Grice e Contessa

 GRICE E CONTESSA. 

Littlejohn citing Floridi: 

“[M]isinformation is […] semantic content that is _false_ […].”

“‘Dis-information’ is simply *mis*-information purposefully conveyed by utterer U to mislead his addressee A into believing that it is information.”

Floridi 2011:260.

Littlejohn’s attending comment: 

“There's continued disagreement in the literature on lying whether lies must be *false*.”

“Some have argued that they must be (Benton; Holguín).”

“Some argue that lies needn't be false.”

“Fallis and Saul allow for 'true' lies (i.e., statements believed to be false by the utterer that turn out to be true).”

“Early accounts of disinformation treat a lie [cf. Grice on Kant’s idiocies on that — The Kant lectures] as *false* content that the disinformant utterer U wants his addressee to believe is genuine information.”

Floridi.

In his seminal “Probability, desirability, and mood operators,” — a continuation of his Henriette British Academy lecture — cited by Davidson — Grice argues that a structure expressing either desirability or credibility is not merely analogous to each other.

A structure expressing desirability or credibility can each be replaced by a more complex structure -- containing a common element — of acceptance.

How to represent this?

Making use of a super-script notation – as he had done with a SUB-script notation in his 1969 ‘Vacuous names,’ Grice proposes two types of operators, Op^A and Op^B.

In combination, “Op^A” and “Op^B” replace – and thus, philosophically improve on -- Davidson's prima-facie for desirability and pr for credibility — borrowed from Emerson.

The operator represented as Op^A represent a ‘mode’ – as Grice prefers over ‘mood,’ after a criticism he received at Stanford by (of all people) Moravsik for using the former over the latter -- close to an ordinary imperative (“Open the window”) and an ordinary indicative (“The sun is shining.”)

The operator may be sub-divided into two types – now merging the super-script with the earlier sub-script notation: 

“Op^A₁

and

 Op^A₂

corresponding to ! and Frege’s turnstile. 

B-type operators, on the other hand, represent the degree (or measure) of _acceptability_ or justification. 

A B-type operator, then, takes scope over an A-type ‘mode’ operator sensu stricto —  yielding 

Op^A₁ [Bouletic Acceptability] + Op^B₂ + a

 or 

Op^A_{1 [bouletic acceptsnility],}+ ! + p

for an expression of 

It is desirable that a.

“Op^A₁ [assertoric acceptability] + Op^B₁ + p”

or 

“Op^A₁ (assertoric acceptability) + turnstile + p” 

for an expression of 

“It is probable that p.”

Moving on from the (more or less surface, or pertaining to a system of signification or communication device) operators to consider the underlying psycho-logical aspect -- seriously understood as a concept within a theory of the psychic -- of reasoning, Grice proposes two basic propositional attitudes:

 V-acceptance 

and 

J-acceptance

— to be considered as more or less closely related to wanting (more basic) and believing (“We soon believe what we desire”).

 Generalising over attitudes, using the symbol 'ψ', Grice proposes:

“X ψ¹ p” 

for “X V-accepts [p]” 

and 

“X ψ² [p]”

 for J-accepts. 

(For his definition of J-accepting in terms of V-accepting, see his “Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre)”.

There are further, more complex, attitudes:

 “ψ³” 

and 

“ψ⁴.” 

These psychological attitudes of a third type and a fourth type, are reflexive or iterative: attitudes that the utterer U can take to V-accepting or J-accepting. 

The attitude of a third type 

“ψ³” 

is concerned with an attitude of V-accepting towards either x V-accepts [p] or x V-accepts [~p]:

 The utterer U wants to decide whether to will p or not.

The attitude of a fourth type,

 “ψ⁴” 

is concerned with the utterer U’s psychological attitude of V-accepting towards either J-accepting [p] or J-accepting [~p]:

The utterer U wants to decide whether to believe p or not.

On the understanding that “willing p” gives an account of “intending p: – vide his “Intention and uncertainty” British Academy Lecture, 1971 --, this obviously offers a formalisation of intending — adding the doxastic component that you cannot cry for the moon.

Grice notes that, for each of these psycho-logical attitudes, there are two further sub-divisions, depending on whether the attitude is focused on an attitude of the utterer U himself, or his conversational addressee, A — or a more distant third party: Smith is to show a leg.

Therefore, 

“X “ψ³_A [p]” 

is true just in case “Utterer U ψ² [X ψ¹[p] OR Utterer U ψ¹ [~p]]” is true. 

On the other hand, 

“Utterer U ψ³_B [p]” 

is true just in case 

“Utterer U V-accepts (ψ²) [Addressee A V-accepts (ψ²) [Utterer u J-accept (ψ¹) [p] *or* Utterer U J-accept (ψ¹) [~p]

 is true. 

