Hall Goes Gricean

Hall would often attend Grice's seminars at Magdalen. And enjoyed them, which is a good thing.

He recalls Grice bringing a long list of perceptual verbs to Austin, "And on which principle was that list compiled?" "On no principle".

Motivated by the recent contribution by R. Hall, of York, I wonder if he
has developed the views in 'Excluders', that excellent paper repr. from
_Analysis_, vol. 20 in Caton, _Philosophy & Ordinary Language_ (Caton also
mentions two further essays by Hall in the v. good bibliography: 'Assuming:
one set of positing words', PR 67, 141-50, and 'Presuming', Phil Quart 11
10-21). (Coincidentally, I see HALL R is the author -- in Caton's biblio --
following Grice HP...). In

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/analytic/

M. J. Murphy has recently been quoting R. Hall's Excluders. I happened to
follow the ref. (always ready to expand my quotes) and note that
'Excluders' is quoted in a relevant section we've been discussing from J.R.
Searle's _Speech Acts_ -- the section where Searle develops from his
'Assertions & Aberrations', in Williams/Montefiore, _British Analytical
Philosophy_). The polemic we were engaged in, you see, was JL Austin's
troubles with:

1. I brush my teeth voluntarily.
2. He murdered her voluntarily.

(in section of 'A plea for excuses' 'No modification without aberration' --
which we think is Austin's parody of either 'No salvation without
predestination', or 'no taxation without representation'). Grice discussed
all this in 'Prolegomena' to _Studies in the Way of Words_, and I tried to
defend a Gricean view, in the shape of the contention that 'voluntarily',
unlike Murphy's favoured word, "hey diddle ho", _is_ truth-conditionally
loaded. I thus proposed that _voluntarily_, whatever its conversational
implicature Austin could not tell from 'what is said', adds to the-truth
conditions of (1) and (2) -- as it means, simply, something like "and my
brushing my teeth was a product of my will", or "and his murdering her was
a product of his will", respectively for (1) and (2). This lead me to some
sort of counter-example, though, viz.

3. There's this maffia leader who says to me, "Dress this way,
or I'll blow your brains off". Since I do comply and
dress the way the maffia leader suggests I do, I can still say
that I do so _voluntarily_ since I can always choose to
have my brains blown off.

The ref. to "dressing" was due to S. Cavell's example, in that seminal
'Must we mean what we say' (A reply to B Mates in _Inquiry_, vol. 1):

4. Do you dress the way you do voluntarily

as carrying the implicature (_avant la lettre_), "you _do_ dress rather
peculiarly, don't you".

Anyway, Murphy's claim is that 'voluntarily' is an excluder a la Hall. I.e.
what it merely states is that, say, one's brushing the teeth was _not_ done
A-ly, B-ly, C-ly, etc. (open set by definition, here, I think). Where, A-ly
could be _mandatorily_, say. I must say that I find this view rather
_empty_ or too libertine (and even I who is a Gricean), since I feel I want
to Know what Voluntarily Means, not what it FAILS to mean, but then, maybe
English _has_ that type of words...

It's a fascinating topic, and we are to thank R. Hall for having discovered
them excluders anyhow...

Best,

JL
Self-Appointed Chair to
The Grice Club.

(PS. I write things like "them excluders" and "I who is Gricean",
_voluntarily_, since I believe it's about time we start & defend _dialect_).