Grice: Implicans vs. Implicandum

--- by JLS
------ for the GC

--- FURTHER to the distinctions made by Grice: 'implying', 'implicate', 'imply', 'implicatura', 'implicatum', there's the classical 'implicans' vs. 'implicandum'. This apparently is only mentioned this far by D. Wunderlich in a festschrift for Bar-Hillel.

IT SHOULD NOT be a crucial distinction, but here you go:

'' implicans ''

'' implicandum ''

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Philosophers are obsessed with this: explicandum and explicans feature strongly in Carnap. Even Grice (Geoffrey Russell, that is; not Herbert Grice) may even on occasion forget about the distinction, as Edley notes in his symposium contribution for the Aristotelian Society (on "Hume's Law" -- the implicans/implicandum in 'is-ought' matters).


IMPLICANS

--- This is an important ontological question, but trust linguists to underestimate it. The locus classicus is Gazdar: "I shall use 'implicature' to mean [x], rather than as Grice has it, to mean [y]". Linguists are inclined, wrongly, to say that an implicature is, for example, a sentence, or an utterance!

--- What is the implicans?

Well,

(a) It is hard to say. Suppose we do abide by Grice's emphasis on 'conversational move', and 'contribution'. Is a 'contribution' the implicans? I will suppose that it is any utterance 'x' -- qua vehicle for 'meaning'. I.e. provided that, by uttering 'x', U meant that p, we can say that 'x' is the implicans.

(b) This is of course otiose, because Grice has said that 'implicate' will do duty for 'mean'. So we cannot just import and export 'mean' and 'implicans' like that

(c) Still.

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As for the implicandum. This is usually a futurus, or futurational, thing. As in Ockham's thing -- it's also deontic:

entia non sunt multiplicanda.

Multiplicandum, implicandum.

I.e. the idea of the '-andum' is that

-- it is passive (passive voice)
-- it is deontic
-- it is future tense

'implicandum', thus: 'the thing which is about to be judged, as per some mandatory issue, to have been put forward, in a defeasible way, by the Utterer, as interpreted by the Addressee.

Again, three points:

(a) Otiose. How can I know what my Aunt will implicate? Surely the future is indeterminate, to talk about what-is-to-be can only confuse (me).

(b) Deontic? Surely it should not be ILLEGAL not to implicate. Never mind 'mandatory' and 'expectation' that Grice uses. Mandate the commandment, as it were.

(c) And what's the vehicle. In any case, this far is clear: it's the implicatum. So the implicatum = the implicandum, only that while 'implicandum' refers to the future, 'implicatum' refers to the preterite. Odd, but Roman (enough). Etc.