Nimplicature

* * * * * (Was: Disimplicature)
* * * * * * * By J. L. Speranza, F. R. S. (failed), &c.
* * * * * * * * * * of the Grice Circle
------------- Dedicated to my friend, Roger Bishop Jones, of Roger Bishop Jones, Ltd.

In a recent post, THIS BLOG, R. B. Jones wrote, "see if you can be amused by consulting my 'link', "Boolean operators". I did -- it's http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/logic/log050.htm -- And I was so amused that I'm writing this thing as a knee-jerk reaction. I have elaborated on these things, so it will be, I hope, a matter of cutting and pasting. But the idea is to expand on Jones's genial take. He writes, "Negating 'implies' gives 'nimplies', or 'nimp' for short." This is what Grice saw as "disimplicate", only different.

There are symbols and symbols -- and symbols. Levinson proposes, "+>", for 'implicates'. It _is_ rather clumsy, in that it takes two slots. And in any case, it's difficult to add the important negative affix that we sometimes feel like adding. The closer would be, then, "-+>". --- The idea is one, failed, rumour has it, but about to be reinvented in this club, and with a vengeance. That of 'disimplicature', or 'nimp', for shortest, or 'nimplicature'. The idea is that philosophers were talking
----- and talking
----------- and talking
------------------- and talking
------------------------- and talking.
AND THEN, hocus-pocus, Grice discovered the 'implicature'. So a lot of the idiocies said by many philosophers were felt, by Grice and the grouse of Grice-ians that followed, to be only IMPLICATED ("Surely no-one but an idiot [in Aristotle's 'sense', 'particular'] would be assuming that the _sense_ of this is ..."). Grice turned 'idiotic' into a word of praise. Consider Hart on 'carefully':

(i) I drove my car carefully all the way back home.

Idiotic, otiose. Surely we ALWAYS drive carefully. It's only when we don't that we have to SAY it. This does NOT mean that we drive _un-_carefully unless we say we drive 'carefully'. Etc. This has nothing to do with the 'sense' of 'care', etc. And so the philosophers started to implicate
--------------- and implicate
--------------------- and implicate
--------------------------- and implicate.
AND THEN Grice started to feel slightly guilty. "Perhaps it was wrong that I invented the implicature, because everybody is using it." As his student at UC/Berkeley, who was never much of a Grice-ian, the Bombay-born philosopher of MIT, Steve Yablo has it, "Implicatures happen". (He has a half MA from Bombay his CV has it, and he is married to Myroan S. Haslanger) Consider:

(ii) I saw a cat.

Does this mean there _is_ a cat? Warnock and Grice would say, 'no', on Tuesdays, 'yes' on Fridays. I.e. this is the 'syntax of illusion'. Sometimes we want to _entail_ that the existence of what we see is yielded by a visual report, sometimes no. Grice speaks in WoW:iii of these as "loose uses". His other example is

(iii) Under this light, the tie is medium-blue; but under this angle, it's light-blue, rather.

--when all we can say is "looks" or seems this particular shade of blue ("Surely," Grice comments, "we don't mean that a change of colour is taking place"). It was reading archival material in Chapman that I am reminded of the 'disimplicature'. I have started to use the term. Eventually, who knows, it may make it to ... A Grice Lexicon, or something. I have no faith for the OED. With the zillions of idiocies they have to 'report', and with a commercial obligation, too, who cares if they keep ignoring Grice? :). So let's check with the archival material. In particular, the point about: "He disimplicates that p" as NOT, "It is not the case that he implicates that p". So perhaps this is not really a nimplicature. But we'll see. Grice writes in a context that echoes perfectly Yablo's sentiment -- as he shared classrooms with the master for years. Grice writes: "I have never been a foe to the idea of replacing [Moorean] entailements by [Gricean] implicatures; but I have grave doubts whether this manoevure is appropriate in this case." This is in the context on the analysis of '... intends that...', but that should not concern us now here).

(iv) I shall ruin the enterprise, but then perhaps I won't.

For Davidson's 'social' theory here, the prediction ('will') would be 'implicated' so that the above would be acceptable. But Grice finds it isn't. The implicature view is, as Pears reports, "too social to be true". Same case Grice makes about "woman's reason": p, ergo p -- Aspects of Reason:

(v) Jill: I like Jack.
Jill's mother: Why?!
Jill: Because I like him.

