Herbert Paul Grice and Derek Antony Parfit
Derek Antony Parfit is a philosopher, whose, er, "philosophizing", on
(a) personal identity (cf. Grice, "Personal Identity," Mind 1941)
(b) the nature of reasons (cf. Grice, "Aspects of Reason") and
(c) the objectivity of morality (cf. Grice, "The Conception of Value")
re-establishes ethics as a central concern for contemporary thinkers and sets
some of the terms (even if a few Griceianisms) for philosophic inquiry. Popper
should be fascinated!
Parfit, of All Souls College, rises, as a matter of philosophical history, to
pre-eminence with the publication of his first essay, “Personal Identity."
Oddly, this is the title of Grice's first essay, too. Or, as Grice would say,
'publication' (His first 'unpublication' was on "Negation", predating "Personal
Identity" for a term or two!)
In "Personal Identity", Parfit (not Grice -- Parfit's "Personal Identity"
should never be confused with Grice's "Personal Identity") develops a theory of
identity (not taking into account the Grice-Myro theory of relative identity)
that "downgrades" the notion, and the importance, of an irreducible self — the
“deep further fact,” as he called it” — in terms not dissimilar to Buddhism
(Grice was not a Buddhist but he liked to meditate)
Grice would agree, and indeed Parfit quotes Grice in both his (i.e. Parfit's)
"Personal Identity" and "Reasons and Persons".
Parfit argues that we (he means his self) continue to exist over time by virtue
of certain relations among mental states at different times, such as the
relation between an experience and the memory of it (Grice's main focus --
following Locke's criterion, and dealing with Read's paradox, etc.), or the
formation of a desire and the satisfaction of it.
“It is a revolutionary essay, and it made him a philosophic celebrity
instantly,” Jeffrey McMahan, of Oxford and one of Parfit’s tutees, says --.
It was. But I would think Grice's Personal Identity was perhaps MORE
revolutionary! (Cfr. Rorty on the linguistic turn as a "minor revolution" in
philosophy). (Grice, being a philosopher's philosopher, as Platts hatefully
calls him) deals with very standard authors in that essay, though, as Perry is
well aware -- such as Broad, and others -- Parfit is less of a philosophical
historian, there!)
As a matter of philosophical history, too, Parfit's essay “Reasons and Persons"
was greeted as the most important work of moral philosophy since Henry
Sidgwick’s “The Method of Ethics." -- This was in The Guardian.
In "Reasons and Persons", Parfit elaborates his ideas on the concept of
personal identity (that Grice had set to analyse in 1941 (well, 1941 is the
year of publication; Grice finished it much earlier! -- vide Perry on Grice on
personal identity in P. G. R. I. C. E., philosophical grounds of rationality:
intentions, categories, ends) and explored issues in moral choice that
reanimates the field of ethics, which to some had descended into abstruse
technical conceptual analyses (and linguistic botanising) of moral terms like
“ought,” “good” and “right.” -- Grice would make fun of this: "ought" is Hare's
word; "should" is Hampshire's word, "My word is "must"" (Grice, Aspects of
Reason). "Good" was rightly analysed, for Grice, by Philippa Foot, and 'right'
is like 'ought', only different.
“A whole generation of moral philosophers was inspired by the questions Parfit
asks in "Reasons and Persons", the *way* he asks them and the methods (alla
Sedgwick) he employs to answer them,” Mark Schroeder, of Los Angeles, wrote in
The Notre Dame Philosophical Review, if you've read him! (Smith misquotes
"Reasons and Persons" as "Persons and Reasons" -- but Grice retorted, "Surely
that's an implicature, "p & q" is logically equivalent to "q & p"!")
Parfit's "On What Matters" deals with the theory of reasons and morality,
arguing for the existence of objective truth in ethics (vide Grice's Carus
Lectures on The Conception of Value for a similar treatment -- Grice is
responding to Mackie, though).
