Implicature as a Concerted Enterprise

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

"Implicature is a concerted enterprise. A true monologue is thus free of it." (apres Grice, "Retrospective Epilogue").

Kramer:

"I came across this interesting paper by Kepa Korta. I wonder what you think of it. It helped me to put some of the jargon you use into context."

The site being:

http://www.sc.ehu.es/ylwkocak/papers/VSZ.report.pdf

I think the author is Basque. I love the Cantabrian coast, if that's what it's called. The Bay of Biscay, etc. Oddly, my favourite Argentine film star, Graziella Borges, who is currently having a major local hit with her new film, "Siblings", was awarded there often (good awards).

It irritates me slightly that I'm so ignorant that I can figure out if "Kepa" is a female or male name. "Korta" I assume is like "Corta", only different. The Basque can be a very difficult language (they say), if you are not one of the them (one of the Basques, that is). But that occurs with any language, notably "Na'vi".

----

So, Kepa Korta says a few things. And implicates the rest.

"I came across this interesting paper by Kepa Korta. I wonder what you think of it. It helped me to put some of the jargon you use into context."

Yes, it's full of lovely jargon. It has a slight Basque accent to it, which adds to the excentricity of the whole thing.

Some running comments, then.

It's good Kepa Korta gets personalised in the reference assignment of

"I haven't had breakfast for years",

which allowed me to figure out she is female alright.

(This incidentally is a bit of trick -- Grice says 'he' refers to a 'male person (or animal)' in "He is in the grip of a vice", or "He is a very intelligent Prime Minister". I fail to see how a non-human animal can be a Prime Minister, though.

----

Kramer was wondering about implicatures as dependent on specific languages. I think that the gender distinctions are pretty arbitrary in English. Why should 'she' refer to a female animal (I omit the feature 'human' as anthropomorphic)?

There are various problems here.

Apparenty, in Na'vi, which one would have hoped signified an advancement over English, they are just as biased: it's she, and he, and it.

Oddly, Grice calls a child an 'it' (Grice, "Meaning"). "A child, feeling faint, allows its mother to know it".

I suppose 'child' WAS neuter in Old English (cfr. Das Kinder, in German). But they come in basically two varieties: 'he' or 'she'. Is different with cats. My mother refuses to call a cat, even if displaying his testicles to her, as her current pet, a 'he'. Cats are 'she'. Dogs, similarly, are 'he', even if displaying mammary glands and stuff. That's my mother I suppose.

Plus, clothes can be deceptive here:

"He is in a grip of a vice".

To what extent have I VERIFIED that the chromosomic structure is indeed XY? (For THAT is the nucleus, here). Very few people use 'he' and 'she' in ways that correlate, in Ramsey observational-theoretical correlation or correspondence 'rules', with what the utterer KNOWS about the chromosome genome of the 'person' involved. Most use 'he' to mean "looks like a male" and 'she' for 'does not'.

In homosexual circles, it is common to refer to males by feminine pronouns ("Elton John, she is an opera quean"). The idea of course is metaphorical. This is NOT the type of transcategorial metaphor that Grice is interested ("You're the cream in my coffee") nor the type of truism that passes for a pure metaphor ("No male is an island"). It is, rather, loose talk.

I suppose one can refer to a female (or male) entity by 'it' without necessarily implying that he or she has been 'neutered'.

"Who is it?" -- we ask.

We are NOT surprised that 'it' happened to be a lady (or a gentleman). In fact, it seems that the 'implicature' (or entaiment as I prefer) of "Who is it?" is that the utterer believes the 'it' is NOT an it. Surely we are not making questions to 'its', like that.

----

But back to Korta:

---

I enjoyed the footnote in Korta's 1997 paper (as she claims she wrote it then) to Bach's 'curly' and square brackets. Of course I won't comply -- but it's a nice (cfr. etymology of 'nice' and phrases like 'a fine, nice distinction) one. Or not.

Bach uses one sort of bracket to mean 'expansion' and another to mean 'saturation'. This is a polemic with Recanati, but Recanati expresses best in French, not in Bach!

-----

Plus, Grice uses 'square brackets' to mean something different: implicated, only.

