For Lacey, rainbows imply rain

by JLS
for the GC

-- THANKS TO L. J. Kramer for reminding me that that brilliant entry, featuring the very otiose thing (to say):

"Rainbows imply rain".

is by Colin Lacey.

The thing, available online via bookrags, includes:

"H.P.Grice, ‘Logic and conversation’ in D.Davidson and G.Harman (eds), The Logic of Grammar, 1975, reprinted in revised form with other relevant material in Grice’s Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard UP, 1989. See also his ‘The causal theory of perception’, § 3, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol., 1961, reprinted in G.J.Warnock (ed.), The Philosophy of Perception, Oxford UP, 1967, esp. § 3. (Some kinds of implication.)"

and I was commenting on the "illegal" thread, I HAD consulted the rather thin volume by Lacey elsewhere (the hard copy as it way).

Anyway, some remarks on that omitted section III that Lacey refers to. Bayne has put the thing online, and I think it will read, "Section III: Implication", i.e. I do thing that Grice uses that reifying thing, "implication", rather than 'implying' -- we will have to elaborate on verbalising versus nominalisation as a construction routine, or metaphysical construction routine.

---

For I was thinking,

"He presupposed that there was a King of France"

does sound odd. Strawson had used, "He IMPLIED that there is a king of France".

For some odd (but understandable) reason, Grice omited the thing in WoW, yet he managed to add a summary of it, which he wrote in 1987, and on which I will comment.

He writes, (this is p. 229-30) of WoW:

-----

Section III

"This section is ... omitted."

"The material it presents is ... the same as that" of "Logic and Conversation" -- WoW volume.

But it's NOT!

Even though he DOES right, 'substantially the same'.

Grice goes on:

"Under hte heading of 'Implication'" -- you see?

"I introduced four ... examples"

and no concept!

These were:

"Have you stopped beating your wife"
"He has beautiful handwriting"
"She was poor but she was honest"
"My wife is in the garden or in the kitchen"

You'll have to guess which was which.

Grice writes:

"One exemplif[ied] what is commonly"

-- SO commonly.

"called the notion of 'presupposition""

--

"The other three being instances of what I
later"

3 years later. Since he first used 'implicature' extensively in a 1964 set of lectures that somebody (or other) should edit out of the surviving thing in the Grice Collection, Bancroft Library --. If I could leave my swimming-pool library for long enough I'd do it -- but then).

Grice goes on:

"called 'implicature',".

---- Oddly, the Grice collection has this, otiosely, as "implicative". That handwriting! (vide "Aiding Help", this blog).

Grice goes on:

"in one case of conventional
implicature"

-- as they don't exist.

"and in the other two of nonconventional
implicature".

One being particularised and proper. The other improperly generalised.

"With regard to the selected examples I raised FOUR
different questions"

and no answer!

"on the answers to which"

which he made his best to leave vague, unclear, fuzzy, and charmingly Griceian.

"depended some important distinctions
between the examples."

"important" pronounced smugly to irritate Popper ("English futilitarians irritate me").

Grice goes on:

"These wuestions were whether
the truth of what is IMPLIED"

as in

Rainbows imply rain.

Or

The rainbow implies rain.

----

"is a necessary condition
of the original statement's"

--- 'Cfr. "You have not ceased to eat iron". Non cessas comedere ferrum.

"possessing a truth-value, what it is
properly regarded as the VEHICLE"

--- Kramer and I do not really LIKE the word. Too metaphorical. Cfr. Cole Porter, "If driving fast [vehicles] you like, if Mae West you like", etc.

"of implication"

--- the rainbow, no doubt.

"whether the implication possesses
one or both of the features of
detachability and cancelability"

--- THIS IS the important point that confused Lacey:

"That rainbow implied rain, but of course, it never rained".

----

"and whether the presence of the
implication"

or what is implied, i.e. rain.

---

"is or is not a matter of the
MEANING"

--- as in the otiose, vulgar -- i.e. popular -- 'spots mean measles', a 'rainbow' implies or means or is a sign, an indication of rain' (hence the name, 'bow of rain').

"of some particular word
or phrase".

To echo Wharton,

"pluie" means rain.

""rainbow" implies rain"

----

""rainbow" implies "rain"".

Ridiculous! I.e. Amusing.

---

Grice goes on:

"I also raised the question of
the connection, in some cases,
of the implication and general
principles"

--- how can there be more than ONE start? "principium" the start, cfr. 'arche'

"governing the use of language"

--- cfr. 'arche': government: 'governments governing'. Otiose. Or rather, redundant.

"in particular with what I later
called the first maxim of Quality"

---- trading on Kant's

QVALITAS
QVANTITAS
RELATIO
MODVS

---

who was in fact trading on Aristotle.

(hence Grice's "Kantotle") (The ref. by Kant, explicit, to Aristotle, is so fun, I dealt with it elsewhere -- it's Kant's commentary on the Table of Categories).

Grice goes on, and in fact, for the record, there is I think a typo there, since that should read, line 4, of p. 230, "first maxim of Quantity", not Quality.

---- (As I pointed elsewhere to no avail. Since Harvard UP is publishing this in fascimile -- the (c) should be given to Clarendon -- they could care less, or could NOT care less, I'm never sure).


"On the basis of this material I suggested
the possibility of the existence
of a class of nonconventional implications"

--- UNLIKE, or very much unlike, 'a whale' and "rainbows imply rain"

"which I latter called conversational implicatures"

-- a beast "unknown to Witters and very often ignored by Austin, no less" (words to the effect, in "Prejudices and Predilections, which become the life and opinions of Paul Grice," by Paul Grice.