------ for the Grice Club, etc.
When K. M. Jaszczolt, elsewhere, and recently, refers to the "later Wittgenstein" -- vis-à-vis some recent developments in semantics/pragmatics, and Noel Burton-Roberts's points remind one of Strawsonian attempts to see things, I wonder if it’s not the time for our little Gricean interlude -- on stuff.
First, an area of ‘crosslinguistic’ examples, recently brought to the linguistic forum by Jason Merchant, Hall, Gutt, and others, and which are often cited with reference to Grice´s attempts to elucidate "what is said" -- a pretty non-euphonic term, if you ask me -- in terms of an alleged "sentence primacy". Thus, in a message elsewhere Gutt retreats to his 'native' language (as Chomsky would have it) and provides an example:
(1)
A: Wem hast du von diesem Brief erzählt?
B: Meinen Eltern.
"Whom did you mention the letter?", "My parents" (in the accusative). What B said: "My parents". What he meant/implied: I mentioned the letter to my parents. Things you always wanted to ask a linguist but were ashamed to.
Gutt is dubious about the role "logical form" (never mind "explicature") should play there -- in the recovery of 'what was meant'.
Gutt writes: "[T]he fact that [B] chose a case-marked phrase (hence the choice of German for this example [but cfr. below my case with "Her" versus "She" in 'native' English. JLS]), and furthermore assuming that case is assigned here by grammatical structure, this would be a strong incentive to the [addressee] to build up a well-formed grammatical structure of which this phrase would be a constituent, and so the specific assumption [U] _told his parents about the letter_ would be quite strongly communicated. In fact, if the response had not been appropriately case marked, e.g. 'Meine Eltern', it would have been felt unfelicitous. Whether this process necessitates the theoretical recognition of concepts like 'logical form'
... seems unclear [to me]"
In a way, Gutt's example relates to the two examples provided by A. Hall (the second apres Merchant) at
www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/alison/Fragments_Oct08.pdf.
-- in work elsewhere referred to by N. Allott. One example in the body of her essay. "[I]n German, to order a coffee, you can utter the apparent subsentence ..."
(2)
A: Can I help you?
B (in his best German): Einen Kaffee, bitte.
Hall comments: “Einen Kaffee” (a-ACC coffee). Accusative case on the object is obligatory, as it would be if the fragment were embedded in a full overt sentence: “Ein ...". NB: When in doubt, I make a _point_ when in Germany of _allways_ [sic] just explicate "Coffee", since, for one, I would be displeased if they do not refill my cup. It simplifies things so). Hall's other example is in a footnote she deals with similar example (involving the dative rather than the accusative case, though – and relying on Merchant’s cross-linguistic evidence in “The syntax of silence”): Her other example concerns case, and I have provided below a case with "She" and "Her" which seems to do the job just as well -- without a need for 'native'-language-switch.
(3)
A: Wem sieht er ähnlich?
B: Seinem Vater.
Here it may pay to take a look at Hall´s paraphrase. She writes, counterfactually (?): "If B's reply were not a case of syntactic ellipsis, it would be a mystery why dative case is mandatory [for a 'felicitous' move, as it were -- cfr. Gutt above] while nominative case, *which would be expected if the fragment were subsentential*, is judged ungrammatical".
I'm not sure about the asterisked bit, "which would be expected if the fragment were subsentential", though, but perhaps A.-E. Gutt is!
Consider some neo-Gricean variants, and a palaeo-Gricean one:
(4)
A (early in the morning, in the kitchen) I’m so hungry! (as he searches around in the cubboard).
B: (a) The jar of marmelade is on the top shelf.
On the top shelf [+> that’s where the jar of marmalade is, if you are
looking for it -- cfr. Austin's own cupboard conditional]
Compare with:
(4b) On the top shelf.
(4c) The top shelf.
(4d) Top shelf.
(4e) Top.
Grice's own casual example (illustrating the category of "Quantity" or informativeness):
(5)
A: Where does C(hris) live?
B: (5a) C(hris) lives somewhere in the South of France.
---(5b) He lives somewhere in the South of France.
Or:
---(5b´) She lives somewhere in the South of France.
as the case might be. Note the variance in the specification of the location phrase:
(5c) Somewhere in the South of France (Grice´s own variant: WoW: 32)
(5d) The South of France.
(5e) South of France. (The latter would yield an ambiguous reply in that it may be interpreted: "C lives south of France", i.e. in Africa, say.
Bringing Merchant home?