As in

[ExKx] & -Bx

The king of France is not bald.

The fact that Grice square-brackets, "There is a king of France" is meant to allow for the Strawson-sort of discrepancies between the traditional square of opposition and the rest (of it).

----

Bach, who is onto other things -- cfr. "The flowers of Bach", pronounced 'batch', in this case -- could care less. Or not.

---

But back to Korta. I like her. Of course she could have expanded more on the philosophical criteria of things.

Also, a serious study of these things NEEDS, seriously, to consider S. R. Bayne -- who belongs in the Grice Club -- and his attempt to upload Grice's "Causal Theory of Perception" -- Section II -- omitted by Grice in the reprint.

All the ideas that Korta is interested in were old vintage by Grice's standards. By 1967, Grice wanted to move on.

But in 1961, when he is introducing 'implicatum' against major figures of the then sort of heyday of OLP (ordinary language philosophy) he was being more serious with himself.

In 1961 he considers four examples:

"I haven't stopped beating my wife"

(PRESUPPOSITION)

"My wife is either in the kitchen or in the garden"

(Conversational Implicature)

"He has beautiful handwriting"

(Conversational Implicature, particularised).

"She was poor, but she was honest"

(Conventional implicature).

Grice is not JUST Jargon. In fact, he does not use JUST those labels THEN and he could not care less about what labels you use. But he is strict about 'tests' or criteria:

Nondetachability features horribly (have you heard an ugly neologism?) there, and so does 'calculability', 'indeterminacy' and 'cancellability'.

And the tests are usually failed (Cfr. Zwicky, "Ambiguity tests and how to fail them").

Intuitions are important, but call me biased if I respect a "philosopher" of good pedigree (as Grice is) for his intuitions, which I follow as a historian of Oxford philosophy at her best.

-----

Consider Joshi et al, "Elements of Discourse Understanding". They propose:

"My testicle itches".

Apparently, the implicature, in English, is that the utterer (a male, we assume) is provided with only one testicle. Of course Korta's intuitions, at this stage, are neither here nor there (cfr. "My tit itches", "My nipple itches").

These are UNserious matters. But a linguist will mix intuitions like that.

Intuitions are a serious issue. But PHILOSOPHERS can use 'intuitions': Linguists self-advertise as 'empirical' scientists so their appeal to intuitions is UNwelcome. (A good reason why I never studied linguistics seriously, and it doesn't show!).

I mean, linguists are supposed to provide distinctive features for phonological things, and things. Not to discuss with a philosopher if this makes sense or doesn't. Many linguists have NOT studied the philosophical implications of this or that point.

Cfr. the implications of truth-value gaps. For a linguist, it's just like a Carnapian 'game': we decide truth-value gaps are okay, we decide they are not. But a Gricean would rather DIE than accept a truth-value gap!

--- So intuitions SAVE us.

But Grice is tolerant (of other people's stupid intuitions). He, as a tutor, would often have to endure other people's stupid intuitions. He writes:

He is talking to the Wellesey girls, so bear with his flirting:

He writes:

"You may regard me, when I engage in a piece
of philosophical analysis as primarily
concerned to provide an analysis of MY USE
of an expression".

(WoW:175).

Cfr. 'say', 'imply'. "My favoured use of 'say'", "in this artificial use I make of the term 'utter'", "in my favoured reading of 'mean' to apply to utterer's timeless occasion-meaning", etc. "in a special use of 'sense' I reject", "in this use of 'reasonable' that contasts with 'rational'", and so on and so forth.

For each of the items of his vocabulary, he is expected to be reasonably clear as to what he means (Cfr. Heidegger -- who NEVER is).

Grice continues:

"To reach a conceptual analysis of one's
own use of an expression"

-- e.g. 'implicature'

"is often extremely difficult"

--- the fact that you invented it, oddly, does not necessarily help. But Sidonius, when he used 'implicatura' was NOT playing the Oxonian philosopher.

Grice continues:

"If I think I HAVE reached a satisfactory
conceptual analysis of my own use"

--- e.g. of 'nondetachability'

"I do not then GO ON to conduct a POLL to see
if this analysis fits other people's use
of the expression".

