How To Become A Pirot In 53 Easy Lessons

---- By J. L. S.

------------- I USED TO TALK about pirots a lot. The pirot talk, they called it. I used to enumerate the different stages pirots go through. Ian C., of the West Country, put me on the right tab. I should NOT use integers, but refer to the continuum, in numbering those stages. This allows for an infinite or constructively very large number of phases pirots suffer to become 'sapiens' or something.

Darwin, like Grice, was English.

Apes have associations with at least four Gricean pet ideas, viz:


i. Chimps are pets is perhaps NOT a good idea (witness Fairfield County, CT).
ii. "Read chimp lit." Grice reminded himself in a note. We believe he never
got to do it.
iii. the idea of a 'convention' as a functional atavism.
iv the all-pervasiveness of "teleofunctional" explanation.

Re iii the linkage of 'functional explanation' and 'convention' is pursued
by F. Newmeyer in e.g.
http://www.nwcl.salford.ac.uk/anlec.htm.
Discussing the advantages of what he calls a _generalised_ ('holistic') variety of functionalism over a more atomistic one (which he associates with 'emergent grammar' and 'optimality theory'), Newmeyer writes:
a given form ["device"] may enter the
system to serve some specific function
_and_ be retained -- by force of
convention[ality] -- even _after_ that
function ceases to be served.
(and cfr. Newmeyer, 'Generative grammar meets Grice: an analysis of syntactic categories without prototypes' -- 5th IPRA, Mexico City). (For the record, the analogy brought by Newmeyer is between, say, 'syntax'
and ... lung cancer:
We *can* pinpoint _smoking_ as a cause
of lung cancer *in general*, even [when]
the *complexity* of a specific pathology
prevents us from conclusively attributing
this specific case to smoking. Similarly,
we can pinpoint, say, iconicity as
[the general function for a formal device]
without _having_ to identify iconicity
as the motivator for every specific device.).
While Grice does trade on 'convention' ("conventional implicatures" which may or may not be some sort of 'fossilised' conversational implicature -- WOW, p. 39, and cfr. p. 280), it is never clear just _what_ his analysis of 'convention' may look like.
(The idea that 'conversational implicature' is the ultimate functional explanation is expressed e.g. by C Gardent at
www.coli.uni-sb.de/~claire/teaching/ss00/implicature1.
"Conversational implicature -- paradigm of
a pragmatic explanation -- offers a functional
explanation of linguistic facts.").
I would like to think he would endorse something like a Lewisian account --
in terms of _arbitrariness_. (Cfr. Dibrell, 'Intention and convention: a
reconciliation of Austin and Grice').

Re iv: It is in _Aspects of Reason_ that Grice explores the idea of what I call with a "horrid", some say, hybridism, 'teleofunctionalism'. Alluding to Lewis Carroll's famous stanza ('The Walrus and the Carpenter':



'The time has come', the Walrus said,

'To talk of many things:

Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax --

Of cabbages -- and kings.'



Grice proposes to start with cabbages. Most items of the greengrocer's talk _are_ Darwinian in this sense. They are best _described_ purely functionally:

Grice notes:

"It does not require very sharp eyes, but
only our willingness to use the eyes one has,
to see that our speech [...] is permeated
with the notion of purpose; to say what a
certain kind of thing is is only too frequently
partly to say that it is for. This feature
applies to our talk [...] of, for example,
ships, shoes, sailing wax, and kings; and,
possibly and perhaps most excitingly, it
extends even to cabbages".

(Grice, _Aspects of Reason_, p. 35).


Interestingly, Grice extends this proposal to the notion of 'sentence'
('Reply to Richards', p. 83). While Chimps are not popular in Fairfield County, they are in Harford county alright. Ruth Millikan likes them (and she favours Grice over Strawson, so that's another good thing). Crucially, Millikan distinguishes between a _direct_ function and a _derived_ one. The former is characterised in _general_ terms; the latter in 'casuistic' ones. Now, a _second_ qualification made by Millikan is between a (say, direct) function which is 'proper' and one which is not. The issue here is whether there is a 'proper' direct function of a system like a natural language may look like. Why shouldn't there?


