What the Butler Implied

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

I don't know what the problem is with blogger.com. Again, I was unable to post this below under "Conversational Inferences and How to fail them", so I have to submit it below. Thanks. So, it's a commentary to Kramer's comment there.

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Yes. I am pleased you quote from Cole Porter: that change is just Ohio ingenuity at its best (he was born in a stately home in Ohio, Peru, as I recall -- i.e. Peru in Ohio, not Ohio in Peru, but you know what I mean).

But how strange
GMaj

the change
C maj

from major
C maj

to MI-nor
--- C min.

----

Of course, major and minor MAKE sense to 'Barbara'. One of the fascinating books I came across when doing some research with Horn at Yale (I would spend some Thursday mornings at the Sterling -- it is quiet enough and Horn loves the mezzanine there -- cfr. "Tangerine" the song) was by an English scholar (in the worst sense of 'scholar') called "Barbara Celarent".

The major premise and the minor then make sense. For the conclusion is always of the form

The S is P.

So what we need is two (and never LESS than two, and never MORE than two) premises. In one "S" features, and in the other "P" features. But the important thing is the "M", or middle term. So according to the distribution of the "middle term" you get the figures -- plus the type of quantifier: so if it's A, A, A (i.e. 'every', 'every' and 'every' -- the latter for the conclusion) you get the "Barbara" (the most boring girl in town as it were -- Celarent, alas, is not a girl).

Every M is S
Every P is M
----
Ergo, Every S is P

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Jones has provided schematism for this elsewhere (in a pdf where he cares to quote me as the source of some of the Gricean Aristotelian ideas that Jones is developing). In view of my shaving exposed him (Jones, not Aristotle) to the vacuity of some of Strawson's remarks, Jones (who has made the strict arithmetics here) concludes that there is an algorithm to calculate which forms are valid, and which are not (provided Strawson exists, and provided he may not have existed --, etc.).

I will look up 'recede'. I hope you are not insulted. ("I recede to the meta-level") I know people who reside in the meta-level (well, they have a duplex and would hardly lower their selves (or themselves, if you must) to anything lower than the 'meta' level -- but I don't think that's what you mean.

--- I will have a look at Korta, Recanati, and the rest of them. I recall when I was at Yale with DeRose (and Nelson -- who is now at UC/Riverside) the occasion would often raise.

"The fridge is empty" -- was DeRose's favourite example. Some of the students (and of course myself) would argue (and some of the students for longer than is average at Yale) that the fridge being empty does not necessarily mean "of food".

The main person here is Stanley, it seems. Unfortunately, Stanley cares to quote more profusely from Stanley than Grice which makes Stanley less relevant (than Grice) as a commentee in the Grice Club (unlike the Stanley club).

Personally, I don't think Grice cared. He can be so artificial in his use of words that the least thing a member of the Grice Club can do is to understand Grice's idiosyncratic usages and comply and provide his own arguments against that 'in a footnote', as it were.

It's pretty difficult to understand Grice if, like Stanley, you are being to be more concerned with your (i.e. Stanley's) intutions. But unlike Stanley, Grice was a post-war important English philosopher. Stanley belongs, rather, to the Post-Vietnam American generation.

Grice was fighting against (not the Vietnamese but) a lot of loose talkers of the day: notably Austin. While Grice did respect Austin, the way Austin ignores important Gricean distinctions is enough to make you wonder (and indeed it was enough for make to me WANDER from Austin, too, and I'm happy Grice embraced me -- for I would have been lost -- I need a father figure, or a grandfather figure, even).

Austin is never clear if what he is saying applies to the level of what is said, or what is implied or 'what have you'. Thus Grice comments in "Prejudices, predilections and peccadilloes, which become the Life and Opinions of Paul Grice", by Paul Grice.

"An impetus in the direction of the provision of a theory underlying natural language came from my work in the idea of conversational implicature which trades on a distinction, often ignored by Austin and never made by 'the Austrian engineer' as to what words mean and what we, qua speakers, or stuff, mean by them" (or words).

The Austrian engineer is Witters, if you must.

Apparently, the Germans (and thus, the German language) lacks a distinction, between "imply" and 'mean'. It's all "meinen" to them. "Imply" they regard as a Latinism, and they avoid them like the plague.

In Korean it's even worse: while they do have a word for 'conversational implicature' (ka-shuwme-ta), they lack a phrase that corresponds to Grice's 'conventional' implicature. Or anything resembling it, I'm sad to report.

But they survive, you'll say. Yes. But it's never easy to understand a joke in Korean, never mind making it.

--- The title is a parody not on Orton, but on this pornographic machines of the Victorians: the butler was always seeing t*ts and *rse. What he implicated is best enriched by a good knowledge of Wodehouse. Usually, Bertie is the idiotic literalist (literalists are only smart when they are Gricean and/or logiclanders). Jeeves will implicate especially vis a vis the thing that idiot of Bertie gets 'implicated in'. (Fortunately not a crime -- since Wodehouse was essentially a comedic writer, not a Greek tragedian).

