Grice and the Periphery

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

JONES, "Strand 5", this blog:

"This does not gel well with the idea that Grice is here
looking for "central meaning", but in fact he seems to talk
mainly about "central significance"."

No.

Grice is the centre. The rest is, as he would say, 'peripheral'.

I congratulate you on having spotted the key terms in Grice's strands. Indeed, 'significance' is a hybrid!

And note that Grice does speak, indeed, as you note, of 'peripheral'.

But I would point that Grice's concern with the "center" of things is time-honoured.

We discussed with Kramer one first facet:

"It is raining"

-- "I believe that it is raining"

-- "My addressee will believe that I believe that it is raining"

--- "I actually WANT my addressee to believe that I believe that it is raining"

--- "Plus, I want him to believe that on his recognising that that is what I intend him to believe."

Max Black, a Russian, would speak here (I ordered his essay, never quoted, in "New Literary History", "On Professor Grice on Meaning" -- because I collect essays with "Grice" - or "Brigitte Bardot" in their titles) of:

i. the yolk
ii. the white and the shell.

What matters is the NUCLEUS. The core. The kernel. The yolk: the proposition 'expressed':

"p" --- "It is raining"

---

The rest is the 'chaff'. So the 'central' (or 'center of') meaning here (and you should not be shy not to want to use 'mean' here) is "It is raining".

Test?

Well:

Surely we want to say that what U meant was that it was raining. Never mind what he implicated, suggested, hint, made explicit, left unsaid, metaphorised, and the rest of them.

Think of Tarski

"Schnee ist weiss"

and

"Grass ist gruen"

-- He said it in Polish --.

----

The OTHER facet is Grice in 1967, where he uses 'centrally';

This is WoW:88

"I want here to introduce some such idea as
that of "central meaning""

--- No doubt he was having nightmares about it which subsided till his "Preliminary Valediction" (I suppose this is a saracasm on Madonna's "The Ultimate Farewell Tour").

Grice goes on:

"I want ot be bble to expalain, or at least
talk about, what, within what U means,
U CENTRALLY means"

Grice focuses here in the preterite:

U centrally "meant". For surely he was a lawyer at heart. Imagine if a lawyer would lecture us on

"The intention that the CRIMINAL will have is an offensive one, to kill our client".

Absurd.

This is all irrefutable 'ex-post-facto' intuitive theorising to entertain the Harvardites.

Grice goes on:

"I wanto to be able to give a sense"

via his slightly ad-hoc necessary and sufficient conditions to a biconditional that will have as analysandum,

"In meaning that p, U centrally means that q".

Odd. Because 'p' and 'q' are successive ("Never mind your ps or qs"). What if all he said was CENTRAL?

----

Grice goes on:

"So, I propose to analyse [dictiveness] in terms of the aforementioned concept of 'what U centrally means, in meaning that p'"

Enough to want to go to the early, middle, and latter Witters. At least he changed radically. Grice, on the other hand (the right one, unfortunately) is regurgiating dictiveness and implicature before any audience that he finds "Griceian" enough!

Grice goes on:

Suppose we have 'explicate' as a replacement for that too English word that I won't swallow easily, 'say'

So, instead of "U said it", we say, "U explicated it".

This amused Borges. For Byron had complained about Jonson. "I agree with the spirit of the explication provided by Jonson. But at the same time I must confess that at times I felt as if his explication was in need of another explication".

Borges commented, "I suppose some idiots always need an explication".

Grice continues:

"U explicated that p"

i.e.

First: U centrally meant that p"

This is NOT sufficient, but it is NECESSARY. To have your cake and eat it (too) we need a further clause which gives free entrance to Carnap. For it reads (WoW:88):

"x is now" not any old gesture, even a sonorous one, like a burp,

but

"an occurrence of a type S [precisely Carnap symbolism for the intension of S qua sentence in one language] part of the meaning of which is 'p'".

----

When Grice starts to use propositions in scare quotes, we now we are in for trouble.

"'p' is the NAME of a proposition".

But it's things like Mary or my cat which have names. Surely it is VERY otiose and Tarskian to think that 'snow is white' is the name of the proposition that snow is white.

Grice goes on:

"I am aware that my definition of [what U explicates] depends largely on the rather macabre idea of 'what U centrally meant'" (or words).

"This leaves," Grice writes, "various questions" -- unanswered? No. In the Griceian vein (his bread-and-butter he got from lecturing -- you gotta love the man), "to be pursued".

Among which is the question that opened the whole thing:

"Number 4. Last, but hardly least: "How is "U centrally means that p" to be 'explicated'?