The Pirot Talk

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

Parrots are clumsy walkers. They can do the parrot talk all too easily, on the other hand. Pirots, on the other hand, walk and TALK clumsily. Grice sees a pirot, as "something like us" --.

The problem that exercised both Grice and Peacocke -- the latter e.g. in the chapter, "Thought and Language" in the Aristotelian Society publication, for Blackwell -- or rather, in Blackwell, for the Aristotelian Society -- is



----- pirot

-------- It is raining

---- x

---* * * the thought, 'it is raining'


Are we to assume that the belief, on the part of the pirot, that it is raining is in some way co-related to the 'sentence', "It is raining". "Only in a very superficial way". Surely we can imagine, conceive of, very intelliget, rational pirots who communicate telepathically. These pirots don't talk -- they just _walk_.

Peacocke is the ONLY one -- almost -- of the Griceians -- who take seriously the idea, in Grice, that 'meaning' and 'intending' is NOT linguistic or conventional at all. It takes a Peacocke to truly understand a Pirot, I say!