A Well-Known Gricean

--- Known by Who? And How?

By JLS
--- for the GC.

THANKS TO KRAMER for his commentary on 'a well-known'. As per today, there were two hits in Google, only, for 'a well-known Gricean': to wit:

1. [PDF] Action and Generality
A Ford - 2008
"The Humean Circle should also be distinguished from a well-known Gricean puzzle concerning epistemic justification.8 A person is getting married, we said, ...
etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd.../ANTONFORD2008.pdf

2. Rational Reconstructions And The Semantics/Pragmatics ... -
de M García-Carpintero - 2001
would support this contention by following a well-known Gricean line of argument involving the previous distinctions. As a first approximation, ...
www.springerlink.com/index/qh140610878g40l1.pdf

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For other collocations,

i.e. just "well-known Gricean", not "a well-known Gricean" there are 488 hits, including:

David Macarthur, Aesthetics (analytic) | PhilPapers -

... analytic aesthetics, using Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen's influential and well-known Gricean make-believe theory of fiction as an example. ...
philpapers.org/rec/MACAA

--- which sounds hyperbolic. I mean, Columbus's theory that the earth is round (if it was his) is well-known, but Stein Haugom Olsen's thing? (I mean, I love Lamarque!).

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I suppose I should provide one for "the well-known Gricean" so we can discourse on the distinction 'between' (sorry about that) 'a well-known Gricean', "the well-known Gricean" and 'well-known Gricean" simpliciter. (How can you distinguish between three things? And what preposition should I use instead?).

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For "the well-known Gricean" I submit one hit out of zillions:

Exceptional language development in Down syndrome: implications ...
Jean A. Rondal - 1995
Referring to the well-known Gricean four sets of so-called maxims (Grice, 1975), it can be said that Francoise 's contribution to the conversational ...

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Possibly, to use 'know', in this instances, is a solecism. Problem with 'know' is that it carries 'that'-clauses occasionally:

"I know that I am a Gricean" means that I am a Gricean. I.e. it entails it. You cannot know what you believe is false.

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But with

"I know Sue"

surely Sue cannot be 'false' in the way that a 'that'-clause can be false.

So I submit that if I say

Prof. Butler is a well-known lesbian

I should possibly be specifying to who (she is known to be a lesbian and well so).

It is true that there are parallelisms:

"Butler, who is believed to be a lesbian"

is obviously less informative than is required (should we KNOW she is a lesbian) -- (On the strenght, of course, that to KNOW something you HAVE to believe it).

But

"The well-believed lesbian"

doesn't flow too naturally.

The problem seems to be the adverb, 'well'. For if she is 'well-believed to be a lesbian', why not go the further step and say that you KNOW it?

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Of course you can WELL believe something without knowing.

In fact, 'well' seems otiose when it comes to 'know'.

Zach knows that 2 + 2 = 4.

Surely it would be over-informative to say that he "well" knows it, or knows it well. I mean, who cares? If we are in a position to report that he knows that p, I can't see what 'well' may add to the thing.

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"You know it well".

versus

"You know it"


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I suppose a good dictionary should elucidate for us who was the first redudant fellow who said it -- for Kramer's discussion of Rock Hudson as 'the well-known homosexual' see his commentary to which this is a commentary.

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In the vernacular, they DO say, 'bien sabido'.

"Como es bien sabido, las Malvinas son argentinas"

('As is well-known, the Falklands are Argentine').

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There is something authoritative about that claim.

But in any case, the fact that 'bene' (qua adverb, like 'well') gets collocated and qualifying 'sabido' (equivalent to 'know') suggests that possibly the Angles got this via French.

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'bien connu':

as in:

Nouvelles catégories pour l'analyse du sens du locuteur

"bien connu (depuis Strawson 1964, Searle 1969, Grice 1969) que la notion griceenne d'implicature non-conventionnelle n'est pas tres interesante.

doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.1746-8361.1986.tb01260.x

Etc.