do mention the case when such a child IS PRODUCED. "We must come to the conclusion that the proposition uttered WAS true." Whereas in the first case ("... is an adult") this would require a different 'conceptual scheme' or semantic interpreation of the basic predicates involved (e.g. "ADULT"), and so on.

Jones:

"Though this is the opposite way round, ordinary discourse providing support for a philosophical distinction."

Excellent point, that.

Recall that at the time, Grice and Strawson were hosting Quine at Oxford, so perhaps 'analytic' was TOO ordinary to be true!

Jones:

"On Kripkean metaphysics the aim would be to undermine the idea that this kind of metaphysics is other than a philosophical construction. Of course Grice might not care for such a campaign, even if it built on his insights!"

The other day I was checking O. Pooley's semantics page at the Oxford Univ site, and it's amazing the time he dedicates in his seminar to ... Kripke! It's not just Kripke-Kripke, but minor Kripke like Kripke on 'semantic reference' and 'speaker reference'. I have work by Patton and Stampe refuting Kripke's early misuse of Grice. It's amazing how it developed into something Grice also found interest, in "Vacuous Names", when he considers Identificatory versus Non-Identificatory Reference -- Kripke's line being put forward also by Donnellan with his referential/attribute distinction.

So, yes, the Kripke-Grice interface is worth considering! Whatever the results!