A Fortiori Volunteering

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

WE WERE DISCUSSING an utterance brought in by Kramer (from the lips of George Carlin), to wit: Carlin's grandfather telling him:

"I'm going upstairs to fuck your grandmother"

Kramer comments on the embedding of the utterance in the 'frame' of the narrative by Carlin:

"My father would say, "I'm going upstairs to fuck your grandmother". He was an honest man and he wasn't going to bullshit a four-year old".

----

Kramer comments in commentary:

"if what I say is irrelevant, then a fortiori it
provides too little information."

I should analyse that 'a fortiori', since, in my Wednesday frame of mind, it sounds like 'a posteriori' but it's not! It says what it means, and it means what it says: strongER.

In any case, this relates or may relate to something that concerned Grice about the OVERSUPPLY of information (quite independently from the Category of "Relatio"). He is concerned with what he calls the Category of "Quantitas". He has FOUR points to consider. The fourth goes:

"(4) While it is perhaps not too difficult to
envisage the impact upon implicature of a real or
apparent UNDERSUPPLY of information, the
impact of a real or apparent OVERSUPPLY is much more
problematic." (p. 372 of his Studies in the Way of Words -- now in paperback!)

--- the topics of the Strand 6 are pretty complex, and I'm very pleased that Kasher decided to reprint that particular Strand in his expensive (alas) collection on "Implicature" for the Routledge Publishing house. But trust linguists et al (including some philosphers!) to keep quoting from earlier sources.

----

The oversupply had been touched already by Grice back in 1967 (the retrospective epilogue of strand 6 he dates twenty years later, 1987), when he refers to, if I may adopt:

"Methinks Grandpa protests too much"

----

Back on p. 33 of "Logic and Conversatio" he speaks of examples falling under

"(1b) An infringement of the second maxim of Quantity,
"Do not give more information than is required," on
the assumption that the existence of such a maxim should
be admitted.
---- A wants to know whether p,"

In the case of the grandson, we don't expect he wants to know of the goal of his grandpa's actions.

"and B volunteers not only the information
that p, but information to the effect that it
is certain that p, and that the evidence for its
being the case that p is so-and-so and such-and-
such."

I.e.

A: Where are you going, grandpa? all naked.
B: upstairs.
A: what for?
B: To fuck your grandmother.

---- A reminisces: "He was an honest man who would not bullshit a four-year old".

----

Grice continues:

"B's volubility may be undesigned,"

--- Kramer suggest it's a signal of B's assumed feisty masculinity.

"and it is SO REGARDED by B it may raise in
A's mind"

-- if he has one, at 4 --

"a doubt as to whether B is certain as he says he is."

----- At this point, he quotes from Shakespeare:

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much" -- from Hamlet.

---

"But," Grice continues, "if it is thought of AS DESIGNED,
it would be an oblique way of conveying that it is to some
degree controversial whether or not p."

In the case of 'I'm going upstairs to fuck your granmother', it falls within the range of exmaples Grice found problematic by 1987, "Retrospective Epilogue". To quote again:

"While it is perhaps not too difficult to
envisage the impact upon implicature of a real or
apparent UNDERSUPPLY of information, the
impact of a real or apparent OVERSUPPLY is much more
problematic"

----

For considering

Mama: You are going upstairs?
Son: Yes.
Mama: You intend to clean up your bedroom and do the homework?
Son: I intend to do the homework. Isn't the chambermaid coming tomorrow?

or cfr.

Darby: We're going to miss Jack and Jill.
Joan: We're going to miss Jill.

---

Here the undersupply is very easily accountable as Grice says:

"[I]t is perhaps not too difficult
to envisage the impact upon implicature
of a[n] ... UNDERSUPPLY of information"

It is

"the impact of a[n] ... OVERSUPPLY
[which] is much more
problematic".

So back to Kramer's 'a forteriori', and I should analyse what makes this stronger:

"[I]f what I say is irrelevant, then a fortiori
it provides too little information."

