Grice and Quasi-Grice

--- by JLS
------ for the Grice Club.

As JONES ("Strand 5", this blog) notes, and the Montagovians agree (to the extreme) co-text is important. Grice plays with 'phi' as being, by default,

"in front of the addressee's eyes"

"If I say, the pillar box seems red to me, I do not want my addressee to ask, 'what pillar box'. Unless otherwise stated, or at least blatantly implicated, the objects we refer to in our ordinary forms of discourse, should be attached, via quasi-demontrative epithets, to the things in front of our eyes."

Unless we are blind. But as Braille used to say, "No blinder man than the one who won't see".

Grice goes on:

Supposing that addressee has found a 'good candidate' for "table" (the table in front of his eyes -- when the utterer remarked, 'There is a book on the table'), Grice notes, the thing is not yet 'done with':

For, he adds, "aided with the composite epithet" -- 'before my eyes' -- the addressee has to 'foot', or 'fit', as Jones prefers, or 'fill' as Grice does, 'the bill', Grice writes, "of being the correct epithet," by which he means,

"that is, the epithet which the UTTERER had in mind" "as being satisfiable by a denotatum of 'phi'".

And this, "in relation fo the selected candidate"

"If not, logically enough, he should seek another candidate." This must be my mother's strategem when she goes with 'indefinites' -- she must be in the look out for a better candidate (as she would put it, smugly on 'better').

-----

Grice goes on:

"So, determining the denotatum of 'phi' is not precisely your piece of cake".

As if anyone would use THAT simile under the circumstances.

He adds:

"For the assignment of a denotatum to the never-expressed 'quasi-demontrative' "phi" involves satisfying oneself, que interpreter, that some PARTICULAR feature IS satisfied by an object"

--- 'the table'.

So, Grice concludes that

"the table" IMPLICATES ('in one way or another) 'one PARTICULAR table'.

----- Perhaps Grice was being too particular about this?