----------- by J. L. S.
----------------- for the GC
---------- I WOULD LIKE TO DISABUSE Kramer (if I'm using the right grammar) of any notion to the effect that he may be wasting his time here! I mean, my reply to his "We agree to disagree" was a bit cavalier in tone. That thread I think should foucs on the important points where we have
A
and
B
holding a conversation.
And sometimes we hear, as we often do,
"I don't disagree with you, but..."
etc.
And isn't there something meta-logical quirky about "we agree to disagree"? I never came across a sincerely polite expression of that phrase, surely not in the face!
----
So I propose to export Kramer's reference to
-- optimality
and
"sub-optimality"
and I suggested a play on 'pessimus,' too, as we elaborate on these things.
I was checking with Grice, and he does use
"metaphysical snobbery", which I think, no ofense meant -- incidentally, there's this great novel by R. Fellowes, called "Snobs"! -- which I'd connect with uses of 'optimality' and 'sub-optimality'.
Mind, I love the notion of 'optimality'. When I was lecturing in Buenos Aires -- for a Inter-American Congress of Philosophy, thing to published -- mentioned this because Cargan likes a congress --, I was all:
A: You like Buenos Aires?
B: I haven't been robbed yet.
I argued that while _THAT_ is perhaps, optimally, a rather charming way to say that the city is, rumour has it, a dangerous one, there is NO WAY it can grow to mean, optimally that. For that, we have "The city is, rumour has it, a dangerous one". An implicature cannot grow an explicature like that! Perish the thought. Schiffer, o. t. o. h. reports, and online too, that Grice told him that, IN OXFORD:
"We should meet up and have lunch together sometime"
MEANS --
"Get lost".
--- So I don't know! It seems to me that the (a) is a remark of some assertoric kind, whether (b) is a sort of imperative, but I should revise what Grice meant.
(Yes, I know of the cliche, but Grice is thinking of the rather fake atmosphere of the Oxford of his days, and he is careful enough to express the implicatum in just as polite terms).
So back to the optimal and the sub-optima. I take all of Kramer's points, and rightly so. I mean, I take them _well_.
He is concerned (as it were) on effort on the part of the Addressee in deciphering non-optimal (sub-optimal, pessmistic) writing or uttering. I proposed that the source of the problem is the utterer's already mis-planning his utterance, if he fails to take into account or provide for the minimum quantum of A's effort.
--- But wouldn't this be "pramatic snobbery"? I have to find out the original phrase Grice is meaning. He writes of
"metaphysical snobbery"
as a desire
"to be seen"
for it's always the passive voice
"except in the"
"company" -- and that seems to go with the definition of a snob
and here is the keyword which I'm keeping since it retrieves some google hits,
of
"any but the best"
--- Grice spoils the collocation, in a way, when he narrows that down to
"best objects" but HE _IS_ talking metaphysics, after all!
So I would think that, qua utterers, we are sometimes pressed to 'converse,' even, with less-than-optimal pirots and so we may need to self-adjust, or something.
Kramer sees the 'be brief' as being most pertinent here, and he is right. And I think we did agree that we mean 'economy of effort', as per Grice PERE, Principle of Economy of Rational Effort.
It's the "waste not" principle. I cannot think of that motto without thinking of the context when I first learned about it. A bit uncavalier, but here it goes, if I find, it Max 'Cheeky Chap' Miller Why should the dustman get it all?'
I can't find the complete lyrics, but it's rather lovely. Max Miller was the inspiration behind the immortal Archie (G)Rice in "The Entertainer" by Osborne (See his "Almost a Gentleman"). I heard the original Miller recording in this CD I have -- next to my wireless -- in CD "Radio Days" -- it's a vaudeville music-hall thing, complete with recitative and where he goes on to mention all the best spots in London, "oops, you don't know what they throw away"... But the very beginning, in typical march-step goes, (while I see if I can retrive the thing--I'm sure I have it copied in my handwritten songbook at the villa):
Waste not,
want not.
