H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: ACHILLINI

 G.: Let us begin with the spots, because physiognomy only becomes interesting once one ceases to treat spots as destiny. S.: Quite. The vulgar physiognomist sees a mark and rushes to a nature. G.: Whereas Achillini, at his best, sees that the route from mark to nature is inferential, and therefore delicate. S.: Which is exactly where you become interested. G.: Naturally. If those spots are merely there by pathology, they may indicate one thing. If they are painted on, they indicate another, or rather they indicate nothing by themselves and only acquire communicative value through intention. S.: So the first distinction is between natural sign and produced appearance. G.: Yes, though one must not stop there. For once a person paints the spots, the marks do not merely cease to be natural signs; they enter the world of meant signs. S.: Meaning that the body becomes a medium. G.: Precisely. A rather theatrical medium, but a medium all the same. S.: Then Achillini’s physiognomic syllogism is not simply a medical inference. G.: No. It may begin as one, but it immediately threatens to become semiotic, rhetorical, and even conversational. S.: Because the interpreter must ask not merely what is seen, but why it is there to be seen. G.: Exactly. Which is already my kind of question. S.: Then perhaps we should formulate the case in your preferred manner. Not “these spots mean measles,” but “someone, by displaying these spots, means to be taken for measly.” G.: Very good. Though “measly” is an unfortunate adjective. S.: I risked it for brevity. G.: And brevity is often the parent of ugliness. S.: As in Oxford examination scripts. G.: Especially there. But let us rescue the point. Achillini is useful because he stands precisely at the border where a visible item may be treated either as signum naturale or as the vehicle of an intentional deception. S.: So the same surface can bear two logics. G.: Yes. Nature’s logic and use’s logic. S.: Which already sounds Ockhamist. G.: Indeed. That is one of the pleasures here. Matsen and the better scholarship did us a favour by recovering Achillini as a Renaissance Ockhamist rather than leaving him as a blurred “Averroist” curiosity. S.: Because Ockhamism gives you supposition, economy, consequence, and the suspicion of inflated universals. G.: Exactly. It gives one a leaner semantic atmosphere. Less metaphysical upholstery, more logical carpentry. S.: Then when Achillini speaks of the prima potestas syllogismi, what do you hear? G.: I hear the claim that the syllogism’s first power is not merely to march from major to minor to conclusion in schoolroom fashion, but to secure a relation of consequence by which one thing is gathered from another. S.: Consequence first, ornament later. G.: Quite. And if one is historically mischievous, one may then say that “meaning” itself begins to look like a species of rationally controlled consequentiality. S.: That sounds very like your own temptation. G.: It is my temptation, yes. I do not say that x means that p merely because p follows in any old way from x, but I do say that a relation of inferentially guided uptake lies very near the heart of the matter. S.: So Achillini is not your ancestor because he “invented implicature,” but because he sharpens the structure in which one thing licenses the gathering of another. G.: Precisely. One must resist the vulgar hunt for anticipations. S.: Speranza does. G.: Admirably. He never says, “Look, here is Grice in 1504.” He says, “Look, here is a structure Grice would recognise.” S.: And that is much better history. G.: Infinitely better. Anticipation-talk usually flatters the present at the expense of the past. S.: Whereas structural affinity lets the past remain itself. G.: Exactly. Achillini remains a physician-logician in Bologna and Padua, not an honorary don of St John’s. S.: Though he might have enjoyed the anatomy collections. G.: More than enjoyed them; he would have corrected them. S.: Fair. Then let us consider the bodily singular. You have often been suspicious of universals descending too quickly upon particulars. G.: Yes. The particular body resists hasty annexation by general predicates. S.: Which is why the physiognomic syllogism is dangerous. G.: Entirely. It pretends that from this nose, these eyes, this complexion, one may proceed to courage, melancholy, lust, or fraud as if the body carried its essence on the sleeve. S.: Yet Achillini, because he is both physician and logician, knows that one needs a mediating discipline. G.: Yes. One must ask under what conditions the passage from visible particular to hidden generality is licit. S.: That is where the syllogism enters. G.: Or seems to. But the syllogism does not save one automatically. It merely makes explicit where the risks lie. S.: For example? G.: For example, one major premise might say: all those who exhibit sign S have condition C. The minor premise says: this man exhibits sign S. Therefore this man has condition C. S.: A tidy fraud if the major premise is itself badly founded. G.: Exactly. Or if the sign is equivocal. Or if the sign has been fabricated. Or if the context alters its force. Or if the observer has fallen in love with his own taxonomy. S.: So the syllogism clarifies error as much as truth. G.: Very often that is its best service. S.: Then perhaps Achillini’s true philosophical value lies less in proving physiognomy than in making visible the inferential ambition on which physiognomy depends. G.: Splendid. That is exactly the line to take. S.: Which also lets you distinguish natural indication from communicative exploitation. G.: Yes. Dark clouds may indicate rain without meaning anything. Painted spots may fail to indicate disease but succeed in meaning “take me for ill.” S.: And the hearer or observer must decide which game is being played. G.: Precisely. Is this pathology, signification, pretence, or some mixture? That is why context is unavoidable. S.: Then the body in Achillini behaves rather like an utterance in your own theory. G.: In certain respects, yes. A bodily display is not merely a body there; it may be a move. S.: A move in medicine, in rhetoric, or in deceit. G.: Exactly. Which is why “those spots mean measles” is, in the interesting case, too simple. Better: “those spots are intended to make one gather measles.” S.: And once intention enters, so does recognisability. G.: Quite. If no one could reasonably take the spots as meant to suggest measles, the deception would fail as communication even if it succeeded as paint. S.: That is a delicious