* * * * By J. L. Speranza
* * * * * * For the Grice Club.
MY LAST COMMENT REGARDING Ian Cargan Dengler's rich commentary under 'A Griceian Taxonomic', THIS BLOG. He writes:
Taxons are just words in some ordered relationship, perhaps even inclusive of all possible orderings. It is the ordering that makes a taxonomy useful to philosophy. The hope is to overcome random dialectics
Nothing personal! But seriously, one wonders about what I call the latitude and longitude of Grice: the Unity and the Continuity. I think Grice was pretty organised, in parts -- from 'head to toe' as we say. A very organised man. Organized Philosopher, if we must. Why? "It's the taxon, stupid!".
Philosophy is the science of criteria. It's eschatology. One builds bridges, but first we need the boundaries.
As Dengler has it,
Taxons are just words in
some ordered relationship,
perhaps even inclusive of
all possible orderings. It
is the ordering that makes
a taxonomy useful to
philosophy. The hope is
to overcome random
dialectics.
With the best ordering being the catalogue that self-catalogues. Why does philosophy proceed via taxonomics? Dengler has it (then why wouldn't he) right. There is an ordered relationship. It may be hard to discover sometimes, as we trace the longitude of a philosopher: Grice started as a philosopher of personal identity (his first published article for Mind back in the day of 1941), achieved parochial Oxonian fame as a philosopher of perception ('Causal Theory', PAS, 1961) then as a pragmaticist ('implicature', 1975 -- when repr. both in Davidson/Harman and Cole/Morgan). But the last 15 years of his life or so, he could not be but anything but a metaphysician. Metaphysics was always dragging him back, to the Origin. To think that his very first paper (or 'unpublication' as he preferred) was on "Not" and Plato ("This is red: this is not green, or blue, or orange" -- now safely deposited, as typed, and with his Harborne address, in the H. P. Grice Collection at Bancroft).
Dengler notes,
It is the ordering that makes a
taxonomy useful to philosophy. The
hope is to overcome random dialectics
And hope springs eternal. And some people wonder. Random dialectics may be very fine as brain-storming: a casual meeting of the Grice Circle, say. And then if you reach the fixity of a taxon, people will wonder: Grice this, Grice that -- and may start to cricise or address their counterarguments with their counterexamples. But one wonders, too: if his more or less definitive 'taxonomies' made him happy, that is, were his idiosyncratic way of coping with things, that should suffice. "Philosophy starts as answers to questions that we, as individuals have, not in order to join in a collective enterprise" (Grice WoW:P&CA). (or words). If we, later, as historians, or as pure Griceians, want to explore those orderings -- the unity and the continuity: the latitude and the longitude, to please the retired Captain of the Royal Navy that Grice was -- we should also use those co-ordinates to trigger in us the wonderment that Socrates saw as the source of all possible philosophy.
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Dengler has it (then why wouldn't he) right. [boldface emphasis added.]
ReplyDeleteIt's rude to interrupt, and JL interrupts all the time. The problem, of course, is that he thinks he's interrupting himself, when I submit that he is interrupting our reading, sometimes to cancel one implicature of his statements that is already canceled by another.
Does "Dengler has it right" implicate one of the following thoughts?
You may believe that Dengler has it wrong, but Dengler has it right?
or
You may believe that I believe that Dengler has it wrong, but I believe that Dengler has it right.
If it implicates either of these notions, does (then why wouldn't he) negate whichever it is? And is it necessary, or when no one has expressly raised the possibility that X is wrong, does "X has it right" have no such implicature? Or, can we say that "X has it right" always implies that someone thinks that x has it wrong, because, otherwise, saying that x has it right is otiose, and we can't have that.
Can we say that a statement violates "Be relevant" if it doesn't at least potentially in U's mind disabuse A of something? If so, then for "X has it right" not to violate that maxim, it's "first-order" (generalized?) implicature is that someone will (or may) be disabused by the utterance.
Now JL wants to cancel that implicature, so he says "(but then, why wouldn't he?)," raising the question of whether that addition is otiose. Is the cancellation necessary in the conversational context of no one having raised a doubt? After all, if someone had raised a doubt, we'd know why Dengler would have it wrong, and it would be absurd to suggest by the rhetorical question that there is no reason to think Dengler has it wrong.
