Grice's "Analogues": The price of the Big Mac

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

--- SOMETIMES Grice writes, confusedly, i.e it does confuse us, about 'analogues'.

For example, he provides analogues for the four conversational categories. Surely they are not JUST conversational, if we can find analogues for the four of them ('qualitas', 'quantitas', 'relatio', and 'modus') in the realm of 'action' in general:

For qualitas. If I'm assisting someone in the kitchen, and he asks for a spoon, I will not pass a 'spurious' spoon, as I think Grice calls it.

For quantitas. If I'm assisting someone mending a car, and he asks for three nails (I know very little about cars, and ignore if it -- the car -- includes nails, but I think Grice's example is that we are supposed to pass 'three and only 'three'' nails, rather than two or four.

For relatio. If I am putting animals in cages, and fish bowls, and assisting someone in this, I am supposed to throw in the fish bowls 'fishes', only -- for a fish relates to a fish, rather than, say, a lion (who would drown, etc.). This is my adaptation of the Grice example which I should double check.

For modus. Here I'll quote Kramer, since this was the point of this blog post:

Kramer writes in "McCafferty":

"What is briefer than pointing to one's bandaged leg? Indeed, saying "I have an injured leg" violates "Be brief" if U can point and A can see. But maybe I'm missing something."

You are not. Plus 'missing', as in Chile, should best be restricted to people (as in Jack Lemmon's film, "Missing"). But no, you are not missing anything (I don't think).

----

But Kramer is combining the 'non-conversational analogue' ("I display a bandaged leg") with the substituted 'conversational' alternate ("Sorry, but my leg is injured" -- as a reply to "I expect you'll be joining us in the squash tournement tonight").

In strict adherence to Grice's principles, what we would need here is a nonconversational analogue of TWO 'nonconversational' behavioural patterns that may signify the same:

"What is briefer than pointing to one's bandaged leg? Indeed, saying "I have an injured leg" violates "Be brief" if U can point and A can see. But maybe I'm missing something."

"Be brief" indeed Grice has under 'Modus'. The nonconversational analogue then for Modus would be, 'be elongated -- not'. I suppose I should provide the 'analogues' that Grice does give:

-----

For Modus:

I'll leave that for the end and proceed in Aristotle's order:

Quantitas (almost the first, for Aristotle):

Grice: "If you are assisting me to mend a car, I expect your contribution to be neither more nor less [good] than is required [for the purpose of mending an automobile]. If, for example, at a particular stage I need four screws, I expect you to hand me four, rather than two or six."

As it happens, I'm pretty clumsy at handing screws, and six WILL fall from my hand or from the car-mender. I always pass one screw at a time.

-----

Qualitas (the first for Aristotle, the second for Grice):

Grice: "I expect your contribution to be genuine and not spurious. If I need sugar [rather than 'a sweetener, such as 'Equal''] as an ingredient in a cake [or 'butter' instead of 'margerine'] you are assisting me to make, I do not expect you[indeed, I expect you NOT] to hand me salt. If I need a spoon, I do not expect a trick ['spoon'] made of rubber."

Grice, oddly, does not have 'spoon' (the second occurrence) in scare quotes, but I would argue that a trick thingy made of rubber to 'simulate' a real spoon is NOT a spoon. Again, I like a practical joke, and I recall that when I first visited Disneyland in Los Angeles, I endeared myself to my local friends by bringing them all sorts of trick objects -- a plastic 'vomit', I recall -- which I purchased there.

-----

Relatio

Grice: "I expect a partner's contribution to be appropriate to the immediate needs at each stage of the transaction."

I.e. he is restricting 'be relevant', appropriately, 'relevant to the topic at hand'.

He goes on: "If I am mixing [together] ingredients for a cake, I do not expect to be handed a good book,"

Unless the implicature is that it's a savoury one?

"or, even, an oven cloth (even though this MIGHT be an appropriate contribution at a later stage)"

If volunteered. On principle, I never hand an oven cloth unless I am asked one.

-----

Finally, the important one, "Modus"

Modus.

Grice: (This to analogue with Kramer's example above):

"I expect a partner's contribution to make it -- i.e. the weather? -- clear what contribution he is making and to execute his performance with resonable dispatch".

-------

"Are you playing squash tonight?"
B displays his bandaged leg.

The problem here is that the move by A is conversational. So we could think of a non-conversational 'invite':

I can, for example, make a gesture of a man 'jogging', thereby implying the question, "Are we jogging tonight?". He (my addressee) then displays his bandaged leg.

Kramer:

"What is briefer than pointing to one's bandaged leg? Indeed, saying "I have an injured leg" violates "Be brief" if U can point and A can see. But maybe I'm missing something."

