--- by JLS
------ for the GC
--- I SEE THAT K. KORTA HAS a joint paper on "conversational implicature" for a logical journal which I should (i.e. most likely won't as things are) have a look at. Thansk to Kramer for this.
I'm using as label the title of McCafferty's thesis which I never read, but hey, "I never read a philosophical dissertation before reviewing it", as Revd. Sidney Smith would say.
Now, for Grice's example:
How is Smith getting on in his new job at the bank, may I ask?
--- Oh, quite well, I would think. He likes his colleagues; they like him; and he hasn't been to prison -- yet.
----
Kramer comments:
"I don't know whether Smith is honest. Now set X equal to either "Smith has not been to prison yet" or "U has said that Smith has not been to prison yet." Both of these premises are communicated by U, so each is available to A to complete one or more syllogisms for which A already has adequate completing premises, and so each is, in effect, an enthymeme."
But one still wonders. Apparently, the step is an AB-duction. So we don't really NEED the modus ponens that R. B. Jones brings to turn the thing a DE-duction. It's NOT an IN-duction, either. It is rather a hypothetico-deductive pattern of 'discovery' as Hanson would have it. We jump, or leap, from inadquate premises to inadequate conclusions.
"Are you saying he is potentially dishonest?"
--- Surely he is NOT saying that.
But what is he implying?
--- Grice, at this stage, does not care. A few pages later, he changes his mind and he starts to care. It's NOT like U is meaning that the colleagues are, human nature being what it is, bound to _betray_ him.
Rather, Grice's gloss runs of the abductive type runs along these lines:
"I will apply the general definition to my initial example."
--- The fact that he was so fastidious in his prose style irritates me slightly when I compare his notes to that of Wittgenstein in "Tractatus". The latter read:
---- proposition
------------ p & p
---- truth
----------------------vs. contingency.
----- (Ask Russell about this).
etc.
----
Grice continues:
"In a suitable setting the recipient of that volunteered, ill-mannered remark might reason as follows."
"First, U has apparently violated the maxim, 'be relevant', and so he may be regarded as having flouted one of the maxims conjoining perspicuity".
-- Why? These are different categories!
Grice goes on:
"Yet, I have no reason to suppose that he
is opting out from the operation of the
Cooperative Principle."
"Second, given the circumstances, I can
regard his irrelevance as only apparent if,
and only if, I suppose him to think that
Smith is potentially dishonest".
But aren't we all?
In fact, a mark of our honesty is that we are all potentially dishonest. Honesty is the best policy, says I. Also, honesty is NO more than a policy. We are not BORN honest, and we don't DIE honest. We grow honest. It pains me that Smith has to spend his otherwise joyful days, 'totting up', as Gertrude Lawrence remarks in "Private Lives", 'bills at some obscure financial institution'. If he does end up in prison, perhaps it is just as well, for perhaps then he will have some time for reading, or something.
Grice goes on:
"Third, the utterer knows that I am
capable of working out all this. So,
U implicates that Smith is potentially
dishonest".
But we know that already. It's like "War is war" and "Women are women". Smith, like any other human being worth the name 'human being' IS potentially dishonest.
I was so irritated by this example by Grice that when I was lecturing in Buenos Aires with Davidson and Searle (them were the days) I submitted the example:
"And how did you find Buenos Aires?"
"Oh -- fascinating: I love the weather; the people can be friendly -- in parts -- and hey, I haven't been mugged!
My point was that "I haven't been mugged" CAN NOT and will NEVER get to mean, "Buenos Aires is potentially dishonest". For how can a city be dishonest?
"Potentially dangerous?" But then, compare New York -- or the Bronx -- at night.
Why, even Versailles, the epitome of boring French quaintness can be potentially dangerous.
I have never been to a city that is not potentially dangerous; but then, I never visited Grice's birhtplace: glorious Harborne.
("That's not a city," Jones complains -- "Even!"). Or something
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You treat "potentially dishonest" as a binary condition, when it is an analog trait. If one can only be or not be "potentially dishonest," then we are all so, and the implicature cannot be framed. But if we are all to some degree potentially dishonest, then "Smith has not been to prison yet" may implicate that he is believed by U to be sufficiently likely to be feloniously dishonest as to make his not being convicted yet worth remarking upon. I say "may," because I would expect "he has not been arrested" rather than "not been to prison," but I'm not sure the example turns on the distinction.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteBut what about the prostitutes?
Recall that the sport of philosophers (the otiose lot) was for a time to counter-attack EACH of the implicatures provided by Grice.
