20 ideas
| 22140 | The greatest philosophers are methodical; it is what makes them great [Grice] |
| Full Idea: The greatest philosophers have been the greatest, and most self-conscious, methodologists; indeed, I am tempted to regard the fact as primarily accounting for their greatness as philosophers. | |
| From: H. Paul Grice (Reply to Richards [1986], p.66), quoted by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 3 | |
| A reaction: I agree. Philosophy is nothing if it is not devoted to the attempt to be fully rational, and that implies consistency and coherence. If a thinker doesn't even try to be systematic, I would not consider them to be a philosopher. |
| 13856 | Conditionals are truth-functional, but we must take care with misleading ones [Grice, by Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Grice argued that the truth-functional account of conditionals can withstand objections, provided that we are careful to distinguish the false from the misleadingly true. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Logic and Conversation [1975]) by Dorothy Edgington - Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? 2 |
| 8948 | The odd truth table for material conditionals is explained by conversational conventions [Grice, by Fisher] |
| Full Idea: According to Grice, it is the rules that govern conversation beyond the merely logical that account for the counter-intuitiveness of the truth table for the material conditional. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Logic and Conversation [1975]) by Jennifer Fisher - On the Philosophy of Logic 8.I | |
| A reaction: There is a conversational rule which says that replies should normally relevant to context. It would be nice if logical implications were also relevant to context. |
| 13767 | Conditionals might remain truth-functional, despite inappropriate conversational remarks [Edgington on Grice] |
| Full Idea: Grice defended the truth-functional account of conditionals, noting the gap between what we are justified in believing and what is appropriate to say. .But the problem arises at the level of belief, not at the level of inappropriate conversational remarks | |
| From: comment on H. Paul Grice (Logic and Conversation [1975]) by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals 17.1.3 |
| 14277 | A person can be justified in believing a proposition, though it is unreasonable to actually say it [Grice, by Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Grice drew attention to situations in which a person is justified in believing a proposition, which would nevertheless by an unreasonable thing for the person to say, in normal circumstances. I think he is right about disjunction and negated conjunctions. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Logic and Conversation [1975]) by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals (Stanf) 2.4 | |
| A reaction: Edgington considers Grice's ideas of implicature as of permanent value, especially as a clarification of 1950s ordinary language philosophy. |
| 10990 | Conditionals are truth-functional, but unassertable in tricky cases? [Grice, by Read] |
| Full Idea: The 'conversational defence' of the truth-functional view of conditionals is that a conditional may not be assertible in difficult cases. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Presupposition and Conversational Implicature [1977]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3 |
| 2170 | Homer does not distinguish between soul and body [Homer, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Homer's descriptions of people did without a dualistic distinction between soul and body. | |
| From: report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.23 |
| 7752 | Only the utterer's primary intention is relevant to the meaning [Grice] |
| Full Idea: Only what I may call the primary intention of an utterer is relevant to the (non-natural) meaning of an utterance. | |
| From: H. Paul Grice (Meaning [1957], p.47) | |
| A reaction: This sounds okay for simple statements, but gets really tricky with complex statements, such as very ironic remarks delivered to an audience of diverse people. |
| 7751 | Meaning needs an intention to induce a belief, and a recognition that this is the speaker's intention [Grice] |
| Full Idea: For a statement to have (non-naturally) meant something, not merely must it have been 'uttered' with the intention of inducing a certain belief, but also the utterer must have intended an 'audience' to recognise the intention behind the utterance. | |
| From: H. Paul Grice (Meaning [1957], p.43) | |
| A reaction: This is Grice's famous and distinctive theory of meaning. I am struck by the problem of a password, which seems to have a quite different intention from its literal meaning. Also a speaker with two different audiences and opposite intentions. |
| 7753 | We judge linguistic intentions rather as we judge non-linguistic intentions, so they are alike [Grice] |
| Full Idea: To show that the criteria for judging linguistic intentions are very like the criteria for judging non-linguistic intentions is to show that linguistic intentions are very like non-linguistic intentions. | |
| From: H. Paul Grice (Meaning [1957], p.48) | |
| A reaction: This hint at the end of his paper is one of the key attractions of Grice's view. It offers an account of language that fits it into the world of animal communication and evolution. It never seems to quite capture the way meaning goes beyond intentions. |
| 22330 | Grice said patterns of use are often semantically irrelevant, because it is a pragmatic matter [Grice, by Glock] |
