Pirot talk

Excerpt from Bar-On/Green, on Grice's "Myth":

"In his 1989 ―Meaning Revisited‖, Grice attempts to portray ―nonnatural meaning as descendant [and] … derivative from … cases of natural meaning‖ (1989: 292)."

"In that article Grice can be seen as answering a question closely related to our main concern here, namely the following."

"How could nonnatural meaning, as paradigmatically exemplified in human communication, arise in a world of natural signs?"

"Put in these Gricean terms, the Sellarsian opposition to Continuity would take the form of simply denying that there is a philosophically illuminating answer to this question.4"

"The Sellarsian skeptic will, of course, agree that in ‗the order of being‘, linguistic behavior that is endowed with nonnatural meaning must be preceded by forms of behavior, so abundant in the nonhuman world, that possess only natural meaning. But she would insist that from this it doesn‘t follow that we can get conceptual purchase on nonnatural meaning – the hallmark of human linguistic communication – by portraying it as an elaboration on these forms of nonlinguistic behavior."

"In ‗the order of understanding‘, the Sellarsian might say, nonnatural meaning is sui generis."

"Grice‘s ―Meaning Revisited‖, which may be read as an attempt to respond to this challenge, is largely devoted to offering what we shall call ‗the Myth of X‘."

"Grice's is a story about how a creature, X, who has a relatively rich behavioral repertoire, including elements possessing natural meaning, could ―end up with something which is very much like nonnatural meaning‖ (ibid.)."

"This myth is plausibly to be construed not as a conceptual analysis, or reductive account, but rather as a diachronic, or ‗genetic‘ Continuity story depicting a continuum of animal behavior, beginning with bits of behaviors possessing only natural meaning, through utterances endowed with individual speaker meaning, to full-blown conventional linguistic meaning."

"Such a story aims to offer a ‗natural

(4 Compare Davidson‘s argument in ‗The Emergence of Thought‘ (in his 2001).
5 See Sellars (1963). .

"reconstruction‘ of a path creatures initially capable only of engaging in behavior endowed with natural meaning could take to linguistic behavior."

"A natural reconstruction, as we think of it, does not explain the emergence of linguistic meaning (and the representational capacities that subserve it) by merely locating increasingly complex stages on a continuum. It also tries to show how each stage develops from an earlier one in some intelligible way."

"One such way would involve an agent or group of agents making choices that realize a more developed form of meaning; another would involve a process such as evolution by natural selection."

"Grice‘s Continuity story is of the former type."

We have to take 'continuity' seriously enough to involve Aristotle's use of 'series' as per providing the semantics to things: 'mean', 'soul', 'number' -- cited by Grice, "From the banal to the bizarre" that Bar-On and Green should also cite, elsewhere.


"As we‘ll see, Grice's myth is vulnerable to criticism from the Sellarsian."

"This will raise the question whether another Continuity account may be given that is not vulnerable in this way.6

"Grice‘s Myth of X begins with a creature X who nonvoluntarily produces behavior that naturally indicates that it is in some state (say, pain)."

My example:

Ouch.

I would grant that when we, homo sapiens, utter "Ouch" we are becoming infants, and inarticulate ones, at that. It is an atavic gesture which you'll never hear from the Queen (of say, England).

Bar-On and Green go on:

"Grice then takes X through six stages that would allow him ―to end up with something … very much like nonnatural meaning‖ (1989: 292)."

FIRST STAGE

--- those stagings obsess Cargan and me. It's Grice's point about internalisation of content, and stuff. One of the routines of metaphysics, in "Reply to Richards". Cargan knows.

"At the first stage, X produces voluntarily behavior whose nonvoluntary production would naturally indicate that X is in the relevant state."

"For example, X might emit a yelp to get his audience, Y, to come to think he‘s in pain."

OUCH.

"Grice imagines that, at a subsequent stage, X‘s audience, Y, recognizes that X‘s performance is voluntary, and can see it as open (or ―wholly overt‖, to use McDowell‘s phrase)."

"Although X‘s behavior is ‗put on‘, he‘s letting Y see that it is put on and Y realizes it."

SECOND STAGE:

"The next stages have X and Y involved in a complicated game of transmitting and receiving information in which X not only intends Y to recognize his communicative intention, but also intends Y to take this intention to be a sufficient reason for believing that he, X, is in the relevant state."

THIRD AND FINAL STAGE:

"At the final stage,


(6 ‗Natural reconstructions‘ of the emergence of particular human phenomena of interest are often offered by philosophers. Cf. Quine (1973) (where he reconstructs the emergence of reference to objects both ontogenetically and phylogenetically), Sellars (1956) (where he introduces his famous ‗Myth of Jones‘ to reconstruct the emergence of mental state attributions), and Gibbard (1992) (where he reconstructs the emergence of ethical language and concepts). Such reconstructions do not typically offer a natural history of the relevant phenomena. Nevertheless, they can be potentially useful for the empirical study of the relevant phenomena provided they meet certain constraints).

"X reverts to producing some vehicle of communication – a bit of behavior or device – which is not a natural sign, but is more loosely connected to the message to be conveyed, in a way that is in some way discernible way by Y."

"At this final stage, we have a communicative vehicle invested with speaker meaning as Grice conceives it. Once a repertoire of such communicative vehicles is developed, our creature may well be on his way to linguistic meaning as we know it."