Dascal suggest that indeed, as he would read the thing (just to refute Grice of course, and thus ad-hoc): the implicature is that the colleagues HAVE NOT 'framed' him. Else, why care to mention that 'he likes his colleagues'?
---
Dascal is more assertive (this is from his piece, "Conversational Relevance" in the Journal of Pragmatics, relying on the mimeo by Grice, even -- and slightly oddly so) when it comes to this other example by Grice:
A: Smith does not seem to be having a girlfriend these days.
B: He is paying a lot of visits to New York lately.
Grice suggests the gloss: "He may be having one there".
Dascal defies: "He is going to the prostitutes there -- and who, under the circumstances, needs one (girlfriend).
Atlas suggested that Smith was gay.
---- (on top of things).
-----
So, I follow you about the thing, and I think the variant:
"He hasn't been arrested yet"
is possibly a more dangerous thing to say -- i.e. less implicaturish, and more explicaturish.
I would use 'arrest' to SIGNAL that he SHOULD be arrested.
Oddly, in your gloss above you still use the sublter, 'convicted'. Can't there be YEARS before a man is convincted? Or is that "sentenced"?
And are such sentences 'final'?
-----
Perhaps at this point one should be reminded of Jennifer Saul, the Princetonian Gricean and her 'beautiful handwriting' database.
Cheers.
But then, if he was convicted, or even arrested, never mind 'been to prison', then he WOULD not be (still) working at the bank.
ReplyDeleteThis is not an essay-question. It is not even a yes-no question. It is an x-question: "How is Smith getting on in his NEW job at the bank?"
I can only think that the remark is JOCULAR. As such, A will KNOW that, and so will NOT take B's stupid remark seriously. But people ARE stupid, and the problem is that when you don't realise it. Or something.
I don't like "He hasn't been to prison yet." It's just not what one would say under any circumstance. Smith would get arrested, arraigned, released on bail (or remanded to jail pending trial), tried, convicted, sentenced, let out on bail or remanded to jail while awaiting the filing, arguing, and decision on appeal, and, finally, incarcerated.
ReplyDeleteGetting arrested is what would be noticed and would end his employment, so that's what B would report hasn't happened yet. "He hasn't been arrested yet" may or may not be jocular. If not, it implicates that Smith is the sort of person A might expect would get arrested in his new job (why bother to assign a reifying adjective?).
I don't quite get your 'why bother to assign a reifying adjective', but never mind. Or do mind, but never.
ReplyDelete---
Anyway, -- yes. I agree. There is the further problem of the 'yet'.
One of the examples by Miss Korta (or "Mrs. Perry", as I jocularly call her, since, hey she has published more essays with Perry than with her own husband -- if she has one -- I love her) is:
"You won't die"
--- said by a careful mother to reassure her little daughter that the wound is not so tragic.
As it happens, I can imagine Borges. He feared immortality so that I can imagine that stupid comment on the part of a careless (if you ask me) mother could leave an unerasable wound.
On the other hand, I admit that "You will die, but not of this", is clumsy and uninvited.
Perhaps the daughter was already idiotic and SHE had asked,
"Will I die, Mom?"
---
It strikes me that
"He hasn't been arrested"
and
"He hasn't been arrested yet"
'project', as the hateful linguistic technicism goes, different implicata.
Incarceration is a serious business. There is, I was checking with J. Saul's site, the disjunctional problem.
If an implicatum is disjunctional in nature, the point could be made that what U means is
"p v q"
i.e. p or q:
I.e., The answer to the 'inquiry', as Grice has it, by A as to what U meant would not involve exclusive disjunction but inclusive one:
"He is potentially dishonest enough OR his collegues ARE treacherous" --- I don't think "or both" works there -- but I ALWAYS add 'or both'. It's the A's problem to figure out the consistency of what she hears, not mine to solve THAT problem for her.
----
Yes, I'm glad you would not say, "He hasn't been to prison yet". I suppose that a disjunctional remark comprising the order of proceedings as you see it would breach, 'be brief':
How is Smith getting on in his new job at the bank?
--- Well, he hasn't been arrested yet, nor, for that matter, yet arraigned, released on bail, nor remanded to jail pending trial, nor tried, convicted, sentenced, nor let out on bail, nor remanded to jail while awaiting the filing, arguing, and decision on appeal, nor, last but not least, incarcerated -- yet."
"But he seems to be enjoying his job alright. And he likes his colleagues, too, which helps."