[JLSblogs] [The Grice Club] Grice for Philosophers

[jlsperanza at aol.com (J. L. Speranza)]

--- by JLS
------ for the GC

--- I WILL TRY TO COMMENT BASICALLY on Kramer's 'hammer' and 'nail'
metaphor. The idea:

I am being, slightly, provocative when I emphasise in this or other
threads, the 'philosophical' side to Grice. It is a serious thing, so I
welcome the metaphor by Kramer on the hammer and the nails. I will
consider them vis a vis Grice.

----

Grice FOR PHILOSOPHERS. I am thinking, I think, of Chapman's
book, "Philosophy for Linguists" -- one of her projects about the
Vienna Circle, etc. Then there's the Logic in Linguistics series -- and
the Moravcsik, "Philosophy for Linguists", and McCawley, "Everything
you always wanted to know about logic but were afraid to ask", etc.
Disciplinarians!

--

GRICE AS PHILOSOPHER. While with a first (two firsts, is that
possible?) in Corpus Christi, Lit. Hum., the thing was philosophy with
him. It is true that he taught Classics for a year at Rossall, but hey
-- is it possible to teach Latin and Greek to teenagers?

--

'Personal Identity' was Grice's first published thing in 1941: a
philosophical thing. But a few years before he had typed a thing
on "Negation" (or someone had typed it for him because he was proud of
not being able to type). 'Negation' is vintage philosophy. Many of the
arguments Ayer will later make in his own 'Negation'. Negation as
difference, Platonic and beyond. The empiricist account of negation
(cfr. Ayer, "There is no highest mountain than the Everest"), etc. We
only have other than archival material a few scattered comments on this
in Chapman's archival material. I don't expect a lengthy
essay. 'Personal Identity' IS lengthy. it is philosophical, I surmise,
rather than psychological. It is about Locke, and memory, and the idea
that "I am having a terrible headache as I write this" resolves in
impressions of a temporal character.

----

Grice in the 1940s and 1950s. Not much published. Almost nothing, other
than the "Metaphysics" (in Pears, 1957), and the "Meaning" and the "In
defense of a dogma" (both for Philosophical Review, where 'for' is
hyperbolic -- the first was submitted BY STRAWSON, rather -- and
written actually in 1948, as WoW has it. These are philosophical but
not CENTRAL concerns by Grice. His 'Meaning' piece is mainly an
excercise in logical analysis which became famous for the 'reflexive
intention' it introduced -- the Gricean mechanism or way: if U means by
x that p, then U intends that A will recognise that U believes that p
on the strength of A realising that it is U's further 'communicative'
intention to have him recognise that. Or something. First cited by
Hart, in 1952 (Philosophical Quarterly). The 'Defense of dogma' was
Grice's and Strawson's polite response to a seminar by Quine when
visiting the fellows.

--

Grice in the 1960s: the Oxford-turns-International. It's "Some remarks
about the senses", in Butler, and the first international hit, 'Logic
and Conversation', where he goes back to his own "Causal Theory of
Perception" -- the latter perhaps Grice's best vintage: when his views
were ESPECIALLY INFLUENTIAL in the quarters where it SHOULD have been
influential. The "Logic and Conversation" at Harvard was already
reactionary and 'nostalgic': For Harvardites, OLP (ordinary language
philosophy) was a thing of the past already, and I wouldn't be
surpirsed if Albritton who, as Chair of Harvard philo, invited Grice
did NOT do it to please Quine (recall "Defense of dogma" is the ONLY
piece by Grice and Strawson that American of that vintage quoted).

Grice in the 1970s. Here we have the traditionally British Grice
delivering his philosophical British Academy lecture on "Intention and
Uncertainty". Typically, if the thing was published in the minutes and
proceedings (Proc. Brit. Acad., pp. 567-81) it was because he was
requested to leave the copy of the notes with them. There's also the
very philosophical "Method in pyschological psycholoy" as President of
the American Philosophical Association, which again got published in
the Proceedings just because Grice was asked to leave a copy of the
notes with the institution.

Grice in the 1980s. Grice was diagnosed with emphysema and he knew that
there was a drama there. There is some stress on his part, it seems, to
publish things, and a revision of this 1970s activity: the Kant-Locke
lectures for 1977 (which will be published post-cremationally in 2001)
and the Carus lectures for vintage 1982 (which will be published in
1991).