Grice suggests now, for simplification and philosophical generalisation (quoting Vitters: that’s what a philosopher does: he CRAVES for generalisation) a more general meta-operator, 

“Opⁱ_α”

corresponding to each particular propositional attitude ψ³_A, where 

i) 'i' is a dummy taking the place of either the first type 1 (wanting), the second type 2 (believing), the third 3 (of decision) or the fourth addressee-oriented type 4, and 

ii) 'α' is a dummy taking the place of either an 'A' mode case or a 'B' acceptability case. 

Grice then ends with four sets of operators -- corresponding to the four sets of psycho-logical attitudes, each yielding a totally different scenario and which Grice describes as follows — incorporating the erotetic realm “?” to his “!” And his turnstile.

“Op¹α” 

-- volitive mode. 

Mode-cases: intentional sub-mode; 

Acceptability-cases: imperative sub-mode 

 “Op²α”:

 judicative mode simpliciter; 

Mode-cases: indicative sub-mode;

Acceptability cases: informative sub-mode; 

[Extra erotetic mode]: 

“Op³_α” 

volitive-cum-interrogative mode

Mode-cases: reflective sub-mode; 

Acceptability-cases: 

inquisitive sub-mode;

“Op⁴_α” – judicative-cum-interrogative (mixed)

Mode cases: reflective (again) sub-mode; 

Acceptability cases: imperative (again) sub-mode. 

For all ‘modes’ except the first, the syntax may not reflect the distinction between the mode-proper and acceptability-oriented cases. 

Grice notes that – his words: 

“in any application of the scheme to ordinary discourse, this fact would have to be accommodated.” 

And in fact he goes on to do so in a segment he inserted to his Kant lectures “Aspects of reason,” where he explores the adverbial: “for your information” – hardly “for your disinformation,” or “for your misinformation.”

 As Grice puts it: 

“It also seemed to me that there is an OBVIOUS corresponding distinction — corresponding to imperatives, that is — between two “uses” of ordinary indicatives.”

“Sometimes one is declaring or affirming that p – one’s intention being primarily to get his addressee to believe that the utterer believes that p.”

“Call them exhibitive utterances.”

“Other times, one is telling the addressee that p, i. e., hoping to get him to believe that p.”

“Call them protreptic utterances.”

“It is true that in the case of indicatives, unlike that of volitives, there doesn’t seem to be, available to the utterer, a neat pair of devices which would ordinarily be thought of as mode-markers and which would serve to distinguish the sub-mode of an indicative sentence.”

“The recognition of the sub-mode has to come from the immediate *conversational* context: (i) from the vocative use of the name of the utterer’s addressee, (ii) from the presence of a speech-act verb, or (iii) from a sentence-adverbial phrase (like “for your information”).” 

Never “For your misinformation” or to quote from Floridi — who has the right Oxonian grasp, like Grice does, for this — “For your DIS-information.”

This suggests that Grice is thinking of his scheme in the earlier Performadillo talk – as he had on the other hand anticipated in “Intention and uncertainty” with a general operator of ‘acceptance’ — as, at least in principle, applicable to an analysis of everyday language, of the type that would have pleased Austin, if not Austen (Grice plays on the fact that his prose need not satisfy neither Austen nor Macaulay!). 

For present purposes, in the Performadillo talk, Grice proposes to concentrate on the simple volitive operator (‘desirability’) and the judicative operator (‘credibility’). 

This is because these express his basic psychological categories of V-accepting and J-accepting. 

Grice has, however, established that it is *possible* — indeed mandatory in ethics — to discuss more complex operators, and therefore more complex psychological attitudes, a topic to which he is indeed to return in the “Pirotological progression” section of his “Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre” invoving iterated operators, and an account of incorrigibility and privileged access that may provide a formalization for ‘akrasia’ – later developed in his ‘Davidson on weakness of the will’ in Hintikka and Vermazen – or ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ along Floridi’s lines. 

Why would you like to deceive but your enemy?

The attitudes expressed by t, and by the pair and !, and !, ('T shall do A' and 'Do A) may be expressed by a general psychological verb of 'accepts'. 

So, for instance, 

“X J-accepts [pl' is 'x accepts [turnstile pl'] 

and 

X V-accepts (pl' is 'x accepts [!-sub A] p.”

Etc.

REFERENCES 

Contessa, Gabriele. Science denial. 

Floridi, The philosophy of information. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 Grice, H. P. Intention and uncertainty. Oxford: Clarendon Press – separatum from The Proceedings of the British Academy – Philosophical Lecture. 

Grice, H. P.  Probability, desirability, and mood operators: Performadillo, Texas. 

Grice, H. P. The Immanuel Kant memorial lectures, Stanford. 

Grice, H. P. Aspects of reason.

 Littlejohn, C. Disinformation. Philosophical studies.

 Speranza, J. L. (n.d.) This and that – for “Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice”.