In The (Quessertive) Mood

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

THIS IN REPLY TO JONES'S post, this blog ("Declarative, ..."). Unable to paste this under his thread, I pasted it here. Thanks.

I regret to report that neither 'declarative', nor 'indicative',
nor 'descriptive' 'fit the bill'. They may foot the bill, but that's neither here nor there (It is rude to allow a declaration, for example, to foot your bill).

For one, a declaration doesn't (really) have a foot, so how can it foot the bill:

Vide:

wordwizard.com - View topic - fit the bill / fill the bill
The exact details of its etymology differ, .... “fit the bill” could be a misheard marriage of “fill the bill" and “foot the bill”. ...
www.wordwizard.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21169 - Similar

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"Indicative" Grice does use (WoW:iii, second page, for example) when he wants to say something "about the indicative mood". This was 1967. By 1977 he had met Moravsevik at Stanford (when delivering the Kant Lectures). Grice had been using 'indicative mood' in many unpublications (notably in "Desirability, Probabability, and Mood Operators" -- 1973, his talk in Texas).

But Moravsik noted to Grice that what he (Grice) was talking about when he used (with a slightly straight face) when he said "indicative mood" "does not resemble in the least what less creative linguists mean by that".

Grice, rather than hurt, was happy that, at long last, he could pay his little vengeance to 'linguists' who had murdered his work (as when they say that I murder Bach when I syncopate him on my piano -- I like 'ragged Bach'). (But (some) linguists are rude, and they know it -- they should be SUED, some of them).

----

So, since Grice recognised (in his third book to date, "Aspects of Reason", 2001) that his "mode" has nothing to do with 'mood', it is otiose to focus to strictly on 'indicative' (because as Grice uses it, it is a mode, not a mood).

--- In fact, I was so irritated by Moravsik (he also, like Chapman, thinks that linguists should be interested in what philosophers say, and vice versa -- but that is hardly the case) that I searched in the OED. And of course, 'mood' is a MISNOMER. It is a 'low cant word', like "fun". The correct English expression is Grice's "mode" -- 'mood', as in 'moody', is an Anglo-Saxon pretty low expression, totally uncognate with anything having the minimal relic of Graeco-Roman respectability, whereas 'mode' CANNOT but be the right choice by Grice.

----

Grice refers to things as 'central speech acts'. (This in WoW:6, second or third page). AND THIS is Grice's serious usage to understand what Jones is after.

For Grice wants to say (also in Retrospective Epilogue, written when diagnosed with emphysema, and knowing he would die (soon), in 1987 -- he died in 1988) that some things are 'central' and others are peripheric:

'adding' for example, is peripheric:

"He added that Butler was a lesbian".

Adding is always superfluous. But 'asserting' is NOT. So I think Jones should perhaps stick with 'assertoric', 'assertion' or, if he must, as he SHOULD 'must', the double sign in Frege, that Grice uses, for 'assertion': the turnstile. This comprises a judgement stroke, and a content stroke.

Since Jones wants to generalise to other 'modes', I regret that Grice was UNABLE (but we never know) to provide an equivalently complex sign for NON-assertoric. He otiosely used "!" for anything non-assertoric. Since he is SERIOUSLY concerned with the parallelisms, one should be able to provide a two-stroke symbol for 'non-assertion'. So I propose

!-

versus

/-

The latter is the common Fregean sign. The former, !-, looks like the latter. The 'content' stroke is the SAME one. But ! is NOT a judgement stroke, but a WILLING stroke.

For one does NOT 'judge', "Open the door!" (or "Close it!" -- for that matter). One WILLS it.

Grice wants, of course, to be able (and he IS) to generalise here. For he wants to use 'ACCEPT' as the verb to "do general duty" (his favourite sobriquet) for both 'judge' and 'will'.

If I will that I want cream in my coffee, I am accepting that I want cream in my coffee. Similarly, if I find the coffee is wishy washy, I judge that it is wishy washy, because I BELIEVE it is wishy-washy.

To accept, then, covers both modalities. For assertoric utterances, it is the judgement stroke of Frege. For non-assertoric uttearances, it is the willing stroke.

Then there's questions. Here Grice, expectedly, uses:

"?"

which again, does not discriminate between the 'judgement' or 'willing' stroke and the 'content' stroke, so I propose

?-

to remedy that.

This gives us

/- p (I accept/judge/believe that p) --- the range of cases Jones is looking for, and for which he wants his vague 'declarations,' 'indications', and 'descriptions' to foot the bill

!- p (for "I accept, WILL that p)

and

?- p (for I will that you will answer my question).

Unbeknownst, apparently, of Ross -- Grandy irritated friendlily Grice. Grice (WoW:MR) calls Grandy a 'mischiveous' one. For Grandy added to the repertoire of Griceanisms yet another one:

?- /- p

-- this combines TWO modes.

The bi-modal, or tri-modal, etc., combo, is or should be more frequent than it is. Horn quotes from Newsweek in "A natural history of negation":

"With the overtness of sex today, who needs a driveway any more?"

Cfr.:

"Sex is so open these days that who needs a driveway anymore?"

I find that difficult (but not impossible) to parse.

---

But Grandy's addition runs along other lines (never mind Ross, who gave Horn the idea for the title of Horn's book, "A natural history of negation" -- title of talk given by that genial of men, Ross, in MIT).

For Grandy's lines run along Myro's. Myro noticed, upon attending most of Grice's seminars in Berkeley, that he felt like introducing what he called "a Grice rule": "If what Grice says strikes you initially as true, it is most likely false in the end, and vice versa" (He applied this to Grice's exposition of 'identity' as 'relative').

Similarly, Grandy. (As reported by Grice, WoW:MR). For Grandy found that the best way to 'formalise' what Grice was trying to say, here and there, was NOT via the use of the Frege assertion sign.

Yet, he was not indulging in the 'interrogatory' mode, either.

So, he wasn't asserting, but he wasn't interrogating. Obliterating the fact that Grice was displaying his rational WILL that something be thus, Grandy proposed:

?-, /- p

to mark what Grice was wont of uttering: a quessertion.

Grice liked the suggestion, and would refer to this or that comment by him as being 'highly quessertive in nature'. In an early paper of mine (which I presented to E. A. Rabossi for my PhD dissertation, and which I inted to pdf at some time) I used, "Quessertion", and I would VERY often found myself -- in other documents -- wishing to use, and in fact using, that 'illocutionary force indication device' as Grice calls it -- 'ifid' for short. Etc.