Urmson on "and" -- and Grice on "Λ"

---- By J. L. Speranza, F. R. S. (failed), &c
--------- For the Grice Club


----- SO HERE IS the extended quote by Urmson that I shared with Horn, and which I think he quotes verbatim in his "Implicature", _Handbook of Pragmatics_. I thought it was clever (and that's why I shared the quote with Horn) that a first-rate philosopher as Urmson get discussed in a discipline that is so varied! -- So Urmson is credited alright in the looong reference section of that vademecum, and I got a little credit too, into the bargain, ha!). The Urmson book I discovered sort of by chance in a very OLD second-hand book in the middle of nowhere. I had heard about it, of course, since after my first year as a philo student, I only wanted to know about Oxonians. I could not care less about Spinoza. The whole book is a gem and I treasure it at the Swimming-Pool Library, and I have corresponded with Urmson and keep the gems of his stuff. Here is what he writes, then, back in the lovely day:

"In formal logic, the connectives "and" and
"or" are always given a minimum meaning, as we
have done above, such that any complex formed
by the use of them alone is a truth-function
of its constituents. In ordinary discourse
the connectives often have a RICHER MEANING;
thus 'he took off his clothes and went to bed'
implies temporal succession and has a different
meaning from 'he went to bed and took off his
trousers'. Logicians would justify their use of
the minimum meaning by pointing out that it is the
COMMON ELEMENT in all our uses of "and". (p. 9).
(1956: Philosophical Analysis: its development between the two world-wars").

As my mother says, "The Blitz! And these futilitarians caring about 'and'!"

---- A proper first shot at a proper analysis: (I hate to analyse crystal clear pieces of geniality like that but here it goes):

"In formal logic,"

--- This may need comment. Symbolic logic? Mathematical logic? "Formal" is a misnomer. Surely "and" is _formal_ enough: it has a _form_, and it meant "versus" in Anglo-Saxon. Cfr. andswear, to answear, to contra-dict. I don't know what the form for '&' was in Anglo-Saxon, and the parochial Oxonians never cared! I love them, each and all of them!

"the connectives "and" and
"or" are always given a minimum meaning,"

--- Since he is _not_ going to be concerned with "or" -- but he did, in his LOVELY review of _Logic_, cited by Wiggins in "Truth and Meaning", Oxford -- for _Mind_, Urmson, since as I say, does not give an example with 'or', we can understand as speaking mainly about 'and', which is less of a hot topic in philosophy, etc.

"as we have done above, such that any complex formed
by the use of them alone is a truth-function
of its constituents."

--- Note the use of 'complex' qua noun. And note the technical, excellent, Fregean (I think) idea of 'function' as applied to truth-tables here. So the continuity here is indeed Frege --> Whitehead-Russell --> Wittgenstein. And Grice and Urmson contesting Warnock and Strawson (Since I'm _only_ interested in fully affiliated Oxonian people on this -- I Kant Do Cambridge!)

Urmson continues:

"In ordinary discourse"

--- This is inverse snobbery. There is nothing 'ordinary' about 'ordinary'! I still am tracing the Latin for 'ordinary' which Cicero cites in his Rhetoric (Loeb Classical Library).

Urmson:

"the connectives often have a RICHER MEANING;"

---- But Grice SAVES but there is no such thing as a free lunch. Here the 'richness' is in the logical form, the number of entailments. It's a very mathematical thing. "Expanded meaning", or indeed, as per Grice 1964 (but Strawson 1952 is already quoting Grice in a footnote on this), "implicated" meaning.

Urmson:

"thus 'he took off his clothes and went to bed'
implies temporal succession"

---- Or rather, as Grice MUST have it (and I, too), the utterer, on occasion, by uttering "He took off his clothes and went to bed" makes it as if to imply that there is a temporal succession. Words don't 'imply'. People do.

Urmson:

"and has a different meaning"

---- Again. What specification? We have to be fastidious here, because otherwise the Informalist may get their cake and eat it. Grice has 5 Specifications of meaning in WoW:v, so here it is applied UTTERER's Meaning --. In my PhD I was able to play with Grice's "part-meaning" because 'and' is a PART of an utterance. But in any case, it is NOT, as Urmson's rather casual wording had it there, part of the _meaning_ of the utterance!

Urmson:

"from 'he went to bed and took off his
trousers'."