Is a motto old and true.
I stick to it like glue
For this is what I do.
-----
The stanzas all end with "Why should the dustman get it all?". The idea, now in pirotic evolutionary theory.
Pirots indeed _need_ to focus on the PERE: there's nothing to waste. Never mind want. It's a survival strategy, and communication indeed fulfils that primary goal.
But there are uses of the 'tool' for things other than that. I'm reluctant to use 'tool' here because "uttering" is not like using a hammer, is it?
So, sometimes those pirots gather round a fire, and they groom, or something, they godsip, they do things. So -- in Gricean parlance, we can say that they are _flouting_ the PERE. Principle of Economy of Effort. Never mind rational.
Grice's PERE is intended to serve a rather different purpose. It concerns how much of the implicit needs to be explicated. So he seems to be saying that a lot of the 'tacit' is out there, 'latent', and that while it is a RISKY business to leave 'unsaid' crucial matters, "provided the stakes are not too high", Grice says, it's best to abide by the PERE. So he is not suggesting the PERE regardless.
The problem here is that someone -- and I've seen some -- (usually linguists?) who do not care or can not see much of the meta-irony in Grice -- get to get the wrong picture? As when in Austin he has 'metaphor' as an etiolated use of language (I think, in How to do things with words). Or Grice on 'loose' uses of expressions.
But again, his 'evolutionary' talk -- in terms of optimal survival-utility for the continued operancy of pirots -- is variable: it may be realised in some way for a 'gaggle' of pirots (at a time) and in some other way for another gaggle at another time.
Think of Cargan's ref. to psychological 'therapy'. Surely it would be slightly rude on the part of Freud to ask his patient, "Please abide by Grice".
Indeed, much of the talk of the schyzophrenics is said to violate Grice in _every_ respect, so these are _serious_ issues. But we don't need to generalise. A schyzophrenic can NOT but 'violate' Grice. Others will. Others shall. Others shall but will not. And finally, others shall not but will.
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So many threads. For convenience, here's a mirror of a comment I put on the "Agree to Disagree" thread.
ReplyDelete---------------
The intentionalist point Grice seems to be making is to focus on the effort on U's part in minimising the quanta (I loved the idiom) of his potential A's effort.
When the masochist says "Beat me," the sadist says "No."
If U is concerned about A's effort, shouldn't we be similarly concerned as analysts? Can't we say to U, "You have failed to minimize A's effort, so you have failed to be brief"?
If we are trying to analyze what is said and what is meant, don't we have to focus on A's state of mind? A's the one with the blanks that U's utterance is intended to fill.
Maybe I'm missing JL's point about U's effort being what matters. I know its U who makes the effort to make the move, but isn't the effort that he demands of his intended A the benchmark for brevity, relevance and the rest?
-----------
Continuing...
and that while it is a RISKY business to leave 'unsaid' crucial matters, "provided the stakes are not too high", Grice says, it's best to abide by the PERE. So he is not suggesting the PERE regardless.
Again I invoke Markham's Circle, a notion handier even than Occam's blade. The actuary in me is not comfortable with the idea that U violates "be brief" when he calibrates his words to the perceived competence of his intended A. There is no "risk of violating" the maxims, only a risk of misapplying them, which I think is a different matter.
The good U always says the least he believes will be sufficiently likely, in light of the stakes, to deliver to A the message, the whole message, and nothing but the message. U may get the math wrong, so to speak, but he will still have observed the PERE. When what ought to be enough, and may in fact be enough, may nevertheless also not be enough, it is ipso facto not enough.
"Enough" is my favorite word. Quintessentially analog.
"Let's agree to disagree" - ie: "I am right, but I will never convince you."
ReplyDeleteI prefer, "Let's resolve this with pistols at dawn."