Stainton has noted that it may do to follow Kenyon in considering 'nonsentences' as sort of 'implicata'. To ask about "the" proposition expressed or implicated by this or that, is, to follow Stainton, the wrong question. Grice was delightfully obsessed, as Stainton notes, with "disjunctional" indeterminacy (or underdeterminacy in the modern jargon). It's more than just "one" "p" that may be implicated (Stainton, intro to Stainton et al).
I see no need to retreat to German while we can stay in the home base with English (of sorts):
(6)
A: Who does he resemble? (après Hall, but sticking with English)
B: (a) Her.
---(b)?She.
(and cfr. Grice on "He is shaggy". "Who is shaggy?". "Him" (WoW:VI -- on Jones's dog, a he, being shaggy).
A Latin transliteration of Grice’s example should provide some evidence
why Sidonius was the first to have used "implicatura", if only in Latin --
vide Short/Lewis, "A Latin Dictionary", 'implicatura: entanglement").
(7)
A: Where does C(hris) live?
Ubi habitat Christophorus/Christophora/Christina?)
B (a): Pars Provinciae. (“The part of Province” – as answer to the question, “Where does C live?”). Or:
-- (b) Una pars Provinciae.
"One part of Provence". Ungrammatical. It should be, in the appropriate case:
-- (c) Parte Provinciae.
In an inflected language like Latin, “Somewhere in the South of France”/"Somewhere in Provence") should not be understood as being in the nominative case. (I'm simplifying things and taking Provence as the epitome, as it should, of the South of
France _that counts_)(But yet, in my reading of Hall above, about the
'nominative' case, it seems like we are forgetting that the nominative case is
just an inflected case as any of the others. No primacy should be given to it?
-- but cfr. Grice for 'ontological correlates' below).
The philosophical background, or why Grice is not Wittgenstein.
In a message elsewhere N. Allott had provided the full context from R. Carston, in Mind & Language, vol. 17, p. 130:
Carston writes about the context for the elliptical "On the top shelf":
“Consider the following very ordinary situation: it’s
breakfast time and, coming into the kitchen, I see
my companion searching around in the lower
reaches of a cupboard; knowing his breakfast habits, I
guess that he’s looking for a jar of marmalade and
I utter: … (4) above. … Although the proposition I
have expressed here is something like,
(a) The jar of marmalade is on the top shelf.
the linguistic semantic input to the pragmatic
processor is, arguably, just whatever meaning
the language confers on that prepositional phrase,
that is, a far from fully propositional logical form,
one which consists of just a location
constituent (which denotes a property).”
Now, I don’t know about the later Wittgenstein, but since Carston has
expanded on this in her (as Noel Burton-Roberts has it, aptly named "Thoughts
and Utterances"), and, interestingly quoting from Sperber and Wilson, Relevance: communication and cognition 1986/1995 - vide Sperber/Wilson 1977 for their first explicit attack on Grice) on 'subpropositional logical form', etc., AND noting that, in her view, Grice's interests in this area (of subsententials) were at best 'peripheral' (No 8b, but the full proposition 8a):
Grice, Causal theory of perception
(8)
(a) The pillar-box seems red to me.
(b) A red-pillar box.
etc. and cfr. Stainton on "sentence primacy" (section in his book -- cfr. Suppes, "Primacy of Utterer's meaning", in PGRICE. -- vide below Grice on 'sense data'), I would like to bring, explicitly, some material on what Grice regarded as involving some 'metaphysical complications' of any account of 'subpropositional' constituents worth their philosophical price. First, metaphysical, as it should (rather than epistemic or linguistic):
Oddly, Grice and Witters (as he called Wittgenstein; we have no clue how Witters referred to Grice) relied on the same obscure simile to refer to some subpropositional aspects of things. They used the term, "radix". For Wittgenstein, a "radical" had to do with chemistry (he was an ingeneer at heart). For Grice, a Platonist at heart, a ´radix´ was the square root of things. //- This little piggy went to market.
Towards an ontological correlates of subpropositional constituents.
Grice's WoW:VI -- subsentential structures -- is all about correlation. He distinguishes two types of ontological correlations, which should be first and foremost 'explicit', even if they can be turned 'implicit' by practice: R-correlation is purely referential, in the manner of direct-reference theories alla Kaplan. But there's D-correlation, or denotational correlation, which applies to adjectival types ("Fido is _shaggy_").
In WoW:VI Grice refers variously to the ontological correlates as being 'things', 'objects', or 'items', featuring this or that 'feature' or 'property' (understood extensionally -- 'shaggy': the class of long-haired things.
