The Wrongs and Rights of Grice on Meaning

-- read that hateful but otherwise charming thing H. P. Grice cared to comment ad lib. in his "Valedictory Essay" ((c) J. M. Jack -- or Mrs Jack, as Grice calls her).

Wrong of Grice. Right of Grice. We never knew what they were, since he did not keep a copy of the thing, etc.

'Right' (or 'a right', 'the right') has acquired the status of a noun (but then cfr. the nominalisation 'the moral' vs. 'the immoral'). Similarly, we don't say 'She did it nicefully -- but beauti_fully_'.

It may also be of some interest to check when the first register for 'moral right' (vs. 'legal right') is given in the OED. Talking of the rightful -- and the 'dutiful'
I see browsing the entry for 'right'some uses which the OED has as 'dialectal': with a 'right' meaning an 'ought'. On the face of it, this would be analogous to the dialectal use of 'learn' to mean 'teach' -- cfr. G. 'lehrer', teacher --. The OED cites being:

* 'I have no right to maintain idle vagrants.'
* 'I don't see as how women have any right to be trampled on.'
* ''I have no right to pay at that toll-bar,' means,
I am not obliged to pay there.'
* ''I have no right to pay': i.e.
I ought not to be compelled to pay.'
* ''To have a right' is equivalent to `ought' or
`in duty bound', in such a phrase as
this: 'He' gotten a weyfe an' bairns, and he's a right to keep 'em.'"

Note that in the third cite above, the author provides a
'meaning'-judgement: "x" _means "y". The next quote is more reticent ("x,
id est, y") and the next speaks of 'equivalence'. I'd stick with the third
quote and speak here perhaps of "meaning" (if only as involving Gricean
_utterer's_ meaning).


It would be interesting to elaborate on Grice's point, as per my first post
on this thread, that even if 'right' is -- as Bayne suggests -- _legally_
conceptually prior, it may still be viewed as _morally_ valuationally
prior? The point is perhaps illustrated by yet another OED cite: 'We should
not take our right on a thief, to justify his theevery'. Or -- in terms of
the W. Edmundson's biblio I forwarded -- is there a 'paradox' in accepting
that someone can have a right to do wrong? The fact that 'the right of a
thief' strikes as, to use Hume's phrase, a 'harsh thing to say' seems to
invite for a case of the _moral_ side to the idea of 'right'?

A related point is one formulated by (Kelsen and) Hart in terms of
'internal' vs. 'external' perspective.

'Maria has a right to make an abortion -- in England'

(or alternatively,

'Maria has a right to make an abortion -- in Spain')

can embody an 'external' perspective -- on the part
of the utterer. The utterer is just stating what Maria's legal right is --
in England. The idea being that there is a conversational implicature (but
just that), in making an ascription of a right, that the utterer endorses
the rightness of it (all). (Of course, for a proponent of a right-based
morality, there must be more than just a conversational implicature
involved here, I would think).

Etc.

Kripke uses pigs in his defense of 'possible worlds'

If the mocking bird won't sing,
momma is going to give you a diamond ring.

Momma says that because she KNOWS that in most possible worlds mocking birds DO sing.

But when Kripke writes, in "Naming and Necessity"

"when pigs fly"

we don't know.

Etc.