Focus, Topic, and Common Ground

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

--- MY MOTHER, who's read Grice, or heard it read, also, would love the phrase, "conversational pool". (I think I owe the phrase to Morgan). He says that one JUMPS onto a pool. It's a pool of information, but who cares. Similarly, Strawson discusses:

--- The king of France is wise.

------ (He never used 'bald')

--- The exhibition was visited by the King of France.

Strawson wants to say (for some obscure reason best left to his analyst to elucidate, if he has or had any -- *How can, you reader object, can the analyst elucidate if he hasn't GOT one? Plus, if he (Strawson) died?) that (2) but not (1) does NOT presuppose that there is a King of France.

(But there MUST be an exhibition).

Strawson trades on 'topic' versus 'comment'. Similarly Kramer:

"[H]ow can you say she's a well-known lesbian if you don't allow folks to say that they know she's a lesbian?"

Point taken.

I guess I SHOULD allow folks to say that they KNOW she is a lesbian. As Grice would say:

"She has said she is a lesbian. There is no reason to suppose she is not abiding by the Cooperative Principle, or at least some of its attending maxims." "In this case, the submaxim of Quality: 'try to make your contribution one that is true', 'Do not say what you believe to be false'."

"Plus she has given me no indication to the contrary: i.e. she has not displayed, this far, any non-lesbian behavioural pattern of any sort".

"Whatever she implicates, what she says when she says that she is a lesbian is that she is a lesbian."

----- This still leaves the topic of 'knowledge' untouched. For Grice, an utterer is able to utter,

"I know that..." on the account of three conditions holding:

"The first is "p" -- if you know that p, then p." In this case, To know that Judith Butler is a lesbian, Judith Butler is a lesbian."

"The second is belief." If you know that Judith Butler is a lesbian you have TO BELIEVE (her) when she tells you she is a lesbian".

The third is 'causalism'. Here Grice wants to oppose the view of Gettier, which he maintained in the formulation of the SECOND maxim of quality ("Do not say what you lack adequate evidence for"). For Gettier, to know that p amounts to "p is true", utterer believes that p, and "Utterer can display adequate evidence for p". Even that won't hold for Gettier. Thus Grice, when forced to give an account of 'know' is ... more forceful, shall we say.

Instead of all that otiose (beloved of lawyers) of the adquate grounds, and adequate evidence, and uncalled for evidence, and producing evidence which is not relevant, yet inadequate, or inadequate AND irrelevant, etc. -- he proposes: (adapted)

"To know that Judith Butler IS a lesbian requires that MY BELIEF that she is a lesbian IS CAUSED, by her Lesbianism"

----

This is actually the best account of 'knowledge' I ever came across. Stampe and many others working in 'causal-accounts' of information have taken it up.

What would it mean to say that Butler's lesbianism caused all beliefs that she is a lesbian?

---- With Butler, the fact gets complicated in that she says:

"I became a lesbian because I loved someone deeply. I was 14". (When she entered the Lesbian Community at school).

But then she said, before that:

"I became a lesbian" just because. So she was always conscious that 'lesbian' had this double edge to it: It could mean a political stand (as when we say that Ricky Martin is a lesbian) or it could mean a sexual activity.

Kramer prefers to use 'lesbian' lower-case to mean sexual proclivity. Again, in this case, some utterers can be loose speakers, or non-cooperative (in terms of the Gricean maxims). The story goes of this cowboy who was, typically, asked.

"What are you?"

"I am a cowboy"

---

"What are you?"

"I am a cowboy"

---

On one occasion he meant to reply back.

"What are you?"

"I am a cowboy. And what are you?

"I am a lesbian", was her terse reply.

This happened in Dick Grandy's country -- Texas. So naturally, his next conversational move was:

"And what is that?"

She was so happy someone was at last (or least) interested. She 'went':

"Oh, I spend the whole day thinking of women,
undressing them in my head, thinking what
they look like, what they
like in bed, how they feel, etcetera etcetera."

The next day, Texan legend has it,
the cowboy goes to the bar, and he is asked, typically, "What are you? A cowboy?.

But know he knowsbetter:

"I am a lesbian." is his proud, macho, reply.