A further parody of Quine: ontological commitment as 'pretty low', in parts (was "alignment")

--- WoW:368


Grice was so bored by mode distinctions ('declaratively or imperatively') -- and he would use square roots to bring Witters to light (Witters's radix as chemistry analogy) that he feels the might 'equally well say', "firmly or tentatively"!

----

But what IS the 'lowest' commitment one's alignment can get?

Cfr.

"He has beautiful handwriting"

"OK. If you DO mean he is hopeless in philosophy, and which is YOUR blame, since you were her tutor, you better say it NOW."

"Not her -- him. St. John's doest not accept girls, you know."

---

Grice writes:

Grice concludes the Strand 5 (p. 368) with an 'elaboration' ('albeit rudely schematic') on 'the characters of tentativeness and obliqueness which are specially visible in cases of 'low commitment'" in communication.

"First, suggestion."

This is NOT when we speak of 'psychic' or mental suggestion. Countersuggestible person, etc.

No, this is just,

"By uttering, "You suck", he meant to suggest that he is an idiot."

Grice writes:

"Suggesting that so-and-so seems, to me,
to be, with varying degrees of obviousness,
different from" the below:

----

i. --- "stating or maintaining that so-and-so."

(This relates to R. B. Jones's point on 'allegation' as a crossbred between 'assertion' and 'belief' in Jones's counterexample to a Carnapian-Gricean account of the scope of pragmatics (as he provides a running commmentary to Carnap, "Some concepts on pragmatics", this blog and elsewhere).

Grice goes on to list:

ii. --- "asserting it to be LIKELY
------- or probable that so-and-so."

In general, 'likely' is a digital no-no. As Kramer notes, taking 'dishonest' digitally, 'He is potentially dishonest' (qua implicatum of "How is he getting on in his new job at the bank") will NEVER triger the implicatum. What we need and Grice needs and Kramer needs here is "likely" -- dishonest so as to be likely of some interest to report at this stage.

Then comes


iii. ---- asserting it to be
--------- POSSIBLE that so-cand-so

where, he adds, "possible' means, 'not certain that it is not the case that so-and-so'. We have discussed this with Kramer in his review of the film with M. Streep, "Doubt". For surely the Sister asserts p such that it is possible that p. When asked, and Kramer and I get very irritated by this ignorant nun on this, she 'goes'. "Oh, I just know". ("I admire people who can say that with a straight face", Kramer commented, which was ironic on the face that the face of Streep went a 'smirk' -- her typical No. 3 one -- when saying, "know".

---

Grice uses 'it' forms here: He is suggesting that

a. It is possible that she did it.

means -- 'presumably', Grice adds:

b. It is NOT certain that it is NOT the case that she did it.

-- again, I would add.

---

Since (b) is a meiotic and a litotes, one is certainly reaching the 'bathic' (or 'lowest' as Grice prefers) levels of commitment here.

----

But this is NOT what 'suggesting' is all about.

Suggesting, rather, Grice contends, "is perhaps more like,
though still BY NO MEANS exactly like,"

--- for nothing can be exactly like -- vide Liza Minnelli's hit, "Exactly like me" --

Grice goes on,

iv --- "asserting there to be some evidence
------ that so-and-so."

Why not this a good paraphrase? Well, it IS a good paraphrase. (Surely when one paraphrases, the exact identity of meaning is not required. For that would be an infringement of 'Say something (new)'.

Grice goes on:

"Standardly, to suggest that so-and-so
invites a response, and, if the
suggestion IS reasonable, the response
it invites is to meet in one way or
antoher the case which the maker of the
suggestion, somewhat like a grand jury,"

--- technicism of that?

---

As opposed to little or small one?

"supposes there to be in favour
of the possibility that so-and-so."


---- Well, some grand juries I've known!



Grice goes on:

"The existence of such a case"

---- in the strict lawyers' use of 'case' as in "The Case of Blanco Posnet" by Bernard Shaw --

"will require that
there should be a TRUTHFUL fact,
or set of facts, which might be
explained by the
hypothesis that so-and-so."

For surely one does not claim that she 'done' it unless it's worth claiming.

----

Grice goes on -- and this so-and-so,

"together with certain OTHER
facts or assumptions [better], though
the [utterer] is NOT committed to
the claim that such an explanation
would in fact be correct."

For, hey, he was just SUGGESTING that she done it. Not STATING it (no eye-witness he, but cfr. Flew on "evidence of my eyes" if you google).

Grice goes on:

"Suggesting," then,

"seems to me to be related to,
though in certain respects different form,
hinting"

---- INDEED a terribly different animal. Vide Holdcroft, "Suggesting is NOT hinting" in "Forms of indirect communication" (Journal of Rhetoric"). NO. This is NOT "Grice avant la lettre". All the wisdom of Holdcroft derives form Grice. I love him!

Grice goes on:

"In what seems to be to be
standard cases of 'hinting', one
makes, EXPLICITLY, a statement
which DOES, or might, justify
the idea that there is a [legal]
case for supposing that so-and-so."

GENIAL Grice. But to see that Americans, who like a title, will use and use and use ad nauseam Toulmin's rather more inferior "Uses of Argument" for their overpopulated courses in rhetoric is a mystery which is non myseteric to me.

Grice goes on:

"But," he caveats,

"what there might be a case
for SUPPOSING, namely that so-and-so,
is NOT explicitly mentioned but is
left"

--- in the best enthymematic fashion as dissected by Kramer, this blog --

"to the [addressee] to identify."

If she finds one, I'll add. (I use 'she' sometimes to mean 'utterer', especially in some cases.

Grice goes on:

"Obivously, the more devious the hinting,
the greater is the chance that the [utterer]
will [stoopidly] fail to make contact
with his [Grice WOULD NEVER use the female]
[addressee], and so will escape wihtut having
commited himself to anything."

Which leads me to my suggestion (BIG HINT there) as to why Grice's first tutee, A. G. N. Flew was expelled from Christ Church: he was an atheist!