ARCHIVAL MATERIAL AND REPRINTS. What we need is a catalogue raisonee,
which Bancroft (Univ. Library) should commission if only as gratitude
that the Trustees of H. P. Grice regaled the institution with such a
gem. And there's reprints that could well fill a

"Philosophical Papers" volume, to be published by Clarenon -- alla
Austin, eponymous, and which should enclude:

-- Vacuous Names
-- Intention and Uncertainty
-- Aristotle on the multiplicity of being (PPQ 1988)
-- Actions and events (PPQ 1986)
-- Metaphysics in Pears, The nature of metaphysics
-- etc.


----

I once wrote a review for WoW, and I cited Platts reviewing the same
thing in Mind: I was, at that time, but pretty much to name-drop,
favourably inclined towards Platts' descript of H. P. Grice (for
Anglophiles and Brits amongst us it's NEVER "Paul" Grice, less so the
New-Worldish, "H. Paul") as

"a philosopher's philosopher"

-- I find the descript ambiguous:

(a) sillily but crucially ambiguous: the possessive and the 'a'. When
we say, "a philosopher's philosopher" (we cannot define that as "the"
philosopher's philosopher") what do we mean 'a'? It applies to who --
philosopher? Not Grice, but - Platts? Is Platts saying that he is 'a'
philosopher that finds Grice a 'philosopher'. So that Grice becomes a
philosopher's (i.e. Platt's) philosopher? The phrase is inexistent in
Italian (land of the dilettanti).

(b) Other.

----

"A philosopher's philosopher" hateful implicatum. Grice was perhaps
naive or clever when NEVER mentioning 'damn by faint praise'. After
all, this is the RESPECTFUL, respected, received name, in the
English-speaking world (of people -- a world does not speak, people
do), apres Pope, for "he has beautiful handwriting". Ditto, I submit,
for

He was a philosopher's philosopher.

Indeed, Platts is even more hateful. He goes:

"The book under review is meant as a subreptitious festschrift on
becoming Emeritus for H. P. Grice, a philosopher's philosopher if ever
there was one" One what? One Platts? One Grice? If one Platts, indeed!
Most people's lives are contingent, and we can imagine a world without
Platts. So there.

---

Why it is a hateful implicatum. Like "His handwriting is beautiful", to
be a philosopher's philosopher can only give Grice the nightmares:

"It is a pleasure for me to browse this festchrift. First, because it's
all by my colleagues. And more importantly by my friends".

--- But not all of those contributing had 'philo' associations, and he
knew it.

--- But cfr. the important variant:

"If Leibniz and Descartes, if Plato and Hegel, if Aristotle and Kant
are _great_, it's because they speak to the Common Woman. I, on the
other hand, am happy to remain a philosopher's philosopher, if ever
there was one."

Surely silly.

Now for Kramer's commentary -- he introduces percussion into the
proceedings: the hammer and the nails. He writes:

maybe you're being too hard on these linguists, JL.

Or 'linguists' as I would now have them. I'm not sure Taylor and
Cameron hold chairs of linguistics. I think they feel better being
described as 'ethnomethodologists'.

Kramer goes on:

Is it not fair to answer the question "What does Grice have to say to
linguists?" in a way that does not try to answer "What does Grice have
to say to philosophers?" Are you suggesting that all (good) writing
about Grice cover the same ground in the same way?

Good. Qualification on 'good' necessary, though. If you re-read, as a
philosopher, Taylor/Cameron, you may be finding yourself asking
questions, of a philosophical or merely critically conceptual or
conceptually critical kind that they are just unable to provide answers
for. This can irritate (the philosopher). It's good you left the 'good'
in brackets (and thus otiose). (My argument is that anything is
brackets is otiose: "Yes, I do own two cars (I also own five
others)." "Yes, I am married (or was married, if you must; since I am
also a widow" -- Baker makes fun on the way Grice kept using brackets
in his writings that she had a problem in interpreting when editing the
mimeos for publication -- footnote in "Conception of Value"
re: 'pinko').

Kramer continues:

That would not necessarily be wrong; Darwinists debate evolutionary
necessity constantly.

Expansion welcome. Are we saying that "Darwinist" is, as I hope it is,
like "Gricean" -- witness the hateful 'like', though. I would so much
think. But some of the authors discussed label
themselves 'neo-Griceans' and 'post-Griceans' which is like saying,
neo-Guinness and post-Guinness (thinking alla D. Dutton of "Althusser"
as a brand (name)).

