In this paper, I outline evidence of Paul Grice’s enduring influence in Psycho-linguistics and the Philosophy of Language. I focus on two particular cases: the role of intentions within developmental psycholinguistics and the notion of what is said within current debates over the notion of semantic content and the semantic-pragmatic boundary. I end the paper with a brief discussion of a possible difficulty facing those who hope to square Grice’s stance on naturalism with this work.

The norms associated with HP Grice’s cooperative principle focus on exchange of information and require considerable extension in order to capture the presiding features of discourse that attempts to inquire into a problem or an issue. These features are revealed by looking at the case of collaborative philosophical inquiry. Although it is a special case, the findings have widespread implications for education. When teachers venture beyond the kind of informative discourse that has traditionally monopolised verbal exchange in the classroom (...) and engage in collaborative inquiry-based teaching, they need to attend to the norms that govern such discourse. (shrink)

Reasons and reasoning were central to the work of Paul Grice, one of the most influential and admired philosophers of the late twentieth century. In the John Locke Lectures that Grice delivered in Oxford at the end of the 1970s, he set out his fundamental thoughts about these topics; Aspects of Reason is the long-awaited publication of those lectures. This immensely rich work, powerfully evocative of the mind of its author, will refresh and illuminate discussions in many areas (...) of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Reasons and reasoning were central to the work of Paul Grice, one of the most influential and admired philosophers of the late twentieth century. In the John Locke Lectures that Grice delivered in Oxford at the end of the 1970s, he set out his fundamental thoughts about these topics; Aspects of Reason is the long-awaited publication of those lectures. They focus on an investigation of practical necessity, as Grice contends that practical necessities are established by derivation; they (...) are necessary because they are derivable. This work sets this claim in the context of an account of reasons and reasoning, allowing Grice to defend his treatment of necessity against obvious objections and revealing how the construction of explicit derivations can play a central role in explaining and justifying thought and action. Grice was still working on Aspects of Reason during the last years of his life, and although unpolished, the book provides an intimate glimpse into the workings of his mind and will refresh and illuminate many areas of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Originally published in 1967, this book aims to develop an ethical theory which remedies the defects of Utilitarianism while recognising the truths upon which Utilitarians have insisted. Its thesis is offered as a challenge to all schools of moral philosophy which have flourished in the twentieth century. Dr Grice argues that there are two kinds of Judgement of moral obligation. Social Contract theory, in a form which avoids the classical objections, is employed in setting out the ground of basic (...) obligations; and the ultra obligations of individual men are found to be grounded in their own characters. He then demonstrates that the theory offered, unlike Utilitarianism, throws light on judgements of rights and justice. Moral good is seen eventually as the coping stone, not the foundation stone of morality. (shrink)

Grice bu yazıda temel olarak sezdirim kavramını incelemektedir. Sezdirim bir karşılıklı konuşmada konuşucunun, söylediği şey ötesinde dinleyicisine aktardığı düşüncedir. Konuşma sezdirimleri söz konusu olduğunda dinleyici, bir çıkarım sonucunda sezdirimleri saptar. Grice'ın savı, bu çıkarımda nicelik, nitelik, bağıntı ve tarz olmak üzere dört grupta toplanabilen ilkelerin (maksimler) belirleyici rol oynadığıdır.

The works of Paul Grice collected in this volume present his metaphysical defence of value, and represent a modern attempt to provide a metaphysical foundation for value. The collection includes Grice's three previously unpublished Carus Lectures on the conception of value, a section of his 'Reply to Richards' (previously published in Grandy and Warner (eds.), Philosophical Grounds of Rationality, Oxford, 1986), and 'Method in Philosophical Psychology' (Presidential Address delivered to the Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, 1975).

The works of Paul Grice collected in this volume present his metaphysical defense of value, and represent a modern attempt to provide a metaphysical foundation for value. Value judgments are viewed as objective; value is part of the world we live in, but nonetheless is constructed by us. We inherit, or seem to inherit, the Aristotelian world in which objects and creatures are characterized in terms of what they are supposed to do. We are thereby enabled to evaluate by (...) reference to function and finality. The most striking part of Grice's position, however, is his contention that the legitimacy of such evaluations rests ultimately on an argument for absolute value. (shrink)

In 1241/4 the theology masters at the university at Paris with their chancellor, Odo of Chateauroux, mandated by their bishop, William of Auvergne, met to condemn ten propositions against theological truth. This book represents the first comprehensive examination of what hitherto has been a largely ignored instrument in a crucial period of the university's early maturation. However, the book's ambition goes wider than this. The condemnation provides a window through which to view the wider doctrinal, intellectual, institutional and historical developments (...) within the emerging university. These include the advent of the Dominicans and Franciscans at the university; and the developing focus of Paris theologians on using their learning for preaching at a time of a rapid and sometimes divergent development of doctrine and concerns over the newly-translated Aristotelian and associated Arab and Jewish works, heresy, the Greek Church and the Jews. The book compares the condemnation's ten articles with the major statement of Catholic principles in the first canon of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, and assesses what conclusions can be drawn from their apparent correlation. (shrink)

Grice continues his project of proving the univocality of common modals by showing how a univocal structural representation can be applied to a certain class of alethic and practical acceptability statements that are at least sometimes valid, subject to license of the involved transitional inferences from a ‘Principle of Total Evidence’. Grice also shows that these acceptability statements can be modified to account for defeasible and non‐defeasible generalizations, which in turn can be utilized to account for a univocal (...) set of modals such as ‘ought’ and ‘must’. The chapter closes with a discussion of the ‘Principle of Total Evidence’. (shrink)

Grice deals with the nature of practical and non‐practical reasoning, particularly what may be called imperfect reasoning. It consists of ‘misreasoning’, ‘incomplete reasoning’, and ‘too good to be reasoning’. The last two kinds of reasoning, Grice argues, suggest a distinction between ‘flat rationality’ and ‘variable rationality’.

Grice begins this chapter by discussing to what extent the notion of variable rationality can be derived from that of flat rationality, and thus from the concept of a rational being alone. He then draws a distinction between ‘explanatory’ and ‘justificatory’ reasons, as well as ‘personal’ reasons that combine the two by being reasons acted upon and regarded as justifying by the agent. Finally, he introduces a structural representation for practical and alethic justificatory reasons that shows that ‘common modals’ (...) are used univocally on both sides of the practical/alethic divide. This representation consists of a single modal operator ‘Acc’, two mood‐operators ‘!’ and ‘⊥’, and a phrastic ‘r’ that these operators apply to. (shrink)

Grice discusses happiness as an end, and its relation to other ends, as it would feature in practical reasoning. He begins by analysing Aristotle's claims towards the self‐sufficiency and finality of happiness as an end, and defends the thesis that happiness is an ‘inclusive end’, consisting of the realization of various other ends that are desirable for their own sakes as well as for the sake of happiness. Grice then briefly discusses the possibility that the components of happiness (...) may not be certain universals or states of affairs but the desires for such universals or states of affairs. He ends with the suggestion that happiness can be characterized as a system of ends that is suitable for the guidance of life, and hence must be marked by features that are conducive to its stability and flexibility. (shrink)

This chapter first shows how—given certain circumstances—valid inferences can be drawn from alethic to practical acceptability statements. For this, Grice tries to establish an acceptability statement of the form ‘it is acceptable that if A only if B, then one should A only if one should B’. He then turns to a discussion of the characteristics of practical thinking other than the application of means–ends reasoning. Such practical thinking, Grice suggests, includes the determination of antecedently indeterminate desires and (...) intentions, contains systems of priorities, and often is revisionist and comparative. (shrink)