I.e. he could care less if a native French speaker (such as Recanati) uses 'dire' in ways that do not match Grice's own use of 'say'. The French, for example, do not buy 'the language of flowers' as easily as others. They are more 'artificial'. Witness their fashion shows of haute-couture.

Grice goes on:

"For one thing, I assume
(justifiably, I think) that it does
in general fit other people's use"

-- unless you are an over-acheving furrin student ("Recanati") who needs to prove how clever he is, by refuting an Anglo philosopher -- and takes issue of the simplest pieces of vocabulary, such as 'say' (French "dire").

----

Grice goes on:

For the exprssions with which (as A PHILOSOPHER)
I am NORMALLY concerned are pretty commonly
used ones"

--- Unlike Heidegger. Nobody before him and few after him used, for example, to this day, 'nichten' as a verb ("Das Nichts selbst nichtet" -- Nothing noths itself).

Grice goes on:

"And, if a particular expression"

--- say "ought" as used by R. M. Hare, a member of Grice's playgroup --

"was given by some of the people with
whom I talk in my daily life a substantially
different USE from the ones which I gave to it,
then I should almost certainly have discovered
this: one does discover people's linguistic
idiosyncrasies".

Or idiocies, as I prefer.

---- Take Bach's impliciture -- a total flout of Occam's razor, modified or not! But if it makes him (Bach) happy, it's not like he is incurring in something illegal.

----

Grice goes on:

"But more important, even if my
assumption that what goes on for
others is MISTAKEN, I don't care"

"MY philosophical puzzles"

-- unlike the mock ones by, say, a Recanati, and a Bach (I'm not referring to them, only to any of the people who share the surname with them ---

"have arisen in connection with MY use
of an expression. My conceptual analysis,
therefore, will be of value TO ME"

-- never mind others -- such as Korta, Recanati, Bach -- They should have their own clubs!

---

Grice goes on:

"(or to any others who may find that their
use of this or that expression coincides
essentially with mine)."

-- i.e. what I call a "Gricean".

(A post-Gricean thinks that Griceanisms are passee, and a neo-Gricean shares this. A paleo-Gricean thinks that Griceanisms are too avant-garde, so go figure).

Grice goes on:

"The analyses I propose may ALSO
be of value to those whose use of
this or that expression"

-- e.g. 'say', 'imply', 'conversation', etc.

"is different, THOUGH different only in
some MINOR respect, from mine."

"But if this is NOT so",

provided you pay him.

"then we have a different use of
an expression".

"And this has to be dealt with
SEPARATELY."

In separate rooms, preferably.

"It has to be subjected to a
separate conceptual analysis"

-- if you find the grant. But trust that, cruel as the world is, most will find grants to rebuff Grice than to elucidate the idiosyncracies of a Bach! (or a Korta).

Grice goes on:

"This we can do, if the need
arises"

and fresh money found.

"(since cooperation in conceptual
analysis does NOT demand identity
as regards the use of the
analysed expressions)."

But why is it that you read Recanati or Bach, or (less so), Korta (who is more respectful, as she should, of a grand name such as Grice), and you detect that condescending tone. As if they were superior when they are not? (We are all created equal, but there's only ONE H. P. Grice!).

Grice goes on:

"I can, with you,"

if you pay me -- or if the university pays me to endure you

"attempt the conceptual analysis
of YOUR [silly] use of an [silly, or otiose] expression,"

--- cfr. 'impliciture'.

"even if your use is different from mine".

If that's not tolerance -- what is?

"So conceptual analysis is NOT a sociological" (and I add, empirical or linguistic) inquiry: the analyst is NOT interested in percentages". It is a philosophical endeavour.

Possibly Grice's target is Frege, but he won't say it.

M. Wrigley wrote his PhD at Berkeley on Frege. He knows a lot about Frege. Unfortunately, his tutor at Berkeley, it was assigned for him, was Grice. On their first meeting, the conversation went:

WRIGLEY. I intend to focus mainly on the arguments
put forward by Dummett in "Frege: philosophy of language"" (The Duckwroth undigestible book).

