Morton Deutsch, if you've heard of him (or as Geary would add, "even if you
haven't") is best described as an expert on Conflict Resolution, in other
words, an expert on, if not Popper, Grice!
One telling example:
After Morton Deutsch learned that Lydia Shapiro, his future wife (as it
happens) was sunbathing (yes!) along (of all places) the Charles River in
Boston, while she was supposed to be interviewing subjects for one of Deutsch's
sociological experiments, he resorted to what D. K. Lewis would call a
"conventional" means of resolving a workplace dispute.
Deutsch fired Schapiro.
A little more than a year later, though, Deutsch took a slightly more creative
or constructive approach to repairing their frayed relationship. Deutsch and
Schapiro became what Grice would call "fully cooperative partners," husband and
wife.
“I have in the past accused my wife of marrying me to "get even," as they say,
but she asserts, uinstead, and using a Freudianism, that it was "pure
masochism,"" Deutsch wryly recalls.
After completing his experiment in graduate school, Deutsch, who lives on the
isle of Manhattan, perfected this formula for reconciliation to become a
leading expert on Griceian conflict resolution and mediation.
He not only remained married for decades, but co-wrote a prescriptive essay
titled “Preventing World War III," where "preventing" is conceptually related
to 'predicting' (via opposition) --. (To prevent is that what others might
predict won't happen).
Whatever credit Deutsch might have deserved for thwarting another global
military conflict, his principles provided, as a matter of history, a
theoretical framework for various Cold-War negotiations (as Grice notes, "not
hot-war ones"), for court decisions that voided legally sanctioned racial
segregation, and for Poland’s rather peaceful transition from Communist rule
(where "rule" is used alla Searle -- vide his constitutive/regulative rule
distinction).
Deutsch served on the faculty at Columbia -- "the uni in New York," as Grice
explains, "not the country in South America" -- until he became professor
emeritus (of Columbia, not Colombia).
There (in Columbia, not Colombia) Deutsch, not Grice, founded the International
Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (since renamed for him --
Deutsch, not Grice), which he (naturally) ran (figuratively -- i.e. using
mainly his brain rather than his legs)
He should have called it "The Grice Institute," or the "Manhattan Centre for
Griceian Studies," if you mustn't. ("But I thought Grice was too Oxonian for
that?")
Cfr. Grice's New York example:
A: Smith doesn't seem to be having a girl-friend these days.
B: He's spending a lot of time in New York.
(Logic and Conversation, II, Harvard)
“The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice,” which he (Deutsch,
not Grice -- now this is getting confusing) edited with Peter T. Coleman and
Eric C. Marcus, is (for those who know it) a standard manual for dealing with
labour, commercial, international and (why not?) marital disputes.
John T. Jost, a social psychologist at New York University, writes in The
journal Social Justice Research that “in what is probably Deutsch’s most
influential essay, ‘The Resolution of Conflict,' he summarized the lessons of
his research tutorials on, among other things, Griceian cooperation and
conflict.” (Oddly, the "other things" are _also_ Griceian, if not Popperian).
“The point,” Jost notes, “is" almost Wittgensteinian, to wit, "that social
forms are self-fulfilling, so that anti-Griceian coercion, anti-Griceian
intimidation, anti-Griceian deception -- or 'sneakiness', as Grice prefers),
anti-Griceian distrust and anti-Griceian hostility are both causes and effects
of competition, whereas Griceian assistance, Griceian openness, Griceian
information sharing, Griceian perceived similarity, and Griceian friendliness
are both causes and effects of, of course, Griceian cooperation, or
'helpfulness', as Grice prefers in his Oxford lectures on logic and
conversation where he coined the English term of art 'implicature'. (Sidonius
had used it in Latin, 'implicatura').
Morton Deutsch was born, of all places, in the Bronx, to Charles and Ida
Deutsch, both Jewish immigrants from what is now Poland (implicature: but then
wasn't). His father, if you care to know, was a butter and egg wholesaler. Ida
wasn't.
