Lycan on Grice in sensu composito

From

http://www.unc.edu/~ujanel/74Topics4.htm

Lycan tells his students, but shared with Humanity as a whole:

"In class I briefly explored a possible rapprochement between Grice and Davidson, the one envisaged on pp. 145-46 of my textbook chapter on Davidson."

"But that compromise or hybrid position can be given either a Gricean or a Davidsonian spin."

"Here's the Gricean version."

-----

"Sure, sure, we need syntax and truth-theory
to overcome the four obstacles and complete
Stage I. But that's just paperwork. (Thanks,
Donald, you can go now.)"

----
(Oddly, Feyerabend was often irritated, if not downright upset by Donald's and Paul's 'silly' exchanges. In a letter to Lakatos, Feyerabend (who taught with Grice and Davidson at Berkeley) recalls how he would waste hours in examination rooms having to undergo the torture of Grice and Davidson checking his students on topics like,

"There is a rhinoceros in the regrigerator".

---

Lycan goes on:

"The fact remains that what meaning really
is, at bottom, is communicative intentions. Grice
rules.""

But, as Yablo noticed -- and he was a son of Grice --

"Impicatures still happen"

Lycan goes on:

"Here's the Davidsonian version."

"Once Grice has admitted that sentence meaning is projected using syntax and truth- theory from the referential meanings of subsentential components, chiefly singular terms and predicates, he's singing our song."

-----

"That the sub-sentential expression meanings are functions of sub-sentential speaker-meanings means only that we now have a Gricean theory of referring, that now competes with description theories, the Causal-Historical theory, etc."

"But Davidson's Truth-Condition theory has never tried to explain referring."

"We're entirely neutral on that, and we just suppose that some theory of referring is correct."

"So Grice is just not addressing the same data we are, and although he has made an interesting and important contribution to the theory of referring, he has said nothing useful about sentence meaning, which is the present topic."

"Davidson rules."

Lycan wonders:

"Is there a real issue here? If you think so, expound it and adjudicate it."

If not, skip.