Not The Way To Go

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


--- I SHOULDN'T OF COURSE ('implicature-triggerer' this, always) be unfair to Daniel Ven Der Veken. He was kind enough to respond to my many inquiries, etc. I love the man, have always done, and always will. I recall one seminar session with Osvaldo Guariglia -- (for my PhD) -- on -- God knows what. Naishat was applying for a PhD degree too and beyond all expectations to the contrary, he was asked to 'present' as you ask someone in an American secondary school. Naishatt was assigned from Searle/Vanderveken, "Foundations of Illocutionary Logic". Typically, Guariglia disbanded the project on poor Francesco's attempt at an introduction, "I will present", Francesco had said, "Searle's and Vanderveken's theory of illocutionary logic". "Wrong --" said Guariglia. (HE had assigned the topic -- this was the 'formal-phase' of Guariglia. "Searle's". For he had met with Searle in Buenos Aires (when I presented my "I haven't been robbed yet" paper) "And Searle told me he didn't write the book -- it was wholly Van Der Veken's idea". Of course Guariglia was indulging in what Grice calls a 'conversational implicature', namely, a hyperbole.

SO as I revise the yellowed pages in my Swimming-Pool Library. (Lots of things are yellowed before their age -- it is a sunny library -- I encounter an offprint from Vanderveken, "Searle and his critics". I was supposed (and willingly so) to read that to check what Van Der Veken does with Grice. It's a mimeo, so I shall quote page number from it.

On p. 1:

"I will generalise and explicate" "results obtained by Grice"

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On p. 2:

"utterances where the speaker conversationally IMPLICATES something"

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On p. 3:

"As Grice pointed out, a speaker who
means to peform non-literal speech
acdts in a context of utterance
intends to get the hearer [or recipient,
or addressee -- symbolised by "A", as Kramer
prefers -- it's not clear though, that
Grice does not use "A" to mean 'audience',
which defeats Grice's point of the
'uttering', I would think] to undestand him
by relying on (a) the hearer's knowlege
of the meaning of the sentence that he
uses and in particular on his ability
to understand the conditions of success
and of satisfaction of the literal speech
act, (b) on their mutual knowledge of
certain facts of the conversational
background and (c) on the hearer's
capacity to make inferences on the basis
of the hypothesis that he respects
conversational maxims in the context of
the utterance."

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Where Grice points out all that is not clear! Notably, now we have the full 'publication' of the William James Lectures (1967) where he presents the "Prolegomena" as mainly addressed against his by-far junior, J. Roger Searle, Dallas-born.

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Deken continues (I am told that 'van der' is otiose -- of course it's not but hey this is the Grice Club):

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On p. 7 he has a section entitled, "Conversational maxims" which is, er, about Grice -- rather than 'conversational maxims'. Deken is an EXCELLENT philosopher (at Trois Rivieres) and he knows it, but I've met linguists and anthropologists who don't! -- and they speak of 'maxims' as if they existed!

---- (and which they replace by principles they think do!)

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Deken:

"As Grice pointed out, the non-literal speech acts that a speaker means to perform in the context of an utterance are in genral CONTEXTUALLY cancellable in the sense that there are other possible contexts where the same speaker could use the same sentence without having the intention of performing those non-literal speech acts".

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Subsection 1 is entitled, "Grice's logic of conversation REVISITED". Of course Grice's 'informal' title for his lecture II -- never, really, was "Logic AND conversation". I have seen a few people think that there is a "logic OF conversation". This is not Deken's point, however.

---

"Grice was the first to make decisive
progress in the analysis of non-literal
meaning."

---

On p. 8, echoing Grice echoing Kant (how many linguists and anthropologists care to read, in German, Kant's Kritik? -- so here's a good example -- to follow for you!), explains 'qualitas', 'quantitas', 'relatio', and 'modus'.

----

Against all logic (just joking), Deken first re-defines, "to exploit" a maxim, and then to "use" it -- i.e. to follow it.

Recall that Grice is JOKING when he uses the imperative mode here, "Be relevant", say. (I know of a linguist who THINKS -- and she should know, having typed things -- that Grice uses the "!" even -- 'be relevant!' -- :( -- so). Grice is being jocularly metaphorical to entertain his sophisticated Harvard audience.

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Nobody is really following anything, or exploiting. Imagine if I were to say,

"My ball itches" (example in Joshi) because I am FOLLOWING the maxim, "Say what you believe to be true".

"You mean you only have one testicle?", my friend asks me. (He is on the phone).

"No."

"Then shouldn't you have said, "ONE of my ball itches"". "Perhaps". Grice would have that as an infringement of a maxim. I would have it as fastidiousness.

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Deken goes on:

"A speaker exploits a conversational maxim"

IFF

(Deken is typically precise about this because -- this SHOULD appeal R. B. Jones -- Deken is an extensionalist set-theorist, and wants ultimately to have Grice perfecly cajoled and pigeon-holed in manageable terms).