Raised in the picturesque Washington Heights section of Manhattan (Grice lived
on the Berkeley Heights), Deutsch read Freud and Marx when he was ten years
old, graduated from Townsend Harris Hall and entered City College when he was
fifteen planning, or 'intending', as Grice would prefer, to become a
psychiatrist (vide Grice, "Intention and Uncertainty").
Deutsch (not Grice) recalls: "I became disenchanted with the idea of being a
pre-med student after dissecting a pig in a biology lab."
(Oddly, "Grice" means 'pig' in Scots).
“I was happy to switch to a psychology major.”
Again, Deutsch, not Grice, received a bachelor of science degree from City
College and a master’s from the Uni of Pennsylvania.
“I grew up in a time when, as a Jew, I experienced many instances of prejudice,
blatant as well as subtle, and could observe the gross acts of injustice being
suffered by blacks,” Deutsch recalls in an essay in “Reflections on 100 Years
of Experimental Social Psychology.”
And Deutsch did not merely "observe" (to use a Popperianism -- recall his
injunction to his class, "Observe" -- the the puzzlement of his students,
"Observe _what_, prof?" -- They missed Popper's implicature -- "or rather it
went over their heads").
Deutsch (not Grice, or Popper) contributed lunch money to the Spanish Loyalists
in the 1930s; organized a protest against the quality of high school cafeteria
food and a strike by fellow waiters at a summer resort during college;
challenged what he considered racist statements by a professor; and, after the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, enlisted in the Army Air Forces and flew 30
missions as a navigator over Nazi-occupied Old World.
“Being in World War II and experiencing the devastation and horror of war, even
though I felt the war against the Nazis was justified, I became interested in
prevention of war,” Deutsch notes in the "Teachers College Today" magazine
It was at M.I.T., where Deutsch (not Grice or Popper) earns his doctorate on
the G.I. Bill, and perhaps more importantly, where he also met his wife, the
afore-mentioned Shapiro.
It was also at M.I.T. -- a lot of things happen at this institute of technology
-- where Deutsch (not Grice or Popper) became a disciple of Kurt Lewin, the
psychologist whose favorite dictum was something Popper would perhaps approve
of: “There’s nothing so practical as a good theory.” (Lewin is punning on
Aristotle, where 'theoria' and 'praxis' are his terms of art).
Deutsch’s postgraduate studies were heavily influenced by the atomic bombings
of Japan, followed by the formation of the United Nations.
Deutsch's (not Grice -- to be a DPhil in Oxford is to be overqualified)
doctoral dissertation was the basis for his Griceian theory of Griceian
cooperation and competition, which postulates that the success of a group (A
and B) depends on the extent to which its members (A and B -- as per the New
York Grice conversation cited above:
A: Smith doesn't seem to be having a girl-friend these days.
B: He has been paying a lots of visits to the Hamptons of late.
-- believe their goals are shared and see a potential to make common cause.
(in other words, conversation, and other forms of cooperative behaviour are not
zero-sum games). (In symbols, GA Int.(intersection) GB (the intersection of
A's and B's goals) is not null or the empty set.
cfr. Grice's keyword: "COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE".
He (Deutsch, not Grice) had in (his) mind the United Nation’s Security
Council, he says, when “I had an image of them either cooperating or competing
and had different senses of what the consequences would be for the world.”
For Frege senses can be of two types: to the right, or to the left. For Grice
there is only one sense ('do not multiply senses beyond necessity'). Popper (or
at least McEvoy) use 'sense' more, shall we say, broadly.
But the same rules, if rules they are, Deutsch says (they are NOT rules for
Grice) apply for confrontations big and small, and, since he fired (but later
married) Shapiro, his researcher at M.I.T., Deutsch says, perhaps jocularly
there were plenty of occasions to practice what he preached.
“In our years of marriage (+>to my wife),” Deutsch (not Grice, or Popper) says,
using an expression meant to provoke Popper, “I have had splendid opportunities
to study conflict as a participant observer.”
-- where 'study' may NOT be Griceian (or Popperian) understatement for
'necessarily resolve'. Or not, of course.
Cheers,
Speranza
