RT list: How to Grice a Toulmin

 
Disimplicating Toulmin. Grice's Two Logics
No Buts About It
Grice cited by Toulmin
 
Well, not really -- but Toulmin's claim to fame was, in Oxford, his cheek
to go and criticise Strawson's Introduction to Logical Theory. Since
Strawson _does_ quote Grice (twice) in that epoch-making book, I take it that we
_can_ say that Toulmin does quote Grice. I append below the passage by
Strawson, where he refers to the 'pragmatic rule' whose operation was made
obvious to him by "H. P. Grice". This was vintage 1952.
 
Toulmin had arrived at Oxford in 1948, complete with his PhD from Cantab.
He first stayed as a visitor with Isaiah Berlin in New College, and a year
later he was appointed "University Lecturer in the Philosophy of Science".
He left Oxford in 1954.
 
In his work, Toulmin, while not caring to cite Grice -- except in this
roundabout way I point out to, by citing Strawson -- he does cite other members
 of Grice's (indeed Austin's) play group at Oxford -- those meeting on
Saturday mornings: thus he quotes from Warnock (in his essay co-authored with
Baier, "On describing" -- the ref. is to Warnock's article on 'hypothetical
statements'), R. M. Hare, J. O. Urmson (author of Parentheticals, etc), H.
L. A. Hart (famous for his 'defeasibility', etc.).
 
It would be interesting to compare Toulmin's views with Grice's in a number
 of respects:
 
"No buts about it"
 
In "Uses of Argument", Toulmin refers to "but" as an 'unruly connective'
which Logicians would rather be seen dead than herding it with the 'logical
goats'.
 
Grice will famously deal with 'but' -- in
 
   She was poor, but she was honest
   (Great War song)
 
at length in "Causal theory of perception" (online version -- NOT that
repr. in WoW). For Grice, as for Frege before him, 'but' _is_ "and" with a
conventional-implicature vengeance about it, which in Frege's parlance,
transpired as 'but's "colour" (Farbung).
 

---
 
Besides dismissing, Toulmin says, 'but' as an uruly connective, Logicians  
will rather be seen dead than herding the non-logical goats of 'unruly  
quantifiers' such as "most" and "few". Rather, Logicians deal with "all" and  
"some", and "or". Here the issue is trickier, for indeed there _is_ a place 
for  so-called pleonetetic logic, thus baptised by Altham after Geach. 
 
----- 
 
"No buts about it" is perhaps not a very clever to specify what I mean.  
After all, if Grice's programme is valuable today, it's because his work on  
CONVERSATIONAL, rather than conventional implicature. But the point here is 
that  Grice's 'informalist' and 'neo-traditionalist' logicians (among which 
we may  safely place Toulmin) make a 'mistake' (and this they share with 
'formalists'  and 'modernists', Grice has it). The mistake, which is thus 
'common' to  proponents of these two 'logics', is their inability to understand 
properly the  nature of 'conversation' and its implicatures. In other words, 
for all that  Toulmin has propounded re: 'working' (utens) vs 'idealised' 
(docens) logic, it  may just be apter not to try to multiply logics beyond 
necessity.
 
I noticed a few (at least two) sort of interesting cross-references  
Toulmin/Grice, too.
 
* Toulmin makes a good point, made by anyone after Moore, almost, that one  
thing is to "state" (Toulmin's favoured expression), another thing to 
"imply"  ('in the sense of give it to understand'). This he makes on at least two 
 occasions in Uses of Argument:
 
   -- re: the Punch line
 
      You can't be sick here +>  You are  not, and you won't
 
   -- re the weather forecaster:
 
       It will probably rain tomorrow
 
      where any 'autobiographical' comment about  the forecaster's beliefs 
is "implied" but not "stated".
 
* He uses the colloquial expression "common ground" (also to be used by  
Grice) when he says that warrants (rather than 'existential commitments, as  
Grice will) are 'common ground' between 'conversationalists'. 
 
