Grice: Hypotheses Non Fingo

--- By JLS
------ for the GC.

--- L. J. COHEN, may he rest in peace, thought he was being witty when quoting from Grice (at least he did not have the moxie to quote from the mimeo) and call Grice's tenet, 'the conversationalist hypothesis' (with capital C and H) to which he opposed the "Semantical Hypothesis". Since I see this as relating to Kramer, and for other reasons (I am tying up the Swimming-Pool Library and come across the copy of Cohen 1971) I quote -- He does NOT use the Semantic Hypothesis to deal with "-", but with the FIRST connective, i.e. 'and'.

Cohen writes:

"According to the Semantical Hypothesis, ... the meaning or linguistic function of 'and', as a clause-concatenating particle, is rather richer [but not yet stinking rich] than that of the truth-functional constant "&". In addition to expressing the conjunction of two truths it also indicates that the second truth to be mentioned is a further item of the same kind, or, in he same sequence, or of a kind belonging to the same set of commonlly associated kins of item, or etc. etc., as the first truth to be mentioned."

Granted -- I mean, he is not using 'sense', which IS anathema to Grice.

But can Cohen has his cake and have it?(I am told that to have your cake and eat it literally means that):

For he immediately goes on to say:

"But this additional feature in the meaning
of 'and' ... is subject to cancellation or
deletion in ceratin contexts."

"According to the Semantical Hypothesis what
is cancelled is a feature that is one of those
features which SHOULD be listed in any
adequate dictionary entry for the word"

-- talking 'senses' here? Or not talking sense?

---

Not really, for Cohen calls Grice's 'modified Occam razor' (senses should not be multiplied beyond necessity) an 'excellent recommendation'. He is just suggesting to take the STRONGER sense as the only one. Both the conversationalist hypothesis and the semantical hypothesis "both assign only one dictionary sense to 'and'". The semantical hypothesis assigns "a STRONGER sense ... and allows a certain feature of this sense to be deleted on occasion".

As you drop your heat at a drop of a hat?

----

As I mentioned R. C. S. Warker, a Scot at Magdalen, defended Grice against Cohen, and Cohen rebuffed Walker in "Can the conversational hypothesis be defended" (in Philosophical Studies, 1977) and (then -- some 20 years later -- he died. Bright chap. (But wrong on things).