Now, Chapman considers, "The apparent counter-examples" (p. 134), and is this not what Yablo has it as 'implicature' being used in an ad-hoc, or non-principled way?
"can be explained" -- THEN *NOT* in terms of 'implicature' because that would be ad hoc and 'opportunistic, to use Yablo's word, but "in terms of 'disimplicature'". Chapman goes on, "In effect, context sometimes MEANS that normal entailments are suspended" "If we say" -- Chapman's example, that

(vi) Hamlet saw his father on the ramparts at Elsinore.

"in a context where it is generally known that Hamlet's father is
dead, then we are not committed to the usual entailement that Hamlet's father
was in fact on the ramparts". Oddly, Chapman is welcoming students in her PhD programme at Liverpool for 'fictional' discourse, because whenever I see "Hamlet" I get so scared at that schene because the man is there alright! And it's Grice's example -- he also used,

(vii) Macbeth saw Banquo

(WoW:iii) as a loose use of 'saw' -- etc. So it's here we want to disentangle ourselves. For if the Loeb 1950 translation of 'implicature' in Sidonius is 'entanglement', surely the nimplicature is the disentangle. Chapman goes on: "In the same way, when context makes quite apparent that threre may be forces that will prevent us from fulfilling an intention, we are NOT committed to the usual entailment that we believe we will fulfil it." "A speaker who says," Chapman goes on,

(viii) Bill intends to climb Everest next week

"DISIMPLICATES that Bill is sure he will climb Everest, just because
everyone knows of the possibly prohibitive difficulties involved." In fact Grice can get subtler in his "Trying" lectures at Brandeis that Harman attended, back in 1963.

(ix) The athlete is trying to topple the wall.

-- knowing he won't but just out of 'practice', to build his muscles. This does not mean that to try is to try to succeed. Chapman waxes pessmistic here, and she thinks she is reporting Grice. She is, and clever use she makes of the archival material, (c)-ing every single quote, without (c) Grice though. She writes, "The notion of disimplicature suggests some interesting possible extensions to Grice's theory of conversation," -- if 'theory' in the restricted sense that Grice gives to Th it is.
"but it does not seem to be one to which he returned." --- Hear, Grice Clubbers!(Chapman is now writing a book about the Vienna Circle, I think -- so Griceians, hear!) "As it is presented in 'Logic and Conversation' (WoW:ii) and therefore as it is generally known, implicature is a matter of adding meaning to 'what is said':" -- to speak very vaguely, :(, or is it :) "to conventional or entailed meaning. With the notion of disimplicature" -- or as I suggest now, nimplicature -- "Grice appears to be conceding" -- he is stating it, right? His preoccupations with Warnock on 'see' are telling there. And this is purebred Oxford: no extramural influences from Davidson! "that the meaning conveyed
by a speaker" or utterer "in a context" -- but cfr. Grice, "The general theory of context" for a pessimistic account of intention-free context -- "may in fact be less than is entailed by the linguistic form used". Chapman continues: "However, [Grice] also hints that disimplicature", or nimplicature, "can be 'total, as in

(x) You're the cream in my coffee.

''.""This remark," Chapman notes, "appears in parentheses and is not elaborated, but Grice is presumably suggesting" -- pretty much stating for all who've read his WoW:ii
"that, in a contenxt which makes the whole [emphasis mine. JLS] of 'what is said' untenable," -- cfr Orton, The Ruffian in the Stairs -- "it can be replaced with an implicated, metaphorical meaning." cfr. dis- in distrust, dissent, disorder. And prefer nimp. Chapman continues, "The mechanisms of disimplicature" -- or nimplicature -- "are not discussed at all, but they could presumably be explained in
terms of the assumption that the speaker" -- or utterer -- "is abiding by the maxims of conversation, particularly the first maxim of Quality." "If one or all the entailments of 'what is said' are plainly false, they can be assumed not to
arise on that particular occasion of use. If the disimplicature" -- or nimplicature -- "is total, the hearer" -- or addressee -- "is forced" -- in loose manner of speaking, or is tight? -- "to seek a different interpreation of the utterance" -- or just look at the stage and _see_ the monster (of Hamlet's father). He was good, though, deep down, no? Chapman concludes her treatment, "There are undoubtedly problems inherent" -- let's exhere them! "in the notion of disimplicature," -- or nimplicature -- "which would provide at least potential motivation for not pursuing the idea".

Or, on the other hand, the challenge!