"i. certain facts of the conversational
background that he presumes to be
mutually known by him and by the hearer are
such that he intends that the hearer
recognises that he cannot respect
the conversational maxim in the context
of his utterance if the primary speech
acdt is a literal speech act and
these facts exist although he is capable
of respecting that maxim without violating
another maxim [should there be one. JLS],
and
ii. the speaker intends that the hearer
believes that they both have a mutual knowledge
of this."

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Mouthful of an intention, if you ask me.

--- And totally dogmatic in that R. B. Jones, in one of his epistemic retreat moves would rather be singing Italian opera than attributing a piece of mutual 'knowledge' with me!

----

---

For 'the use of a maxim', the necessary and sufficient conditions run along similar lines.

---

(adapted)

U 'repectxs that maxim ... only if a certain NON-literal"

---- how Deken managed to bring in the non-literal to the use of a maxim is Griceainly admirable if Griceianly otiose -----

"illocutionary act is performed, non defective
and satisfied in that context".

----

Section II goes by the grand title (Grice liked 'grand', and would often talk of the 'grand plan' of his William James, or FOR his William James (lectures):

"A generalisatio and explicatin of the maxims".


----

"In spite of its incontestable merits" -- which HAVE, alas, been contested -- cfr. Grice, "If people would not CONTEST me, why have I put a telephone line?" --

"Grice's theory is defective."

--- cfr. "And he never really had beautiful handwriting.

"And it is defective in various aspects."

---

Grice's maxims are too vague

--- More than enough is too much. Grice writes in instituting what he jocularly called the maxim no. 10, making it a decalogue.

"The maxim is, as it should be, vague."

Maxims are SUPPOSED to be vague. That's the hateful Kantian point (or neo-Kantian point) again Hegel. Imagine if our motives had always to be pure? Baker in the PGRCICE festschrift -- "Do one's motives have to be pure?". A hell! So we rather have 'vacuous', vague maxims that 'every decent chap', as Grice has it -- recall that St. John's would NOT accept females till way after Grice left for the "New" world -- should follow, etc.

---

It's different in Canada (which resembles Germany in this: they do want -- and in some parts of London, and France (Paris), too -- 'strict' maxims, or no maxims, or something.

----

Deken goes over the top: the maxims also are:

without precise theoretical content

In my "The feast of conversational reason" (or something) cited in Philosopher's Index -- for what it's worth -- I said that they DO have the theoretical content they NEED to have. They are framed (or 'framed' if you must) in the terms of psychological attidudes that a talking pirot (or parot if you mustn't) will have: 'accept,' -- 'judge' and 'will' -- these are STRICT theoretical concepts for Grice. Most people who DO use 'theory' freely -- I know a group of people who think they are engaged in 'queer theory' and there are OTHER uses of 'theory' and acronymic too, with "T" for 'theory' -- generally haven't got the slightest idea of GRICE's own treatment of Ramsified definition that he endorses to 'introduce' those theoretical terms in terms of corresponding 'observational' terms.

Deken continues:

This phrase should irritate me and amuse Kramer or something. Also because it possibly is true, etc.:

Plus,

Grice tends to identify the
exchange of information as the
sole aim of conversation

But it is!

Grice in fact never identifies that: his 'avowed aim' (He loved that phrase) is to allow for 'the institution of decisions'.

Now, how can the 'instituion of a decision' NOT proceed via 'information'. Protrepsis, after all, is a type of exhibition (I'm using these as Griceian cliches). One MAY grant that we can go to an art gallery and 'converse' as how we love the thing. In fact, I'm going to the opera tomorrow night, and when I will converse, I won't be exchanging information ("Ugly hat", "Terrible shade of turquoise", "Call THAT a tenor?" -- it's 'Fidelio'). We are instituting a decision. We are deciding she screams (Leonor -- aria Atto I). We CAN do without exchanging information because we are BOTH hearing her!

---- Etc.


he does not provide any justification
for the completeness of his system of
conversational maxims.

Which is just as well. At least Deken is careful to keep using the qualification, 'conversational'. For Robin Tolmach Lakoff (who married Lakoff) thinks 'be polite!' [sic in the imperative] is a maxim that Grice overlooked. Of course Grice never overlooked 'be polite', which he explicitly mentions in WoW:ii -- as the thing was 'stolen' and distributed infamously (etc.). What he says is that 'be polite' does NOT count, in HIS LOVELY artificial 'way with words' as 'conversational'.

----

So, he is an adult, he is a philosopher, he is from Oxford, and he is n original genius. Yet people like Robin Talmach and Deken want us to read Grice in the light of what they write about it. They need a career, or needed one --. But Griceians beware! And unite, even!

