Grice's Valediction in English about the Vernaculars!

------ By J. L. Speranza
----------- for The Grice Club.

SOME EXCERPTS FROM THE HOT TOPIC OF RUSSELLIAN/WHITEHEADIAN symbology and the vernacular (limpid at that Quine had it) of Sir Peter Strawson -- as viewed by Grice, before he entered immortality. This is WoW:RE. "The formalist," Grice says -- think Hilbert -- "MIGHT hold that what he recognises as Logic[landian -- après Kramer] reflects exactly or within an acceptable margin of approximation the inferential and semantic properties of vulgar logical connectives."
"He might, alternatively, hold that though NOT EVERY feature of vulgar logical connectives is preserved, all features are preserved which DESERVE to be prserved."
"He might, further, claim that those features which are not ommitted possess, collectively, the economic virtue of being adequate to the task of presenting, in good logical order [perish the implicature in logiclandian, as Kramer has it. JLS] that science or body of sciences the proper presentation of which is called for by some authority, such as Common Sense or the 'Cathedral of Learning'".

All this is contested by Strawson.

Grice's sympathies -- with Hilbert. Talking of 'rational' constraints, and interests, he proposes that

"a truth-functional conception of complex propositions offers prospects [...] for the
rational construction of at least part of the realm of propsitions."

He goes on to introduce the idea of 'implicatum' and the problem it yields for the calculus. Should an implicatum yield maximal scope? Is the problem solved by mere scope-indicating devices? (We hope so).

Nothing too crucial, but this is Grice 1987, one year before his death, and in this retrospect which covered his adventures in Logicland. As he notes, it was his interest in the philosophy of perception (to 'rebuff some followers of Wittgenstein' he has it) that got him thinking about the 'implicature', and it was later with the impulse given by the extraordinary heterodoxy of Strawson that set him in the right foot. Etc.

A checklist here would be to consider the 'vernacular' counterparts proper that Grice has analysed. I.e. a subject-index of quotation marked 'lexemes' and why and how Grice thinks the problem they are associated with are a matter of entailment or implicature, and if implicature, whether conventional, or conversational.

The 'non-truth-functional evidence' features large.

p
_______

p v q

is valid in logic. And so, to use Grice's example in 1961

A: Where is your wife?
B: In the garden or in the kitchen.

Standardly, one would not utter "p v q" on the mere truth-functional evidence given by, say, 'p' as per argument above (introduction-rule for 'or'). Since that is so, the addressee is entitled to _risk_ the interpretant that U does not KNOW where his missus is. Surely that's NOT part of what is meant as per the logic. Similarly for

p ⊃ q

The truth-table for this is so meagre, that no 'implication' of any kind is meant between protasis and apodosis. Yet, Strawson had, -- and this is the ONLY passage cited in full by Grice in WoW:i from the book:

Note all the typical paraphernalia of the well-behaved Oxonian of the ordinary-language school that Grice did NOT want to be associated with! -- especially when travelling to America!

Strawson:

"each hypothetical statement made by
this use of 'if' is ACCEPTABLE (true,
reasonable) if the antecedent statement,
if made or accepted, would in the
circumstances be a good ground or reason
for accepting the consequent statement;
and the making of the hypothetical
statement carries the implication"

--- implicatures not yet invented.

"either of uncertainty about, or of disbelief
in, the fulfilment of both antecedent
and consequent" (1952, available online).

I say this is the exact quote from Strawson because in WoW:i the other two connectives, in that order, 'and' and 'or', Grice recites by heart:

"It has, for example, been [WRONGLY. JLS]
suggested"

Recall these are all suspect-examples by the A-philosophers, who are always appealing to 'acceptability' or 'appropriateness' conditions, and that he wants to rebuff.

"[indeed by Strawson.] that because it would
be INCORRECT or INAPPROPRIATE to say
"He got into bed and took off his trousers"
of a man who first took off his trousers and
when got into bed""

(Urmson's example 1956, this is Grice 1967, and he'll repeat the example in a passage of 1981 he ellided for the 1987 reprint)

"it is part of the meaning, or part of _one_
meaning, of 'and' to convey temporal
succession."

Not if we think of 'be orderly' as a conversational maxim. As regards 'or' -- he sumamarises his account of 'implicataion' in the excursus of 1961.

"The fact that it would be inappropriate
to say "My wife is either in Oxford or
in London" when I KNOW PERFECTLY WELL
that she is in Oxford"

He is speaking in Harvard.

"has led to the idea that it is part of
the meaning of 'or' (or of 'either ... or')
to convey that the speaker is ignorant
of the truth-values of the
particular disjuncts."

It is after the easy ones, 'and' and 'or' that he tackles his point with Strawson and 'if' and the horseshoe. Etc. This is vis a vis then of the vernacular counterparts to what he called "logical constants, "considered as elements in a classical logic, stanrdardly" [read, bivalently. JLS] interpreted" (WoW: 8). And to think that while Bartlett online has Grice as "British logician" this was just ONE topic of the vast talents of this ... GENIUS!