Grice summarises the strands (vaguely) before dissecting them (sharply)

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

I AM CONSIDERING JONES's apt remarks of an exegetical nature regarding Grice's paraphrase of 'the strands to come':

Grice speaks on p. 340 of

the 'virtue of convention'

--- which she never was seen to display!

"First, a distinction between those elements
of meaning which are present by virtue of
convention and those which are present by
something other than [never mind
the virtue here] convnetion."

----

"Second," what Jones has as 'asserted'.

----

"Second, [there's this distinction we should
pay some attention -- provided it's 'euro'?
I never like 'pay' (such a cheap word) to relate
to something pupils never give: 'attention' --
especially if it's a state-owned school
for which their parents don't have to 'pay'.
As Williamson remarked: "Parents are never so
mean as when deciding what school to send
their children to" -- but I disgress]

"Second," Grice writes, the distinction

"between those elements of meaning
which standardly form part of what a word
or forma of words asserts (or its
user asserts),"

-- Dubious here, for nothing is asserted in "Close that blooming window!" and surely no philosopher of language of the pedigree Oxonian university of Oxford can get away without them orders.

Grice continues:

"and those elements of meaning which,
rather, form part of what the words or
their users IMPLY"

i.e. implicate, if you want to be fastidious. And why should we? The whole point of speaking English is that you need to KNOW how to use 'imply' (versus 'infer', say). It's hardly FAIR to go and introduce 'implicate' because you think 'imply' won't do for you.

Fortunately by the time of his "Preliminary Valediction" Grice knew better. (Was about to see the light! Love the man).

Grice goes on:

"users imply or otherwise
convey or are committed to."

Can of worms. Commit is possibly a reference to that hateful phrase by Quine, "ontological commitment" which was one of the greatest inventions by American philosophers in the twentieth century. Grice will resume this when dissecting the strand as 'low' versus 'high' commitment.

Grice goes on:

"A distincti[on, that is ['to say', he adds
redundantly, as if it were, 'to order' instead?],"

for

(a)

between

conventional and conventional meaning.

Jones here uses the 'slash' -- but I prefer

conventional-nonconventional

----

My aunt cannot read slash.

--

(b) between

assertive [or 'asserted'? Don't think so]
and nonassertive meaning.

I.e. the

assertive-nonassertive distinction.

Jones is right that it is cumbersome to have this as varieties of 'meaning'.

What's wrong with the

assertion-nonassertion distinction?

Well, it's not provocative. That's what wrong with it. For who would deny the assertion-nonassertion distinction?

----

conventional-nonconventional

is also apt in that

convention-nonconvention

seems vacuous.

Grice is clear about the role of 'c' -- convention -- the trash bin.

In WoW:115 -- when he reaches his final definition of meaning,

you see

symbols:



i --- for 'iconic'

c --- for 'conventional'


o --- for other.


Here he would need a dummy to blanket them. Let's use 'mc', for mode of correlation.

For Grice wants to define "... means ..." such that NO 'convention' IS NEEDED.

---

What we do need is a 'mode of correlation'. I discussed this with Jan D. -- this blog --as reported from other fora.

Here the point is that

'x'

a TOKEN (with reservations -- since Grice found the type-token distinction spurious -- vide Strand 5 for his account of 'soot' versus 'suit' --).

having a feature, which he unimaginatively symbolises by 'f'.

x is f.

he wants to say:

"Snow is white" has a feature: it is the feature of it being a sentence in the English language.

But, Grice adds:

"f is correlated in way c with psi-ing that p"

-- Here, at his peak, Grice is all about GRAND, great, generalisations. In the Preliminary Valediction, etc., he is rather echoing what his critics had been emphasising to boring tears, and he had 'given' up.

that way 'c' is used in the instillation of the belief.

Because the utterer's ONLY CHANCE to have
his addressee think something (that U desires/believes that p)
is via U's utterance, x, being correlated in
some way:

"The cat is on the mat" -- correlated in some way with the belief that the cat is on the mat.

"Close that blooming window!" -- correlated in some way with the desire that that blooming window be closed.

Etc.

And Grice adds:

"Note"

We need to go back to p. 103, where he introduces the variable "c"

"c" or mode of correlation, rather, "mc"

to stand for or take as values:


i ----- for 'iconic'

c ----- for 'conventional'

o ----- for other.

Ultimately he wedded to the iconic-noniconic distinction (WoW:Meaning Revisited).

But on p. 103, as delivered at Harvard he has "c"

'to stand for 'mode of correlation' and 'range' over: "iconic, associative, conventional".

So we actually get the

a ------- for 'associative'.

What do we associate with this?

Grice is thinking of his good ole read, Stevenson's "Ethics and Language" (1944) which prompted his essay on "Meaning".

For Stevenson had used the example of

'a drop of a hat'

---

or the putting on of a raincoat.

Grice writes (WoW:216):

"It is no doubt the case that many people
have a tendency to put on a tailcoat
when they think they are about to go to
a dance"

-- or more mundanely, a raincoat when they
think they are about to get wet.

---- (Jason Kennedy may inquire at this point what to put on if the utterer thinks that he is about to go to a dance to get wet).

Grice goes on:

"And it is no doubt also the
case that many people, on seeing someone
put on a tailcoat, would conclude that
the person in question [thinks he] was
about to go to a dance"

-- or an asylum, if he just THOUGHT it.

