Or how to Plat-Hegel an Aris-kant.
Reason Bound
Congratulations to Nicholas E. Allott. Been recently browsing his
magisterial thesis, and wish him all the best in Oslo.
I enjoyed the bibliographical references in Allott's thesis. There's Mill,
there's Boole, there's Kenny, there's Winch -- and not just Grice! A lot of
fun for the philosophy-oriented!
Talking of Gri-- did I say Grice? Chapman quotes this "Grice for the Mill" I
think is is -- yet another pun.
Allott thinks rationality cannot be 'classical' -- he quotes Plato,
especially the Meno, and relies on Jowett's translation. It has to be _bounded_.
There's a lively discussion of 'cognitive-science' meets the Griceans, with
discussions of Over, Johnson-Laird and of course R. O. Warner's introduction to
Grice, "Aspects of reasoning".
Also very good reference to G. E. Harman and other post-Griceans (Schiffer
notably).
Allott seems to be concerned with what Grice calls the P E R E, the
Principle of Economy of Rational Effort (in 'Reply to Richards', in Grandy/Warner,
PGRICE)
-- this is _not_ listed, but it _will_!
1986. 'Reply to Richards', in Richard Grandy & Richard Warner, Philosophical
Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends. Oxford: Clarendon.
This was written for his own festschrift (when you reach a certain age) but
publication was delayed. He did not know (Grice, that is) that his "Aspects
of Reason" would be one day published by Warner; so he (Grice) summarises his
own views on 'implicit' (or 'quick' as Allott prefers) reasoning (abductive,
nonmonotonic and with 'stopping-signals', as it were).
The P. E. R. E. is simple to formulate, and draws on much of those ideas
that were in the air (as when Sperber/Wilson first made it public in the
"Pragmatics microfiches" that 'relevance' seems more of a guiding principle than the
mere rubric for a 'maxim of relation' -- but cfr. Grice's 'Valediction' or
"Retrospective Epilogue" where Grice explicitly responds to Sperber/Wilson and
speaks of 'severing' -- not heads, though!
So, the PERE formulates as:
Economise Rational Effort!
-----
Can Allott do with further historical explananda? Sure he will. He warns us
that his pages with UCL are going to vanish, but let's hope he keeps an eye
on _this_ mailing list, will he? Please do! We love you!
Allott quotes
Grice
1957. Meaning.
It may do history justice to recall that Grice _re-dates_ this (is that
possible? Is that _legal_? Is that _moral_?) as "1948". The date is important, I
think, to place Grice's efforts well in the 'forties'. Hence his quote of
Stevenson (1944) and hence the sense of H. L. A. Hart quoting Grice in Hart's
review of Holloway for the Philosophical Quarterly, 1952.
--- I know, Nick -- why bother!? Loved to learned he did "International
House" at Newcastle.
--- Personally, that bit above took me some time! Especially as I wanted
to _contradict_ Peter Facione's view that Hart's theory precedes
Grice's!
1968. Utterer's meaning, etc. Foundations of Language
Here I am reminded of a post to this list by someone Allott acknowledges in
the preface to his PhD for his 'enthusiasm and knowledge of Grice': T.
Wharton -- we love him too! Wharton was wondering about details of the lectures (on
the list) and in his written Working Paper he ends up quoting some
references from Levinson, etc. The 1968 above then, for the historicist, would be:
1967. Utterer's meaning and intentions. 6th William James Lecture
typed by D. S. M. W. --
-- revised 1987, repr. in WOW, 1989 (I owe the "WOW" to Wharton)
and you see that the 1968 Foundations-of-Language reprint becomes a
contingency!
-----
Incidentally, the Presidential Address for the APA, wasn't that 1975b? I
know (or think I know) because it forces (or bounds) me to have to use 'b';
although strictly speaking it's 'a', for why would Grice cherish more the thing
that Davidson & Harman forced him to publish, almost*? -- I refer to "Logic
and conversation" in Davidson/Harman -- two-column book as format goes, as I
say --., 1975.
