Grice on 'logical form'

It can be argued that Grice supersedes Nowell and Smith on a number of fronts.

Nowell-Smith, like the rest of them -- Hungerland, Edwards, Bar-Hillel, Moore, Strawson, Grant, Urmson, Austin -- would _HARDLY_ stress the

implicit-explicit distinction.

This is not NECESSARILY an interesting philosophical distinction. Usually philosophers, Griceans included, find it hard to see _what_

'imply'

is antonymous with. The OED for example notes that there is an occurrence of 'plicature' 1580, which would suggest that there is a distinction between IMPLIC-it and EX-plicit aspects of what is communicated.

For Grice, who was unimpressed by talk of the implicit-explicit distinction, the contrast tends to be between

implicature vs. logical form.

True, he focuses often on 'stating'. "What you state, versus what you imply", or worse, 'say': what you say versus what you mean/imply/suggest.

On the other hand he does us 'ex-' as in 'express' for things we would rather not have as part of what is ex-plicitly communicated. He says that

It is raining

EX-presses the belief (or representation) that it is raining.

In any case we get the pattern. It's a that-clause usually (or 'that'-clause, as Austin prefers -- see my correspondence with R. Hall in CHORA for this, drawing on the poverty of the OED entry for 'that'-clause)

Jack is in the grip of a vyce

Thus corresponds to a proposition. As such it carries a truth-condition. I.e. a condition that makes

"Jack is in the grip of a vyce"

true. For other forces we need to generalise that into a general satisfactoriness condition. Eg.

"Get a grip!"

for example, cannot be _true_.

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Once we get to the satisfatoriness-condition, we can analyse the logical form. This is not a game. For, for Grice, "if you cannot put it in symbols, it's not worth saying" -- where by _saying_ he means Frege's sense-and-reference, and thus 'a pretty good guide to logical form'.

So we need to see, in "Jack is in the grip of a vyce" what exactly it is we are talking about.

Are we predicating something of a definite descriptor? Or the referent thereof? No. Unless we count "Jack" as "the person called 'Jack'"

So we need to postulate an individual constant, here, or "constant of an individual", for which a denotatum is in need.

-- unless the utterer is being vague -- as when Americans call 'John' any client of a prostitute --. (

This John is in the grip of a vice.

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Next we need to get rid of the 'is' which is NOT a predicate. Existence is NOT a predicate. We need to turn the thing into S-P form, The S is P.

The John is gripping, as it were.

The Jack finds his-self in the grip of a vyse.

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Since how he finds hisself to be is immaterial. We need to be more 'explicit'.

The Jack is located in the pressure of a tool used by carpenters.

We are getting closer to Tapper's otiosity:

"By uttering 'She's got a bee in her bonnet', the Utterer
means that she's got a bee in her bonnet."

True but perhaps not too informative, or useful.

It should be pointed out again and again that there is nothing contradictory, merely otiose, in a report,

"By uttering "He is in a grip of a vyse"
he meant that he was in a grip of a vyse.

Note that a Brit, who will reject the spelling 'vyse' will find that hard to report. I for example find it hard to report that Obama thinks that honor is crucial in a president's job. For I find myself wanting to say that Obama thinks that honour is crucial in a president's job (if what he said or WROTE was, "I think honor is crucial in a president's job").

Etc.