Moore's Not My Man

--- by J. L. Speranza
------ for the Grice Club.

JONES ("Strand 5", this blog):

"The context of an assertion plays a role in determining the
proposition asserted, and its role in this belongs to
semantics and this encompasses what is entailed by that
proposition (to which only the truth conditions pertain).
There may be significance to the assertion which goes beyond
what may be found in the proposition asserted.
This belongs to pragmatics, and implicature belongs here."

Hear, here. Some 34 points, though.

Just joking!

----

A few points, though.

I never liked Moore's Melodies. Apparently, this Moore is related to some Moore who was related to the ideal of masculinity of J. Langshaw Austin ("Some like an Austrian ingeneer, but Moore's MY man").

Moore used 'entailment'.

Jones uses it, Grice uses it, and I won't!

I think 'implicatio' is enough. This term, 'implicatio' can be used variously. Notably for the horseshoe.

But it can ALSO be used to refer to that Mooreism, the 'entailment'. I recall I tried to play with 'speaker's entailment" as opposed to 'proposition's entailment" but failed. But with 'implication' is does hold water (I seldom use a metaphor but there's a false one for you). For we do say, "utterer's implication" and 'the proposition's implication".

So I submit that we stick with 'implication', unless we won't.

---

In this way:

---- 'semantic' -- so-mis-called ----> 'implicatio'
---- 'pragmatic' -- so-mis-called ---> 'implicatura'

This is the spirit of Jones's and Grice's manoevure, only the would use 'entailment'. Only very RARELY would Grice use 'implication' to mean 'entailment'.

Jones:

"The context of an assertion plays a role in determining the
proposition asserted, and its role in this belongs to
semantics and this encompasses what is entailed by that
proposition (to which only the truth conditions pertain).
There may be significance to the assertion which goes beyond
what may be found in the proposition asserted.
This belongs to pragmatics, and implicature belongs here."

-----

If my mother were reading this: she disbelives in pragmatics and she desbelives in impicature, so I suppose she would find Jones's claim, "impicature belongs in pragmatics" as vacuously true.

--- "or false", she'd hasten to add.

(She LIKES Moore's Melodies).

Anyway, Grice refers to himself ("archival material" in Chapman) as having gone on record as being "no foe" to treat alleged (he uses this) entailments as implicatures.

But when DAVIDSON would do the same, Grice would exclaim:

"No fair!"

For Davidson would see as 'implicature' what Grice saw as 'implication'.

Feyerabend was witness to this:

"I had to bear today", he wrote to his
girlfriend in Muenchen,

"an examination table with Grice and
Davidson. The student were treated to
long tortures on whether 'there is a
rhinoceros in my refrigerator' involved
a quasi-demontrative."

---- ("Letters of Feyerabend" -- thanks to L. M. Tapper for bringing me this idiotic letter to my attention. As if I had no better things to do than read Feyerabend's ramblings to his Hun of a girlfriend).

----

So, Davidson wants to say,

"I intend to go to the concert tonight, if I'm not in jail".

---

"by then".

Grice finds that if the utterer believes that it's only p < .5 the subjective probability that he will be FREE to go to the concert, he shouldn't use 'intend' with a straight face.

"The problem with Davidson's implicature-based approach to 'intention'" Grice said, -- "archival material" -- NOT CITED BY CHAPMAN, but by D. F. Pears in "Motivated Irrationality" -- is that it's

"too social to be true".

For how can an entailment, i.e. an implication, depend on what Jones would have as 'the manner', 'the context', or what have you. These are CENTRAL issues.

It's implicatio, not implicatura.

Perhaps Cicero should have made more use of the formative character of the Latin language (unlike the rather dry Greek declensions) and use 'implicatura' more often (he never used it, in writing) or 'implicatio'.

That would have saved a few victims, notably Witters, if not Moore, in the border wars. Or not.