https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5WdpSPeQUE
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Sent: Friday, October 7, 2016 7:41 PM
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Subject: [lit-ideas] Robbing Peter To Pay Paul
Or Grice, BA Lit Hum
On another thread, McEvoy notes:
"it had been something 10 to 15 years since anyone got a First in
philosophy/PPE. St. John's often got mostly 'Firsts' in this, year after year."
I explain that (Popper loved 'explanation') in terms of the influence of H. P.
Grice, of St. John's.
McEvoy goes on
"[Speranza] once relayed the story of how Strawson did not get a First,"
I think the one who delves on this was Mabbott in his delightful "Oxford
Memoirs." (Strawson had two philosophy tutors at St. John's: Mabbott and Grice
-- Grice could care less about Strawson's not first).
McEvoy:
"but [Speranza] did not afair delve into this aspect of it - the fact must
surely be that, compared to the average First given, Strawson clearly merited a
First given his ability and if he was viva'd the viva should have tipped it his
way."
Well, that's a conditional (if he was viva'd) and a sort of (you knows almost
counterfactual -- or is it indicative? Cf.
i. Sir Peter was viva'd.
is certainly indicative. Since the 'if' is what the logicians call the
horseshoe, we have here:
ii. Ah, that Sir Peter had been viva'd.
which is not indicative, but counterfactual. Mackie once said, wrongly, that
'if' has two senses: in indicative conditionals, the sense is Griceian (and
that of the horseshoe or material implication); in subjunctive conditionals, it
ain't. R. C. S. Walker refudiated Mackie in his "Conversational Implicature".
But Grice is cautious enough when he gives his fourth William James lecture: he
entitles it "Indicative Conditionals," implicating that not all that he says
applies to 'subjunctive conditionals', like, not (iii) which is indicative:
iii. Strawson merited a first and if is a fact that he was viva'd, the viva
should have tipped it his way.
but more like
iv. If you were the only girl in the world nothing else would matter in the
world today.
Just to tease the Griceian, when Sir Noel Coward recorded this in his medley
for "Cavalcade" he actually sings it the way the Tommies did:
v. If you were the only girl in the world, and I _was_ the only boy, nothing
else would matter in the world today.
So, 'ifs' are tricky.
McEvoy goes on:
"More incredible (to me) than Strawson's Missing First" is something else for
McEvoy.
What is very credible is that perhaps Grice should never have been appointed
Strawson's tutor -- but what do they know at St. John's. Sir Peter was pursuing
a PPE, and Grice had all his qualifications in the classics: BA Lit Hum, MA Lit
Hum. That may explain (if we, alla Popper, explain) Strawson's missing first.
"One of our tutors mentioned, almost en passant, at the end of a course, that a
vast amount of complex and detailed material, set out at the beginning of the
standard text-book, was of historical interest only - well, thanks for that
now, given I'd spent days trying to grapple with this very difficult but, it
turns out, utterly irrelevant material. Would it not be much more intelligent
to have mentioned this at the beginning of the course?"
Well, Grice was known at St. John's as Godot -- there was hardly a 'beginning'
and an 'end'. And students would pile up up the steep stairs at his room in St.
John's. He once asked Strawson:
GRICE: You should bring me a paper by the end of next week.
STRAWSON: What newspaper would you prefer?
Grice took the example to illustrate Strawson's 'implicature': "Surely while
'paper' may implicate 'newspaper,' it was clear to Strawson that I did not mean
'paper' as per "The Daily Telegraph". There is a further implicature to the
effect that 'paper' may literally (if figuratively) contain MORE than one page.
But 'paper' is a mass noun, and it would violate my maxims to utter, "You
should bring me a 5-page essay, i.e. five papers into what in Oxford refer to
as a 'paper'. Strawson, pursuing a mere PPE, was beyond this.
McEvoy:
"in Oxford ... it was something you put up with, along with dons who even feel
asleep during their own tutorial."
In fairness to Grice, he was a tuttee once, and he was irritated that Hardie,
his tutor, fell asleep during his own tutorial. Grice had to wake him up, and
Hardie's question, to Grice's sharp argument towards a proof for the
immortality of the soul, was:
vi. And what is the meaning of 'of'?
McEvoy:
"A sneery sense of their own intellectual superiority - way out of keeping with
the reality of their mostly modest intellectual gifts - went hand in hand with
this systemic lack of competence in actually educating others."
This is debatable. Grice never called Strawson, "my tuttee", but "my former
pupil" -- which he wasn't. And in "Introduction to Logical Theory," Strawson
commends "Mr. H. P. Grice, from whom I never ceased to learn this discipline
since he first educated me on it as my tutor at St. John's."
"Educate" is a trick of a word. Grice must have done his best to educate Sir
Peter on the material-implication only sense of "if", yet Strawson never
learned.