* back to 'state' vs. 'say', Toulmin mentions 'that is to say', i.e. "i.e." 
 as an analytical way of dealing with arguments (the conclusion is another 
way of  saying what the premisses say). This seems to agree with Grice's 
extended notion  of 'say'. 
 
Grice's "Two logics" is an ambiguous title or header. I'm using as evidence 
 of Grice's 'do not multiply logics beyond necessity', but if you DO a  
word-search for "Logic and Conversation" you'll see that, scare quotes or not,  
it is an expression, "Two logics", used by Grice, when referring to this 
topic  that appealed Toulmin, whether there are "recognizably valid" 
inferences, which  are not necessarily 'formal' but 'material. 
Johnson has summarised Grice's and Toulmin's positions vis a vis the  
so-called informal logic. But: he manages to misquote Grice's essay as "The  
logic of conversation". (Johnson also discusses Strawson, whose 'Library of  
Living Philosophers' volume carries an interesting essay on 'two kinds of  
logic?'. And Johnson does some terrific work in identifying Ryle (possibly  
Toulmin's major influence here) as precursor of this branch of 'informal logic'  
(as it never was influential in England the way it was, even mandatory, in 
the  USA).
 
Incidentally, since we were discussing Peirce, I see a couple of online  
sources cross-referencing Peirce, Toulmin and Grice, plus this reference to an 
 essay, "Grice in the wake of Peirce", published in "Pragmatics and  
Cognition".
 
The issue raised by Toulmin allows for various responses. My favourite is  
to 'disimplicate' him, i.e. allow that if there _are_ divergences, as 
'connexive  logicians' claim between, say, 'and' and "&", it is still open to see 
the  'formalist' logician as 'disimplicating' what the connexive logician 
sees as  'entailing'. 
 
I'm not meaning to say that to it's easy or desirable to "Grice" a Toulmin  
-- cfr. Grice a Strawson, or neo-Strawson. 
 
Some hasty remarks then along the historical notes on pragmatics.
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
 