Excellent, Kramer. And good film, Jason, "The Duelists" by Scott, I think. ---
ReplyDelete"any of the best" -- snobbery. The utterer is the best, in the circs, the addressee is the best, in the circs.
I think I buy Kramer's 'enough' as one's favourite word. Quintessentially analog indeed. Or as I prefer, to use it in a sentence. Recall Frege, "The meaning of a word is its locus in a proposition". This yields, "More than enough is too much". What a lot of empty wisdom in that refrain! Occam, while no Markham, was possibly an analogist, too. As Grice comments with a bit of sadness in his tone, "Do not multiply beyond necessity"."A platitude, alas, that trades too sadly on what it counts as 'necessity', I expect" (or words). Kramer is right: The U will do his best, but he, may, no doubt, fail. Plus, Addresses can be so clumsy, too. I have to keep reminding my addressees, in face to face encounters: "Darling, be ironic. What I did say was a joke, and I'm not expecting a reprimand as to how stupid I sounded. I'm expecting you ironise and amuse me". I do like the Markham Circle, etc. It's Circles and gambits indeed, this life of ours.
"Enough": Indeed, more than enough is too much. That is possibly analytic and tautologous and thus empty. Alla, it is the duty of every Englishman to do what he ought to do." (Every Englishman must do his duty). We don't want maxims to be _that_ empty and self-explanatory. But I like the idea of 'enough' as it applies to logical form. This is pleonetetic. Consider: "She never eats enough". How are we to formalise that? Vide Altham. "There were not enough players in the polo team". We expect less than four, but who knows. I propose then to generalise:
QUAN -- be informative enough.
QUAL -- be trustworthy enough.
RELA -- connect well enough.
MODU -- be clear enough.
Since the four Kantian categories spring, as per the unity of reason, from one single contraint of "Corporal Punishment" ("Try to make your physical contribution such as it strikes well enough"), one wonders, too about the etymology of 'enough'. Genug, in Kant. It is a nice sounding word, too, in English. The 'e-' is possibly otiose. Hence Kramer uttering ''nuff' on occasion. But while ''nuff' applies best to
"'nuff said"
"it" seems a bit too much, i.e. more than enough to think that "'nuff implicated"
makes similar sense. In this case, if the addressee goes over the top and 'reads between the lines' -- the result is an over-implicature, which is NOT of course an implicature.
"She said that she had three breasts". "I hope she does not implicate that she has only three breasts". In the context of "Avatar" or some such sci-fi film (we need the context). "The Argentine film won the Oscar -- "The secret in their eyes"". "I don't think the title is informative enough? What kind of silly film is that? Whose eyes?" The Genug wisdom was known to the Greeks, 'None in excess', was the Delphi oracle. or "Temper not to be lost". Dodds however has argued, in "The Greeks and the irrational" that it was because the Greeks were by default excessive that they needed such a gross (i.e. German 'grand') inscription on the temple. Etc.
“Nothing’s better than more, more more. Nothing’s better than more.” Stephen Sondheim
ReplyDeleteThe Genug wisdom was known to the Greeks, 'None in excess', was the Delphi oracle. or "Temper not to be lost". Dodds however has argued, in "The Greeks and the irrational" that it was because the Greeks were by default excessive that they needed such a gross (i.e. German 'grand') inscription on the temple. Etc.
Yes, a fully proper redundancy would only apply to a description of the empty set
The Delphi inscription read: I´m using small letters but it was all capital letters with the Greeks:
ReplyDeleteΜηδὲν ἄγαν
where the "me" is the negation
and
"agan", ´excess´.
Latin "ne quid nimis".
Or as MTV had it
"Too much is never enough"
http://readersrecommend.blogspot.com/2009/11/too-much-is-never-enough.html
"the slogan from the early days of MTV. And even as a jaded American teenager I thought--that's NOT RIGHT. Perhaps 80s MTV is responsible for all the ills of society."
Ah well.