Kramer and Solum on Grice

by J. L. Speranza
for the Grice Circle

L. J. KRAMER, an author in this blog, relates the story of R. A. V. v. City of Saint Paul (Minnesota) in his commentary to "Grice's Deutero-Esperanto".

---- His commentary, while not relating directly to constitutional 'origin', reminded me of Lawrence Solum, who is also an author in this blog.

----

Kramer is not specifically quoting from Grice, but his points revolve around the idea, Gricean at heart, perhaps, that one is the 'authority' or 'master' -- or one is not? Kramer suggests one is not, when it comes to the Law. ("the dictionary is the master", he adds).

Similarly, Solum has advanced some theses which he charitably labels "Gricean" -- or 'Griceian' as I prefer -- for they are! ---. There seems to be some room for divergence when it comes to Griceian Studies, then!?

---

Let's revise Solum's arguments, before we engage in the details that Kramer links us to, vis a vis the VAK v. City of St. Paul.

---

The reference is the online "Constitutional Texting" by Solum (of the University of Illinois College of Law) as published in the San Diego Law Review, vol. 44. Solum presents "an account of meaning that draws on H. P. Grice's distinction between "[utterer]'s meaning" and "[expression] meaning"", the former of which Solum rewrites as "the meaning that the author of the ... text intended to convey in light of the author's beliefs about the reader's beliefs about the author's intentions." "Expression" meaning, on the other hand, gets transcribe as, on occasion, "the meaning that an ordinary reader would attribute to the text at the time of utterance without any beliefs about particular intentions on the part of the author."

Solum, like Kramer, argues that "[expression] meaning is possible because the words and phrases used ... have conventional semantic meanings - ordinary meanings in a natural language, English, as it was used at the various times when [the] text was created," and which Kramer would have the dictionary reflect.

Solum is engaged with a sort of anarcho-legalism (if that's possible) that he finds in the work of Smith, "Law's Quandary", which ALSO relies on Grice.

As Solum has it, "Smith argues that the meaning of [a text] must ultimately be cashed out in terms of the intentions of some author or authors."

"[T]he best theory of the meaning,", rather, Solum argues, "is based on the ordinary or technical meaning of its words and phrases"

So, Solum claims, and rightly so, that one can call oneself "Griceain" and still defend an "anti-Smithian account of ... meaning."

(Source of Solum: http://ssrn.com/abstract=993442).

At

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1120244

Solum expands on the source of it all, when back in the late 1970s, none other than good ol' Harvardite R. Albritton recommended Solum to read Grice.

Solum expands on Grice's WoW on the distinction between expression and utterer's meaning.

He rightly points how Dworkin can have the cheek (my word) NOT to quote Grice in his work, when it's all about utterer's meaning.

This is also interesting for Solum's reference to Skinner and he having totally misunderstood Grice (who he thought a disciple of Austin!).

In his commentary, then, Kramer had said:

"You guys make everything so complicated,
and I think it's because you exalt those
damn reifying nouns (e.g., "meaning")
over verbs (e.g. "interpret.")."

Exactly.

We should be concerned with what an utterer may mean by uttering "fighting word", not with what the meaning of the expression is, right? (Or is there room for BOTH approaches -- and more? I hope so).

Kramer goes on to address the issue,

"who will do the interpreting?"

"In the US, ... [it's] the judiciary -
human beings, fallible and possibly political,
and usually assumed by the population to be both."

We are dealing here then with

"writing in standard English with the
intention that ... words be understood in
standard English."

"The most prudent [thing for the judiciary to do]
for determining what [an utterer] intended is to rely
on the plain meaning of the words [he] used."

As in 'fighting word'.


Kramer referred then to

"that old chestnut "cruel and unusual""

---

"It's entirely possible that the [utterer] intended that the phrase be interpreted to mean "cruel and unusual at the time applied," and that interpretation is a reasonable interpretation of the words [the utterer] used."

i.e.,

--- By uttering 'cruel and unusual' U meant that p iff U intended his audience to believe that...

A claim or 'specification' as Grice has it, or utterance (i.e. expression) meaning is different:

"cruel and unsual" means _here_ that p.

There are five or six specifications of utterance-meaning. He does not use "expression". He considers 'utterance part', as in

"fighting word"

Grice wants to be able to identify or localise or narrow down the 'controversial' bit of the meaning of an utterance. There's "timeless" meaning, which I never saw. And there's "occasion-meaning". This can be for the utterer. "utterer's occasion meaning". There's also "applied timeless meaning" of an utterance of course, never of an utterer. An utterer cannot display "timeless meaning". Only an utterance can.

"fighting" is used here with its timeless meaning.

("Applied timeless meaning of an utterance part")

"fighting" may be being used with an occasional meaning which is not the timeless meaning -- e.g. in a way that it plays on the etymology or something. And then there's the TYPE, rather than the token.

The text must be seen as a TOKEN, I would assume. But if you look it up in the dictionary you are mislead to think of 'fighting' as a TYPE?

A good dictionary should just stick with cites of TOKENS.

'fighting'. Who used that first? Who used 'fight' first? King Alfred?

Then, the OED (the only dictionary that does this sort of seriously) would give different quotes from here and there.

Each quote or use of 'fighting' is a token. But then the OED folks go on to propose a "general" definition of 'fighting' out of all the instances in the corpus -- i.e. they typify the tokens, then it's a type of an utterance part that they reach.

In England, it's all the more anarchic in that, as Kramer notes, they have a Bill of Rights. And "it's not clear what authority [The Brits] cite for finding another act of Parliament ultra vires. It appears to be all common law."