In one grand flourish, which Parfit calls "the triple theory," -- which Popper
would distinguish from "three different hypotheses" -- Parfit tries to
reconcile three competing theories of morality:
-- one based on the idea of a hypothetical contract -- cfr. Grice's
contractualism or quasi-contractualism in "Logic and Conversation, II" and
Geoffrey Russell Grice's contractualism -- full-fledged!
-- another based entirely on the consequences of action (TELEOLOGY) and
-- yet another based on Kant’s conception of duty (DEONTOLOGY) -- this was
eventually Grice's favourite one, as "Aspects of Reason" shows and the PILES of
papers by Grice on Kant, in the Grice Papers (Bancroft Library).
Philosophers of all three schools, Parfit argues, are actually “climbing
different sides of the same mountain.”
He fails to mention what mountain that is (perhaps a mount or a hill, rather?)
-- which reminds me of Grice's Marmaduke Bloggs, who climbed Mt Everest on
hands and knees ("Vacuous Names").
Parfit's essay includes articles by other leading philosophers criticising
Parfit’s ideas -- after Dancy's excellent work on this -- if you can call it
work! -- along with his replies to them.
It was a format that echoes a good part of Parfit’s Socratic (diagogic, as
Grice prefers) philosophical activity.
Parfit, like Grice, is renowned as a commentator, offering extensive, detailed
critiques of work sent to him in manuscript.
In the introduction to his essay “The Rejection of Consequentialism: A
Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral
Conceptions,” Samuel Scheffler indeed writes, as per implicature, that Parfit’s
notes on the work in progress "were longer than the book itself."
The implicature is that Scheffler should have extended the book -- as he called
it -- although the title is extended enough if you axes me.
“With no other philosopher have I had such a clear sense of someone who had
already thought of every objection I could make, of the best replies to them,
of further objections that I might then make, and of replies to them too,” the
philosopher Peter Singer notes in The Daily Nous.
This reminds me of Judith Baker when writing her dissertation "under Grice"
(metaphorically). Baker realized that nobody could understand her better than
Grice. And Grice's conceptual analysis of 'meaning' is referred to by B. J.
Harrison as having received more counterexamples than rule-utilitarianism! (The
fun thing is that Grice managed to reply to EACH counterexample in "Logic and
Conversation V". -- his favourite counter-exemplarist was of course S. R.
Schiffer, of Arizona, and formerly Atlantic City).
Derek Antony Parfit was born in Chengdu, China. -- Herbert Paul Grice, on the
other hand, usually the right one, was born in what he calls "the heart of
England" -- the affluent suburb of Harborne.
Parfit's father, Norman, and his mother, Jessie Browne, were doctors teaching
preventive medicine at Christian missions.
On the other hand, usually the right one, Grice's father, also called Herbert,
was a 'dreadful businessman, but a fine (piano) musician', and his mother,
Mabel Fenton, ran a preppy school in the Grice residence ("upstairs") -- her
favourite pupil was her own son!
The Parfits (not the Grices) returned to England when Derek was still an infant
(metaphorically, -- could not speak) and settled in Oxford, where Derek
attended the Dragon.
Grice went through more standard channels: from affluent Harborne, to Clifton,
and THEN the dreaming Spires (Corpus -- or "The House," as Grice calls it)
After graduating from Eton, Parfit spent a year in New York visiting his
sister, Theodora (or "Theo," as he would fondly call her), and working briefly
as a researcher at The New Yorker.
Grice didn't. But he refers to New York while in Harvard:
A: Smith does not seem to be having a girlfriend these days.
B: He's paying a lots of visits to New York recently.
-- Note that Parfit visited stuff other than her sister -- e.g. Central Park,
etc. She lived in the Upper East Side, rightly. "The New Yorker" was one of
Grice's favourite publications -- when at the dentist's!
Parift enrolls in Balliol and earns a degree in modern history -- "1066 and all
that"). This would have provoked Grice who was a pure MA Lit Hum! -- no modern
history about it!
