Grice Plays with Eternity

----

Grice calls it "The City of Eternal Truth". This is a joke. It should spell "Aeternal", or æternal, if you must.

------

When in his anglo-saxon mood, he says, 'timeless'.

When is the first time Grice used 'timeless'?

Let's check:

It was in 1948 ("Meaning", repr. WoW:217).

if we can elucidate the MEANING
of [occasion-meaning] this might
reasonably be expected to help us with" [the below]

x means-NN (timeless) something (that so-and-so).
A means-NN (timeless) by x something (that so-and-so).

THIS IS A JOKE! Nothing is timeless LIKE THAT!

It's like if we need Frege to tell us:

"the concept 'horse' is not a horse."

Or something.

Surely, 'horse' refers to the concept horse, timelessly.

---- The opposite is NOT 'occasion', but timeful!

----

On p. 220 he proposes to see how timeful gets you to timeless: For he provides definiens for (a) and (b) above. He just skips (b), though, and for (a) provides what follows. That he skips (b) and indeed that he lists (b) which naturally and ontologically comes earlier than (a) as (b) is a sign that nobody has to take 'timeless' too serious.

Grice proposes then for 'timeless' as defined in terms of 'timeful':

"'x means-NN (timeless) that so-and-so" MIGHT AS
A FIRST SHORT be equated with some statement
[or other] or disjunction of statements about what
"people" (vague) intend (with qualifications about
'recognition') to effect by x."

Some eternity!

----

Grice was enamoured enough with his flirtings with "in aeternum" when in 1967 -- i.e. almost 20 years after -- he is still talking 'timeless' (WoW:89):

When he is considering:

grass, n. marijuana.

-----

"If I shall be assisting the marijuana to mature"... "I shall call the specifications of the timeless meaning(s)".

These can be of a TYPE (always), never token.

But there is

"applied timeless"

?????

Yes. For if, "on this occasion", 'grass' DOES MEAN 'marijuana' we want to say so. This applies then to A PART (rather than a whole, complete, utterance). Grice is being loose here for surely

"Grass."

IS COMPLETE, or can be COMPLEAT.

---

"Grass is green"
"Snow is white"
"Snow".

----

"We need to be able to say, with respect
to the occurrence [tokening] of [a type], 'grass'
in a particular 'utterance' ... that, here, on
this occasion, 'grass' meant 'marijuana'.

--- (and not 'lawn-material').

But if in 1948 he was defining timeless in terms of timeless, he is more careful in 1967, for he notes of

"I shall be dead"

"I shall be helping (or assist) the grass (lawn material? marijuana?) to grow (mature)"

That phrase, Grice rightly notes,

"neither mean nor mean here "I shall be dead"" (WoW:90). So utterer's meaning is NEVER timeless.

Yet it is what defines TIMELESS.

--- Odd.

--- But true.

He refers back to 'timeless' on p. 91 when he repeats his 'nominalist' claim: it is via the explication of utterer's occasion meaning that "timeless meaning and applied timeless meaning can be explicated."

----

"together with other notions" -- he adds! Which we hope is not Nicholas of Cusa!

----

"and so ultimately in terms of intention"

-- for which he DOES NOT ADD, 'together with some other notions', fortunately.

---

On p. 119 he resumes talk of 'timeless':

---- This all relates to Carnap's intensions, so beware!

----

Grice notes:

"It will be convenient to recognise
that what I shall call statements of
timeless meaning (statements of
the type "X means '...'", in which
the specification of meaning involves
quotation marks) may be subdivided."

into idiolectal (or idiosyncratic).

--- and other.

Here he contrasts the labels as being

"idionsyncratic meaning", which is still timeless. This seems rahter artificial. If I use "tomato" to mean "pear" on ONE OCCASION -- for one specific semantic interpretation or model -- it seems a stretch to say that 'tomato' means 'pear' in some timeles sort of way. And surely one's idiosyncratic meaning can apply to just one idiosyncratic occasion. But I see Grice's point.

---
In any case, it's interesting that Grice, (in case you are considering Carnap), goes to use "L" which is the variable that Carnap uses in "Concepts of Pragmatics". L for language.

For the other type, other than timeless idiosyncratic meaning is what Grice calls, roughly, "linguistic meaning". The specification follows a general pattern, without loss of generality as it were. And it's quotation marks alright, but it's surely now NOT 'for an utterer' but with "L" as variable:

In L (language) X means '...'

Abstract -- but true.

---

What about the Essay 6 redefinition of the APPLIED timelessness?

Grice writes:

"In view of the MULTIPLICITY [disjunctional] in the
timeless meaning of an utterance-type, we shall need to
notice, and to provide an explication of, what I shall
call the APPLIED timeless meaning of an utterance
type. That is, we need a definition for the
schema, "X (utterance-type) meant HERE '...'""

Grice glosses this as

"a schema the specification of which announce
the correct reading of X for a GIVEN
occasion of utterance",

and for which the word 'applied' as applied to 'timeless' seems --- dated?