Chapman does not like a butler. I treasure a copy of "Mad" where, one of the tips in the organisation of the correct party included a voucher that provided with the appropriate attire for your father to wear (a butler).

S. R. Chapman complains (in a way) with Grice's "so English" obsession with butlers and stuff. A butler is a very important thing (cfr. "The Remains of the Day"). Sometimes they (and the actors who played them) -- e.g. Sir Anthony Hopkins -- are more important than their employers (or the actors who played them -- e.g. Christopher Reeve, what an unmemorable role. I hardly remember it).

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Chapman refers to Grice's example in "Vacuous Names". Grice attends a party and his hat and coat is mixed with Smith's -- by the butler. As it happens, the butler was originally and 'really' the "gardener". But Grice wants to say that

"The butler mixed our hats and coats"

would NOT be, strictly, false, even if it was the gardener who did it, or done it, if you must. I may disagree.

Grice proposes two ways of dealing with this. He sort of hated that Donnellan had proposed exactly the same two ways, and so he cares to provide the Donnellan reference ("Definite descriptions: referential versus attributive uses"), but Grice will NOT of course buy the whole silly picture that Donnellan (and later Kripke) will make of this (I am indebted to Patton for letting me have an unpublication of his that deals precisely with this, and passages of which I intend to share with the club sometime in the future -- as opposed to 'in the past'.

Grice's distinction is between

IDENTIFICATORY

and

typically,

non-Identificatory

uses of 'the' phrases.

"THE butler"

versus

'the butler'.

He provides a conversational tag test to mark or distinguish the 'distinction'. If you can add, 'whoever he was', to the use of a definite description, it is, naturally, non-identificatory:

"Someone, whoever he was, mixed our hats and coats".

"The butler, whoever he was, mixed our hats and coats".

"Someone -- as it happened, the gardener, mixed our hats and coats".

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At one point Grice falls victim of the 'Fido'-Fido theory of meaning. People are obsessed with names. Matter of fact, I had a butler one. His surname was Cliff, but I called him, qua my butler -- he preferred the label, 'equerry' -- Clifford. It was more sonorous. He's back in Nottingham, now; but he was a good 'butler' alright.

"Clifford mixed our coats and hats".

I can say.

But Grice wants to say that one may NOT know the name of the butler -- especially if one is visiting a place or stuff. Under the circumstances, or IN the circumstances, as I prefer (ants are under the circumstances, we humans live BY them), Grice proposes the tag:

"The butler, let's call him Smith, mixed our coats and hats".

The point of this manoeuvre is pretty subtle (or otiose, if you must). Apparently it connects with the idea of 'rigidity' of 'butler'. Or lack thereof, actually. "Smith", unlike 'the butler' is a proper name, NOT a definite description. And hence it is more difficult for "Smith" to be vacuous.

But this is not always the case. Grice reports (words to) a conversation between the butler at the Royal Merseyside Society and a reporter. The butler's name is Smith:

SMITH: Welcome sir.
REPORTER for the Derbyshire Standard: I came to join in the celebrations.
SMITH. What celebrations, sir?
REPORTER: The celebrations to honour Marmaduke Bloggs, the man who climbed the Everest on hands and knees.
SMITH: Oh, but, sir, he doesn't exist.
REPORTER. What do you mean, he doesn't exist?
SMITH. I mean what I say, sir. He (Marmaduke Bloggs) was invented by the local journalists of "The Scouse".
REPORTER: So I suppose someone is not going to be at the party.
SMITH: Quite right, sir. Care for some brandy?

----

Grice wants to say that "Marmaduke Bloggs" is a 'vacuous name' (Grice's paper is entitled, "Vacuous Names"). Of course, all names are vacuous, or none are, strictly. "Marmaduke Bloggs" does refer -- the the invention by the journalists. In fact, it's pretty difficult to come up with a REALLY vacuous name (An atheist may suggest, "God" -- but I take God to be a 'common' rather than a proper name, strictly -- 'the gods'). So what may or may not be vacuous is the denotatum of the name. If the denotatum is the empty set (as in the case of "Marmaduke Bloggs" -- i.e. the man who Won't be joining in the celebrations) then we can stipulate that 'Marmaduke Bloggs' IS a vacuous name.

The relevance of this to the 'borders war' as Horn calls them -- and vis a vis what Kramer mentions about the borderline between the implicatum and what is not the implicatum is difficult to ascertain.

Feyerabend comments in a Letter to his wife how depressed he would feel after sharing an examination table with Grice at Berkeley. "We spent the whole session discussing with our series of examinees what to make of "There is not a rhinoceros in the refrigerator" -- and this with the bombastic first name in Ordinary Language Philosphical Analysis: one Paul Grice. Why have I left Frankfurt?"

---- Etc.