The Grice Club

Welcome

The Grice Club

The club for all those whose members have no (other) club.

Is Grice the greatest philosopher that ever lived?

Search This Blog

Monday, April 19, 2010

Why Grice Hated Conventions

---

He has (WoW:3640) two macabrely Gricean references to convention.

In the first one, he refers to Schiffer having borrowed (but never returned) Lewis's misguided account of 'arbitrary' convention to the area where it does NOT belong (the meaning of expressions -- never Lewis's topic).

Grice writes:

"Here I intend NEITHER to endorse
NOR to reject the possiblity
of [Schiffer's manoeuvre]."

Implicating: it does not make sense!

Schiffer SHOULD have taken 'implicature' more seriously!

---

The OTHER remark goes:

"Similar troubles might attend
a SUPERFICIALLY different
presentation of the enterprise,
according to which what is
being sought, and one hopes,
LEGITIMATELY FIXED
by fiat would NOT be

conventional meanings

of certain expressions, but
a solid guarantee that, in certain
'alethic' conditions, in calling
[a spade] [a spade], one would NOT
be miscalling [a spade]
[a spade]."

---- While Duchamp and me would regard this as 'analytic', Grice weakens it to mere 'alethic':

"The conditions in question"

--- why we call a spade a spade --

"would OF COURSE have to be conditions of truth"

The 'of course' is uncalled for (a spade)!

No comments:

Post a Comment