Grice's Polar Bear (Was: Polar Coordinates)

JONES in post, THIS BLOG:

"We would be working with "Polar Coordinates" if we ventured so far as to attach a number to the degree (of lat or long)."

I love that. I'm so bad at them. I can't see why I call myself a sailer (never 'sailor' which I think mispells rude). I follow Lewis Carroll in "Hunting of the Snark" -- I know the stanza by heart since I set it to music:

"What's the good of Mercator..."

"“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs!""

----

Indeed they are. And at THIS point, Grice's idea of a non-natural sign is of little help.

I do think that a polar coordinate (I wrote 'polar bear' in the header, to give a more pictorial representation to the thing) is a good thing.

----- If Grice is right, Philosophy is like the World: we venture longitudinally and we reach a certain region. We venture latitudinally and we reach ANOTHER region. We cannot escape a Polar coordinate. He means: we are bound by our historicity and by the fact that whatever we SAY falls within one 'branch' of philosophy.

Etc.