I seem to recall an early thread - the ladder thingy? - putting implicatures in order of control, as lawyers do when we say that the specific controls the general. In this case, I would think that the implicature raised by the lack of expressed doubt (again, we need to think of silence as information) cancels the implicature raised by saying "Dengler has it right."
Would Grice agree that if a generalized implicature can be canceled, a conversational implicature of the same sentence can do the cancelling? And if that's the case, does (but then, why wouldn't he?) becomes unnecessary absent a reason to have to disabuse A of the notion that X might be wrong?
I thought a bit about I agree with Dengler as an alternative to Dengler has it right, but the two are different, and the "but then why not" cancellation points to the difference.
Both version imply self-importance (but then, why shouldn't an important person imply his own importance?) but in different ways. Saying that Dengler has it right suggests that the speaker is an authority on the subject. Saying that one agrees with Dengler suggests that one's opinion is of interest, but is, still, only an opinion. The difference comes clear when we try to cancel the implicature with "(but then, why...)" We get
Dengler is (but why wouldn't he be?) right
vs.
I agree (but why wouldn't I?) with Dengler.
The second leaves it unclear whether the notion of which A needs to be disabused is (i) that I may be wrong or (ii) that Dengler may be wrong. But, I would still submit that if the question is not rhetorical, its answer is already known; so it must be rhetorical, but if it's rhetorical, it's otiose.
Pardon the interruption.
Oh, that was excellent, and I shall (or will) elaborate on it, I hope. You are right (You have it right) that I may be interrupting my own train (as the French say?) of thought, rather than willing to interrupt my addressee -- that's a bit strong, but it is Gricean jargon -- recipient sounds ruder. I think I was analysing this, perhaps with Kramer, elsewhere, or perhaps I just read discussions of this in blogs, "I don't disagree with you", as used by many interviewees on television. The analysis proceeded along Gricean lines. I think, deep down, my subconscious thought was that I think Dengler is criticising some of my points, but he is so educated, that it's hard to say. As I read his comments. So, when I reply to his comments, provided Dengler will read them -- he has things to do, :) -- I feel, "He'll think I am criticising him -- for why bother to reply". I think this is called the Warnock's trilemma on the net -- vide wiki. I was pointed to it by John McChesney-Young at Classics-L (He works at UC/Berkeley, next to Bancroft). So, I do feel that, in that context of a conversational move after something like a critique to your previous conversational move, there is a smell of epagoge in the air -- a friendly gladiatorial thing, as R. B. Jones would call it. But it odd, the 'but then why wouldn't he', especially parenthetically abused in the middle of the thing or clause -- perhaps an asterisk to a footnote, *, would be less interruptive -- because we can always ignore those things. Will think about it. And also will consider the variants Kramer proposes featuring 'agree'. I once discussed with Horn et al, the "pace" thing. "Pace Dengler, taxons are important". This, to me, means, literally, "in peace with". Now, this, apparently, only makes sense when there has been a _war_. USA can be in peace with Japan, say. Or Mexico, or Cuba. Or England. But Alaska? The Russians, maybe. So, in general, "Pace A, p" seems to _implicate_ that the utterer (U) of the above did disagree with "A" (addresse) but that that is over now (the war is over; make love, not war) and that there is a pax britannica or pax romana air about it. I would call it pax epagogensis. Grice says that conversation can proceed via epagoge, or via diagoge. I may have considered that in another post, and I like the idea of a dual distinction. People co-ordinate, or are conflictive. And as things are, it is sometimes slightly hard to keep the flow without pointing as to where one stands in a conversation, or thing. Finally, as things stand, I thought: "If I don't make it explicit that I do think that Dengler is right, then he'll think I think he's wrong and keep criticising me; and while that may be lovely, it is Saturday today, and I feel like agree-ing :)
ReplyDeleteOh. What about Dengler has 'it' wrong also? The converse follows from the rectifying implicature, even in the P -P condition. I like the errors, and perhaps they even are, to some-x. I'm keen on having both in affront. The supra argument is an aporematic, or aporia or just a fuzzy, local-referential quiver of conversational implicature. In a taxonomy, would it not belong in the middle?
ReplyDeleteMaybe .505150515051etc