GRICE. Oh, I haven't read that one. And I hope I won't.

----

Austin is also very dismissive of Frege, if less so. After all the man spent weekends translating Frege.

In "How to do things with Words", Austin writes to the effect:

"People make a lot of fuss about 'meaning'. In what follows I will just adopt Frege's manoeuvre and refer to meaning as encompassing 'sense' and 'reference': no more, no less".

Austin woulld go into more detail when he would distinguish between the phonic and the phatic and the rhemic and the illocution and the perlocution, but his simplicities irritated Grice.

So, Grice's programme can be seen as APPLIED philosophy of language. He is NOT interested in language as a topic (He is NOT a linguist). He is only concerned with the jargon used by philosophers. With time, he became more and more self-conscious about this, and he would go back to his earlier selves to check if he had not been too authoritative about a claim about this or that. So he felt he was needing to explicate (rather than implicate) what he meant. By 'use', 'meaning', 'expression', 'entailment', 'implication', 'suggestion', 'belief', 'ought' -- never mind old-time philosophical pieces of vocabulary like "seem" or "may".

----

So, he submitted his views about constraints on what we say. What is said is the dictum of Hare's dissertation at Oxford in the 1940s. Hare was enough of a snob to want to coin the proper Hellenism and would use 'phrastic' for the former 'dictum', and 'neustic' for the dictor (He will later introduce the tropic -- for sign of mode -- and clistic -- for sign of completion). We see here a philosopher of exactly Grice's generation -- slightly his junior as it happened, but both born in the 1910s -- struggling with his own puzzles.

When Grice wrote his 'Valedictory Essay' he was beyond all jargon. And so he went back to 'dictive' and 'dictum' and 'dictor'. He wanted to focus on the essence -- philosophical essence -- of this or that claim.

He entitled the thing, Way of Words (echoing Locke) to show to what extent a particular phase in English philosophy (his beloved postward Oxford up to the demise of Austin) was obsessed with this (or that). And he had an ear and a brain for the fine-tune which we DON'T perceive (?) in others who, having different backgrounds, lack that type of sensitivity and love of detail for the things that matter.

Since Grice KNEW, he could care less if his readers would (know) and so he would NEVER supply the bibliographical reference. But it's all about Frege, and Ackerman, and Ogden and Richards, and Carnap, and Stevenson, and of course Strawson, and Austin, and Moore, and Malcolm, and Wittgenstein, and Descartes, and Locke, and Hume, and Kant, and Aristotle.

But you read Recanati or Korta or Bach and those names are missing. Instead we have elongated discussions as to whether she (K. Korta) thinks whehter she has committed herself (or not) to the claim that she never had breakfast in her life.

The echo of the dismissal of a certain type of Griceanism in Bach, et al, is recurrent in the work of S. Neale (S. Nail, as I prefer) and Atlas. These authors were closer and are closer to the Gricean spirit (and they often invoke him) -- but often with a pesimistic tone about it ("Grice knew that he was wrong", Neale writes (or words), and ditto Atlas, "Grice couldn't just cope with pragmatic intrusion. He felt he had not the stamina to accept that, like sh*t, implicatures happen -- cfr. Yablo). The lack of respect of some of the current Americanised academia is faboulous (i.e. badly fabulous).

O. T. O. H., philsophers are a selfish lot. It had to be a teacher of English such as darling S. R. Chapman is, who spent hours disclosing out of the closet the stuff that the Trustees of H. P. Grice deposited in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley.

If Bach and Recanati (Bach more appropriately, since he lives across the bay) can't care to seriously have the University of California to do serious editorial work with Grice's stuff, why are they still so ready to keep on criticising him?

--- Grice wrote LOADS about this stuff. Chapman has just unburied the tip of the Gricean iceberg (if I may use that hateful cliche) -- and she spends, understandably, too much time, making Grice accessible to the 'linguist' ("The book will be useful for undergraduates", the blurb reads -- or not).

But while Wittgensteinians have ALL the economic support of the Government of Austria, Grice is left alone, to implicate with his-self. Or not.

Etc.