The Day After Yesterday

---- by JLS
-------- for the GC

--- (I think is the line in 'Sideways')

---- We were discussing with L. J. Kramer's Horn's use "gratia Speranzae". This was an example by Potter. In the film, Downey (as I recall -- could well be Chambon, in the BBC serial) he says,

"I am sleeping mostly with myself these days"

The nurse, as I recall, says, "mostly means not always". She is being stupid. Of course Downey knew that. Plus, it's false. "Mostly" means "mostly". Rather, utterers, on occasion, implicate, by "mostly", 'not always' -- but that's neither here nor there.

So we have here yet another case of a Tannerism. Deborah Tanner, a Berkeley professor, manages to amuse us when she occasionally writes for Harpers. For who is going to go the boring way of what she writes for boring academic journals?

----

A woman is not Gricean. A man is Gricean. Or male. Hence, in a way, homosexuality. By becoming homosexuals, some males 'pick on' certain features of femeinity -- in their speech, etc. Vide the video referred to by J. Kennedy elsewhere, of Judith Butler, a well-known lesbian, caricaturing a homosexual male!

Anyway, back to business.

Grice says:

"Harold Wilson is a great man"

"The present Prime Minster has two dogs"

"I would be ready to accept, that, under the circumstances" -- what circumstances? --"they are referring to the same person"

----

But there are variants.

Usually, females -- we discussed this elsewhere with P. A. Stone, and J. M. Geary -- don't go by Carnap's intensional isomorphism.

In "Sideways", this New-Haven actor says, to his one-night stand:

"You should read my novel some day"

"What's it called?", she asks -- in her typically feminine ways. (Wouldn't you think that if the novelists had wanted to INFORM you about the title of the novel he would have volunteered it?).

He hesitates. (The thing has not been published, and you know authors).

""The day after yesterday"".

She looks at him with her feminine eyes, and after a pause, where she possibly revised all that Quine had to say in "Two dogmas of empiricism", comments, stupidly:

"That's 'today', right?"

----

Now back to Grice. Grice IS being articial, and he knew it.

"vyse" and 'vice'. They are different words! Who cares that they are pronounced similarly!

On the other hand, he is too much of a liberal when he writes, on that page which should be memorised by people (some people) -- WoW:25 -- especially those followers those who think they have re-invented the wheel when they saturate us with 'pragmatic saturations', and stuff:

---

Grice writes:

"This brief indication of my use of 'say' leaves it
open whether a man who says (today), 'Harold Wilson
is a great man' and another man who says (also today)
'The British Prime Minister is a great man' would,
if each knew that the singular terms had the
same reference, have said the same thing."

----

But what does what 'each knew' has to do with anything? It's what the U knows or believes he knows counts.

What I cherish is his conclusion: the choice of "Harold Wilson" over "the present Prime Minister" is guided by the maxims which, history has it, are "Gricean" in nature:

"For, whatever decision is made about this
question,"

---- "No, they have said DIFFERENT things -- one said that Harold Wilson is a great man, and the other said that the British Prime minister is a great man". "No, what he said is that the British Prime Minister is a great man" -- emphasising the fact that a "minister" is not a "Minister", etc. --

Grice continues:

"the apparatus ... [his apparatus, that is] [is]
capable of accounting for any implicature
that might depend on the presence of this
rather than that singular term."

Singular indeed!

What about 'plural' terms. Cfr. "The Argentine Junta is a great institution", "Videla & Co is a great institution" -- while "The Argentine Junta" is a plural term, it is composed of three singular terms: one for the Army, one for the Navy, and one for the Air Force.

-----

"Such an implicature [projected by one
choice rather than the other] would
MERELY be related to different maxims"

---- he writes, p. 25 -- when he hasn't yet even MENTIONED one. This is all in the future, or in the past, rather.

i. Harold Wilson is a great man.
ii. The British Minister is a great man.

To update things a bit:

i. Obama is Irish.
ii. The American president is Irish

--- We were celebrating "St. Patrick's Day" recently and came across this silly song, "There's nobody as Irish as Barrack O'Bama"

I would think that the implicature here is a serious one. Why would one say, "American president" when they mean 'Obama'? The answer is Fregean. For Frege, Mill, Carroll, and the rest of them, 'Obama' doesn't make 'sense' (it only makes 'reference' -- this is more of a natural thing to say in Frege's mother tongue: German -- Nicht Sinn (no sense), Alle Bedeutung (all reference).

So U is choosing between a vacuous name ('Obama'), i.e. a name that has no sense, only reference, and a definite description, 'The American president', which, as it happens, includes a vacuous name to it ("America"), i.e. a singular term which has no sense, but merely reference.

The idea is that it would be rude for employees at the White House to say "Obama" all the time -- they KNOW the President is Obama, and they are employed by "The President", not by someone bearing a 'vacuous' name ("Obama"). He is the president, because he presides (over people). He is, plus, "the" President, not "one of THE presidents": it is a SINGULAR term: like "Obama", it ranges over just one individual (or any other bearing his name or office -- but while there have been many Presidents before Obama, he is the first to be called "Obama" AND be president --.

Grice adds:

"if each knew"

But I don't care what each knew because people (never mind utterers) usually know diddly.

---

So back to "The day after yesterday".

In a feminine way, 'today' IS 'the day after yesterday'.

So, a man (or woman, as in this case) who says:

"He told me he had written a novel, or stuff, called "The day after yesterday"."

Is NOTABLY NOT '[saying] the same thing', or to use the more pedantic present perfect phrase -- I use it in case one googles this -- what Grice writes: "have said the same thing". Where the emphasis is on "the same thing" or "said the same thing". ('saying the same thing' is different).

----

And she is NOT saying the same thing or have said the same thing AS a woman who said, rather:

"He told me he had written a novel, or stuff, whose title referred to 'today'".

For "today" and 'the day after yesterday' are singular terms, too. And they uniquely refer, like "Harold Wilson" and "the British Prime Minister" -- but the female is using an opaque context -- for she can't see (or she Kant see, if you must).

----

Or something.