So, here we have the reverse:

I make the gesture, 'are we jogging tonight?'
He replies verbally, my addressee: "I have an injured leg".

That violates, indeed, and what it violates is that, a nonverbal move is best responded with a nonverbal move, not a verbal one. But here it's the reverse:

"Are we playing squash tonight"
"You might -- but I'm not. Look" (Displays bandaged leg).

In that case, it IS appropriate. But a totally silent move I would regard as, perhaps, 'too brief' a contribution.

--- But again, let's recall Grice's point here:

He is trying to elucidate the REASON why U (or 'u' -- I'm going to start using lower-case u for utterer, and restricting U with upper-case for the Platonic Ideal of an Utterer -- if you find her) should think that a (again I restrict "A" for 'the ideal of an addressee') should respond as u wants a to respond.

He has two examples. The first he already provided a reference for in his earlier 1948 'Meaning'. In 'Meaning' he writes:

"Herod presents Salome with the head of St. John the Baptist on a charger".

Surely, Grice writes (WoW: 218), we are at odds.

For 'we SEEM to have a case which satisfies the conditions so far given for meaningNN. After all':

i. Herod did intend to make Salome believe that St. John the Baptist is dead.
ii. No doubt, Herod intended thus to recognise that he intended her to believe that St. John the Baptist is dead.

Yet.

not iii. "I certaintly do not think" Grice complains, "That we should want to say that we have here a case of meaningNN".

Why?

Well, because Salome will come to believe that St. John the Baptist is dead by just looking at his 'separated' head; not because she will recognise any intention in his wicked uncle.

----

Another example by Grice is appropriately more complicated and convoluted:

"I leave the china my daughter has broken lying around for my wife to see".

This would agree with Kramer's case of 'absence' or 'abstention from doing'. A silence, as it were, in the realm of analogue non-conversational action. But surely Grice's wife will come to believe that the china has been broken regardless, not by recognising her husband's intention to leave the mess untouched, or something.

A third example is even more convoluted:

"Feeling faint, a child lets its mother see how pale it is, hoping that she may draw her own conclusions and help".

Again, the mother, if a real mother, will draw the right 'inference'. And in any case, a child cannot really judge 'how pale it is' -- Children are never concerned about being pale. And how can SHE help?

-----

Grice is explicit here as to why he feels uncomfortable with those cases which do not qualify as having an utterer 'meaning' anything:

"What we ant to find is the difference between deliberately and openly letting someone know" (eg. that one's leg is injured), "and 'telling'". Or between "getting someone to think" and telling.

In the case of someone displaying a bandaged leg one is at most 'openly' letting someone know' that one's leg is bandaged -- but one cannot SHOW that one's leg is injured (to a non-specialist) and less so that it (the leg) is bad.

----

Here Grice appeals to technology. In the days of painting, people had to paint, as the name indicates. Nowadays we can take "photos".

So suppose I want to communicate to someone that this someone's wife is cheating him (with another man, rather than, at brigde). I have two ways open to me:

I can, to follow Grice's advice, "draw a picture of the woman displaying UNDUE familiarity with Smith".

Or else I may just photograph her ditto.

The difference? Only the drawing (the piece of art) counts as meaning -- not the photograph. I agree. I cannot see how a photographer can pass for an artist like that (I do not even count Mablethorpe's pics as art -- in fact I find them obscene).

Grice comments:

"I find that I want to deny that in the case of the mere photograph (or my showing the photograph to my friend, rather) I mean anything at all."

"On the other hand, I want to assert that in the case of the picture (or my drawing a picture and showing it to my friend) I do mean something: to wit: that my friend's woman is cheating on him."

Perhaps here the problem is that a friend SHOULD NOT be doing that sort of thing. (In some cases, ignorance is bliss, and friends should know about it).

Grice continues:

"What is the difference between" a piece of art (as a drawing is) and "a mere photograph"?

Grice answers:

"Surely the difference is that in the case of the photograph, my friends' recognition of my intention to make him believe that his wife is cheating on him is (more or less) irrelevant to the production of this effect by the photograph itself."

----

This depends on Grice's preconception about realistic drawing. I can be pretty realistic in drawing. Apparently, Grice isn't. For he writes:

"It will make [all] the difference [when it comes to the picture, rather than the photograph] to the EFFECT of the picture on my friend WHETHER OR NOT he takes me to be intending to inform him (make him believe) that his wife is cheating on him with Smith".

At this point, some mark in the face or other of Smith seems to be required for my friend to 'read' onto the picture that the man in the drawing is Smith. I suppose I could label the figures: "your wife", "Smith" -- but by the same token (almost) I guess I might just as well verbalise the feeling.