If we have that as 1975a
then we could have 1975b, 'Logic and Conversation', in Davidson/Harman
(Grice, Chapman tells us, would _not_ quote Cole/Morgan!)
But again, this is contingential if we rather have
1967. Logic and Conversation. 2nd William James lecture.
Typed by D. S. M. W. --
Revised 1987, repr. WOW 1989
For:
Grice 1981 "Presupposition and C. Implicature", the dating in WOW goes
"1970"! This is legally important! (Just joking). But it allows us to see, for us
historicists, why some views of the 'generative-semanticists' and also of
philosophers of language -- _have_ to rely on some 'publishing' made 'public'
(Wittgenstein said that to 'publish' is to make your views 'public' -- He would
find Grice's "unpublications" a misnomer!). In particular, I was trying to
trace the earliest Gricean account of negation. Levinson quotes a Pragmatics
microfiche on a "Gricean account of negation". I got hold of the microfiche,
and note that the author -- a philosopher teaching at a college in New England
-- is relying on seminars by Grice and Myro, circa 1970.
Allott does have it that "Logic and Conversation" -- it _is_ confusing that
title of whole lectures -- never advertised as such, in Emerson Hall? -- bear
the same title as the _second_ lecture -- was "originally" in Cole/Morgan.
And also more originally in Davidson/Harman. There is dispute about this,
generatively-semantically speaking, since G. N. Lakoff wrote elsewhere that
apparently Grice had to be coaxed, as it were, into two tasks: having the mimeo
published by Harman/Davidson _and_ having the mimeo published by Cole/Morgan!
Talk of conjunction reduction!
Again, the date Grice gives for "Retrospective Epilogue" is 1987 -- he was,
unfortunately, dead by 1989. And 1988 spent most of the time at the San
Francisco hospital.
What do we do with posthumous. Allott has
2001. Grice, Aspects of Reason. Correct!
But what is this mimeo? Well,Warner notes that it was indeed the (trick
here) Immanuel Kant Lectures _and_ John Locke lectures (only a grice-to-the-mill
could have let same set of lectures pass for the empiricist and the
rationalist who refuted him!). I especially cherish the John Locke lectures. Oxford
being as it is -- conservative to the neck -- would *never* allow a Brit to
deliver the Lockes! The man had to become an American to be invited in! (By
rule, the lectures are given by _visiting_ professors! Grice jokes about this in
the Preamble when he drops the fact that he was also a "John Locke Lecturer
(failed)"!
Would we add to the Griceana?
Well, sure!
1971. Intention and uncertainty. PBA is very good in that has within
stone-thrown range of the "London school of monoguism" -- at Cumberland House,
delivering his British Academy thing. I mention this because Allott does make a
point about 'reasoning to 'uncertainty''. The keyword here is meant as a pun on
Hart/Hampshire who had published for _Mind_ in defense of the _certainty_ of
intentional ascriptions!
1961. Causal theory of perception. Aristotelian Society.
This is important historically in that ALL of the philosophers I studied
with would _never_ quote from Davidson/Harman. It's all 'Causal Theory of
Perception' for them! (e.g. Platts, "Ways of Meaning"). Why? Well, for British
philosophy, having a symposium in 1961 is more 'influential' than the
'cosmopolitan', 'overseas' (i.e. distant) William James! -- Also because, as Chapman
notes, there is a good continuity one can trace between that excursus in "Causal
Theory" (unfortunately not included in WOW) and _Logic and Conversation_
proper!
One trick I came across was Levinson's misquote of a lecture by Grice as
1973. Probability, defeasibility and mood operators.
I love Levinson, don't get me wrong, but this Performadillo took me some
time to decipher. Eventually, I trust Judith Baker (in her Baker/Grice, Davidson
on Akrasia, in Hintikka, Oxford UP) who cite this as:
1973. Probability, _desirability_ and mood operators.
Anyone familiar with Warner's intro (to Grice 2001) and Grice's 2001 book
itself will see that he does mean 'desirability' as exactly the corresponding
concept for 'probability'. I'm not even sure about 'mood', seeing that Grice
preferred Moravcsik's correction -- as he attended the Kant Lectures in
Stanford -- of 'mood' into _mode_. (For Grice, the imperative and the indicative
are _modes_, 'mood' is notably ambiguous in Anglo-Saxon, and it has nothing to
do with being 'moody').
