"At one point he decided enough was enough" (S. Wright): some Griceian points

by JLS
--- for the GC

THIS WAS MEANT as comment to Kramer's comment in "Enough is enough", this blog. Blogger disallowed it, so here it goes.

Yes. Totally out of context. In context, it is quite a different animal. I think part of the problem of 'enough', besides being Kramer's favourite word in the world (that is NOT a problem, and I share his feeling, almost -- he likes it because it's a gradational word, as I may call it), is Altham's pleonetetic.

Altham, a Cambridge logician, sort of followed Geach in dealing with 'pleonetetic' logic -- e.g. as per link below:

A lot of our ordinary language is pleonetetic: words like "many", and "few" for example, do not make sense _simpliciter_. We need a threshold. Ditto for 'enough' or 'too' (as in 'too much' -- and the truism: more than enough is too much).

So I should elaborate on the non-truistic interpretation of "enough is enough" vis a vis utterer and addressee as propounded by Kramer in his commentary to the post.

The link citing Altham's invention (indeed Geach's) goes:

http://nb.vse.cz/kfil/elogos/logpoint/93-3/REVIEWS.htm

"J.E.J. Altham (in Plural and Pleonetetic Quantification) investigates relational quantifiers, such as "there are more js than cs", "nearly every j is c", and "many js are c". He also deals with pleonetetic logic, that is the logic of the quantifier "most" ("most js are c"), considers some interesting examples with this quantifier, and gives some principles for monadic pleonotetic logic."

I would think that

"Enough is enough"

may require some pleonetetic logic. It's not like we can symbolise "Enough" by "E" and then say that

E = E

or

If x is E, x is E.

Ex ) Ex

--- for indeed, "A soldier a soldier," "Mother is Mother", etc -- -- the form, "S is S" is universally truistic. And there is something about "Enough is enough" that makes THIS apparent truism special.

Oddly, 'too much is too much' is not something you hear too often, but there's logically just as much of a chance for it to provide a 'move' in the conversational game. So we can propose alla Kramer some conversational scenario.

"Enough is enough"

seems a more polite variant on "Enough!"

--- I.e. "Enough!" as an answer to some silly repetition, say, seems a very logical thing to say -- reasonable. It means "x is enough". Implicating: "No more!".

But "Enough is enough" seems to add an assertoric shade of meaning as if instilling the 'truism' or apparent truism with the axiomatic nature of a logical principle.

Grice considers two patent tautologies in WoW:ii:

Women is women
War is war

----

"Boys WILL be boys" (some say) compare.

And "Enough is enough", too.

Levinson brings in other types of tautologies ("if he comes, he comes") -- in Pragmatics -- as flouts to 'informativeness' (or quantity). In the case of "if he comes, he comes", Levinson suggest the implicatum to be: "There's nothing we can do about it, so stop worrying".

In the case of "War is war" we know the implicatum: "it IS justified". In the case of "Women are women" we also 'know' it: "accept it".

In the case of 'enough is enough' there is, as Kramer suggests, a different scenario. Someone (perhaps the utterer, perhaps not) has decided that he is not going to endure it any longer.

What is also intersting is that 'enough' is not really a noun, I would think. "He writes well enough". So, in 'enough is enough', there is like a meta-device by which 'enough' becomes a noun that can be copulated with itself -- talking of pseudo-dyadic predicates.

In Anglo-Saxon, nouns had gender, as in Latin: masculine, feminine and neuter. But, I would think, 'enough' would not easily fall as any of these. Yet, it is deemed to be a singular (perhaps mass neuter) term, for which 'is' fits naturally. Note that in most uses of 'enough' it is the 'empty' "it" that usually does the trick: "She thought it would be enough for her to pack 5 dresses". WHAT is enough: five dresses are enough (cfr. ? "Enough is five dresses").

The relational, or n-adic quality of 'enough' may also be worth noting. If there is a threshold involved, there is also a 'tag': 'enough FOR'. Thus, six sandwiches may be enough for a party of 2, but surely not enough for a party of 12. Or something.