--- by JLS
----- for the GC
---- IN HIS INTERESTING COMMENTARY under "Implicatures in Na'vi" thread, L. J. Kramer refers to what he calls "CB", i.e. 'communicative behaviour', as per below.
"I don't see the fuss about "utterance." It's a label. It doesn't need an intrinsic accuracy. Indeed, it is short in this context for "communicative behavior." Hence, CB radio, and "Ready when you are, C.B.""
----
The point I think I perceive here is some sort of definitional circle. When Grice uses 'utter' (and indeed 'uttearance') he is of course free to define it as he pleases (and Kramer and I, as good Griceans, follow suit -- against those 'post-Griceans' out there! ha! -- even 'neo-Griceans'! It's not like Grice is Aristotle: 'neo-Aristotelian' is a good joke, but neo-Gricean is sort of diminishing the value of all those 14 cardboxes full of Griceanisms that await publication -- none of that re: Aristotle).
But the point, I think, is that Grice defines 'utter' as (shortly), 'vehicle' for meaning:
--- Let me see if I find the passage in WoW, since, as an OLP philosopher (I'm currently working on a project to be published soon, I hope -- in two years, or so, I am told) on Grice as OLP -- ordinary language philosopher -- and how THIS impinges on what he has to say -- the modus on the other three categories as it were) he needs to justify this 'extraordinary' use of 'utter':
This is actually Grice on the first line of p. 261 of WoW:
I use 'utterance' as a neutral [i.e. 'label' to use Kramer above] word to apply to any candidate for meaningNN
He says he does that for the wrong reason:
"it has a convenient act-object ambiguity."
Indeed, he may not be providing that as the reason. Recall this essay was unintentionally (on Grice's behalf) published by Strawson. The man (Grice) was not wishing to have his views discussed by Americans (etc.) like that! (Recall "The Philosophical Review was an is -- and will be? -- an American journal. "We don't have those things in Oxford").
For Grice writes:
"I use 'utterance' as a neutral word to apply to any
candidate for meaningNN; it has a convenient act-
object ambiguity."
I hold these are different issues (or 'issues' as Elton John would say -- "Sexuality is not an 'issue' for me -- note my flamboyant hats that my Aunt would use with a 'straight', as it were, face).
Indeed, when Grice published "The conception of value" (well, 'published' is more of the Clarendon Press's greed here), he writes of 'concept' versus 'conception' as having the RIGHT ambiguity he is referrring to here. So I do buy that. (I do use 'utteratum', though, to avoid it, even if it would give my Latin teacher the cringes).
--- But what about the first clause then?
"I use 'utterance' ... to apply to
any candidate for meaningNN".
This is exactly falling in the same trap that he was criticising Stevenson for. Stevenson (recall this is vintage 1948 Grice -- mainly a commentary on his just having his hands on that paperback from Yale Univ. Press, "Ethics and Language" by Stevenson, 1944 -- and making a 'fuss' to use Kramer's word -- where none should have been made -- and then no OLP pragmatics! Recall philosophers are pedants).
For Grice was criticising Stevenson. Stevenson was NOT onto 'meaning' (As when we say that Sue is onto surfers). He was onto serious 'issues' (to use the Elton-Johnism). So he thinks he can get away with out. But we have Detective Police Inspector Grice:
Stevenson wrote:
"I put my hat on. I mean to leave".
"Surely stupid", Grice is thinking. "I might just as well say that if I vomit, I mean that I disliked the food."
----
(I am going to use 'think' to utter the most blatant inaccuracies).
Grice cares to quote verbatim from Stevenson (p. 215). When Stevenson writes, on ch. 3 -- Grice NEVER cares to give page references --:
"an elaborate process of conditioning
attending
the use of the sign in
communication"
Grice swallows the S-R (stimulus-response) bullshit, because, hey, we ARE behaviourists at heart (but surely that's no reason why to leave philosophy as a discipline, and turn into a linguist! -- and a mentalist one at that!).
So I will just stick to what Grice says about the bold type segement above,
"the use of 'x' [utterance, 'utteratum'] in
communication".
And cfr. here Kramer on "CB", which features the same 'c': 'communicative', 'communicational'.
But what is communicational?
Surely, if we are, as Grice IS -- but few, unless you ARE, or play the game of being a 1940s postwar English Ordinary Language Philosopher -- into analysing 'mean' in terms of 'necessary and sufficient conditons' it is just ILLEGAL (and criminal) to use 'communication' -- or anything resembling it, including the Holy Communion -- into it! (or the bargain, as you must).
-----
Grice writes about this vice in Stevenson ('the vicious circle'):
"This clearly will NOT do". Grice writes, using 'do' unacademically. You see what I mean when this was NOT meant for publication in a transatlantic journal!?
What irritates Grice about Stevenson is what Grice calls that hateful 'qualifying phrase', "attending the use of the sign in communication" -- strictly, 'the second part of the qualifying phrase', as Grice notes):
For, Grice notes:
"If we HAVE to take seriously" -- and why should we? After all, Stevenson is hardly a serious philosopher! What else has he written other than this infamous claim that to say, "Beautiful picture!", one means "Ah!" -- "the account of meaningNN is OBVIOUSLY CIRCULAR".