Grice notes that surely, this does not satisfy us to say that "putting on a tailcoat means that one is about to go to a dance".

----

Grice doubts it means "anything at all".

----

A more irritating example by Stevenson is when he wants to go 'pragmatic' (the term had JUST been coined by his colleague at Chicago, Morris) and apply this to



"He said, 'athlete'"

"He meant, 'tall'!"

--- What about what politically incorrect lingo has as 'dwarf' in the 'Special' Olympics?

Grice goes on to apply "the same difficulty" "really" (WoW:216) with Stevenson's other example then.

The sad of this is that Stevenson recognised difficulty in the SECOND case but failed to even grasp it in the first.

Grice's example is

i. Jones is tall.

[actually, he is -- Roger Bishop Jones].

versus:

ii. Jones is an athlete.

[He is, too -- Roger Bishop Jones].

So we have

Utterance:

"Jones is an athlete"

Implicature (?): "Jones must surely be reasonably tall".

-----

"Has 'tallness' a reason?"

---

Surely we do NOT want to say, to use Grice's exact wording, that it is

"part of [the meaning of -- what is meant by]"

'Jones is an athlete'

or

"Jones is athletic" if you must -- Jones will re-analyse this as "Jones IZZ athletic" as "Jones HAZZ athletic" (vide his pdf where he credits me as he decodes Code].

---

Why?

Well, because as Stevenson, who played for Harvard:

"athletes" -- especially in Harvard -- "can be nontall."

Not not (simplifiable?) say, 'short'.

---- (Ironically, Stevenson's book was published by Yale University Press, and we know that most Yaleites ARE nonnontall -- I have a sympathy for their Corinthian Yacht Club which I got to know well).

-----

Anyway,

But if 'c' -- the mode of correlation is merely 'associative' -- we should BE INCLINED to go the whole hog.

Grice writes:

"To tell someone that Jones is an athlete
would tend to make [utterer's addressee] [if
both are ignorant [read: bigots, idiots,
etc.] believe that Jones is tall."

----

We need to want 'to avoid saying' such idiocy.

Stevenson fails miserably, Grice notes,
when
he "resorts to invoking lingusitic rules"!

----

A sort of pseudo-meaning postulate.

"A" for athlete
"T" for tall

(x) Ax --> - Tx

cfr. Carnap on 'Some swans are black'.

----

In Stevenson's case, it is, granted, not a rule-rule, obligatory rule, but a "permissive" (cfr. 'permissive society') rule,

"Athletes may be nontall".

In symbols

- ((x) Ax --> Tx))

---

This Grice finds pretentious and jargonistic in the worst "Yale University Press" sort of way.

"This [invocation by Stevenson of a rule or postulate]
amounts to saying that we ARE NOT prohibited
by rule from speaking of 'nontall athletes'"

as we ARE prohibited by rule from speaking of a 'married bachelor', or a 'young adult' ("My neighbour's three-year old child is an adult" -- as Grice notes, if he is an 'adult' it (Grice uses 'it' for Child) must be at least consenting age, 16, which is then, by definition, not 'young', or at least not a baby).

---

(This begs the question as to what has age of consent to do with understanding Russell's theory of Types -- "My neighbour's three-year-old child understands Russell's theory of Types" -- Grice's twin example).

Grice goes on:

"But why are we not prohibited
to say 'nontall athlete'?"

----

"Not because, I expect, it is bad grammar"

Actually, it iS bad grammar for Carnap.

"Not because, I expect, it is impolite"

Yes, it is a semantic offense. And all offenses are impolite.

Recall that this "Meaning" is something Grice READ at the Oxford Philosophical Society in 1948. He never MEANT to publish it. Strawson feigned his signature and sent it to "Philosophical Review" -- and when I say "feigned his signature" I mean "Grice's signature" for surely it would have been idiotic (if less wicked) of Sir Peter to feign his OWN signature.

On top of that Sir Peter (as he then wasn't) didn't even care to TYPE the illegible manuscript by his tutor. He just handed it to Lady Ann (nee Martin, as she then wasn't -- not a lady, but yes Martin) (Of course she 'was' a lady) who TYPED it.

"The Philosophical Review" being an American thing would just ignore illegibile things from across the waves. Especially from one "H. P. Grice" that nobody had heard about? Not quite: He had just published 'with P. F. Strawson', "In defense of a dogma" (Philosophical Review, 1956) so I submit the faked letter went,

"Dear Sirs,
I am hereby enclosing a copy of my "Meaning"
for publication if you should care (to publish).
My name may ring a bell (or two) to you
because with P. F. Strawson I authored
"In defense of a dogma" which you were, albeit
it was an offensive attack of who you possibly
regard as the biggest American philosopher
-- quite short by our standards if partly
atheletic --, that is, Quine."
"Yours, etc. -- H. P. Grice, Fellow of St. John's,
the University of Oxford, Oxford OX1".

----

Grice goes on --. So it's not 'bad grammar' (really) or oxymoronic, or impolite.

"The other Jones is a nontall athlete".

-----

"Presumably," Grice writes, "we are allowed to
say 'nontall athlete' on the strenght of
it not being meaningless."

which then renders the thing ciruclar. Q. E. D.