----

----

Deken says that Grice's choice of maxims is 'arbitrary' -- 'arbitrarily chosen'. Seeing that to choose is to exert one's 'liberum arbitrium', I'm never sure if that's redundant in a legal way...

Deken continues:

What's worse,

"Grice confuses purely and simply
the primary non-literal speech acts and the
conversational implicatures".

--- which is back to Wilson. Neil Wilson, a genial of a Canadian, approached Grice at Oberlin.

"You simply confuse all that Searle says with
life".

He replied:

"I grant you that I may be MISTAKEN -- but I'm
NOT confused".

On the other hand, I'm often confused but never mistaken.


---- Odd how implicata work.


Deken continues:

"I will now try [and] improve [Grice's]
analyis by formulating" things --. He does, and with a vengeance. Try, that is.

-----

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It turns out that, in Deken's view, disparaging Kant -- "On this account, Grice's formulation of the maxim of quality is just the particular case of quality for assertions".

Recall that qualitas is Aristotle's term -- for the SECOND category. The first is the 'id', the second the quale. When logicians worked on this, they focused really on 'categories' of JUDGEMENT. So a qualitative judgement is one where the copula is affirmed. Kataphasis. When the copula is negated -- apophasis -- we don't really have quality. So we have two types of polar quality. When we apply this to Kant, who loved a triangle -- we need to introduce the indefinite. So there's zillion more interesting problematic points about 'quality' and 'assertion' than Deken seems to give credit to.

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For the category of quantitas, Deken proposes (p. 13) something which COULD have been elucidated and enriched by an account of Grice's LOONG discussion of 'strength' and weakness in his misguided "Causal theory of perception". I don't particularly believe Grice has it right there -- in the section he dismissed in WoW -- the whole section II -- and Grice did not think that either for why dismiss it at once fell swoop? He was CONSTANTLY changing his views, and what would the point be of having someone (call him an 'idiot') checking with Grice's 1967 and then comparing it with the 1964 version and then with the 1961 version and concluding that the 1961 version was the best? Oddly, -- my friend Edoardo DOES think that Beethoven's earlier "Fidelio" is better than the 'totally brief, cut' later version -- but then he was deaf by then, etc.).

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Deken speaks of the category of 'quantitas' as involving:

Let your primary speech act
be MAXIMAL (i.e. as strong as
possible) in the context of
each utterance.

Slightly otiose. It's like having a boxer comply with:

"At the stage of each boxing
exchange of beatings you are engaged,
provide always the strongest beat
possible."

Quality: "No beating under the trouser allowed"

Modus: "Don't add injury to blame by INSULTING your co-boxing 'partner'.

Relatio: "If you think you have reached a K. O. proceed to
greet the masses. Don't overdo it -- or sing an anthem."

----

Boxing Implicatures -- an analysis of reports of boxing matches by the original boxers, in terms of their 'figures of speech'.

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Deken:

Since Deken is presenting or self-presenting this picture of Deken as 'improving on Grice in terms of Searle' all he says about:

"Like Asa Kaher, I believe that converational maxims are rational," etc. -- should best be as, "Like Grice ...", etc. (p. 14).

Section III is entitled,

"irony, indirect speech acts, and conversational implicatures".

People forget. This was they heyday of, shall we add, "speech act theory". After the infamies of Levinson, nobody believes in Austin anymore -- but members of the Grice Club (including me) should see the pains, trials, and tribulations undertaken by 'speech-act theorists' which are just ignored today because it doesn't pay anymore to say that your 'reserach paradigm' is that of 'speech-act theory'. At least I'm providing some good quotes, and people who are interested should be able to proceed with further research. I personally think that Austin should be revised, and revised, -- and revised. The fact that the Bodleian Library is so sombre -- and I rather be punting on the Cherwell -- has kept me away from dealing with the Austin manuscripts -- in his own lily white hand -- deposited there. "Deposit" is a euphemism).

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(Usually it's furriners who do the work: M. Sbisa, B. Nerlich, Siobhan C., etc. :)).

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Section "C" of Deken is titled, at long last,

"Conversational implicatures".

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He goes on to explicate, as he says, some types of implicatures in terms of the 'terms of art' introduced in previous sections.

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The thing appeared in "Searle and his critics" and ends with a general note on why Searle's approach can be seen to be consistent with a more 'formal account' -- contra a more "Wittgensteinian approach". Deken is carefully NOT to mention Grice explicitly in this section (how can you mention someone IMPLICITLY? -- cfr. 'allude', etc. -- and in general, Holdcroft in that genial, "Forms of indirect speech" in "Journal of Rhetoric" where he takes Grice's grand phrase, "conversational implicature" to just mean 'meiosis' or something). For Grice had, as he confided, one boot on each camp: he could play the ordinary-language philosophy game with the Austinian, but he could flirt with the ultimate prof. of Wyekeham logic at Oxford -- or not.