Grice continues:

"For my friend may be think otherwise [or nothing at all] if he thinks I'm just doodling or trying to produce a work of art".

---- This possibly brings us back to Mona Lisa. For the Mona Lisa is, allegedly, a work of art. And a work of art is unrepeatable. So surely the addressee cannot rely on a previous 'pattern of behaviour'.

Kramer:

"What is briefer than pointing to one's bandaged leg? Indeed, saying "I have an injured leg" violates "Be brief" if U can point and A can see. But maybe I'm missing something."

So, while briefer, it is also more controversial. Because, in virtue of the conventional meaning of "I have an injured leg", one cannot really defeat that by way of cancellation:

"I have an injured leg, but perhaps I don't (have an injured leg)".

But with a mere gesture -- Kramer's 'pointing to one's bandaged leg' --, the situation is different:

A: Are we playing squash tonight?
B points to his bandaged leg.
A: You haven't answered my question.

In fact, my mother used to tell me repeatedly, "Have the mice eaten your tongue?". This in the absence of a signal as to what I may mean, on occasion.

---

So, these are complications.

Plus, there is the problem that when it comes to 'showing' rather than 'telling', the implicature/explicature distinction becomes especially otiose and we don't want that.

For 'mean' Grice parallels with 'imply' and he has 'implicate' as a reformulation on 'imply'. But 'imply' has this suggestion (or connotation) that the thing is pretty indirect. And there is nothing 'indirect' about pointing to one's bandaged leg.

Here we have Kramer's complication. He writes that it's easy enough to ascertain (I think it's the verb he uses) the boundary between the implicit and the explicit. But, he adds, 'what is the limit of the implicit?' -- I agree with the pertinence of the question.

I would provide an intentionalist answer alla Grice, with which Kramer obviously agrees. So it's not like he ignores this: he is pointing to the validity of our criteria for applying this constraint here.

The intentionalist reply goes: If it is part of U's intention to inform A that he has a bad leg, THEN, that is what he means. Otherwise, it's not.

To use the other example by Kramer:

"You need to screw this".

If the intention is that a (the particular addresee) will come to believe that, since the store is closed -- it's a holiday, say -- THEN, and only then, can u be counted as having meant THAT a will be screwed, because, since the store is closed, and he hasn't got a screwer, he will not be able to remedy the need (to screw that).

-----

The problem here is that there MAY be (wrongly) an indefinite (indeed infinite) chain of inferences that we never intend our partner (or addressee) to draw. So these are NOT part of what we mean (or imply -- which at this stage, mean the same thing -- we don't care for 'say' -- we are not (just) the 'chattering classes'.

Grice discusses this early in "Meaning" -- or rather, later, in that early "Meaning". He is dicussing the 'effect' intended by the u on a:

"I think it follows from what I have said [indeed, written. JLS] about the connection between meaningNN and recognition of intention that (insofar as I am right) ONLY WHAT I may call the primary intention of an u is relevant to the meaningNN of x. For, if I utter x intendign (with the aid of the recognition of this intention) to induce and effect [call it r (for response)], and intend this r1 to lead to a further effect, r2, then, insofar as the occurrence of r2 is thought to be dependent SOLELY on r1, I can NOT regard r2 to be in the least dependent on recognition of my intention to induce r1."

It's good that Grice illustrates at this point. It also allows to cut the passage not to infringe copyright:

"That is, if (say) I intend to get a man to do something
by giving him some information,"

--- eg. that my leg is bandaged.

"it can NOT be regarded as relevant to the
meaningNN of my utterance to describe what
I intend him to do."

Like money, Grice elswhere says, the problem with info is that you never know that use a will make of it.

Or not.

"Information, like money, is often given",

Grice judiciously reflects,

-- to one's son, I would add.

"without the giver's".

i.e. the father's

"knowing to just WHAT use [if a use at all]
the recipient [perhaps a better label
than 'addressee' -- antonym, transmitter]
will want to put it."

Spend it?

It is often said that the way to judge the economy of a country (or, literally, nation) is to check the price of a big Mac. Grice also said, that "hamburgers, like truth" one should not bite more than one can chew" -- hence the subtitle to this: the price of a big mac (clumsily connecting 'money', price, and the hamburger that counts).

--

"Why are you displaying your bandaged leg?"

"I thought you would draw the inference that my leg is bad".

"So?"

"Well, I thought you would also draw from that the further inference or implicatum that I won't be able to join you in the game of squash tonight"

"So?"

"I thought you were inviting me, and that you cared?"

"I was being ironic. You read too much between the words -- i.e. between my words, to be more explicit."

"You mean I read too little: to be ironic is to read MORE between your silly words than you cared to even write between them".

Etc.