"Admire": The Implicatures

by J. L. Speranza
for the Grice Circle.

THIS IS A COMMENTARY ON LAWRENCE K. HELM´s comment on "Grice and the continentals", about the logic and implicature (or implications) of "admiring". As he notes, and I appreciate his correcting my hasty interpretation, he never said he admired the French men of letters. Only that he "admire(s) the French for admiring men of letters."

Oh, o-kay. Thanks for the clarification. Yes, admiring what THEY admire is safest!

Grice, in 1967, said, jocularly,

"Heidegger is the greatest living philosopher".

He used that as an example of an ´assertion´ NOT made seriously!

But I can imagine a few French men of letters uttering it -- in French, of course -- and seriously!

No, the English are NOT a lot to admire. They are diffident, and they are VERY guarded in their expressions. A phrase one hears in America a lot, "I love...", e.g. "I love Scott Fitzgerald", "I love Steinbeck", is not one you´d hear in England.

When it comes to the proceedings of the Grice Club, I cannot say one can say one admires people. Grice was so diffident that he would not even say he admired Aristotle or Kant. He had to mix them in a cocktail personality: ¨Kantotle¨, the greatest philosopher that never lived. There´s always a drawback in people: Aristotle wrote in a bad dialect of Greek, say, and Kant said some ridiculous things about the universal prohibition of lying. Kantotle, on the other hand, was pretty sensible.

------- Oddly, the riff raff in England loves the rock-and-roll. They are FASCINATED by the local history of the suburban groups that gave the world the worst opera after opera! But still, I wouldn´t think they would say they LOVE them. They treat them very bad in the press. The tabloids are terribly anti-"I love".

Admiration is a good attitude. Strictly, it means, to "look", ad-mirare. The idea that one has to IMITATE or use that as a model is yet an ´implicature´ to analyse. Why is it that one who says, "I admire x", is taken to mean that he would ENDORSE x. In some cases, the implicature is defeated. Only yesterday, an acquaintance of mine who is always pesimistic was ... complaining. I said, "But then it´s the same the world over. Everything is going to the dogs -- everywhere." She said, abruptly, "Not Finland". In this case, I would think that she meant, "I admire Finland", but there is no way she would endorse the policies of the Finish. Finland is DISTANT enough for us to say we admire it without implicating that we would do something about it.

There is a further consideration. For an utterer, U, what he holds -- beliefs, desires, etc. -- are the BEST in the world. Nobody can have a desire, or a belief -- such that he would rather NOT have it. Life is too short! and we can always change, so what gives? So, in general, people´s disillusions are about what OTHER -- the hoi polloi, the idiots out there, the masses, my aunt, whoever -- thinks or believes. This superiority that gives the first person perspective is the foundation of morals for Grice.

Everything has to be constructed OUT of this first personal approach. It is INCORRIGIBLE (Nobody can tell you that you shouldn´t desire what you desire) and you have privileged access to it (commercials that want to dig in your psyche to show you that what you REALLY desire is a holiday in Morocco, with the natives, are WRONG).

So, yes, the French men of letters admire this and admire that. They possibly admire themselves. There´s a lot of selfpromotion in name dropping. I recall a local film star who would say, "When in Cannes, I had a wonderful conversation with Sartre -- on horses. Such a charming man." I would think he never thought the starlet bright enough to converse on the angst of existentialism, or some.

There is a lot of pure snobbery with the French that it best accounted for in terms of INVERSE snobbery in the English. So one has to be careful. You can PRETEND to admire something that you really don´t ADMIRE really, but think it is "in" to say you admire.

In general, one would seem to admire what one is NOT. "I admire the way I tend my garden" seems presumptuous. Who you would be TELLING that to? It can only hurt and make you look silly. There are so many subtler ways, via implicature, to express what you mean other than using the verb, ´admire´. E.g. I sing tenor arias. "You should be on stage", some say -- jocularly. I have a fast reply to that. "I never admire a tenor. I´ll be damned if I have to perform for money."

Then there´s the counterfactual admirations. I have a lovely book, The Eternal Summer, or something, about Edwardian England. Lovely black and white photographies. My friend D. J. Calder, who knows all about vintage Victoriana -- and knows a biography of a music hall artist by the name, "A victorian in orbit" -- calls me "An Edwardian in orbit". So I can say to admire the Edwardians. There´s nothing I can do about that. Other than keep the record of the Henley regatta every now and then! (They are holding a local "one" this weekend!).

With traits that are beyond rational control it is even more stupid. "I admire the colour of the eyes of Elizabeth Taylor" seems ungrammatical. Mind, it´s not for Britney Spears, and don´t be surprised if she gets artificial lenses to match!