| Full Idea: The slogan that meaning is use came under scrutiny by Grice's theory of conversational implicature. He said patterns of use shown in analysis were often semantically irrelevant, snce they are due not meanings of expressions but to pragmatic principles. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Some Models for Implicature [1967]) by Hans-Johann Glock - What is Analytic Philosophy? 2.8 | |
| A reaction: I think the simplest objection is that words only have use because they have a meaning; The most interesting part of pragmatics is what you DON'T say in conversation. |
| 18045 | Grice's maxim of quality says do not assert what you believe to be false [Grice, by Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Grice's maxim of quality says one ought not to assert what one believes to be false. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Some Models for Implicature [1967]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 5.2 | |
| A reaction: The obvious exception is irony, where are truth is asserted, but the listener is supposed to spot that you are not really asserting it. |
| 10991 | Key conversational maxims are 'quality' (assert truth) and 'quantity' (leave nothing out) [Grice, by Read] |
| Full Idea: Grice particularly identified two maxims as guiding conversation: the maxim of 'quality' (that one should assert only what one believes to be true and justified), and of 'quantity' (one should not assert less than one can). | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Presupposition and Conversational Implicature [1977]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: I think it would be very foolish to boldly embrace the second maxim when talking to strangers. If white lies are occasionally acceptable, then what is the status of the first 'maxim'? Is it a moral maxim? |
| 18046 | Grice's maxim of quantity says be sufficiently informative [Grice, by Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Grice's maxim of quantity says 'make your contributions as informative as required'. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Some Models for Implicature [1967]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 5.2 | |
| A reaction: Is the 'requirement' of informative for the speaker or for the listener? It is easy to image situations where, one way or the other, the two people don't agree about informativenss. |
| 18044 | Grice's maxim of manner requires one to be as brief as possible [Grice, by Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Grice's maxim of manner requires one to be as brief as possible. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Some Models for Implicature [1967]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 5.2 | |
| A reaction: An alternative maxim of conversation is that there should not be long silences between contributions - which would probably result if the contributions are all curtly abbreviated. |
| 2171 | The 'will' doesn't exist; there is just conclusion, then action [Homer, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Homer left out another mental action lying between coming to a conclusion and acting on it; and he did well, since there is no such action, and the idea is the invention of bad philosophy. | |
| From: report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.37 | |
| A reaction: This is a characteristically empiricist view, which is found in Hobbes. The 'will' seems to have a useful role in folk psychology. We can at least say that coming to a conclusion that I should act, and then actually acting, are not the same thing. |
| 23689 | Moral words have an inherited power from expressing attitudes in emotional situations [Stevenson,CL] |
| Full Idea: A term is moral because of the power that the word acquires, on account of its history in emotional situations, to evoke or directly express attitudes, as distinct from describing or designating them. | |
| From: Charles Leslie Stevenson (Ethics and Language [1944], p.33), quoted by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought 1 'Ayer' | |
| A reaction: Invites the question of what the words meant before they acquired this patina of historical usage. If 'good' orginally meant 'hurray!', its repeated usage doesn't seem to change that. If it was descriptive, why would that change with time? |
| 21819 | Plato says the Good produces the Intellectual-Principle, which in turn produces the Soul [Homer, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: In Plato the order of generation is from the Good, the Intellectual-Principle; from the Intellectual-Principle, the Soul. | |
| From: report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE], 509b) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08 | |
| A reaction: The doctrine of Plotinus merely echoes Plato, in that case, except that the One replaces the Form of the Good. Does this mean that what is first in Plotinus is less morally significant, and more concerned with reason and being? |
| 11388 | Let there be one ruler [Homer] |
| Full Idea: The rule of many is not good; let there be one ruler. | |
| From: Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE], 2.204), quoted by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 8.9 | |
| A reaction: [Quoted by Aristotle at Metaphysics 1076a04] |
| 14829 | Homer so enjoys the company of the gods that he must have been deeply irreligious [Homer, by Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Homer is so at home among his gods, and takes such delight in them as a poet, that he surely must have been deeply irreligious. | |
| From: report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Human, All Too Human 125 | |
| A reaction: Blake made a similar remark about where the true allegiance of Milton lay in 'Paradise Lost'. |