Still, Grice was so full of respect for his pupil and now knight, that when he
had to choose an example of a mistake by a philosopher in the first William
James Lecture, he chose Strawson's otiose account of "if" in "Introduction to
Logical Theory" (section ""If" and the horseshoe").
As a postscript, when a festschrift for Grice (PGRICE, Philosophical Grounds of
Rationality) was conceived, Strawson was invited to contribute. He did, with
""If and the horseshoe" -- but he didn't even pause to revise or re-read the
thing, and keeps referring to Grice's views on implicature as "unfortunately
unpublished," when they were not -- they had appeared in Harman/Davidson, and
Cole/Morgan, inter alia.
Still, Grice loved Strawson. He would say that their conversations (due to the
large conversational pool they shared) were so abbreviated, that they were
cryptic to third parties. And the Grice Collection at the Bancroft Library
still contains LOADS of material co-written by Grice and Strawson on
"Individuals". My favourite must be their joint reference to Bunbury:
An abstract noun such as "mercy", Grice and Strawson write on this
unpublication, can be both referred to and predicated, whereas 'Socrates' can
only be referred to.
The example give by Grice and Strawson is
A: Bunbury is really disinterested.
B: Disinterested persons do not exist. Real disinterestedness does not exist.
A: Yes, they do. Disinterested persons do exist. Yes, it does. Real
disinterestedness does exist. Bunbury is really disiniterested.
This is okay, but the following is "not linguistic in order" (Grice's and
Strawson's wording):
A: Bunbury is really disinterested.
B: There is no such person as Bunbury.
A: Yes, there is. He is really disinterested.
This is not "linguistic in order" because producing a sentence in which
something is predicated of a SUBSTANTIAL is not enough to guarantee the
existence of that subject.
Grice and Strawson note that the situation would be quite different "if we
replace 'is really disinterested' by "in the next room":
A: Bunbury is in the next room.
B: There is no such person as Bunbury.
A: Yes, there is; he is in the next room.
"Here", A's choice of predicate does MORE than just offer a description of
Bunbury."
"['in the next room'] points to a way
of verifying his existence."
"Our use of language, then, very often, presupposes the existence of
substantial objects."
The distinction between establishing existence by referring to and by
predicating expressions is established by Grice and Strawson by means of a
comparison between two short dialogues -- and Grice regretted that Strawson
never cared to quote him in "Universals" ("even if we spent HOURS discussing
that stuff).
Our Conversation I above is perfectly acceptable. Evidence is successfully
offered for the EXISTENCE OF A UNIVERSAL ("Disinterestedness") by predicating
it of a particular ("Banbury"):
A: Banbury is really disinterested.
B: Disinterested people do not exist; real disinterestedness does not exist.
A: Yes, they do. Yes, it does. Bunbury is really didisinterested.
In second-order predicate calculus:
(F)GF
In CONVERSATION II, in contrast, descriptive statements do not guarantee the
existence of their subjects, but rather stand in a "special relation"
(expression Grice's and Strawson's) to statements of existence.
This "special relation" is, Grice and Strawson note, elsewhere called
'presupposition'.
It seems that at this stage, at least, Grice is prepared to endorse Strawson's
response to Russell.
The second conversation above is thus 'NOT LINGUISTICALLY IN ORDER' (expression
Grice's):
A: Bunbury is really disinterested.
B: There is no such person as Bunbury.
A: Yes, there is. He is really disinterested.
Producing a sentence in which something ('disinterested') is predicated of a
substantial subject ('Bunbury') is NOT enough to guarantee the existence of
that subject. Grice and Strawson note at this point that the situation would be
"quite different" if 'in the next room' (or any other verifiable predicate)
were substituted into A's response -- as in the above variant:
A: Bunbury is really disinterested.
B: There is no such person as Bunbury.
A: Yes, there is. He is in the next room.
Here, A's choice of predicate ("in the next room") does MORE than just offer a
description of Bunbury. The choice of the predicate points to a way of
verifying Bunbury's existence.
At this point, Grice and Strawson were more interested in verifying Bunbury's
existence than their own.
When Quine visited Oxford, Grice and Strawson presented him with a refudiation
("In defense of a dogma" -- Grice's warning to Strawson: "Don't dare publish
this in one of your many compilations!"). Quine criticised them in "Word and
Object". For the Quine Festschrift, "Words and Objections", Grice and Strawson
were meant to provide a joint contribution. But Grice ("Godot") was late, and
Strawson wasn't (providing his own). In the second reprint of that festschrift,
Grice got his "Vacuous Names" published, which was a good thing.
And stuff.
One shouldn't press the similarities between Grice and Strawson too strongly.
Grice went by "H. P. Grice" until in USA he got rid of the "H" and started to
answer to "Paul Grice". Strawson went by "P. F. Strawson" till he was knighted
for his services to philosophy. But instead of getting rid of the "P" (and thus
following Grice's manoeuvre), he got rid of the "F" and started to answer to
"Sir Peter". And stuff.
Cheers,
Speranza
