Collocations in Dale and Grice

It is excellent for Dale to have made his beautiful PhD thesis, "The theory of meaning" available online. We can study some of his collocations. By which I mean his specific 'sections' and titles of sections, as per the table of contents of his thesis, as it provides 'food for thought', so-called.

Collocations include

"theory of meaning"

---- While Grice does not mention 'theory of meaning', this bit, in WoW: Strand 5 (I think) responding to J. M. Jack, is about the distinction between 'analysis' of meaning and theory of meaning. I read and re-read that section by Grice, but was unconvinced. He wants to say that our reflections on the PARTICULAR meanings of this or that expression is a matter of 'intuition', and thus that it cannot be 'theoretical'. But this is NOT what Dale has in mind, which is to examine the philosohical ground, as it were, of a focal view of "... means ..." in terms of intending. The point Grice makes against Jack has more substance than one would otherwise think vis-a-vis a topic I have discussed elsewhere with R. B. Jones (he is a Carnapian): the reductive-reductionist distinction. Grice wants to say that what he offers is an 'analysis' (perhaps rather than 'theory' -- but cfr. his use of "T" for theory -- this taken up by Schiffer -- in "Method in philosophical psychology"), and one which, further, has to be understood as at least reductive, but not necessarily 'reductionist' (the semantic is NEVER 'eliminated' away as it were, in terms of the psychological).

"The Reduction of Expression-Meaning"

I follow Dale in preferring 'expression' here. Grice sometimes ("Meaning Revisited") speaks of 'emission', which is perhaps vague enough. I like the point about 'reduction' here. In this case, it is a bit of a reductionist analysis. Or is it 'reductive'? When one reads what Grice has to say about that realm, expression meaning:

X means ...

we see he always misses the 'that'-clause, the oratio obliqua that he restricts to the central, focal, cases of utterer's meaning (U means that p). Or something.

"Reduction?" is the name of a section in Dale's thesis. Brilliant.

"Natural and Non-Natural" is part of the name of another section of Dale's thesis. In connection with this, I am fascinated that Grice, in "Meaning Revisited" reverts to the natural-artificial distinction that he rejected in the 1948 earlier "Meaning". In the higher stages of his creature-construction, he relies on the idea of 'artificial' communication device. He has in mind non-natural, but won't say it!

Dale has sections for

"Victoria Welby"

"Alan Henderson Gardiner"

"Causal Theories" (of Meaning)

Other later sections bear collocations such as:

"the Actual-Language relation", where Grice would enjoy this actual-possible distinction. Dale is borrowing from Peacocke, I think, and others, as to what makes something an actual language of a population.

"Sub-Sentential Expression Meaning", this is an excellent section, vis a vis what I have been discussing elsewhere about the current fad for 'fragments' as in the work of Alison Hall, and Jason Merchant, "The syntax of silence". It has been argued that Grice is a 'propositionalist' and regards propositional-meaning as focal. Dale here offers some examples from Grice's work on the subsentential (or subatomic, as Hare would prefer) realm.

"Compositional Truth Theories". Here Dale gets VERY technical, and philosophical and rightly so. In general, R. B. Jones should love a compositional truth theory".

While I love Peacocke he is often disregarded in the literature. Not by Dale, who has a beautiful section on him: "Peacocke and Intentional Relations to CTTs"

Another delightful technical section by Dale is on "Attitude Ascriptions In Sensu
Diviso" -- we should expand on THAT!

When getting closer to his 'thesis advisor' (Schiffer), Dale has appropriate sections on "Hell-Determining Translators".

The last chapter is genial Dale's own proposal, and I should leave it as it is! -- in terms of the section, it comprises:

Title of whole thing ('chapter')

Towards a Theory of Meaning

Introduction

Saying

The Unusable

The Non-conventional and the Unuttered

The Theory of Meaning

---- Note the geniality of 'unusable'. I once wrote a thing for MY thesis advisor, which I called "Aunt Matilda". It dwelt on

"runt"

--- not meaning, 'runt of the litter'.

but 'undersized person' (fig.). Grice wants to say that his prim and proper Aunt Matilda KNOWS what 'runt' means, metaphorically, but will never use the expression. How more genially anti-Wittgensteinian can you get!? Yet a lot of historians of Grice (NOT Dale) make the common assumption (wrong one at best) that Grice is following Witters on 'meaning is use'. Quite the wrong slogan, as Grice has it.

The unuttered is another geniality. I think people who like to stick with the Latinate have talked of 'utteratum' and non-utteratum. Like the never-emitted, and so forth.

Perhaps we should get another look at Dale's name index vis a vis his references, too. Etc.

Cheers!