[lit-ideas] Re: Geachiana
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2013 11:29:45 -0500 (EST)
Some notes on Geach, and Grice -- below.
Speranza
--
Peter Thomas Geach-------------Herbert Paul Grice
Born: March 29 1916------------Born: 1913
Born: Chelsea, London----------Born: Harborne, Warwickshire (Staffordshire)
Died: 21 December 2013--------Died: 1988
Era: 20th-century -- Region: Western philosophy -- School: Analytic
philosophy
Main interests: Philosophical logic, history of philosophy, philosophy of
religion
Notable ideas: Analytical Thomism, Omnipotence paradox
Influenced by: Thomas Aquinas, Ludwig Wittgenstein
Influenced: G. E. M. Anscombe (wife), Anthony Kenny, Alasdair MacIntyre
Peter Thomas Geach (born 29 March 1916, died 21 December 2013) was an
English philosopher.
So was Herbert Paul Grice.
Geach's areas of interest were the history of philosophy, philosophical
logic, and the theory of identity.
Grice's area of interest was conversational implicature.
Geach was educated at Balliol College, Oxford.
Grice was educated at Clifton (we always mention public school first) and
Corpus Chrsti. Also scholar at Merton.
Geach taught at the University of Birmingham from 1951 until 1966 when he
was appointed Professor of Logic in the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Leeds.
Similary, Grice taught at his alma mater -- Oxford -- as Tutorial Fellow
in Philosophy of St. John's, until 1967, when he was appointed Professor of
Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California
at Berkeley. That was some big move!
Geach was given the title of Emeritus Professor of Logic on his retirement
from Leeds in 1981.
Grice was given the title of Emeritus Professor of Philosophy on his
retirement from the University of California at Berkeley in 1982. He later
became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Seattle.
Geach was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1965.
Grice was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1966. He went on to
give the Annual Philosophical Lecture there (in London, Cumberland House) in
1971, "Intention and Uncertainty".
Geach, unlike Grice, was awarded the papal cross "Pro Ecclesia et
Pontifice" by the Holy See for his philosophical work.
Grice, on the other hand, was, naturally C. of E., even if at one point he
admits (Way of Words) that a person may be committed to the 39 articles
without knowing what they are (implicating his self, some think). His father
(also called Herbert) was a notorious non-conformist in the West Midlands
affluent town of Harborne. His mother, Mabel Fenton, was a High Anglican.
Interestingly, Grice's aunt -- Mabel Fenton's sister -- was a convert
Catholic. As a result, young Herbert Paul was VERY confused -- but drew
inspiration mainly from his FATHER's non-conformism, to _argue_ and provide
_reasons_ for what one thinks -- unlike the resident convert Catholic aunt.
Indeed, Grice recalls theological conversations between his mother, his
father, and this aunt, almost DAILY -- and over dinner, too!
Geach's early work includes the "classic" texts "Mental Acts" and
"Reference and Generality", the latter defending an essentially modern
conception
of reference against medieval theories of supposition.
Geach's target of attack in "Reference and Generality" is Grice's student
at Oxford: P. F. Strawson.
Geach's mental act draws mainly from Grice's favourite author, Occam, or
as some prefer to spell this (since he was from Ockham), Ockham.
Geach's Catholic perspective is integral to his philosophy.
Grice's religious perspective is NOT. Although later in life he titled one
of his forthcoming books, "From Genesis to Revelations".
Grice is also famous for having invented a philosophical new discipline:
eschatology, philosophical. Vide: "PHILOSOPHICAL ESCHATOLOGY". He was
fascinated by the discourse of some theologians on matters of Analogy and
Metaphor.
Geach was perhaps the founder of Analytical Thomism (though the current
of thought running through his and his wife, G. E. M. Anscombe's work to the
present day was only ostensibly so named forty years later by John
Haldane), the aim of which is to synthesise Thomistic and Analytic approaches.
Haldane could just as well go on and name the brand of Philosophy Grice
was onto. I suggest: "Analytic Implicaturalism".
If Geach worshiped Thomas (I don't use 'saint'), the Italian philosopher,
Grice worshiped Kantotle (the Greek-German, almost, if Macedonia and
Koenigsberg can be located on maps).
Geach defends the Thomistic position that human beings are essentially
rational animals, each one miraculously created.
Grice skips the 'miraculously created' bit, but his saw himself as God.
His approach he called the "Genitorial Programme", which is a variety of the
Ideal-Observer Theory. The idea is to philosophise on man as a rational
animal, from the standpoint of God, who designed us.
Geach dismisses Darwinistic attempts to regard reason as inessential to
humanity, as "mere sophistry, laughable, or pitiable."
Grice never found Darwin 'laughable'. Note that there are strong
connections between Darwin and the part of England where Grice came for. In
later
years, Grice indeed adopted an 'evolutionary' approach, and hoped to read
more of 'chimp lit', as he called it, and Dawkins. Grice thinks that things
like 'beliefs' (being true) and 'wants' (being fulfilled) serve adaptive
functions. His is a teleo-functionalism, of sorts.
Geach repudiated any capacity for language in animals as mere "association
of manual signs with things or performances."
Grice was never so definitive. He knew that
"For utterer U, to mean that p", involved a very complex net of
intentions, and he doubted that any animal other than man would be able to
display
it. But he adopted a 'sequential' approach to various items in philosophical
psychology, such as belief, which he ascribes to squirrels (or squarrels,
as he prefers). He also makes an amusing reference to the 'Parrot' of Prince
Maurice discussed by Locke in "Essay" (in Locke's discussion of 'person'),
and speaks of 'intelligent, indeed, rational' PIROTS, rather than parrots.