And if we do Grice 2001, why not Grice 1991 (by courtesy of Judith Baker).
This means that
1975. From the banal and the bizarre
"scattered out there" -- Grice complains in "Reply to Richards that he fears
someone should publish these things for him in a more accessible format --
became:
"reprinted now in _Conception of Value_", published by none other than the
Clarendon!
It is interesting to check for some overlap in _Conception of Value_ (The
Carus lectures -- was there a lecture this man did _not_ give? He gave the
Dewey lectures, too!) -- middle lectures -- with _Aspects_. Notably, the
'universalizability' of the hypothetical reasoning.
My own PhD is really about that!
I.e. to what extent is 'utilitarian' reasoning justifiable along Kantian
terms? Grice plays a bit with this in Conception of Value, which he delivered
_after_ the John Locke. He resumes the topic of the 'technical' 'imperatives'
and finds that some account of 'human' qua person is necessary!
'human rationality' may seem a joke to someone who, likes Allott, likes to
quote from "HumEan rationality" instead!
But not to Marina Sbisa, who at San Marino, 'spake' that it's all for Grice
a matter of 'persons' reasoning, never humans!
---- A good reference here I found in discussion with Stalnaker. The man is
_wedded_ to Bentham and the utilitarians, and I reminded him, when I heard
him give a talk some time ago: "But wasn't that where Warner found you were
wrong?"
I was referring to Warner's reply to Stalnaker in the Journal of Philosophy
report on the "Symposium on the Thought of Paul Grice" (1991). Warner, as I
recall, wants to say that no account of Gricean rationality is complete
without an examination of some sort of _moral_ even transcendental 'imperatives' or
constraints alla Kant!
I'm pleased Allott mentions Sibley on 'reasonable and rational'. Not the
Sibley I know! (The Lancaster professor of aesthetics!). But that seems to be
the _gist_.
PhD theses are always open-ended. Mine ended with a chapter on "The cunning"
or something of reason. Once you get Kantian, you want to play with Hegel
too. Perhaps Hegel is right that 'rationality' _is_ relative; but not even him
could let relativism destroy his dignity: it's not that reason is _relative_;
it's that it plays games on us. The word for 'cunning' is German and
difficult -- but it did motivate in England (UEA, actually) some lively debate led
by Martin Hollis on top of them all!
I once tried to discover if Grice's views on rationality were shared by the
group he cared most: the Saturday morningers. Hampshire (in Thought and
Action) has a line or two to the effect that 'rationality' is merely
'connectedness' in discourse; the type of 'conversando in conversazione' that Allott
develops. But indeed, the very word, 'rationality' would have seem pretentious to
them all! -- and they would need to wait for Jonathan Bennett to provide a
few generalities they could _digest_ -- his book on "Rationality" that is.
America is different. Rescher was publishing on "Rationality" for years, but
when I asked my tutors for advice as to Rescher, they would say, "Never
trust a philosopher who publishes more frequently than Barbara Cartland".
As for 'pragmatic' to discuss the other sobriquet in Allott's thesis, I
loved Grice's "Retrospective" when it goes into the 'pragmatic' versus 'logical'
distinction. He is careful enough to _avoid_ 'pragmatic' when he entitles the
Part II to WOW, "Studies in _semantics_ and metaphysics" -- a stronger
cocktail some will say!
But Hegel should only be given his _due_ and no more. It's with Kant that
Relevance (or "Relation" in his jargon) starts to exist (although Chapman
rightly traces it to Aristotle's fourth category on which Grice lectured for
_ages_).
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
The Grice Club, etc.
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Received on Wed Feb 18 19:31:17 2009
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