Deviant Implicatures

J wrote in "More on Grice on logical form:

"According to J's "pragmatic analyticity" (treatise to arrive at later date), we keep the LOEM and LONC, like we keep the rules of chess--thats how the logic-game is played. But are they written like in some timeless platonic abode? Un f-ing likely."

Oddly, for my PhD degree, I had to pass a course on the philosophy of logic; which I did. The required text was Haack, "Philosophy of logic", which I devoured. Of course, I did my paper and research on her treatment of Grice - chapter i, luckily.

But then I found out more. Haack had a second book, called "Deviant logics". It's all about Quine, and Strawson, and Grice.

You see, for Grice, logic is _simple_, as it was for Witters.

Strawson complicated things, with his "truth-value gaps", that Grice detested. This does not have to do what with Chomsky would call "LF", logical form, but "ILF", interpreted logical form.

"The king of France is a bastard"

is neither true nor false, for Strawson, since the King of France does not refer. For Grice,

"The king of France is not a bastard"

is true, since, well, there is no King of France. On the other hand, for Grice, "The king of France is a bastard" is _false_.

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Quine also is brought in.

So consider things like (ix), the iota operator, for the description of "the" in "The king of France", or the horseshoe (better), ), for "p ) q", "if p, q".

For Grice, 'if', in English, mirrors "p ) q" and vice versa. For Strawson it doesn't. He thinks that by uttering "if", speakers mean MORE than the material conditional. This is yet a different disagreement than that over the meaning of 'the'.

When Grice starts his "Logic and Conversation" piece he mentions that he will try to defend "classical logic", as he calls it, "in a two-valued interpretation", as he also adds.

So

"p v -p"

would for Grice be a 'law' of some type. In a non-two-valued interpretation, things are different. A non-two-valued interpretation may be a 'truth-value' gappy interpretation, alla Strawson. Or more deviantly, it may be a three-valued interpretation.

Haack analyses all that.

Where Quine fits in. Quine offers a principle of charity (alla Davidson) to approach people's speech. We tend to assume that foreigners', say, use of the language will be isomorphic with us. But what if their interpreation of the logical constants is NOT two-valued. What if in some Southern Pacific tribe, truth-value gaps ARE the norm? What if the logical form of their 'conditional' utterances imply something like C. I. Lewis's 'strict implication' (the fishhook) rather than the horseshoe?

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Grice tended to be a universalist. As far as homo sapiens is concerned, the laws of logic _ARE_ universal. Not so much because logicians are, oh-so-clever. But because the laws of logic are supposed to mirror homo-sapiens's psychological correlations with Reality, as homo-sapiens conceive it.

Chimpanzees may operate on a different logic. They may _perceive_ Reality in a different perspective.

So I WOULD relativise logic to 'homo-sapiens', first, and English, second.

The idea of a formal system (like Grice's System Q, or Myro's System G) should then be understood as a way to 'model' the language of a Quine (System Q) or a Grice (System G). Within those parameters, the law of the excluded middle, or non-contradiction, hold. But as J notes, in different languages, they may not.

Etc.

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Van Fraasen also elaborated on this, even if he failed.