Grice on Iconic

---- By J. L. S.

I WILL START WITH some collocations of "picture theory of meaning" to continue the conversation, I hope, with Kramer. This from wiki, "Wittgenstein":

"The Tractatus is probably most well-known for the logical atomism that Russell himself stressed in it: the picture theory of meaning: the world consists of independent atomic facts—existing states of affairs—out of which larger facts are built. Language consists of atomic, and then larger-scale, propositions that correspond to these facts by sharing the same "logical form". Thought, expressed in language, "pictures" these facts."

Grice WoW:MR expands on something like the iconicity of language, which may relate. The idea is that we compile language (or lingo) to represent things, so there is an iconic foundation to it all. It's not clear how the foundational iconicity represents "reality" rather than our conceptions of it. But Grice will surely want to say that it would be totally otiose if ALL our assumptions were wrong.

Witters was onto something different!

But the idea of truth-functional seems capital to both Witters and Grice. Grice will grant that some propositions are NOT truth-functional, so it's not like he is wedded to it.

Kramer says: "Urmson to the dock". Grice was similarly pigeon-holed (if I'm getting Kramer's observation alright. I.e. it would have been IMPOSSIBLE for a historian of Oxford philosophy to have the subtlety to say, "Well, there is ONE BIG exception in the group: H. P. Grice", so they just pigeon-holed him with the "informalists", and he never had enough moxie (why should he?); in WoW:RE he does say he possibly was to blame for having the criticis at odds, with Grice having "one feet in each camp", between the formalists and the informalists; but his whole campaign was to rally to the defense of that most underdog of all the dogmas of Oxford: symbolic lingo!

Later,