The Conception of Value

by Paul Grice

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.

Genres: Philosophy

172 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 1991

About the author

Herbert Paul Grice (March 13, 1913 – August 28, 1988), usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H. Paul Grice, or Paul Grice, was a British philosopher of language, who spent the final two decades of his career in the United States.

Grice's work on the nature of meaning has influenced the philosophical study of semantics. He is known for his theory of implicature.

One of Grice's two most influential contributions to the study of language and communication is his theory of meaning, which he began to develop in his article ‘Meaning', written in 1948 but published only in 1957 at the prodding of his colleague, P.F. Strawson. Grice further developed his theory of meaning in the fifth and sixth of his William James lectures on "Logic and Conversation", delivered at Harvard in 1967. These two lectures were initially published as ‘Utterer's Meaning and Intentions' in 1969 and ‘Utterer's Meaning, Sentence Meaning, and Word Meaning' in 1968, and were later collected with the other lectures as the first section of Studies in the Way of Words in 1989.