We are not concerned with defending a 'Gricean' view which Millikan rejects on various fronts ('psychological implausibility', derived status of the implicit/explicit distinction, etc.). Either you are a Gricean or you ain't. But some Griceans have been seen criticising certain current *evolutionary* functional
explanations of linguistic form. Millikan's [teleofunctional] account of a (biological/cultural) device is in terms of "the proper funtion"] causally responsible for the reproduction and proliferation of the device." For Millikan a given form [device] has a *direct* _proper_ function iff the form is such that it originates as a reproduction" of a [device] which, due to possession of the properties reproduced, _has_ performed the function." On the other hand, a given form has a _derived_ proper function iff the form is such that it originates as
the product of some prior device that, given specific circumstances, had
the performance of the function as a proper function AND which, under those
specific circumstances, causes the fucntion to be performed by means of
producing the specific device."

Some illustrations:

(i) "The pigment-arranging device of the chameleon's skin performs the
function of hiding the chameleon by producing a colour pattern which
matches the background on which the chameleon is sitting. Now, a _specific_
pattern in the chameleon's skin, though never produced before, may still be
said to have a function, and a "proper" one, even -- if a _derived_ one.")

(ii) "A gosling's "imprint mechanism" has the *direct* proper function
of allowing the gosling to fix an image of its mother so as to follow her.
A _specific_ imprinting -- unique to a specific gosling -- will have the
*derived* proper function of helping that specific gosling to follow [its
mother]")

As for 'artifacts' ('cultural items'): Consider a hammer. A hammer may be said to have the direct proper function of driving a nail. It is the successful -- and repeated -- performance of this driving of nails by hammers that causes the proliferation and reproduction of hammers, as it were. But no. Ditto for an expressive device such as language qua vehicle of utterer's meaning: "Among the effects that may correlate with a given "expressive device" ["form"], a device's direct proper function is what keeps communicators using it (the device's *conventional use)." "Now, the _derived_ ["particularised" in Grice's jargon?] proper function of an expression device may (but then it may _not_) be a mere token of its direct proper function -- as when a word is used to convey its conventional
meaning".

"The truth in Grice's model is that
we have the ability to interrupt and prevent the
automatic running on of our talking and our
doing-and-believing-what-we-are-told equipment.
We do this when we discover evidence
that the conditions for a normally effective
talking and for a correct believing-on-the-basis-
of-what-we-hear are *not* met".
(Millikan, Language, thought & other biological
categories, p.69).

But the debate should ensue, properly or not!

Refs:

Block N. Troubles with functionalism
http://www.hps.elte.hu/~gk/books/cog/block.htm
(On yet _another_ side to Gricean functionalism

as per Grice's 'Method in in philosophical psychology'
repr. in Conception of Value).

Darnell, M, E Moravcsik, F Newmeyer, M Noonan & K. Wheatley, eds
Functionalism & formalism in linguistics. John Benjamins
Info from:
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/lec/publications.html

Dibbrell WS. Intention & convention: a reconciliation of Austin
& Grice. MS. Available via UMI Int.

Gaines P. Functionalism & formalism
http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/11/11-145.html

Grice HP. Studies in the way of words. Harvard University Press.
The conception of value. Clarendon
Aspects of reason. Clarendon.
Reply to Richards.
In PGRICE, Philosophical Grounds of Rationality:
intentions, categories, ends, ed. R. Grandy & R. Warner. Clarendon.

Kirby, S. Constraints on constraints, or the limits of functional adaptation.
In J. Darnell et al. Function, selection & innateness:
the emergence of language universals. Oxford UP.

Knight, C, M Studdert-Kennedy & J Hurford, eds,
The evolutionary emergence of language: social function
& the origins of linguistic form. Cambridge University Press.
Info from:
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/lec/publications.html

Lewis DK. Convention. Harvard UP.

Millikan RG. Language, thought & other biological categories. MIT Press.
White Queen Psychology & other essays for Alice. MIT Press.
Language conventions made simple. JPhilosophy 95
A common structure for concepts of individuals,
stuffs, & real kinds : More mama, more milk, more mouse.
Behavioural/Brain Sciences 9
-- available online.

Newmeyer F. Generative grammar meets Grice:
an analysis of syntactic categories without prototypes. 5th IPRA, Mexico
City.
Language form & language function.
Where is functional explanation?
Abstracted in http://www.nwcl.salford.ac.uk/anlec.htm