Stainton, our expert in nonsentences, has nearly not touched on an important topic: the alleged ontological complications that a subsentential ontology should involve. After all, philosophers are _so comfy_ with extensional propositions being the bearers of truth, that one wonders...
Someone should, before the Apocalypse, re-edit Grice´s ¨Vacuous Names¨ into a manegeable anthology. It contains all you wanted to know about subsentential Grice. A pity he focuses on _empty_ names, but hey, you can´t have everything.
Grice´s thoughts on this evolved.
When Searle thought of reprinting Grice's WoW:VI in his influential "Philosophy of Language" (Oxford readings in philosophy, ed. Warnock, 1971), he hasted to add a preliminary note with a caveat to readers that things should not always be so 'behaviouristic' as Grice implies.
And, indeed, Grice's views on propositional constituents and their ontological correlates did vary.
Consider, for example, this rather convoluted (in the best Griceian way) analysis of quantifers -- an element in the _first_ constituent of a 'propositional complex', according to Grice, "Reply to Richards”. This is a rather longish reply to Richard Grandy and Richard Warner. In the particular bit I’m quoting from, Grice is addressing the alleged primacy (undefined, though) of the ‘proposition’. Grice provides a reply which aims at analyzing what we mean by a proposition (or ‘propositional complex’ as he prefers) in terms of its (sub)constituents, and spends some time in their ‘ontological correlates’ (and keep in mind Carston above, 'going ontological': “a location constituent (which denotes a [B(beta)-type] property”)).
In particular Grice explores a second-order set theory to account for
various quantificational phrases. And he is NOT having in view things like:
(9) The king of France is bald.
(a)The King of France.
(b)Is Bald (or "Bald").
(cfr. A. Hall,
(10) (a) What have I done with the baby?
--- (b) The baby! (+> (a)
-- uttered by worried mother))
Grice is exploring neo-traditionalist tendencies in logic as associated
with his joint work with Peter Strawson, and is fascinated by the fact that
in this view even singular phrases tend to bear a 'universalist' analysis.
Note, too, that while this is just a reposte to Grandy/Warner, Grice takes
his time to provide sub-divisions for different subpropositional
quantificational phrases, which should be evidence of the primacy he regarded the
topic showed.
As with WoW:VI, cited below, Grice provides extensionalist (in
set-theoretic terms) while leaving room for an alternative intensionalist account (in terms of 'properties').
Grice writes, then, of how second-order set theory is involved in analysing a sub-sentence, as it were (or a sub-sentential component of a canonical sentence):
Proposition: "S is P".
"[W]e associate with the subject-expression of a canonically
formulated sentence [expressing a proposition, bearer of truth] a set of at least
second order."
First case: singular entities (as in "France", or "South of France"). Or, after Grice's WoW:VI: "Fido" (proper name) being "Jones's dog" (definite description), or "Whiskers" being "Smith's cat".
"[1] If the subject-expression is a singular name, its ontological
correlate will be the singleton of the singleton of the entity which bears
that name. ..."
Second case: indefinite phrases (like "Somewhere in the South of France") ("Some dogs are shaggy").
"[2] If the subject-expression is an indefinite quantificational phrase ..., its ontological correlate will be the set of all singletons whose sole element if an item belonging to the extension of the predicate to which the indefinite modifier is attached." ...
Third case: universal quantification (as in "All of France"). All shaggy things are hairy-coated.
"[3] If the subject-expression is a universal quantificational [all-together, rather than one-at-a-time] phrase, ... its ontological correlate will be the singleton whose sole element is the set which forms the extension of the predicate to which
the universal quantifier is attached."
(Grice, Reply to Richards, p. 77ff, in Grandy/Warner, Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986).
***************************
INTERLUDE: second-order set theory.
Jones has provided a commentary publicly accessible at the Grice Club, elsewhere, which I comment on here.
R. B. Jones writes that he feels to comment on this one. He first notes a little terminological trivia. The first-order/second-order/higher-order terminology is thoroughly confusing, he notes, because of first-order set theory. "One naturally thinks sets as having orders, which correspond to another term, the "rank" of a set", Jones explains. "One thinks of individuals as having order zero, of sets of individuals as having order 1 and sets of sets of individuals as having order 2.
This is the usage which Grice is working with in the matters discussed here."