Incidentally, is Darwin a Darwinist? I hope you are enamoured by my
mention of Grice as a palaeo-Gricean. Strictly, palaeo-Gricean is
Aristotle (vide Horn: "Greek Grice: some protoconversational rules in
the history of logic", on Aristotle). Horn does not
use "palaeo-Gricean", though, _then_ (or afterwards, maybe). We may
even doubt about the implicatum-free remark, "Darwin is Darwinist".
(or "Darwinian"). I surmise that '-ist' is even a better, more euphonic
suffix, "Grice as a Griceist", etc. "The principle of cooperation is a
Griceist thing".

Kramer goes on to introuduce the sledge:

It is often said, disapprovingly, that to a man with a hammer,
everything looks like a nail, and you do not fall into that trap.

Or into that vyse, as it were. (""Vice" is as ambiguous word," writes
Grice ambiguously -- they are DIFFERENT words -- "yet a pun is created
if I say that Jones (sorry Roger Bishop, but "Jones" IS the surname
Grice keeps using) is caught in the grip of a vice").

Oddly, even to a man not at the moment of utterance WITHOUT a hammer,
most things do look like "one" nail: My argument goes that everything
is like everything else (only different). If you've seen the Mad-Hatter
(Johnny Depp) in tridimension you leave the movie theatre thinking that
if we do not know why a raven is LIKE a writing desk that's the
script-writer's fault.

Kramer goes on:

Maybe philosophy is the only nail worthy of the Gricean hammer. But I
hope not. For me, a simple reductionist with no preference for any
discipline - "undisciplined," you might say - there are precious few
hammers and many, many nails, and I cannot stop always to do philosophy
before nailing down something else.

Thank you: that was an excellent phrased thing to say! Only I would
use 'sledge'. Oddly, Grice's metaphor is the fine-tooth combed (of Bill
Bailey's fame). He would seeve through arguments with a fine-tooth
comb. Not your regular sledge. But of course you say that people do
use 'hammer' disapprovingly. In fact, Grice discusses the cooperative
principle as the carpenter's art of dovetailing (cfr. his use of 'vice'
-- "a tool used by carpenters", Grice notes, WoW:MR). The art of
dovetailing is NOT having to use a hammer (and thus, not having to use
a nail, or two).

Wood ("The force of lingusitic rules") and others have elaborated on
this. The idea is that a hammer is a 'functional' word (cfr. Grice
on 'cabbages and kings' in "Conception of Value"). Indeed, the
disapproving idea about the hammer is that: what purpose can a hammer
have without a nail. Thus the adage cited by Kramer:

"To a man with a nail, everything looks like a hammer" (or something).
(I echo Kramer's remark, 'Screw it, JL!').

Kramer goes on to cite a very apt poetical thing:

Recall Robert Frost's famous essay on the choices we make about
misusing our tools: "Whose nails these are I think I know/His
workshop's in the village, though/
He will not see me stopping here/To ball and peen his cabin
so./Linguistics is all right, you see/But I'm into [philosophee]/And
that's just how it has to [bee]. And that's just how it has to [bee]."

Indeed amusing. Oddly, to be 'into' is sometimes stupidly described as
being a Valley-Girlism, "I'm so not into Malibu". It's odd that Frost
used it like that, "But I'm into philosophee". How "all right" can
lingusitics bee if you're not INTO it, in the stead, the implicatum
goes.

Kramer comments: "I left out a couple of verses, as I don't remember
them exactly and I wouldn't want to misquote". Excellent. For the
record, I think he said he was 'into butterflies' or stuff.

----

But back to the hammer and the nail. The problem with the hammer is
Heideggerian. Geary knows about this stuff. A hammer is what Heidegger
calls 'zu hand', i.e. to the hand. A nail, on the other hand, is
not 'to the hand' but 'to the hammer', literally. A tool is a tool is a
tool.

Grice --
what Grice wrote --
the disciplines.
The keywords: 'philosophy'.

In my own PhD dissertation, I made a POINT OF NEVER using the
word 'philosophy' or 'philosophical'. It sounded so otiose to me to
focus on that word. After all, the thing WAS being submitted to
a "Philosophy Department", and surely philosophers don't want to hear
about philosophy (they don't want to hear about most anything else
either -- and I never used 'linguistic' or 'linguistics' either).

'philosopher' qua keyword.

--- In a way, 'philosopher' is possibly a misnomer. "Grice for
philosophers", I enitlted, unimaginatively, this (Hey, one should stop
calling thing 'unimaginative'. I know people -- and friends even --
compared to what THEY say, "Grice for philosophers" is 'florid'. They
have the most unimaginative, dreary, dull prose -- and verse, too --
even if it usually gets the 'rhyme' wrong!

---- Etc.

--
Posted By J. L. Speranza to The Grice Club at 3/28/2010 05:25:00 PM
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