Grice and Strawson on logical form

--- We know about GRICE. But we should not dismiss his joint work with Strawson on this, or Strawson´s own independent work.

Logical form can be a fascinating topic for an Oxford seminar. Just imagine Grice and Strawson lecturing Quine (they had the courtesy to invite!) back in the Oxford of their day (1956 -- just before "In defense of a dogma").

Atlas has given seminars on

"Implicature and logical form"

and indeed, that´s part of the subtitle of G. M. J. Gazdar´s one and only book on the topic, Formal pragmatics.

In general, it is best to stick with "implicatum". How much of the Implicatum is NOT a matter of the logical form of what is NOT "implicatum". Cicero should let us know!

----

"Logical form" was a term of art in the logic of Grice´s day, and he was always willing to say he was no logician, "only a PHILOSOPHICAL logician", or "philosopher of logic" at worst. Note that his "Logic and Conversation" starts with a quip on "philosophical logic", a "common place" therein.

Yet, people need to be reminded, and it was a good idea of M. Sainsbury, whom I have corresponded with on this or that, to have his

book

on "Philosophy of logic" (or is it "philosophical logic") super-entitled, "Logical forms"!

------

In general, it´s best to identify, indeed, the logical form with the truth-conditional aspects.

"She is in the garden or in the kitchen"

(Grice´s third example in "Causal theory of perception"), implicating, "God knows where of the two places she actually finds herself in".

So, the logical form

is

p v q

---- The implicature, that there is NO TRUTH-FUNCTIONAL evidence

for "p v q" that does NOT proceed, as per the introduction of "v", via either p or q, is "convesational".

Grice is cautious to stick with an entailment-view of "strength" at this point.

To utter

"p v q"

is LESS STRONG

than to utter "p" (in specific terms of material implication and entailment, rather). But most cases, he allowed, provided further puzzles.

After all,

The pillar box SEEMING red has nothing to do (in terms of entailment) with the pillar box BEING red, so one can´t really say that one utterance is stronger than the other. Or weaker, for the matter.