Geach dismissed both pragmatic and epistemic conceptions of truth,
commending a version of the correspondence theory proposed by Aquinas.
This he agrees with Grice on. Grice criticised Strawson's performative
theory of 'true' ("To say that something is true is to endorse it") and
proposes to use 'factual satisfactoriness' instead of the rather pretentious
label, 'truth'. He thought a good theory of truth should account difficult
indirect cases like those mentioned by Tarski, where the proposition 'p' is not
mentioned ("What the policeman said was true" -- "If I later find out that
what he said was "Monkeys can talk", I may change my mind").
Geach argues that there is one reality rooted in God himself, who is the
ultimate truthmaker. God, according to Geach, is truth.
Grice, instead, speaks of Truth as "Factual Satisfactoriness". Later
Alethic Satisfactoriness (when he engaged in an analysis of practical
satisfactoriness for deontic modalities). He would submit that the proposition
God is Factual Satisfactoriness.
is sacrilegous.
While the American and South African logicians W. V. Quine and A. Prior
lived, Geach saw them as his allies, in that they held three truths:
-- that there are no non-existent beings
-- that a proposition can occur in discourse without being there asserted
and
-- that the sense of a term does not depend on the truth of the
proposition in which it occurs.
On the other hand, Grice notably ignored Prior (although he possibly loved
him), and he was officially engaged by Oxford to ENTERTAIN Quine while at
Oxford.
Part of the entertainment, for Grice, consisted in talking Quine (fresh
from Harvard) to attend one of his joint seminars with Grice's student P. F.
Strawson. They sat Quine there and read to him their joint "Defense of a
Dogma".
Quine was silent during the proceedings. Only YEARS later he would respond
to Grice's and Strawson's apt criticism in "Word and Object".
Oddly, this gave occasion to Grice (and indeed Strawson) to criticise
Quine once again in "Words and ObjectIONS"!
Geach invented the famous ethical example of the stuck potholer, when
arguing against the idea that it might be right to kill a child to save its
mother.
Grice didn't.
Jenny Teichman, fellow of New Hall, Cambridge, has characterised Geach's
philosophical style as "deliberately outrageous".
Speranza has characterised Grice's philosophical style as "genuinely
genial".
Geach's wife and occasional collaborator was the noted philosopher and
Wittgenstein scholar G. E. M. Anscombe.
Grice's charming wife is the daughter of a naval engineer. They met at
Oxford. Mrs. Grice is a lady and read lovely memoirs like "Oxford memories" by
J. D. Mabbott.
Both converts to Roman Catholicism, Geach and Anscombe married in 1941 and
had seven children.
Grice and Mrs. Grice married, too.
Geach and Anscombe co-authored the 1961 book Three Philosophers, with
Anscombe contributing a section on Aristotle and Geach one each on Aquinas and
Gottlob Frege.
Anscombe was what Speranza calls an "Oxbridge" philsosopher ("where
"Oxbridge" is not an portmanteau -- vide "Philomena" by Stephen Frears -- but
a
literal description, almost, to describe someone, like Anscombe, who
displays double loyalties to Oxford and Oxford's historical rival, the much
more
recent educational institution on the river Cam.
--
For a quarter century Geach and Anscombe were leading figures in the
Philosophical Enquiry Group, an annual confluence of Catholic philosophers
held
at Spode House in Staffordshire that was established by Father Columba Ryan
in 1954.
Grice was familiar with Staffordshire since he had been born there, in
Harborne. In later years, Harbone became part of Warwickshire, though. The
town itself did not move -- only the boundaries, and it's best described as the
most affluent town in the "Heart of England", so-called.
Selected publications by Geach includ:
-- (edited, with Max Black) Translations from the Philosophical Writings
of Gottlob Frege, 1952/1960/1966
Grice found "Sense and Reference" as difficult to read, in _any_ language.
Not for him, but for the student. Translations tended to obscure Frege's
original thoughts.
"Good and Evil," Analysis (1956)
Repr. in Philippa Foot, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, ed. by G. J.
Warnock (Grice's collaborator).
Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects, 1957/1997 --- a discussion
of Ockham's theory of 'sermo interioris'.
Three Philosophers: Aristotle; Aquinas; Frege (with G.E.M. Anscombe), 1961
Cfr. Grice, "One Philosopher: Kantotle".
"Reference and Generality: An Examination of Some Medieval and Modern
Theories, 1962"
cfr. Grice, "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature". Grice
rejected Nominalism, but still found the idea of 'generality' too 'general' to
digest.
"History of the corruptions of logic", inaugural lecture, University of
Leeds, 1968
cfr. Grice's Locke Lectures, Oxford, 1979.
God and the Soul, 1969/2001
Cfr. Grice on 'soul' in Method in philosophical psychology, "Conception of
Value".
Logic Matters, 1972
Reason and Argument, 1976
"Saying and Showing in Frege and Wittgenstein," Acta Philosophica Fennica
28.
---- Perhaps we should discuss this with McEvoy. "What Frege said, and
Witters showed".
Truth, Love, and Immortality: An Introduction to McTaggart's Philosophy,
1979
(edited) Wittgenstein's Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, 1946–47:
Notes by P.T. Geach, K.J. Shah, and A.C. Jackson, 1989
Grice's colleagues at St. John's, G. P. Baker, and P. M. Hacker, later
become renowned Wittgensteinians (followers of Witters), and so they would be
familiar with this work and edition by Geach.
Logic and Ethics (edited by Jacek Holowka), 1990
Truth and Hope: The Furst Franz Josef und Furstin Gina Lectures Delivered
at the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of
Liechtenstein, 1998
See also: Omnipotence levels
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