Grice on Peirce on "English"

It's as if Grice wants to stick with short Anglo-Saxon terms. Surely it would be pedantic to say:

"Those spots didn't signify anything to me; to the doctor, they signified that Timothy had the measles."

--- "mean" is what you should use, if you want to stick to short Anglo-Saxon words. Or not.

Chapman notes:


"Grice observes that ... the position of the weathercock meant that the wind was NE entails, first, that the wind was indeed NE."

Note that Grice is using 'entailment', which is a techno-cryptical thing by Moore. I use the horseshoe in a tautology: -- associated conditional:

---


ENTAILMENT, factivity of "... means..."

The position of the weathercock MEANS that the wind is NE.
----------
Therefore, the wind IS NE.

Chapman notes:

"Second, [it is also entailed] that a CAUSAL connection holds between the wind and weathercock."

"This feature, [Grice] notes, seems to be restricted to the word 'means'" rather than ... 'beauty'? No. He is comparing different terms. "... a sign of..." is a trick. The other day, I was reading this cartoon, which I should retrieve. A medium may say that "something" is "a sign of" something else. And what we get is the content of a psychological attitude. For the medium, it is factive.

"... is an indication of ..."

is another tricky expression.

Grice's "Meaning Revisited" has:

" ... is suggestive of ..."

---- Enough to want to stick with,

"Smoke means ... smoked salmon"

--

Chapman's exegesis:

"You can say

The position of the weathercock as AN INDICATION that the wind is NE.

BUT

it is actually SE. "

---- So '... is an indication of...' is not factive in this sense (Grice's flirting with factivity after the Kiparskis, is a late thing. He would never use this hybrid back in 1948).



"'is an indication that' is NOT [then]
a satisfactory synonym of '... means ... ' because it
does not ENTAIL the truth of what follows."

Dale was wondering about uses of 'causal' in Grice, etc. Chapman's exegesis of this lectures by Grice on Peirce may give us some (wrong?) cues?

Chapman notes:


"The causal connection also offers an interesting point of comparison to different ways in which "... means... " is used."

"Grice draws on an example that also appears in 'Meaning' [and by which we take this are lectures prior to 1948] when he suggests a conversation at a bus stop as the bus goes."

"The comment, [of someone explaining a parvenu, say]

'Those three rings meant that that the bus is full'

could legitimately be followed by the query:

'But was _it_ full?'

That would indicate we have non-natural meaning. In any case, Grice is simplifying Peirce's scheme and the spirit behind it. He should not have called his thing, "Lectures on Peirce" and I will recheck how Chapman wants this study to be quoted.