The Invention of Lying: Otiose?

Kramer, in "The Invention of Lying" writes:

"Compare:
Q. What did you tell them?
A. I told them what happened.
--
Q. What did you tell them?
A. I told the truth.
In the second version, there is an implicature that U might have chosen to lie..."

Excellent point -- which reminds me of Frank Plumpton Ramsey.

He thought, as did Strawson later on, and Grice was seduced by this at some point -- that 'true' as Kramer remarks in his capsule of the film under discussion, 'Invention of Lying' HOLDS -- i.e. lying IS a cultural invention, in that in this society that the film portrays there were, Kramer notes, no word for 'true' or 'false'.

This may be behind Ramsey's great insight that 'true' IS redundant. He would play with variants on the dialogues above:

A: What did you tell them
--- What happened.
--- the truth.
--- other.


Grice consider this in a couple of pages (literally -- TWO pages) in WoW, "Truth", in Lecture III ("Further notes on logic and conversation"). As I recall, his example is:

The policeman said that monkeys talked. Or that monkeys could talk.

He wants to stick to a given propositional content, "Monkeys talk", or "Monkeys can talk". In the example by Kramer above, we would have:

"He ate a sandwich"

may do:

A: What did you tell them?
-- i. That Smith ate a sandwich.

This is different from 'what happened'. In that 'what happened happened', but 'what happened was that Smith ate a sandwich.

Now Tarski apparently had a problem with this. Grice discusses this. For Tarski wants to analyse:

"Smith ate a sandwich" is true if Smith ate a sandwich.

--- Hardly illuminating, and unable to account for the predicate 'true' in UNASSERTED contexts, as I think Grice calls them -- precisely Kramer's cases:

"What happened"

"the truth".

----

Grice's example:

"What the policeman said was truth."

Suppose is the Sheriff asking the cop:

Sherrif: What did you tell them?
Police: "Monkeys can talk".

Grice wants to be able to analyse 'true' in unasserted contexts, or where there is no specification of WHAT is supposed to be the case for a true statement to hold.

"What the policeman said was true".

----

This, apparently, is a bother to symbolise formally. And pretty otiose, "If, upon inquiry, I come to learn that what the policeman said was, "Monkeys can talk", I withdraw the statement."

------

Grice seems to be wanting to explore what the grounds are for things like:

"What the policeman said was true"

"Perhaps we work on the assumption that everything that policemen say -- or everything that THIS policeman says -- is true."

---

In any case, back to the Sheriff:

----

Sheriff: So what did you tell them?
Police: That Smith ate a sandwich.

Grice wants to take into account the point by Strawson on the 'implicature' of adding, 'true':

--

Sheriff: And that is the true thing to say.
--- or: It is true that Smith ate a sandwich.

Grice wants to compare the briefer:

i. Smith ate a sandwich (which reports a fact)

and

ii. It is true that Smith ate a sandwich. (first occurrence of 'predicate' "true" with merely an implicatural effect, which is the one pointed out by Kramer at the quote at the beginning of this post).

Ramsey, Strawson, and Grice would want to agree that what 'true' adds is 'implicatural' -- and that strictly, the predicate 'is' otiose. Or something.