H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA -- LA CONVERSAZIONE: I VERBALI: SIRENIO

 G.: Let us begin with the sentence itself: “He is a lucky fellow.” S.: A small sentence, but already a trap. G.: Quite. I have called it stupid, or silly, and I mean that seriously. It is ordinary language at its most philosophically indiscreet. S.: Because it attributes luck as if luck were a stable property, almost like height or politeness. G.: Exactly. It makes “lucky” sound predicative in a way that invites metaphysical nonsense and then pretends not to notice the invitation. S.: Yet ordinary speakers use it freely. G.: Of course. Ordinary language often walks where metaphysics fears to tread, or ought to. S.: Then why call it silly rather than merely loose? G.: Because the sceptic will seize on such looseness and ask whether any of our common talk commits us to absurd hypotheses. If I am to criticise scepticism properly, I must show that the sceptical hypothesis is absurd and yet still the sort of thing a rational utterer might attempt to impart to a rational addressee. S.: So “He is a lucky fellow” becomes a test-case. G.: Exactly. It looks harmless, but if pressed it starts suggesting fate, necessity, chance, providence, and all Sirenio’s old company. S.: Then Sirenio’s title suddenly becomes less baroque than it first appears. G.: Very much less. De fato libri novem: in quibus inter alia, de contingentia, necessitate, providentia, praescientia, prophetia, et divinatione, divina—every clause in that title can be made to bear on “He is a lucky fellow.” S.: Then let us do the title one phrase at a time, as you threatened. G.: Gladly. Begin with De fato. S.: On fate. G.: Or concerning fate, which is already better. Now, if one says “He is a lucky fellow,” does one mean “He is fated to prosper”? S.: Not ordinarily. Usually one means only that good outcomes seem to accumulate around him more often than expected. G.: Good. So fate is already too strong, but ordinary speech leaves the door ajar. S.: Because “lucky” personifies contingency by making it look like a trait. G.: Exactly. Luck becomes a pseudo-property. The fellow is not merely one to whom happy contingencies have occurred; he is “a lucky fellow,” as if marked by a standing relation to fortune. S.: Which is where the sceptic enters and says, “What could that possibly mean?” G.: Precisely. And one must answer without pretending the sentence is nonsense, for it plainly belongs to ordinary use. S.: So De fato asks whether the utterance covertly commits us to a doctrine of fate or whether it merely trades on a looser economy of explanation. G.: Excellent. And I say: the latter, unless the speaker is philosophically reckless. S.: Next phrase, libri novem. G.: Which means that Sirenio thought the matter too large for a pamphlet. Quite right. S.: You mean luck too is never just luck. G.: Exactly. Once one asks what “lucky” means, one has opened the whole old cabinet: chance, contingency, necessity, providence, foreknowledge, signs, omens, divination. S.: Then “He is a lucky fellow” is really a vulgar shorthand for a suspended metaphysical indecision. G.: Very good. It allows one to speak as though outcomes had pattern without deciding what sort of pattern they have. S.: In quibus inter alia. G.: Ah yes. “Among other things.” An excellent phrase, because it admits that the topic exceeds any single doctrinal centre. So too with luck. One begins by saying “He is lucky,” and before long one is discussing whether events are contingent, whether they were necessary under a description, whether some providence superintends them, whether we merely select the favourable cases, and so on. S.: So the sentence carries more than it says. G.: Naturally. That is why I care for it. S.: De contingentia, then. G.: Yes. “He is a lucky fellow” is most naturally at home under contingency. S.: Because if the good outcomes were necessary, “lucky” would be misplaced. G.: Exactly. Luck presupposes, or at least conversationally implies, that things might have gone otherwise. S.: So contingency is built into the ordinary use. G.: Very much so. To call him lucky is to imply that the favourable event was not secured by settled design, skill alone, or strict necessity. S.: Yet not every contingent success invites “lucky.” G.: Good. Say more. S.: If a man studies hard and passes, the result may still be contingent in cosmic terms, but we do not usually call him lucky unless some element of happy accident visibly assisted him. G.: Excellent. So luck enters when contingency becomes salient against background expectations of possible frustration. S.: Which makes the sentence already a compressed