sentence. G.: Keep it, but do not attribute the deliciousness to me. S.: Never intentionally. G.: Good. Now, what of Bologna? S.: Older than Oxford, which pleases you. G.: Naturally. I like a university with enough age to make Oxford look juvenile. S.: Yet Bologna matters here not merely for age but for climate. G.: Yes. A place where medicine, natural philosophy, and logic could still be taught in one living relation. S.: So Achillini is formed in a university world less compartmentalised than the later British one. G.: Exactly. One can still be physician enough to describe the malleus and incus, and philosopher enough to write on syllogism, and natural philosopher enough to treat physiognomy as a serious inquiry. S.: Whereas in Oxford the physiognomist would be mocked into college silence. G.: Quite rightly, perhaps, though one might thereby lose an interesting inferential case. S.: So Speranza’s merit again lies in keeping the figure whole. G.: Yes. He does not reduce Achillini to an anatomical curiosity, nor to a quaint logician, nor to a family name. S.: Which brings us to the family name itself. G.: Ah yes. The danger of Achillini in the generic. S.: “Some like Achillini, but Achillini is my man” only works if the right Achillini has been isolated. G.: Precisely. Otherwise one praises a surname and neglects a mind. S.: And Speranza refuses that flattening. G.: Admirably. He knows that Italian family names, like Roman nomina, are traps for the hurried. S.: So Alessandro must be kept distinct from Giovanni Filoteo. G.: Entirely. One is the physician-logician at the crossing of consequence and bodily signs. The other is the humanist, poet, compiler of literary gardens. S.: Viridario, not De potestate syllogismi. G.: Exactly. Green garden, not inferential engine. S.: Though both, in their own way, concern mediation. G.: True enough, but one must not sentimentalise the kinship. The structures differ, and the whole point is to preserve difference. S.: To each his implicature. G.: Very good. Speranza would approve. S.: Then let us return to consequence. You said a moment ago that meaning is not identical with consequence, yet is structurally near it. G.: Yes. One must avoid the crude thesis that if p follows from x, x means that p. That would make smoke mean fire in the same sense in which a gesture means refusal. S.: Which you have always resisted. G.: Absolutely. But the hearer’s route from what is presented to what is gathered often has a consequential form. It is because the route has that form that Achillini becomes useful to me. S.: So you borrow the shape, not the doctrine. G.: Precisely. Achillini’s world lets one see, with unusual clarity, how an interpreter moves from visible particular to intelligible conclusion. S.: And from there one can pass, by analogy, to conversational cases. G.: Yes. Someone says very little, shows something, omits something, or arranges a circumstance. The hearer asks: what follows, given reason and occasion? S.: Which is nearly your own description of implicature. G.: Nearly, yes. Though my cases are more thoroughly social and intention-dependent. S.: Still, your squash player and Achillini’s spotted patient are cousins. G.: Distant cousins, perhaps. But recognisably of the same inferential family. S.: Let us try an example of your own. A says, “I am not entirely well,” while touching his forehead. G.: Good. The hearer may infer fever, reluctance, excuse, or a plea for sympathy depending on context. S.: So even there the bodily item is not enough. G.: Exactly. Neither the words nor the gesture suffice in isolation. Meaning emerges from their placement in a rational scene. S.: Which is what Achillini’s best examples force us to notice. G.: Yes. The body is not a transparent text. It is a site where signs, symptoms, pretences, and intentions mingle. S.: Then perhaps physiognomy is philosophically valuable precisely where it fails scientifically. G.: An excellent paradox. Yes, because its failures expose the inferential temptations of the interpreter. S.: And the temptation to confuse appearance with essence. G.: Precisely. Which is why the Ockhamist strand matters. It counsels caution about swollen universals. S.: So Achillini stands at a very nice point: enough scholastic technique to articulate consequence, enough medical realism to care about bodies, enough Renaissance confidence to risk physiognomy. G.: Very nicely put. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become vain. S.: I shall try to fail modestly. G.: Better. Now, what about De intelligentiis? S.: The earliest securely locatable work, 1494, at Bologna. G.: Yes, and the title itself already tells one something about the atmosphere: commentator and Aristotle, truth and deviation, all arranged in the disputational manner. S.: A world in which questions about intelligences, spheres, and celestial order still live beside medicine. G.: Exactly. Which is why one should not imagine Achillini as a mere transitional figure on the road to modernity. He belongs to a fully inhabited intellectual cosmos. S.: Yet one in which consequence remains central. G.: Indeed. Consequence, interpretation, ordered transition from one term or proposition to another. That is the durable thread. S.: So if one asks why Grice should care, the answer is not simply “because Achillini once mentioned signs.” G.: No. The answer is that Achillini makes visible an inferential architecture which later philosophy of meaning can reuse without inheriting all the old furniture. S.: Reuse without masquerade. G.: Exactly. One need not turn him into an analyst of ordinary language avant la lettre. It is enough that he shows how something seen may become something gathered under a rule of consequence. S.: And Speranza’s historical tact lies in showing just that, without annexation. G.: Yes. He is careful where many are lazy. He knows that family names, doctrinal labels, and retrospective triumphalism are the historian’s three common vices. S.: So in Alessandro Achillini he rescues both a person and a pressure. G.: Very good. A person from genealogical blur, and a pressure of thought from chronological condescension. S.: Then perhaps the closing formula is this: Achillini teaches not that bodies speak by themselves, but that interpreters are always tempted to make them speak. G.: Excellent. And the philosopher’s task is to ask under what conditions that temptation becomes knowledge, and under what conditions performance. S.: Which is very nearly the whole of conversation too. G.: Near enough for Bologna. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Bolognese.