Grice: the Received View

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

Again, this post below I was unable to post, as I intended, under 'McCafferty', so here it goes:

So now we can compare Kramer and Grice:

i. Kramer:

"There is a default meaning when "addressing" people with whom one has no special arrangement, but any observable behavior can by agreement mean anything we agree to have it mean."

ii. "I want a paper" +> "It is raining".

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Why? How come we use 'mean' so loosely? If 'mean' derives its evolutionary strength from the unintentional expression of emotions, how come we can misuse this important Darwinist notion like that?

Only by exploitation, Grice suggests. What is odd is that what is extrinsic to language, i.e. its artificiality (or 'arbitrariness' to use Lewis's technical notion -- in "Convention") is seen by some as its epitome, as it were.

Grice:

"We reach, then, a stage in which the communication vehicles" (Grice uses, alas, this rather ugly phrase, WoW: 295) "do NOT have to be, initially, natural signs of that which they are used to communicate: provided any bit of behaviour" (to use Kramer's phrase, almost) "could be expected to be seen by the receiving creature" (which should thus be not blind) "as having a discernible connection" (also visible, we expect) "with a particular piece of information, then that bit of behaviour will be usable by the transmitting creature." "Any link will do".

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But call me a romantic if I tell you I miss the old days when a horse said neigh. I find a lot of the English words I find myself using too arbitrary at times. Oddly, Geary's daughter shares my feelings. She was once inquired by Geary, "Why is a pig called 'pig'?" "Because he is a pig" was her clever (or was it stupid?) reply.

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Grice finds this to provide a 'freedom' from the stimulus to the creatures concerned: "the widest" and thus most beneficial "possible range is given where creatures use ... communication devices which have no connection with the things that they communicate... and the connection is made, simply, because of the supposition, or assumption, of such a connection is prearranged." (WoW:296).

This relates to Grice's excellend idea of an 'established' procedure more of which later, right now, I hope.

For Grice is distinguishing between TYPES of 'procedures' (he WON'T use 'convention', aptly). And some procedures' are established:

For we can drive a flashy car to mean the Brits are coming by land.

What does it take to establish such a 'co-relation' (as Grice technically puts it in his final definition of Meaning in WoW:v)?

Grice writes:

"I want to keep distinct the idea of an 'established' 'meaning', which we may need, and that of a 'conventional' meaning, which we may not". (WoW:124)

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Again my deepest convinctions, Grice writes: "I wish to argue that the notion of M-intention is otiose here".

(WoW:125).

He writes as if that were a bad thing, mind. It is not.

Why is Grice finding the idea of 'otiose' otiose, as it were?

Well, suppose we are considering the practice of driving a flashy car to mean that a Pope has NOT been elected.

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"Now, if U is ever to have the particular intentions which will be involved in every implementation of this policy, he must (logically) be in a position, when uttering [x] to suppose that there is at least some chance that these intentions will be realised; for such a supposition to be justified, as U well knows, a given addressee A must be aware of U's policy and must suppose it to apply to the utterance of 'x' with which U has presented him."

"U, then, when uttering x on a particular occasion"

--- Say, Easter day, in Rome (I don't recognise "Vatican" as a state).

"must expect his addressee to think (or at least to be in a position to think) as follows."

""U's policy for [driving a flashy car in the streets of Rome -- the wrong side of the Tiber, granted] is such taht he utters x now with the intention that I should think that he thinks that [a Pope has not been elected]."

"But", Grice notes, "to utter x expecting the addressee A to respond in such a [convoluted] way is to utter x m-intending that A shoud think that U thinks that [a pope has not been elected]."

"So," Grice concludes: the reflection-mechanism is otiose: "a formulation of U's policy of [x] in terms of the notion of simple intention [rather a more Speranzaic type of thing] seems adequate to ensure that, by a particular utterance of X, U will mean taht [a Pope has not been elected]."

Rivere's tipster may still involve a different qualification. Or not.

I title this 'received' because of some hateful (but hey I love her) phrasing by Chapman when qualifying Grice's speech: "he had an RP" she writes -- meaning of course, 'received pronunciation'. But received from whom? The mother. It was the mother's fault.

But 'received' can also be used for things other than pronunciation you receive (from your mother or stuff). A view, for example: the received standard theory of Chomsky for example, RST, or something. This is different from the 'unwritten' doctrines, because, hey, he wrote them (alright). Etc.

But 'received' has a triple ambiguity that I'm exploiting. For we do use 'kat' to mean 'felis domesticus' because we 'receive' the procedure from to others. We are thinking of what Grice calls a 'receiving creature', as it were.

Seeing that meaning is so demystified by Grice (and rightly so) one wonders by some philosphers (notably Fregeans and some Wittgensteians) are still so mystifyingly mystified by it all. Or something. (Surely a 'received' view can be 'false', too, even if that's not the entailment here, I hope).