---
 
Strawson writes in "CHAPTER 6 : SUBJECTS, PREDICATES, AND EXISTENCE -- THE  
TRADITIONAL  SYSTEM OF CATEGORICAL PROPOSITIONS l:
All x is y  -- No x is y -- Some x is y -- Some x is not y
"The system invites  comparison with  the predicative calculus. But there 
are important   differences."
All alcohol is poisonous -- All elephants are   long-lived -- All tigers 
growl -- All the guests sat down
All non-# is y  -- All x is non-y -- All non-# is  non-y
Instead of writing : * The  inference-pattern
xKy
yAz
.*. xAz
is valid ', I shall simply write  down the first-order  formula
xAy . yAz D x Az
The laws of the square  of opposition,  which give certain logical 
relations between formulae in  which the
terms, their quality, and their order are the same.
The   Square of Opposition. The doctrine of the Square of Opposition 
concerns   the logical relations between any two statements of different forms 
having the  same subject and predicate. Since the terms, their position,
and   quality are identical in the related statements, we can symbolize the 
laws   of the doctrine simply by using the letters A, E, I, O. The doctrine 
is as   follows : A is the contradictory of O, and E of I; A and E are 
contraries,   and I and O subcontraries ; A entails I, and E entails O. Since  
there are  four figures, there are altogether 256 possible moods of the  
syllogism. Of  these 256 only twenty-four are recognized as valid;
THE  ORTHODOX CRITICISMS OF THE SYSTEM. Criticisms of the traditional   
system have centred round the question of whether or not, in using a   sentence 
of one of the four forms, we are to be regarded as committing   ourselves 
to the existence of anything answering to the description given  by  the 
first term of the sentence. It is felt that this question cannot  be  left 
unanswered ; for the answer to it makes a difference to
the  validity of  the laws. It is argued that the usage of the ordinary 
words  (e.g., * all ')  corresponding to some of the constants of the system  
varies in this  respect.
"Everyone agrees that it would be absurd to  claim that the  man who says 
'All the books in his room are by   English authors' has made a true 
statement, if the room referred to  has no  books in it at all.
Here is a case where the use of * all '  carries the  existential 
commitment. On the other hand, it is said,  we sometimes use  'all ' without this 
commitment. To take a classic example : the statement made  by 'All moving 
bodies not  acted upon by external forces continue in a  state of uniform motion 
in a  straight
line' may well be true even if  there never have been or  will be any 
moving bodies not acted upon by  external forces. The consistency-problem for the 
traditional system is then  posed as follows.  We must decide, with regard 
to each of the four forms,  whether it carries  the existential commitment 
or whether it does  not.
But, for any  plausible decision, i.e., any decision which keeps  the 
constants of the  system reasonably close in sense to their use as  words of 
ordinary speech,  we find that some of the laws of the traditional  system 
become INVALID [emphasis mine. JLS]
It has generally been assumed  that, in the case of the particular  forms, 
i.e., I and O, only one  decision was reasonable, viz., that they did carry 
the existential commitment;  and that whichever decision was  made for one 
of the universal forms, the  same decision should be made for  the other. So 
the problem reduced itself  to a dilemma. Either the A and E forms have 
existential import or they do not.  If  they do, one set of laws has to be 
sacrificed as invalid; if they do  not,  another set has to go. Therefore no 
consistent interpretation of the  system  as a whole, within the prescribed 
limits, is possible.
We   should normally accept :All the books in his room are  by English 
authors"  and "At least one of the  books in his room is not by an English 
author" as  contradictories.  The second sentence seems very close in form to 
(Ex)(Fx  .  ~Gx) which is the contradictory of (x)(fx --> gx). It is quite  
unplausible to suggest that if  someone says ' Some students of English  will 
get Firsts this year ', it is a sufficient condition of his having made a  
true statement,  that no one at all should get a First. But this would be  a  
consequence of accepting the above interpretation for I. Note that  the  
dropping of the implication of plurality in * some ' makes only a  minor  
contribution to the unplausibility of the translation. We should  think the  
above suggestion no more convincing in the case of someone who  said "At  least 
onestudent of English will get a First this year".
The  third  table of translations, then, does, if anything, less than the 
other  two to remove our sense of separation from the mother tongue. Suppose 
someone  says ' All John's children are asleep '.  Obviously he will not 
normally,  or properly, say this, unless he believes  that John has children 
(who are  asleep). But suppose he is mistaken. Suppose John has no children. 
Then is it  true or false that all John's  children are asleep ? Either 
answer would  seem to be misleading. But we are  not compelled to give either  
answer.
We can, and normally should, say that, since John has  no  children,, the 