While on a Harkness Fellowship at Harvard and Columbia after graduation, Parfit
begins attending lectures on philosophy and changes course. (Some attribute
this to the influence of Theo, or Theodora).
O. T. O. H., usually the right one, Grice never changed course.
“What interests me the most are those metaphysical questions whose answers seem
to be relevant — or to make a difference — to what we have reason to care about
and to do, and to our moral beliefs,” Parfit tells the journal Cogito (Oddly,
Parfit was a critique of the cogito -- vide Grice on Descartes in WoW -- Way of
Words).
"What interests me the most is cricket," Grice once said -- but then he was a
member of the Oxfordshire Cricket Club!
Parfit was elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls, and became a research
fellow.
Grice passed from Corpus to Merton and eventually became a fellow of Oxford's
best 'college' (Nancy Mitford says it's non-U to add 'college'): St. John's.
For years, Parfit was a visiting lecturer at Harvard, Rutgers and New York.
Grice was a visiting lecturer at Harvard -- indeed the William James Lecturer
for 1967 (the lectures were instituted in philosophy and psychology in memory
of the psychologist and philosopher after which the lectures are named) -- and
to almost every other uni in the New World. He would settle actually in
Berkeley and return to Oxford (as per to deliver the John Locke lectures) as a
'furriner', almost!
Parfit was awarded the Rolf Schock Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy,
philosophy’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize -- which was recently given,
incidentally to Bob Dylan. Grice could not speak Swedish -- but could IMPLICATE
in Swedish!
Like Grice, Parfit publishes seldom, but to great effect -- or 'perlocutionary'
effect, in the words of J. L. Austin.
Parfit's two major works are compendious and staggeringly ambitious.
“Reasons and Persons” is four essays in one.
The first part deals with morality and rationality.
The second part deals with a theory of individual rationality and rejects the
idea that self-interest requires people to be equally concerned about all parts
of their future.
In the third part, Parfit expands his ideas about personal identity -- citing
Grice.
In the fourth part, Parfit devotes his focus to moral thinking about future
generations and the morality of bringing other humans into existence, offering
a number of Grice-type paradoxes and puzzles challenging traditional moral
thinking.
In so doing, Parfit tangentially opens up a new field of inquiry, population
ethics -- C. A. B. Peacocke, on the other hand, usually the right one, had
opened the new field of population pragmatics when he expands on Grice in
Evans/McDowell, "Truth and Meaning" (Oxford) -- "The word 'dog' means dog in
population P iff..."
“On What Matters,” much of it based on the Tanner Lectures that Parfit delivers
at the University of California, Berkeley (or Grice's varsity, as Grice called
it -- Moses Hall) is similarly wide ranging, with multiple sections, and
sub-sections (almost alla Witters) each worthy of its own volume, and
concluding with a magisterial monograph on meta-ethics, alla Grice.
Oxford University Press plans to publish a third volume of “On What Matters.”
Or, rather, the people working at OUP do -- Presses don't plan -- vide Parfit
on population ethics and Grice on population pragmatics. Clarendon CAN plan,
because he is a man!
This third volume consists, in part, of responses to criticism of Parfit's work
by leading philosophers, which will appear in a companion volume, edited by
Singer, titled “Does Anything Really Matter?” (the attending implicature being:
"???")
On the other hand, when Grice was asked by Grandy and Warner to provide a
response to EACH of the many contributions to PGRICE (Philosophical Grounds of
Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends), he said, "Are yous crazy?" Instead,
he just provides ONE response to Richard Grandy and Richard Warner ("Repy to
Richards" -- "I use "Richards" as a short for "Richard Warner and Richard
Grandy," Grice says -- the implicature being obvious -- if implicit or unsaid,
as some prefer)
On Daily Nous, Singer offers a snippet from Parfit’s new work:
“Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the
power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can
expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that
we cannot now even imagine.
“In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon,
and such an open sea.”
On the other hand, there are LOADS of snippets from the Grice Papers -- my
favourite must be his quote from "From Genesis to Revelations" -- or not!
Cheers
Speranza