"However, when we move from talking of the order of particular sets," Jones notes, "to talking about set theories, there is a completely different terminology (though coming from the same origins). This difference arises because modern set theory is usually formalised in first order logic, and is called in its entirety "first-order set theory" even though the objects in the domain of discourse have every conceivable order, from 0 up to orders which noone but professional set theorists can comprehend (objects of these orders are the subject of "large cardinal axioms"). Though most set theorists work with first-order set theories, and most mathematicians work in first-order set theory (if informally), there is also second set theory. This is what you get when you axiomatise set theory in second-order logic. It doesn't actually give you higher orders of sets, instead it allows you to quantify over things that most would call classes, which in a first-order set theory don't exist, such as the class of all sets."
As to Grice's correspondences, Jones notes: "I don't recall the context for this. One would expect such an account to be a part of a general account of the semantics of some language, and it would then be judged according to whether the whole account fitted together and correctly expressed the semantics of the language in question."
He goes on: "The issues at stake seem all such as could be addressed in a simple type theory such as Church's (essentially the same as the Higher Order Logic supported by ProofPower), which contains (or in which can be defined) definite and indefinite description operators. Grice's use of second-order sets in this context seems a little anomalous to me, though it is plausible that it could be made to work."
How? Well,
"Most logics are given a semantics in terms of interpretations, i.e. the truth conditions of sentences are given relative to some interpretation of the language. In Higher Order Logics such an interpretation would include a value for the indefinite description operator which assigned a single individual to each set to which the operator could be applied."
"In such a treatment, the collection of possible values obtained for a description would not appear as the denotation (which is the same kind of thing as Grice's correlates) of the description under any interpretation. You would get just one of them in each interpretation, and to find all the possibilities you would have to look at all possible interpretations. The effect of this is that you get away with objects of a lower order. Even if you are being (as Grice here seems to be) rather Aristotelian in having the same kind of correlate for individuals and universals (held by some, e.g. Russell, to be simply a cock-up in traditional logic) then you still only need first-order sets as their correlates, a singleton for a particular and possibly larger set for a universal."
Jones adds: "I am ... more familiar with Grice's talk about correlates in his "vacuous names"" ... "which I ... scrutinised formally with ProofPower. The result was:
rbjones.com/rbjpub/pp/doc/t037.pdf"
******************
It would not be much of a stretch to apply that 'constructivist' account
to 'propositions' (qua families of 'propositional complexes' in Grice's
jargon) to "On the top shelf"--- or as I prefer,
with Grice's 'alpha' construction being 'the cat', or "Whiskers", and Grice's 'beta' construction (adjectival) being, almost, 'on the mat'.
(11) (a) The cat is on the mat
--- (b) The cat.
--- (c) [Is] On the mat.
or ¨Fido is shaggy¨ (see below).
I am fascinated by the Longman Dictionary of English that
lists, ‘on the mat’ to mean, ‘being punished’, with ‘cat’ meaning ‘nasty
woman’. Some title for a wicked novel. Back to Grice’s very own
subsentential "Provence" example cited above:
“What he said”: “Somewhere in the South of France”.
ODD implicature:
(5)
(c) Utterer doesn't know WHERE _in the South of France_ C(hris) lives.
Note, incidentally, that while this would be a simple case of syntactic
ellipsis (rather than semantic or pragmatic ellipsis, in Merchant’s view --
but "Do not multiply ellipses beyond necessity"), Grice, as we've seen, can
go unashamedly subpropositional (subsentential), providing the ‘idiomatic’, (5c) "Somewhere in the South of France" rather than the clumsier
[over-informative],
(5)
(a) Chris lives somewhere in the South of France.
Surely the pronominal version,
(b)_He_ [or 'she' -- but not ??both] lives in the South of France.
is still a different animal). Cfr. Grice on "He (Jones's dog, Fido) is shaggy". He (Grice, rather than the South-of-France dweller) didn’t seem to have made much of the alleged complication this involves.
AN OTIOSE DIALOGUE, or how to disrespect a palaeo-Griceian.
Neo-Gricean:
He said _that_ C lived in the South of France.
Palaeo-Gricean:
He did not! He said, “Somewhere in the South of France”, at most.
Neo-Gricean:
Surely he explicated ‘he lived’”.
Palaeo-Gricean:
Surely not – not the type of explicature he was up to!
(And you see why Stainton notes that nonsentences are a bit like implicatures, only worse).
And so on, which I will lead to neo-Griceians vs. post-Griceians, while I stick with the palaeo (relentless literalism being a sign of class back then).
