Entailments and Implicatures of Visibly

Kramer is unimpressed by Urmson ("How not to do Urmson with words", this blog).

He suggests, instead, that we concentrate on whether a phrase, e.g. "by your outfit", is used adverbially or parenthetical -- from the Greek, 'parenthesis' a figure of speech), or not:


I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy
I see by your outfit that you're a cowboy, too.
You see by our outfits that we are both cowboys,
If you get an outfit, you can be a cowboy, too.

The problem here is the factuality of 'see'.

Seeing that 'see' _is_ factive allows one to find any adverbial qualification otiose. Indeed, this IS the case of the lady doth protest too much for Grice (WoW:ii):

"The question arises whether
Jack Smothers is a cowboy.
His brother, Jacko, volunteers
not only the information that
indeed, Jack _is_ a cowboy,
(as he sees him, or _it_ as he
would rudely say), but also
irrelevant, otiose, information,
violating the quantitative maxims,
to the effect that this is so
by Jack's wearing a certain outfit,
to wit: a cowboy's outfit".

"Here, 'by your outfit' works
parenthetical but NOT as a
parenthetical, for, while Jacko's
volubility ("by your outfit")
may be undesigned, and thus
to be disimpicated on occasion
and on principle, Jack may never
care."

"But _SHOULD_ he care, the
doubt may arise in Jack's mind
as to whether he _is_ really
a cowboy. For surely, as the
proverb goes, in Spanish,

'el habito no hace al monje'.

Mutatis Mutandi, the cowboy."

---

"But if it _WAS_ designed by
Jacko, or at least if it is
so recovered by Jack, i.e.
as thought of as designed,
surely 'by your outfit' kills
the certainty that

I see you are a cowboy

has on the face of _it_. And
it kills it because surely
the evidence of a real
cowboy is in his sexual
_morality_, not an Aristotelian
accidency as his outfit is
or is thought of as being."

"Therefore, the implicature,
if so designed, is that it
is to some degree controversial
whether Jack can think that
by just wearing a stupid
outfit he will be regarded,
indeed seen, as one."

"Surely philosophers can
distinguish this. But we won't
expect the Smothers' Brothers,
or whomever wrote the stupid
lyrics to them, will or should
for that matter."

Yet, the line sticks with me

Apparently they have the moxie
to go on that, philonianly,
if _I_, Grice, wears such an
outfit, I _shall_ be a cowboy,
too?

The silliness of the thought
is enough to perish _it_.

--

In another of her _gaffes_ Chapman unethically discloses (I love her, though):

"Grice was perhaps most offended in his whole
life when a student remarked to him
that it was awkward that a philo professor
should hold his trousers by pieces of string"

"The idiot failed to see that they were
cricket ties of the North Oxford County
Cricket Club".

Etc.

JL