Does it?

Cfr. "My lips are sealed"

A: What are you going upstairs all in the nude for, Grandpa?
B: My lips are sealed.

It seems B is abiding by "be relevant".

The problem with the OVERsupply (rather than the UNDERsupply) seems trickier in that we MAY need the qualification that Grice makes "real or apparent" -- and he fails to specify, to who?

Hence his point about designed and undesigned. If you are Anna Freud psychoanalysing a patient, you let her speak and speak and speak and speak and speak and speak and speak and speak and speak and speak. You will not inhibit U's oversupply of information. You may not even care (provided it does not exceed the time limit of the 'session', expensive as they were back in Bloomsbury) as to 'real or apparent'. And we may not be concerned with 'information' as being 'true' of course, provided we use 'information' in scare quotes.

Now, Kramer's

"[I]f what I say is irrelevant, then a fortiori
it provides too little information."

relates, as I recall, to Carlin's comment, not to Grandpa's utterance.

Kramer felt that, to make the joke funny, Carlin's comment, "He was an honest man and he wasn't goint to bullshit a four year old" fails to address the topics it should address, which Kramer identifies as two. From Kramer's comment to "He wasn't going to bullshit", THIS BLOG:

"Carlin's defense of his grandfather's statement
does not answer the questions "Why did you
provide so much detail and why
did you say it so crudely?"

Which may be back to volunteering, especially as regards the first question.

"Why did you provide so much detail?"

This is "the lady doth protest too much". It may be designed or undesigned. I suppose, "He is an honest man" sort of answers the first question. I would think that his intention to communicate "I am going to fuck my wife" IS undesigned. But seeing that he saw his grandson on the way, he volunteered. But almost spontaneously, undesigned-turned-designed. Note that there IS detail but not so much about it. Compare with Grice's example of "much" detail, above:


"B volunteers not only the information
that p,"

e.g. that he is going upstairs.

"but information to the effect that it
is certain that p, and that the evidence for its
being the case that p is so-and-so and such-and-
such."

briefly, "to fuck your grandmother"

If "B's volubility [is] undesigned", or rather if it is "SO REGARDED by B" "it may raise in A's mind" whatever -- e.g. that he is playing macho. Talk of 'implicature' only starts to make sense when the volubility [oversupply of 'information'] is thought of AS DESIGNED"

--- which I interpret as a provocation. The grandpa is provoking his grandson by letting him know he is doing something private to his wife (the grandparent's wife, the child's grandmother) identity of which is best spared on the grandson.

Still, at the end of the day, Carlin valued honesty over volubility. Volubility Kramer contrasts with paucity. His example:

"His wife is possibly cheating on him".
Actually,
"She is probably deceiving him this evening".

At this point, A may need U to volunteer, as it were, something else. Something that would BACK such a horrendous bitchy comment. But none is forthcoming. There IS an undersupply of 'information' as it were. The reverse of "p, and I am certain that p, and the evidence for p is so-and-so and such-and-such".

Grice comments of this as an

"example[...] in which the second maxim of Quality, "Do not
say that for which you lack adequate evidence," is flouted"
and which as such, is "perhaps not easy to find."

We can always invent. This is what Chapman calls the sentence examples, I think. She is a linguist yet finds them slightly irritating when Grice invents them out of his hat.

"The following seems to be a specimen", Grice happily reports:

"I say of X's wife:

----- "She is probably deceiving him this evening".

"In a suitable contenxt, or with a suitable gesture or
tone of voice, it may be clear that I have no adequate
reason for supposing this to be the case. My partner, to
preserve the assumption that the conversational game is
still being played, assumes that I am getting at some related
proposition for the acceptance of which I DO have a
reasonable basis. The related proposition might well be
that she is given to deceiving her husband, or possibly
that she is the sort of person sho would not stop short
of such conduct."

-----

So, what is the antonym of 'a fortiori' and do we need it? (the antonym, I mean). Thanks to Kramer for his remarks.