On p. 139 of Solum's review of Smith's book, at

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=993442

Solum recapitulates the Griceian distinction and which Solum finds it is between

mean -- intransitive

and

mean -- transitive.

His example has the good thing that it's the same one:

(i) Spefication, first, of utterer's meaning:

The utterer meant THAT the Expression MEANS that p.

But then, there's also

(ii) Specification of TOKEN-meaning, supposed to derive from the above:

The expression means that p. (Strictly, for Grice, X means '...' -- this cannot BUT be oratio recta).

Solum considers that (ii) indeed is included in (i) -- but there are some serious purely philosophical further 'reductive' analyses one can try. One would think Grice would indeed postulate some sort of subtle reduction of expression-meaning to utterer-meaning (what an expression means is reducible to what an utterer means). So, in both cases it's a co-relation with beliefs:

Expression meaning is indeed derivative of what the utterer meant. For only an utterer can hold a real intention, a meaning-constitutive intention. Indeed, to use the Belgian phrase, it's even metaphtonmyic to say that an expression 'means'. It's not as bad (to my ear) like those 'spots' (which didn't mean anything to me), but not pretty basic, either.

Solum seems to be saying: Some like Smith, but Grice's my man. But I'm not sure Smith is not my man: Smith is walking on the beach from Texas to Mexico. He sees a sign on the sand, which reads, apparently like

. . .
.
. .
. ...
. .
. . ...


i.e. as "real". Smith notes: "Now if this was written by a _gringo_ it means 'existing'. If it was written by a Mexican, it means 'royal'. If it was written by the wind it means [diddly]". In other words, we do _need to trace the intention to pronounce as to the meaning (and on occasion, 'meaning') of things.
And note that no reification is necessary. It's ultimately all 'verb' as conjugated. Followed, primarily, by a 'that'-clause that makes some essential reference to a belief.

What IS the belief behind the use of 'fighting' and 'fighting word'? Can it include the belief (or desire) in a tuna sandwich?

Why Solum calls one transitive and the other intransitive is a moot point. Both seem transitive enought. He means the scare-quote device.

Solum concludes his reply to Smith with a confession to having provided good "Gricean hues" to an otherwise simplistic canvas.

On the other hand, in one of his unGriceian modes, Kramer wonders,

"Why complicate the matter with what [the expression] "means"?"

"I don't see any point in turning to the public meaning of the expression, at least not on this issue. The question arises because the public meaning is unclear."

(This is the Patent Act case).

Solum quotes a lot from Kripke, in his articles. In one he goes so technical that he imagines someone protesting, as we did, "Surely we don't need the theory of Leibniz's law of the indescirnibles or Grice's theory of particularised implicatures" to read the law. (But we should recall that he is a professor: he is training future lawyers).

Thus, with regard to the impossibility of a 1,000-year patent, a thing that struck me as what I think Solum mentions, perhaps as 'rigid designation' or 'original intention'.

Solum seems basically concerned with those 'minor' issues of sentence meaning vs. utterance meaning. For he goes on to distinguish between sentence (qua utterance type) and utterance proper.

Solum thinks that while Smith is a good Griceian, he ignores a few useful Griceianisms.

Solum for example distinguishes between cook-meaning from recipe-meaning.

A woman writes a recipe for apple-pie that has as one of its ingredients,

"whisky".

As it happens, she meant, rhum.

When told about her mistake, she said,

"Actually, it does taste better with whisky. So do not touch the recipe."

---- Cfr.

"Fighting word".

"Do you mean 'tuna sandwich'?"

"Actually, your provision works better with 'figthing word' meaning tuna sandwich, so feel free."

For Kramer had "been away worrying through our President's Supreme Court nomination. Ms. Kagan has written exentsively about the case of R.A.V v. City of Saint Paul (Minnesota), in which a city ordinance against cross-burning was held to be unconstitutional."

In Kramer's rewrite,

"the question" is

"whether placing

--- "a symbol... which
one knows or has reasonable grounds
to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment
in others"

can, for purposes of a criminal statute, constitute

"fighting words"

any more than "glory" could, in such a law, mean

"a [nice] knock-down argument.""

The suggestion (implicature) being that it Kant!

----



"[W]e" [don't want to be] "left", Kramer argues, "with a statute in which "symbol" might mean "tuna sandwich.""

----- A nice tuna sandwich for you.

Kramer generalises: "[t]he point is that in law, the guy doing the talking [is not] [my emphasis. JLS] the master. In law, the dictionary is the master."

And no dictionary, so far, has 'symbol' to mean tuna sandwich. (Whereas the OED reports ALL uses of Jabberwocky: slithy toves gyre gimble wabe).

Kramer:

"If words don't have their common English meaning, or some other meaning assigned to them by other words that do have their common English meaning, then the law is useless as a guide to conduct."

And hardly common, as the Brits confidently call it!

"Thus, when Alice says "I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," and Humpty replies "Of course you [don't -- till] I tell you," the lapsed lawyer in my brain whispers "the defense rests.""

---- Now, there may be differences. In my "Jabberwocky" essay I quoted from Sitwell, who suggests that obviously, for Humpty Dumpty, who is the epitome of the Oxonian philosopher, 'glory' is a nice knock-down argument. (I'm less sure about impenetrability, though. There is the further problem that the anthem should thus mean, "Send her victorious, happy and 'argumentative'?"). So it's never as arbitrary as all that.

So, there are borderline cases, and there is a fuzziness within reasonable limits as to what 'fighting word' may or may not mean.

While it IS always conceivable, to use Grice's example, that by uttering, "I want a paper" Grice meant that it was raining (WoW: 167), it is less conceivable WHY one COULD have meant 'tuna sandwich' by uttering 'symbol'? Or something.