question does not arise. But if the form of the statement were  ~(Ex)(fx.~gx) 
the correct answer to the question,  whether it is true,  would be
"Yes"; for 4 ~ (3tf)(/#) * is a sufficient  condition of the  truth of * 
~(3<r)(/# . ~gx) '. And if the form of the  statement were  either ~(3XA ~&) 
*)(/) or ~ (3x)(fx .  ~gx) . (3x)(fx) .  (3x)(~gx)
the correct answer to the question would be  that the  statement was false; 
for * ~(3ff )(/#)' * s inconsistent with both  these  formulae. But one 
does -not happily give either answer simply on the ground that  the 
subject-class is EMPTY. One says rather that the question of the truth or  falsity of 
the statement simply does  not arise ; that one of the  conditions for 
answering the question one way or  the other is not  fulfilled.
The adoption of any of the explicitly  existential analyses,  whether it be 
a negatively existential one or a con-
junction of negatively  and positively existential components, forces us to 
conclude that the  non-existence of
any children of John's is sufficient to  determine the  truth or falsity of 
the general statement; makes it true for  the first  analysis, false for 
the other two. The more realistic view seems to be that the  existence of 
children of John's is a necessary pre-condition not merely of the  truth of what 
is said, but of its being
either true or false. And this  suggests the possibility of interpreting 
all the four Aristotelian forms on  these lines : that is, as  forms such that 
the question of whether  statements exemplifying them are  true or false is 
one that does not arise  unless the subject-class has  members. It is 
important to understand why  people have hesitated to adopt such a view of at 
least some general statements.  It is probably  the operation of the trichotomy 
' either true or false or  meaningless ', as  applied to statements, which 
is to blame. For this  trichotomy contains a  confusion : the confusion 
between sentence and  statement. 
1 Of course, the  sentence * All John's children are asleep ' is not  
meaningless. It is  perfectly significant. But it is senseless to ask, of  the 
sentence,  whether it is true or false. One must distinguish between  what can 
be said about the sentence, and what can be said about the statements  
made, on  different occasions, by the use of the sentence. It is about  
statements only  that the question of truth or falsity can arise ; and  about these 
it can  sometimes fail to arise. But to say that the man who  uses the 
sentence in  our imagined case fails to say anything either true  or false, is 
not to say  that the sentence he pronounces is meaningless.  Nor is It to deny 
that he makes a mistake. Of course, it is incorrect (or  deceitful) for
him to  use this sentence unless (a) he thinks he is  referring to some 
children whom  he thinks to be asleep ; (b) he thinks  that John has children ; 
(c) he  thinks that the children he is referring  to are John's. We might 
say that in  using the sentence he commits himself  to the existence of 
children of  John's. It would
prima facie be a kind  of logical absurdity to say * All  John's children 
are asleep ; but John  has no children '. And we may be  tempted to think of 
this kind of logical  absurdity as a straightforward  self-contradiction ; 
and hence be led once  more towards an analysis like  that of Table 2 ; and 
hence to the  conclusion that
the man who says * All  John's children are asleep ',  when John has no 
children, makes a false  statement. But there is no need  to be led, by 
noticing this kind of logical  absurdity, towards this  conclusion. For if a 
statement S presupposes a  statement S' in the sense  that the truth of S' is a 
precondition of the  truth-or-
falsity of S,  then of course there will be a kind of logical  absurdity in 
conjoining S  with the denial of S'. This is precisely the relation, in our 
imagined case,  between the statement that all John's  children are asleep 
(S) and the  statement that John has children, that there  exist children of 
John's  (S'). But we must distinguish this kind of logical  absurdity from  
straightforward self-contradiction. It is self-contradictory  to conjoin S  
with the denial of S' if S' is a necessary condition of the  truth, simply, 
 of S. It is a different kind of logical absurdity to conjoin  S with the  
denial of S' if S' is a necessary condition of the truth or  falsity of S.  
The relation between S and S' in the first case is that S entails S'. We 
need a  different name for the relation between S and S'  in the second case ; 
let  us say, as above, that S presupposes S'. Similar considerations hold 
for I;  though mention of I reminds us  of one not unimportant reservation we 
must  make, before simply concluding  that the constants ' all *, ' some ', 
* no  ' of the traditional system can  be understood, without danger to any 
of  the rules, as having just the sense  which these words have in the hosts 
of  ordinary statements of the kind we are discussing. And this is a point 
already  made : viz., that 'some ',  in its most common employment as a 
separate  word,
1 Compare the  discussion of the truth-functional system, Chapter  3,
pp. 68-69.
carries an  implication of plurality which is  inconsistent with the 
