-- by J. L. Speranza
----- for the Grice Club, &c.
GRICE SPEAKS of the pragmatic basis for our selection of logical forms in the little known, "Actions and Events", which he published in 1986.
Hylemorphism is, of course, a reactionary retreat to Aristotle.
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For Grice, creatures which are mechanisms which mean, can be explained in terms of hylemorphic features.
Consider a bird which utters:
"Hawk!"
on the proximity of a hawk. The CONTENT Of the bird's psychological (protopropositional) attitude is a feature in the bird's environment: a hawk.
The hyle, or 'matter' of the utteratum, what was uttered, is the physical entity: the signal itself, which can be described in purely physical terms.
The 'morphe', or form (forma logica proper, morphe logike) is 'what-is-meant' by the bird's alarm cry. It is not now physical -- I follow Kramer in talking of physical versus logical devices here. It is _logical_.
There is a _series_: from the bird's alarm cry we get to the less evolutionary, oddly,
"It seems to me as if there is a hawk in the proximity of our nest, darling."
Here, again, the utteratum allows for a physical-channel description. What is meant is perhaps not "Hawk", but something more on the subject-predicate, noun-verb basis.
As Palmer had it in his "Grammar" (the cartoon):
One caveman to another: "Remember when all we had to care about was nouns and verbs?"
Grice calls that alpha-movements. Alpha and beta.
So,
"HAWK, near"
is an 'item', the hawk, which displays a feature, "---is near".
We get to the logical form.
When the logical form is interpreted, we provide _matter_ for it.
An interpreted logical form is no longer a logical form.
----
Etc.
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Planning as I am a visit to the clubhouse, I thought I'd drop by to see what was happening. And lo, I find my name taken, not in vain, but in service to the day's agenda. This happy coincidence emboldens me to stick in my two cents.
ReplyDeleteI don't translate the bird's cry as "Hawk, near" but as "Danger, hawk." The difference, I think, is that the act of utterance is prompted by the signicance of the hawk and so can be interpreted as a communication that the only cause for uttering exists.
Consider the strange incident of the dog in the night. It does not matter what the dog would have barked; the fact that he did not bark communicated, in dog-talk, that no strangers were afoot. Had the dog broken his silence, and particularly, had he barked excitedly, one might infer the presence of a stranger. Thus, the squawking bird, by squawking, can be understood to communicate danger. The ability to give the utterance an interpretable shape - "hawk" - creates a target of opportunity, so to speak, a useful semantic freebie identifying the threat.
Not that identifying the threat is unimportant. From the Smothers Brothers (the Poor American's Flanders and Swan):
Tom Smothers, singing):
Yesterday I fell into a vat of chocolate
Yesterday I fell into a vat of chocolate
Yesterday I fell into a vat of chocolate
Lolly-do-dum-lolly-do-dum-day
Dick Smothers, singing):
What did you do when you fell into the chocolate?
What did you do when you fell into the chocolate?
What did you do when you fell into the chocolate?
Lolly-do-dum-lolly-do-dum-day
Tom:
I yelled "Fire!" when I fell into the chocolate
I yelled "Fire!" when I fell into the chocolate
I yelled "Fire!" when I fell into the chocolate
Lolly-do-dum-lolly-do-dum-day
Dick, speaking: Wait a minute, wait a minute. Why did you yell "Fire!" when you fell into the chocolate?
Tom: Because no one would have rescued me if I yelled "CHOCOLATE!"
Yelling "chocolate" might be seen as cancelling the implicature of danger carried by a shout of the sort made. Instead of the generic "HELP!!" the utterer behaves as if he needs help, but, by saying "chocolate" would at least call into question that inference. So, he had to yell something that did not nullify the plea for assistance implicit in his vocalizing at all, and "Fire" served the purpose.
The logical devices here, I think, are two: the warning of danger and the communication of the specific threat. In physical terms, the first is aural, the second verbal.