Disimplicature

I loved E. Borg's recent (2009) I. R. P. essay to reappear under a different guise in Parkus "Essays from Grice" -- and her reference to, out of the blue, to one Daniel Watts.

I want to know EVERYTHING about him!

In any case, in a footnote, Borg quotes Watts as thinking all I always thought about things.

Who is _he_?

He speaks of cancelling explicatures, reinforcing implicatures, in the process of the conversazione itself. Delightful.

I add the 'disimplicature' because S. Chapman re-discovered it for us. In her "Grice" -- now in paperback.

It is possible to give a more or less precise formulation of 'disimplicate'.

The gist of what I see as the next most important critical notion in pragmatics trades on the curious phenomenon that, in spite of what Griceans have been saying repeatedly, Grice also saw that *sometimes* words mean/say MORE than what we _mean_ by uttering them (via conversational implicature).

It's the exact opposite of cancellability so the connection with D. Watts holds.

Grice considers:

"U disimplicates" (where "U" is utterer) as different from

" ~ (U implicates)".

I.e. to disimplicate is not just incorporated negation of 'implicates'.

You have to _want_ to disimplicate. It's an intentional thingy. You have to be _ready_ (for it).

The example he gives, alas is only one: 'see'. -- but also 'is'/'seems' -- as in "That seems red and is red" (not the dirty back of a double decker, but a nicely polished victorian pillarbox photographed in the cover of "This England" and which I actually _saw_ in Gloucestershire, of all places: the pillar box, not the magazine.

Grice's examples (WoW, iii):

(i a) The medium-green tie has a touch of blue in this light.
(i b) The medium-green tie SEEMS to have a touch of blue in this light.

A different range:

(ii) Macbeth saw (the visum of) Banquo.

It would be odd, Grice writes, to have a successor of 'sense-discoverer' William Hamilton of Edinburgh, who discovers that 'see' has TWO senses: one factive, the other not. Surely it's ALWAYS factive. So, what happens with (ii)?

U disimplicates that 'see' is a factive.

He uses 'loose talk', to use D. Wilson/D. Sperber's term. Sloppy we can say he is being -- the utterer. But people _do_ use 'see' like that: for things like unveridical hallucinations, etc. -- the 'visum' was a concoction he later found redundant, but which Grice introduced in the course of
philosophising with, of all people, G. J. Warnock, vice-Chancelor of Oxford.

In the case of (i a-b), a is the 'noumenon' version, b the 'phainomenon' version.

In a scenario, Grice writes (WoW, iii) where there is no question of a change of colour, we are understandably expected to use sloppy things like 'the tie _has_ a shade of blue in it' even when we know it only _seems_ to have it.

Disimplicature, I find, is ubiquitous.

We have been brought up as good Griceans to implicate on request; but it's part of
the 'rational reconstruction' (I loved Emma Borg's footnote on this) of our pirotic habits that we can also, on occasion, and in a welcoming fashion, _disimplicate_ -- this or that. For _we_ remain being the Masters (*Reference here to A. G. N. Flew on "Humpty Dumpty" -- with provisions).

So much for Grice disentangled.

Cheers,

JL

Ref.:
Short/Lewis, "inplicatura", entanglement.