To mock a mockingbird: Smullyaniana

Speranza

There was a recent post to the "Carnap Corner" on "Deep Learning Eternal Truth" by R. B. Jones (the founder of Carnap Corner, as it happens).

I thought I would drop a line (or two, as the implicature goes) about Smullyan.

That would be Raymond Merrill Smullyan, a very prolific philosopher whose interests seem to correspond, shall we say, with Carnap's and indeed, Jones's.

Jones makes in his post on "Deep Learning" a passing reference to the catastrophe (not a word Jones uses) brought by Goedel. And Smullyan then has a whole book on Goedelian paradoxes that should amuse Jones.

Smullyan's career is eclectic. He holds a MA, and a PhD from Princeton -- His dissertation being on "Theory of Formal Systems".

He is best known to Griceians for a passing reference in Grice's "Vacuous Names" and for Smullyan's "First Order Logic".

When Grice gave his second William James lecture on logic and conversation, he starts by referring to what he calls, yes, a 'commonplace' in philosophical logic. The commonplace that there is, or appears to be (Grice is so guarded it hurts), between:

not
and
or
if
all
some (if not all)
the

and their formal counterparts: ~, /\, \/, ), (Ax), (Ex), (ix).

And the commonplace is repeated by Smullyan.

Of course, Grice will go on to argue -- not so much in THAT lecture but the two following ones, especially Lecture V, concerning if/) -- that this commonplace RESTS ON A BIG MISTAKE!

The mistake is due to the inability -- by Smullyan and others, onto which we can add Carnap and Quine -- especially the Quine of "Methods of Logic", that P. F. Strawson refers to in his introduction to "Philosophical Logic" (Oxford readings in philosophy) -- to perceive an implicature.

It's not that 'and' and '/\' differ, but if we say:

i. Sally, in our alley, got pregnant and married.
ii. Sally, in our alley, married and got pregnant.

Logically, they are equivalent. If the 'implicatures' differ, that's because there are, to use Carnap's label, some 'pragmatic' or 'general features of discourse' (as Grice puts it in "Prolegomena", Lecture I), at play, so that if you are narrating events, you proceed orderly.

This was noted by Urmson before Grice, and indeed by the Greeks before the English! Urmson's example (in "Philosophical Analysis between the two war worlds") is amusing:

iii. Smith got into bed and took off his trousers.
iv. Smith took off his trousers and got into bed.

When Grice delievered his lecture on "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature" (in the original transcript) he used that example, but the segment was edited out when he included that lecture in his WoW (Way of Words).

There are other fascinating facets about Smullyan. He was, like Grice, fascinated with Dodgson, Goedel, Boole, Cantor, and all the interesting names that should fascinate a Carnapian.

Smullyan had a taste for paradoxes, but he never lost his faith that first-order logic was the solution to it all, almost!

Grice and Carnap on the value of formalism

Speranza's post connecting Dick and (of course) Grice to Carnap contains a quote from Grice which is reminiscent of something which Carnap says in his "Intellectual Autobiography".

Grice said, apparently, :

"If you cannot put it in symbols it's not worth saying it."

Rather uncompromising!

Long before him Carnap (a more radical enthusiast for symbolic logic) more modestly (when writing about how he felt early in his PhD research) wrote:

"When I considered a concept or proposition occurring in a philosophical or scientific discussion, I thought that I understood it clearly only if I felt that I could express it, if I wanted to, in symbolic  language."

That was published 1963, but talks about his views just after the first world war.

Marcus Dick makes it to "Dear Carnap, Dear Van" -- and Grice

Speranza

The 'and Grice' is what I call the ObG: i.e. any post should have some Griceian implicature to it!

There was a post in the Grice Club some time ago, which was basically a quotation from P. M. S. Hacker's essay on Witters (or Wittgenstein, if you must).

I love Hacker because, with G. P. Baker, they succeeded Grice (when he left for Berkeley) as tutorial fellows in philosophy at St. John's.

Anyway,

Hacker has this thing, like I do, matter of fact, for alphabetical ordering.

And he manages to try to list the members of what J. L. Austin called his 'kindergarten' -- i.e. the members of that play group that he led and that met on Saturday mornings. The list starts -- I shall use set-theoretical formulation to please Jones:

PG = {Dick, Grice, ...}

-- the members of the class needed to fill some requisites: they had to be younger than Austin himself, and full-time Oxonian 'dons' -- no students allowed, or professors, for that matter!

In any case, note that Dick is the first in the list, followed by Grice.

I found that charming.

I don't think Hacker is trying anything too deep, or historiographical, since, for one, give me five minutes or so, and I shall find members for the play group starting with A, B, and C -- so Dick would NOT be the first!

In any case, why does this relate to Carnap's Corner?

Well, in "Dear Carnap, Dear Van: The Quine-Carnap Correspondence and Related Work," edited by Richard Creath, we read:

"Among it various communications from Marcus Dick, trying to get in touch with us."

So, yes, Dick made it to the Carnap annals, too!

The interesting thing is that those 'various communications' could never be reciprocated because Marcus Dick left no 'future address', if you can believe that!

Ah, well.

Quinton knew Dick from his All Souls days, and he used to say (as a reciprocation for Dick saying, "No much competition here, Richard" -- addressing Richard Wollheim) that he had never met a professional philosopher at Oxford who, like Dick, had never published 'a single word'.

Quinton is of course being hyperbolic. Why?

Well, Quine, in his autobiography, refers to Dick as being an outstanding Commonwealth Fellow at Harvard, and having produced some 'outstanding work' in that area (under Quine, of course).

So, I would think that if Dick never published a single word, he must have published (on Quine's blackboard) a symbol, or two!

The connection between Dick and Grice is more tenous, or shall I say, implicatural, in nature!

But we know that in his later phase of his philosophical development, Grice grew more formalistic and logicist. Indeed, the obituary for P. F. Strawson has a gem: Grice once told Strawson,

"If you cannot put it in symbols it's not worth saying it."

-- whatever that meant! Strawson was impressed, and retorted!

But I would think that Carnap, Grice, and why not, Dick, enjoyed the profuse use of 'symbols', or logical notation to make their ideas clear -- or not! (I have a friend who always reprimands me for putting things in 'logical formal' notation -- "Life is not algebra!" he would shout!)