contrastive judgment: he succeeded, and the conditions left room for failure. G.: Very good. And now de necessitate. S.: If necessity enters, luck seems to retreat. G.: Yes, but only in the philosopher’s clean room. In ordinary language people often say “Lucky fellow” of someone whose success, in retrospect, looks nearly inevitable. S.: Then the utterance may signal ignorance of the necessitating background. G.: Or indifference to it. One need not settle whether the event was in some strict sense causally determined. One need only note that, from the speaker’s practical point of view, the result was open enough to make “luck” an apt social summary. S.: So luck and necessity may coexist at different levels of description. G.: Exactly. Sirenio would approve the distinction. Necessity under one aspect, contingency under another, and human deliberation living in the interval. S.: Then “He is a lucky fellow” does not deny causal order. It marks the agent-relative opacity of that order. G.: Splendid. Keep that. S.: Thank you. G.: Now de providentia. S.: Here the sentence becomes dangerous. G.: Entirely. If the speaker really means providence, then “lucky” is a timid euphemism for “favoured by God.” S.: But ordinary speakers often avoid providential language while smuggling in providential comfort. G.: Precisely. “Lucky” can be a secularised providence-word. S.: Meaning that one attributes a benevolent pattern to events without the theological burden of saying so. G.: Very good. That is one reason I call the sentence silly. It half borrows the shape of providence and half pretends it is merely worldly. S.: So one should ask whether the speaker means only statistical fortune or whether he is consoling himself with a disguised teleology. G.: Exactly. Most of the time it is the former. But the latter is always conversationally available. S.: De praescientia. G.: Foreknowledge. What bearing has that on our poor lucky fellow? S.: If someone says “He is a lucky fellow,” there may be an implication that one could not have known in advance how the event would go. G.: Excellent. Luck belongs where foreknowledge fails. S.: Or rather where ordinary human foreknowledge fails, even if some stronger foreknowledge were metaphysically imaginable. G.: Yes. The phrase lives under ignorance. If the result was clearly knowable beforehand, “lucky” becomes weaker or ironic. S.: So foreknowledge and luck are inversely related in ordinary use. G.: Very much so. A bookie who knew the result in advance would not call the winner lucky, except for comic effect. S.: Unless he wished to conceal the knowledge. G.: Quite. Then the sentence becomes dissimulative. S.: De prophetia. G.: Another excellent inflation. Prophecy enters where outcomes are not merely known but announced in advance under special authority. S.: Which makes “He is a lucky fellow” seem positively municipal. G.: Yes, but there is still a relation. Suppose someone repeatedly prospers beyond expectation. Soon enough others begin speaking of him as though future success could be safely anticipated. S.: So luck hardens into expectation. G.: Exactly. And the sentence shifts from retrospective commentary to predictive habit. S.: Then the sceptic asks: are you not treating past contingency as if it guaranteed future favour? G.: Precisely. Which is one of the irrational temptations luck-language encourages. S.: So “lucky fellow” may invite an inductive superstition. G.: Very good. It converts a run of outcomes into a quasi-prophetic character trait. S.: Et divinatione, divina. G.: Ah yes. The most embarrassing clause. Divination is what luck-talk can become when it stops pretending to be modest. S.: You mean talismans, omens, signs, reading the world for favourable alignments. G.: Exactly. If a man is called lucky often enough, people begin to treat his circumstances as signs—“He touched that card,” “He entered the room,” “Back his horse,” and so on. S.: So luck migrates from description to divinatory practice. G.: Yes. And that is another reason the sentence interests me. It sits on the edge between harmless social idiom and full irrationalism. S.: Which is where scepticism also likes to sit. G.: Quite. The sceptic says: your ordinary language is already infected with absurd hypotheses. You call a man lucky as if fortune were a property or a power. S.: And your response? G.: My response is that ordinary speakers are not thereby committed to a worked-out metaphysic of Fortune. They are using a convenient summary for a pattern of contingently favourable outcomes under ordinary ignorance. S.: So the sentence is silly only if taken with metaphysical pomp. G.: Yes. Silly in structure, not unusable in