And we want square.
"We might just as well," Grice says in his Humpty Dumpty mode, "'X has meaning if it is used in communication,' which, though true"
-- or a truism, rather
"is [hardly] helpful".
So, let's see what else Kramer says -- I hope he will reconsider then the idea of "CB" communicative behaviour. We want a neutral term alright, but not merely defineable as 'the vehicle for meaning'.
If I place a number of (ornamental) rocks in a garden to please a visitor (or myself), I may be said to mean or have meant (for surely it's more important to refer to 'mean' in the past -- cfr. the stupidity: "Are you going to mean good wishes?") something. But if the stones were just laying there regardeless, the position of the stones cannot 'mean', this. Yet, the 'utterance' -- the position of the stones -- is the same. Kramer is right that 'silence' will do here too, which makes the whole idea of 'utterance' pretty vacuous, literally -- the 'flatus vocis' of Roscelin.
So, what do we mean?
What is x?
If 'x' is anything by which U (utterer) means -- that p. Then so be it. What level of the act are we interested. It does have, 'utterance' does, an act-object ambiguity, but do we NEED that ambiguity? I am enough of a happening-artist to want to say that we don't need a product, just a process.
His burping, intentional as it was, meant that Homer (Simpson) was playing the 'scum' again.
While a 'burp' IS an object, it's more the 'burping' than the 'burped' that we are interested in. And this only because we KNOW that Homer (Simpson -- and in fact, the other one too) has 'rational' control (as some giraffes don't) over their burps or burping.
The important thing to consider (in parts) is the 'that'-clause. What did he mean by burping so grossly?
Are we to accept something like Grice's easy way out with 'natural' meaning here: "Those spots on Tim's face did not mean anything to me, at the time, but the doctor convinced me that they were a natural sign of a virus in Tim's blood -- the measles".
Surely if Tim has the spots, he has the measles. To say, "Those spots didn't mean anything to me" is a red-herring, as it were.
The problem here is Anna Freud. For her, everyting HAS to have a meaning: usually a defense mechanism of the ego (Recall that she was the daughter of a well-known, if over-rated, psycho-analysts -- he was charging fortunes in his Mayfair flat to have his 'patients' burp their 'flatus vocis').
So...
Homer burped.
Utterance: his burping.
Meaning?
Something or other.
I am told that in Japan it is okay (indeed, 'polite') to burp: this indicates that the food has been digested alright but not so alright (I suppose that to evacuate would NOT be polite in any language).
-----
Indeed, in the vernacular, they do use, "Good burping" when they serve you in restaurants. I find the phrase insulting.
Ah well.
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So, let's see what else Kramer says -- I hope he will reconsider then the idea of "CB" communicative behaviour. We want a neutral term alright, but not merely defineable as 'the vehicle for meaning'.
ReplyDeleteMy reference to "behavior" is intended to capture the delivery of information, not the vehicle (for meaning or anything else). (I see "meaning" as the reification of an effort to transfer specific information. When would "what information do you intend to impart>" not work as well as "what do you mean"?)
Behavior is an action or abstention, not the product thereof. So it's not a "vehicle." "Communicative" is a loose choice with no detailed freight to speak of. "Informational" might be better - it's a label - it's resemblance to a semantically loaded word is merely a mnemonic device. When U wants to impart information to A, U behaves in a way calculated to do so. Call the behavior or its product whatever you like - makes no difference to me.
Good. I think you are with Grice in calling this "x".
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you make sense (of course you do, but you know what I mean, I hope) of Grice's (occasionl) distinction between 'x' and "X", though.
He seems to be using 'x' (sic _small-case_) to mean a 'token' (e.g. "Fire!") and "X" (sic not lower-case type) to mean "type" (or class of tokens -- e.g. any 'token' or realisation of a type, or class, "Fire!").
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Let me see if I can locate the passage. I HAVE used, to mislead linguists, the distinction made by Grice here, and I have taken very seriously the idea, by Bennett, that this amounts to a 'nominalism' of some sort (Alas, Bennett put forward this view in that obscure journal, "Foundations of Language", 'The meaning-nominalist strategy', and never cared to reprint the view).
But it IS nominalist enough that we deal with TOKENS of 'repeatable' (it seems) 'behaviours' which are informational. This is otiose most of the times:
"By uttering a token of "Mona Lisa", Da Vinci meant that he was a genius".
Part of his genius, they say, is that "Mona Lisa" is NOT a token of any type, as it were.
On p. 118 of WoW Grice uses 'utterance type' alright and has "X" just before it, when he wants to distinguish locutions of the form "U meant that p" and "X (utterance type) means '...'".