---- And as Kramer noted, -- his "Comment" to "Strawson and Grice on 'analytic', THIS BLOG -- Urmson is perhaps trading illicitly on the dropping of 'he'. Strictly, "he went to bed and he took off his trousers". Ditto for the earlier, "He took off his trousers and he went to bed". The dropping of those things is importantly syntactically, and Urmson, who had written one of the most charming essays ever written by a philospher, his "Parentheticals", knows about it. For "I believe", parenthetical, yields a different surface form from "I believe that--". Ditto for here

>>>>>>>>> He <<<<<<<<<<<<
. ----------------------------- .
. ----------------------------- .
. ----------------------------- .
. ----------------------------- .
went to bed took off his trousers


Different from:

>>>He<<<<<< ----- AND ----- >>>>He<<<<<
. --------------------------- .
. --------------------------- .
. --------------------------- .
went to bed took off his trousers.


Urmson wants to be exegetical of Wittgenstein here -- this is chapter on "Logical Atomism" that was all the rage in _Cambridge_, never Oxford. The Oxonians, unless you ARE Grice, could care LESS about 'formal' logic. They are ALWAYS finding problems with it!

Urmson:

"Logicians would justify their use of
the minimum meaning"

----- They have been justifying one thing after the other. The last thing they justified is that they don't want to HEAR from philosophers any more! So much for the Legacy of Ordinary Language Philosophy! I love Urmson. If you want to study Logic in Oxford today you don't need to enroll in the Philosophy (Lit. Hum.) programme at all! You just go to St. Giles's Street. It's called "Chair of Mathematical Logic" and don't expect the teacher is English! (It's over-achiveing furrieners (I love them) who apply in these fields: they don't have, can't have, the sensitivity to matters of usage that Urmson, Strawson, Warnock, Grice, had -- and most likely their students won't, either! So what gives! Give them the 'ampersand'!), or as Grice has in in WoW -- for he is not even using the '.' anymore, but he does refer to the 'ampersand'. What he has is the "Λ" symbol (WoW:ii, first page).

Urmson:

"by pointing out that it is the
COMMON ELEMENT in all our uses of "and"".

---- which is just as well. We have to be careful about 'all' and 'common' and 'element'. Perhaps 'shared'. I mean, I love Urmson, don't take me wrong. He is saying the _shared_ feature. I.e. It WOULD be IMPOSSIBLE -- because it would be

ANALYTICALLY CONTRADICTORY

rather than tautologous,

to say,

"I like icecream and I like coffee"

if it is NOT the case that I like both -- never mind the ordering.

So by 'common element' of 'all' "ands" -- cfr. Pears on "ifs and cans". is just that.

"and"

---"and"

--------"and"

---------------"and"

---------------------"and"

---------------------------"and"

THINK ABOUT IT.

Now add one thing at each side

P AND Q

------- Q AND P

---------------- P AND Q

----------------------- Q AND P

What 'and' does is just connect.

In "WoW:iv" Grice -- he never meant to title this "Indicative Conditionals", it's just the fourth William James Lecture -- and I quote it in my PhD -- quotes Wilson.

Grice wants to say that 'and' (like the other connectives) has a _metier_.

The metier of "and" is _otiose_. Grice notes:

"Surely 'and' is not necessary. Consider "It is raining. It is windy". (I think he has "It is pourring" but that complicates things).

The WHOLE point of 'and' is its conversational metier. It's the way the utterer HAS of 'facilitating in the form of expression any reply that may be regarded as approppriate' -- his tenth conversational maxim that makes his thing a 'decalogue'. So here he imagines the dialogue:

A: It is raining and it is windy.
B: That's not so!
A: What is not so?
B: That it is raining and that it is windy.

---- So, 'and' facilitates B's claim. B will now need to provide evidence, other than the truth-functional, or an analysis of the truth-functional one, for why he is challenging A. He may be doing that because he believes it is not raining, or he may be doing that because he believes it is not windy, or he may be doing that because he believes it is not raining and he also believes that it is not windy.

_IF_ we had to involve 'then' into the picture, imagine the possible challenges! Whitehead and Russell would NOT want that. They would not even engage in conversation with you -- they were Cantab. and hardly philosophers -- Whitehead was more of a mathematician (I love him) -- unless you cared to allow that 'p.q' is all you meant.

Moore had coined 'entailment' by then, so it's best to leave 'analytic' aside and consider 'entail'.

The use of "and" entails that the conjuncts are commutative. The "then" tag is NOT entailed.

If von Wright and others want to diverge from Principia Mathematica (or PM for short) they are free to do so, but they would need to specify the thing in a calculus. I.e. when 'introducing' (R), say, it is then 'incorporated' as part of what is meant -- no longer the mimimal conjunction of 'classical' logic -- but something altogether different.

This does NOT answer Kramer's witty point (and more than witty, too -- but I like witty) about the 'picture' thing. Possibly Urmson commented on that in the pages leading to p. 8, so I may want to check that, too.