practice. S.: Tam secundum philosophorum opinionem. G.: Excellent. According to the philosophers’ opinion. Sirenio means the philosophical treatment before dogmatic imposition. S.: Then according to philosophers, “lucky” must be analysed into contingency, ignorance, salience of favourable outcomes, and the human tendency to reify patterns. G.: Very good. Philosophically speaking, “He is a lucky fellow” is shorthand, not theory. S.: And perhaps not even good shorthand. G.: Often not. That is why I call it stupid. But stupidity in ordinary language is rarely uselessness. It is often merely untidy compression. S.: Quam secundum Catholicorum theologorum sententiam. G.: And here the theologians complicate matters. A Catholic theologian may wish to say that what ordinary folk call luck is really providence under the appearance of contingency. S.: Or perhaps concurrence, permission, secondary causes, divine ordering without violence to freedom. G.: Quite. Theology is always better at multiplying distinctions than luck-talk deserves. S.: Then the same sentence may be heard theologically as a vulgar misnaming of providence. G.: Yes. The theologian says, perhaps: no one is “lucky” in the pagan sense; he is fortunate only under divine governance. S.: Whereas the philosopher says: fortunate is safer, because it need not imply a metaphysical force called luck. G.: Good. Though fortunate too has its old baggage. S.: Docte, et copiose disseritur. G.: “Learnedly and copiously discussed.” Which is what we are now doing with a sentence that most people utter before lunch and forget by tea. S.: That is your revenge on ordinary language. G.: No. My revenge is on those who think ordinary language cannot be philosophically embarrassing. S.: Then let us return to the sentence. “He is a lucky fellow.” What is its logical grammar? G.: Ah. Now we can ask the proper question. “Lucky” looks adjectival, but the underlying grammar is event-relative and contrastive. One is lucky with respect to some outcome under some background of possible mishap. S.: So to say simply “He is lucky” without qualification is incomplete. G.: Exactly. It suppresses the domain. Lucky at cards, lucky in escaping accidents, lucky in marriage, lucky in appointments, lucky to have caught the train, and so on. S.: Which means the predication is radically underdescribed. G.: Very much so. Ordinary language gets away with that because context fills the gap. S.: Then the sentence might be analysed as “He has had a notable run of favourable outcomes in the relevant domain, outcomes not wholly attributable to his own design or merit.” G.: That is much better than “lucky fellow,” but no one would say it at the races. S.: Which is perhaps why races exist. G.: Very likely. Now, what about scepticism? S.: You said the critic of scepticism must show that the sceptical hypothesis is absurd and yet still the sort of thing a rational utterer may want to impart to a rational addressee. G.: Yes. The difficulty is always that scepticism must be both speakable and self-undermining. Similarly, “lucky fellow” is speakable and yet, if pressed into theory, absurd. S.: So the sentence is a miniature of the sceptical predicament. G.: Exactly. The rational speaker can use it, because he wants to convey something real enough: the salient pattern of contingently favourable results. But if he means by it that the man possesses some occult property of luck, then he is speaking absurdly. S.: Then your anti-sceptical lesson is that one must rescue the rational communicative point without endorsing the absurd metaphysical surplus. G.: Precisely. One must show how the utterance can be rationally usable even though one possible interpretation of it is philosophically intolerable. S.: That sounds like your whole career. G.: In miniature, yes. Now, let us take “libero arbitrio” from Sirenio’s framework. Does “lucky” threaten freedom? S.: Only if one imagines outcomes to be so governed by fortune or fate that deliberation becomes idle. G.: Good. But ordinary use usually does not go that far. To call someone lucky is not to deny his agency; it is often to say that agency did not wholly suffice to explain the result. S.: So luck marks the residue beyond deliberate control. G.: Exactly. And Sirenio would say that freedom survives because contingency and necessity constrain without annihilating meaningful choice. S.: So if I say “He is a lucky fellow,” I may mean: his choices occur within a field not wholly mastered by him, yet his agency remains intelligible. G.: Excellent. That is the charitable Sirenian reconstruction. S.: Whereas the vulgar speaker may simply mean, “Things keep breaking in his favour, curse