Grice's Frown -- Revisited

-- by J. L. Speranza
----- for the Grice Club

THIS IS A PARODY ON E. Waugh's, "Brideshead, Revisted", and on Kemmerling's parodying Grice with his "Utterer's meaning, revisited", in PGRICE, and Mitchell Green. Only in Green's case, it is an affectionate parody.

Grice thinks he knows better than Lacey and he does. Lacey refers to the frown, deliberate or not, and in ways that echo Occam on 'significat naturaliter' in "Summa Totius Logicae" (discussed by yours truly elsewhere).

Grice notes:

WoW, p. 219


"Consider ... frowning."

"If I frown spontaneously, in the ordinary
course of events, someone looking at me
may well treat the frown as a natural
sign of displeasure".

Only 'sign' is a krypto-technicism here to be avoided, vide my commentary on Grice on Peirce, elsewhere. Grice, "Lectures on Peirce", Bancroft Library, the Grice Collection.

Grice goes on:

"But if I frown deliberately (to
convey my displeasure), an onlooker
may be expected, PROVIDED HE
RECOGNISES MY INTENTION, *STILL* to conclude
that I am displeased."

-- Exactly. Bringing in implicature here is so otiose it hurts! And Lacey should KNOW that.

Grice goes on:

"Ought we not then say, since
it could NOT be expected to make
ANY difference to the onlooker's reaction"

-- response, effect, whatever

"whether he regards my frown as
spontaneous or as intended to be
informative, that my frown (deliberate)
does NOT mean-nn anything?"

I loved his use of 'informative' at this stage! Coincidental with MINE, for once! (I ONLY use 'informative' factively).

Grice goes on:

"I think this difficulty can be met; for
in general a deliberate frown may
hae the SAME effect"

-- or the same TYPE of effect, strictly.

"(with respect to inducing"

--- another good favourite with Grice, to 'induce' --, Grice the perlocutionarist miniaturist --

"belief in my displeasure) as a
spontaneous frown, it can be expected
to have the SAME effect"

-- i.e. type, really --

"*PROVIDED* the [addressee] takes it
as intended to convey displeasure"

--- hence Sampson's idea of the 'unintended implicature' totally otiose and wrong. Cfr. Reichman, "an implicature is not like a baby: an unwanted baby is still a baby; an artificial flower is not a flower; an intended 'implicature', an unwanted 'implicature' is NOT an implicature'

Grice concudes the paragraph:

"That is, if we take AWAY the *recognition*
of itnention, leaving the other circumstances
(including the recognition of the frown as
deliberate), the belief-producing tendency"

-- cfr. his laughing at 'behavioural tendencies' when he rejects a 'scientist' causal theory of perception, p. 2 of "CTP", in WOW)

"of the frown must be regarded as being
impaired or destroyed."

In fairness to Grice, Grice is writing NOT to be published (it is the best essay in philosophy I ever read), and dwelling or delving on STEVENSON, a rather boring book published by Yale U. P. in 1944 which is BORINGLY on 'tendencies' like that!

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