---
But when does it use 'x' to mean a token of a type? (I recall I once attended a lecture by that pedant, A. Blanco, at the Argentine Association of English Culture -- stuffy name, but trust Prince Charles visited the premises, on posh Suipacha Street, when he visited my town -- Blanco was using 'utterance' and 'sentence' so loosely that I had to react!)
---
For some linguists, 'utterance TYPE' is pretty otiose. It's not. For them, 'utterance' is ALREADY a token, regardless.
It IS true that we first need the TOKEN, and then the type. But what IS an utterance token? Why not just call it an 'utterance'?
----
Grice does use lower-case 'x' on the very same p. 118 (I'm glad I did not have to type all that! I would have made perhaps a few changes, some unintentional, too!):
He writes:
"I use the term 'utter' (together with 'utterance')" -- cfr. my hateful 'utteratum' -- after all it's a solecism apres 'to out' to outer, outerance -- versus innerance, I expect -- and he uses the term, Grice says, "in an artificially [but not yet peverse or unnatural] wide sense [perhaps the width of it is a mark of perversion?], to cover
ANY CASE of doing x or producing x by the performance of which U meant that so-and-so"
Kramer is right that 'vehicle' IS hateful here. Should check this out. Among hateful authors. It's NOT used by Grice, I hope!
---
Grice continues, and in the continuation he cares to use 'x' again as 'utterance' for 'utterance TOKEN' as it were:
"The performance in question need NOT be a linguistic or even a conventionalised performance. A specificatory replacement of the dummy 'x' will in some cases be a characterisation of a deed,"
--- not necessarily the Boy Scout's good turn a day as it were --
"in others a characterisation of a product (e.g. a sound)."
The problem here is Na'vi. What if they had a mouth which produced a click that we can't?
If some x's are irrepeatable (as it were) -- is this possible? -- Grice seems to be suggesting that while "U meant by x" is BASIC (Da Vinci painted "Mona Lisa") it would be otiose to have to provide a definiens for the locution, "The TYPE 'Mona Lisa' meant ...", because there is no such thing: the type Mona Lisa. Or something.
I think the x, X thing is a logical hammer in search of a nail. The phrase "an utterance" may refer either to a type of behavior or to an instantiation (token) of that behavior. The type and the token are two different logical devices, so a logician would want, I think, to have in his toolbox a way, should the need arise, to refer to them by different names, a way that would work for any type and its tokens.
ReplyDeleteThe symbolization thus arises out of the logical distinction, and not out of any practical need to resolve it in actual utterance other than by context. Whether such a need will arise remains to be seen, but that's not the logician's concern. The hammer is in the box, because logic, not language, requires it to be there.
Yes, and I have now moved to a thread which DOES NOT include the ugly 'vehicle' so there. I appreciate your comments. You have the ability to make me laugh (almost publicly) by the grace (and grice) or what you say ('grazioso' as they say). You manage to bring humour (or humor, as you would 'say') to this stuff which can be so dry in less able hands (than ours, of course).
ReplyDeleteI think you are right that 'an utterance' can refer to a type. I never saw a 'type', though. In the vernacular, 'type' means a man. That type ('tipo') is a 'shabby' one, say --. I suppose that must derive from vulgar Latin.
I may disagree about the primacy when you write, "the type and its tokens". Why not the 'tokens and their types', I wonder.
Consider a sneeze. Surely creatures have found (where 'found' is metaphorical) that to sneeze is beneficial (to the same-self creatures). Hence the idea, "Bless you", or "Health!" as we say in the vernacular to someone (usually a person but can be a rat, too) who sneezes.
So, by sneezing, U meant that 'he was cold'. (For some reason, that's the vernacular meaning, from what I can gather).
But the meaning of a sneeze? Well, yes, a sneeze can mean this or that. Actually it can mean THIS and that. For it means, naturally, that you have a virus (or something -- could be a bacteria -- I should need to check over this). Or it can mean, artificially, or as William Chapman may prefer (vide his comment in "How artificial can language be?", this blog) something else, e.g. that the U is cold.
At this point I wonder if a sneeze cannot be its own 'utterer'.
Since Kramer rightly suggests that most fine-tuning of what he abbreviates as "CB" (communicative behaviour) is otiose, I suppose that I can say that the sneeze is the utterer (and that it is using Us -- the sneezers -- to mean, this or that).
----
But the TYPE of a sneeze? I cannot see how different sneezes may belong IN or 'to' as Grice perhaps more clumsily puts it, to a Platonic Idea -- for surely all types are Platonic Ideals or Archetypes, as he preferred, i.e. Plato did, or even worse, Paradgeigma(ta).
Yet, Grice wants to say that 'followers of Wittgenstein' crave for generalities. They are the philosophical cravers. But there are NO generalities!
As Kramer has it, the context usually will indicate what the sneeze means.
A logician -- I think Kramer is being too charitable towards the lot. Mind, some of my friends are logicians. But what would the use of a tool be in your toolkit if the situation will NOT arise?
It seems that the x-X distinction is Platonic and we don't need it! But for that I will have to say some of the otiosities that Grice identified as 'the latter stages' of his 'programme', or something. Or something.