him.” G.: Very often. Envy is the everyday metaphysician of luck. S.: Then perhaps “fellow” matters too. G.: Indeed. “He is a lucky fellow” is colloquial partly because of fellow. It humanises the predication and lowers the philosophical temperature. S.: “He is a lucky man” is graver; “He is lucky” more abstract; “He is a lucky fellow” already half excuses itself as social chatter. G.: Very good. Which is why I can call it silly without denying its ordinary humanity. S.: Then the phrase is stupid in metaphysical ambition but innocent in conversational deployment. G.: That is almost right. Innocent is too generous. Let us say tolerable. S.: Tolerable silliness. G.: Exactly. Ordinary language is full of tolerable silliness. S.: And your job is to say when it remains tolerable and when it starts pretending to be ontology. G.: Precisely. If someone says “He is a lucky fellow” after a game of cards, I tolerate it. If someone builds an account of human success around luck as an occult property, I reach for Sirenio, or perhaps for ridicule. S.: Ridicule is your preferred deontic modality. G.: Often the only one available. Now, what about contingentia again? Would you say luck is simply contingency under a favourable evaluative aspect? S.: That seems close. Luck is not mere contingency; it is contingency appraised from the standpoint of interest. G.: Excellent. An earthquake is contingent, but not lucky for those crushed by it. S.: So luck is evaluative contingency. G.: Splendid. Keep that. S.: Thank you. G.: De necessitate again. Could one be necessarily lucky? S.: Only by changing the sense entirely. If by “necessarily lucky” one means that in every relevant possible circumstance events break in his favour, then luck has become fate or providence and ceased to be luck. G.: Very good. So luck requires the open appearance of possible failure. S.: And therefore a finite point of view. G.: Exactly. That is why de praescientia matters. A fully omniscient being does not call anyone lucky. S.: It sees the whole order. G.: Yes. Luck is a category of local ignorance inside an order not fully surveyed. S.: Which makes it anthropological rather than theological. G.: Beautifully put. Luck belongs to the human angle on events. S.: Then “He is a lucky fellow” is not nonsense if heard anthropologically. G.: Exactly. It is only nonsense if inflated into world-metaphysics. S.: So the sceptic’s trick is to force inflation and then mock the result. G.: Precisely. And the anti-sceptic must say: no, the utterance has a rational everyday point without bearing the absurd load you assign it. S.: That is also true of “the sun rises.” G.: Very much so. Ordinary language is full of expressions whose practical point survives theoretical correction. S.: Then perhaps “lucky fellow” belongs with “sunrise” and “free choice” as respectable vulgarities. G.: I like that phrase. Respectable vulgarities. S.: You may keep it. G.: I probably shall. Now, prophetia once more. Does repeated luck invite prophecy because humans over-read patterns? S.: Yes. We seek regularity where there is only selective memory and favourable clustering. G.: Good. So luck-talk is a nursery for weak divination. S.: And divination is luck-talk with confidence. G.: Excellent. Sirenio would enjoy that. S.: Then why do you insist on the sentence’s silliness? G.: Because I want the hearer to feel that the phrase, though ordinary, should not be allowed to repose as though it were conceptually comfortable. It is a debacle of scepticism in miniature because it tempts one to say more than one can reasonably defend. S.: Yet still to say something worth saying. G.: Precisely. The rational utterer may wish to convey that the fellow’s sequence of successes cannot be fully credited to skill, prudence, or effort, and that a residue of favourable contingency remains. S.: And the rational addressee can grasp that without postulating Fortune as an entity. G.: Exactly. That is the whole rescue-operation. S.: Then perhaps the final paraphrase should be: “He has repeatedly benefited from favourably contingent outcomes in ways salient to our shared interests, though we need not infer any occult property thereby.” G.: Perfectly hideous as English, perfectly sound as philosophy. S.: Which is what one aims for in seminar. G.: Often. And Sirenio’s title helps because it reminds us that even a silly everyday sentence lies at the crossroads of fate, contingency, necessity, providence, foreknowledge, prophecy, and divination—at least if one is foolish enough to ask what it means. S.: Which you always are. G.: It is my luck. S.: Lucky fellow. G.: Precisely the sort of thing I should forbid if I had any real authority.