Grice on "therefore"

--- By J. L. Speranza
----- for the Grice Circle

--- I WAS DISCUSSING with Danny Frederick, elsewhere, Grice's and Strawson's points on 'therefore' qua 'conventional implicature', so I thought of copying and pasting the few remarks on this in WoW and share.

Grice writes twice on 'therefore' in WoW:

The first time is on p. 25, where he wants to contrast the 'conversational' implicature, which is his claim to fame, and the rather more boring, FAR more boring, 'conventional' impicature, which did not bore Strawson enough.

Grice writes:

"In SOME cases, the conventional meaning
of the words used"

-- as in the meaning of 'there' and 'fore' in "therefore"

"will determine what is implicated, besides
helping to determine what is said. If I say
(smugly),

'[Jack] is an Englishman; [Jack] is, therefore brave'

-- I have certainly committed myself, by virtue
of the meaning of my words to its being the case
that [Jack's] being brave is a consequence of
(follows from) [Jack's] being an Englishman. But
while I have said that he is an Englishman, and
said that he is brave, I do not want to say that I
have SAID (in the favoured sense) that it follows
from [Jack's] being an Englishman that [Jack] is
brave, though I have certainly indicated, and
so implicated, that this is so."

He goes on:

"I do not want to say that my utterance of
this sentence"

---- two sentences, actually.

"would be, strictly speaking, false should the
consequence in question fail to hold. So SOME
implicatures are conventional, unlike the one [attending,
"He hasn't been to prison yet"]. WoW: 25-6.

The second instance is p. 120.

He is considering:

"Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave."

----

Here he has a slightly different variant, complete in indeed ONE sentence:

S1 --
"Jack is an Englishman AND he is, therefore, brave"

---

Grice comments:

"It would be appropriate, I think, to make a
partial specification of the timeless meaning of
S1 by saying:"

"PART of the meaning of S1 is

[Jack was born in England]

and

[Jack is courageous[

and

[That Jack is courageous follows
from his having been born in England].

---

"It could also be true taht when U uttered S1,
h emenat (part of what he meant was) THAT
that [Jack] is courageous follows from his
[having been born in England]" (WoW: 121)

---

"Now, I do not wish to allow that, in my
favoured sense of 'say', one who utters S1 will
have SAID that Jack's being courageous follows
from his [having been born in England], though
he [did say] that Jack is an Englishman and that Jack
is courageous."

"I would wish to maintain that the
SEMANTIC function of ['therefore' -- [or 'so'. JLS]]
is to enable an [utterer] to INDICATE,
though not to say [or explicitly convey], that
a certain consequence holds. ... My primary
reason for opting for this particular sense
of 'say' is that I expect it to be of
greater theoretical utility [vis a vis 'assert']
than some other sense of 'say' would be."

"So, I shall be committed to the view
that applied timeless and occasion-meaning
may coincide, that is to say, it may be
true both (i) that when U uttererd X the
meaning of X included "*p" and (ii) that
part of what U meant when he uttered X
was that *p. I would like to use
the expression, "conventionally meant that"
in such a way that the fulfillment of the two
conditions just mentioned, while
insufficient for the truth of "U said that *p"
will be sufficient (and necessary) for the
truth of "U conventionally meant that *p"".

--

The point we were deaing with with Frederick concerns the otioseness or lack therefore of 'therefore'. It seems it's a metalogical device which _I_ find otiose. In logic classes, we usually don't say, 'therefore' -- or those classes which I have attended! The master just goes to the blackboard and writes, as J mentioned in a previous commentary:

alla Barbara:

All M is P.

All S is M.

----

All S is P.

--- But you'll say that the WAY this is displayed (on the board) indicates that the intention is to communicate that "All S is P" follows from the premises. Similarly, some people use:

∴

So that

"∴" is pre-fixed to "All S is P" to mark it is a conclusion, rather than a volunteered statement to some other effect.

While Grice does not mention 'so', it serves just the same function. He does note that 'moreover' and 'but' share with 'therefore' the same features of their carrying a 'conventional' implicature.

---- Potts has written a book about this, but he is more linguistics than philosophy oriented, so I wouldn't think he should care (much) about the metalogical considerations!?

-- (It all started, as far as Grice is concerned, with Strawson's hasty remarks in the opening sections of "Introduction to Logical Theory" in 1952. In Strawson it struck back with a vengeance since he'll infamously said that 'if p, q' shares with 'therefore' this character of a 'conventional' implicature, whereas for most Griceians it is a CONVERSATIONAL thing(y). Etc.