requirement that  should be the strict contradictory  of A, and I of E. So * some 
', occurring  as a constant of the system, is  to be interpreted as ' At 
least one . . .'  or ' At least one of the . .  .', while * all ' and * no ', 
so occurring, can  be read  as
themselves.  The interpretation which I propose for the   traditional forms 
has, then, the following merits : (a) it enables the  whole  body of the 
laws of the system to be accepted without inconsistency  ; (b) with  the 
reservation noted above, it gives the constants of the  system just the sense  
which they have in a vast group of statements of  ordinary speech ; (c) it  
emphasizes an important general feature of  statements of that group, viz., 
that  while the  existence of members  of their subject-classes is not a part  
of  what is asserted in such  statement, it is, in the sense we have  
examined, presupposed by them. It  is this last feature which makes it  
unplausible to regard assertions of  existence as either the whole, or  conjunctive 
or disjunctive parts, of the  sense of  such ordinary statements  as All the 
men at work on  the  scaffolding have gone home
or Some of the men are still at   work This was the reason why we were 
unhappy about regarding
such   expressions as ' (x)(fx --> gx) ' as giving the form of these 
sentences  ;  and why our uneasiness was not to be removed by the simple addition  
of  positively or negatively existential formulae. Even the   resemblance 
between There is not a single book in his  room which is not by  an English 
author and the negatively existential  form ' ~ (Ex)(fx . ~ gx)  was 
deceptive. The former, as normally used, carries the  presupposition  
'books-in-his-room ' and is far from being entailed by   'not-a-book-in-his-room ' ; 
whereas the latter is entailed by  ~(3x)(fx).  So it is that if someone, WITH A 
SOLEMN FACE, says, "There is not a single  foreign book in his  room and then 
later reveals that there  are no  books in the  room at all, we
have the sense, not of having been lied  to, but of having  been made the 
victim of a sort of linguistic
outrage.  Of course he did  not say there were any books in the room, so he 
has not  said anything false.
Yet what he said gave us the right to assume that there  were, so he has  
misled us. For what he said to be true (or false) it is  necessary  (though 
not sufficient) that there should be books in the room.  Of this  subtle sort 
is the relation between, 'There is not a book in his  room  which is not by 
an English author'
and 'There are books in  his  room \ l What weakens our resistance to the 
negatively  existential  analysis in this case more than in the case of the  
corresponding * All  '-sentence is the powerful attraction
of the  negative opening phrase * There  is not . . .'. To avoid 
misunderstanding I  must add one point about this proposed interpretation of the forms 
of the  traditional system. I do not  claim that it faithfully represents 
the  intentions of its principal  exponents. They were, perhaps, more 
interested  in formulating rules  governing the logical relations of more imposing  
general statements than the  everyday ones I have mostly considered ; were  
interested, for example, in the  logical powers of scientific  
generalizations, or of other sentences which  approximate more closely to  the desired 
conditions that if their utterance by  anyone, at any time, at  any place, 
results in a true statement, then so does  their utterance by  anyone else, at 
any other time, at any other place. We have  yet to  consider how far the 
account here given of certain general sentences  of
common speech is adequate for all generalizations.
FOOTNOTE: "Some  will say these points are irrelevant to logic  (are 
'merely pragmatic'). If  to call them *irrelevant to logic* is to  say that they 
are not considered  in formal systems, then this is a point I  should wish 
not to dispute, but  to emphasize. But to logic as  concerned with the 
relations between general  classes of statements occurring  in ordinary use, with 
the general  conditions under which such statements are  correctly called * 
true *or '  false'' these points are not irrelevant. Certainly a 'pragmatic ' 
consideration,  a general rule of  linguistic conduct, may perhaps be seen 
to underlie  these points: the rule,  namely, that one does not make the 
(logically)  lesser, when one could  truthfully (and with equal or greater 
linguistic  economy) make the greater,  claim. Assume for a moment that the form 
"There  is  not a single . . . which is not . . ." were introduced into  
ordinary  speech with the same sense as ~(Ex)(fx . ~gx). Then  the  operation 
of this general rule would inhibit the use of this form where one  could 
truly say simply There is not a single . .  .  (or ~(Ex)(fx  & ~Gx). And the 
operation of this inhibition  would tend to confer on  the introduced form 
just those logical  presuppositions which I have  described. The form would 
tend, if it did  not remain OTIOSE, to develop  just those differences I have 
emphasized from  the logic of the symbolic  form it was introduced
to represent. The  operation of this 'pragmatic  rule' was first pointed 
out to me, in a  different connexion, by Mr. H. P.  Grice."