In a similar fashion (I was amused by S. Lucas’s reference to it being
natural that ‘relevance theorists’ will disagree on this and that) A. Hall
(in the work referred to by N. Allott, and elsewhere – A. Hall is currently
researching the compositionality principle at the Nicod) has also explored
this ‘subpropositional logical forms’ (Sperber’s and Wilson’s term) in
terms of subpropositional constituents. Incidentally, I prefer, as I’m sure
you should, too, to use 'sub', as in 'subsentential' -- "On the top
shelf" -- rather than, as per subject of this thread, "non-sentential", which
seems to be different in scope -- cf. Guijarro: a totally out-of-the-blue
utterance of "Between if": nonsentential but NOT subpropositional).
Grice's own shaggy-dog story, or how to make sense of Frege's fragmentated senses and references.
Grice enjoyed, on occasion, to make a story _long_. Notably at Harvard.
For the record, one sees that Grice uses 'subsentential' in at least two
places of WoW: V (p. 89 – “an “incomplete” utterance-type (which may be a
nonsentential word or phrase…)” and VI (p. 119: “in case X is a
nonsentential utterance-type, claims of the form “X means ‘…,’” where the
locution is completed by a nonsentential expression”.
A NOTE ON GRICE'S FORMALISM FOR THIS.
Grice also uses the expression "with" (symbolised "(...)", and adding a subscript, typically, for sigma (s), with which he formalises 'sentence'.
This yields
S1(S2)
to read subsentence S1 of sentence S2. And allowing he notes, "any sentence to be its own subsentence").
He works with more complex collocations, too:
S2(S3((S1))
---- So, this to show that he elaborated on 'nonsentential' AND 'subsentential'. Note that, charmingly, he refers to a word (or a hand signal) as an unstructured bit. He seems to have omitted the reference to adjectival of the -y in "shaggy". Thus, he refers to the waving of a hand as a "sentence-like" utterance. All this is VERY important from the perspective of Grice's programme, which uses 'sentence' arbitrarily, possibly influenced by Chomsky -- they did read Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" at those Saturday mornings, with the Play Group -- and cfr. Grice's later thoughts on 'sentence' (like 'reasoning') being a "value-oriented" concept! (Surely, "Between if" is NOT a sentence. "wff" on the other hand, as used by logicians, is NOT otiose. Some formulae can be NOT well-formed. But a sentence is a sentence is a sentence. Or not.
In particular, it would be good to play around, philosophically, with what I have elsewhere called Grice's shaggy-dog story.
This had some philosophical bearing for Grice. Note that in
(12) Jones's dog (Fido)
is shaggy, i.e. hairy-coated.
whereas Smith's cat (Whiskers)
is not.
Grice is obsessed with getting further _onto_ the subpropositional
constituents of a simple act of meaning. NOT: "By uttering "Jones's dog is
shaggy", Utterer meant that p or q", but rather
(a)
Vis-a-vis “alpha” (α) type ‘subject-expressions’: (WoW: 131 for Grice’s
use of ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’)
(13) By uttering, "Jones's dog"
U referred to Fido.
Or, by uttering "Fido", U referred to Jones's dog.
-- expanded by Schiffer in early work on a Gricean theory of reference in
the pages of Synthese.
(b)
Vis-à-vis “beta” (β) type ‘predicate-expressions’:
(14)
By uttering "Shaggy"
U predicated hairy-coatedness (-- cfr. Carston, 'denotes a property') of
Fido.
-- Grice provides a non-resultant (basic) procedure in terms of ostension at this point: to utter 'shaggy' as U ostends this or that object (Jones's dog).
At this point, a quote from Grice WoW with his typical complications, as
per his footnote will just serve as an example of his ‘
analytical-philosophical’ skills.
Grice thus treated his Harvard audience in the first (Spring) term of 1967 with the following qualification to his analysans in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.
Grice is concerned with the intrinsic intentionality of the basic (i.e. non resultant) correlations involved. While a behaviourist bell may ring to some, I follow Chapman and others (e.g. Suppes) in regarding Grice thus as an 'intentionalist', rather than a behaviourist at heart. (Suppes in PGRICE).
Grice writes:
"To have explicitly correlated "X" [nonsentential
item] with each member [item] of a set K, not only
must (a) [the utterer] have intentionally effected
that a particular relation R holds between
"X" and all those (and only those) items
which belong to K, but also (b) [U's]
purpose or end in setting up this
relationship R must have been to perform an
act as a result of which there will be
some relation R' or other which holds
between "X" and all those (and only those)
things which belong to K. To the definiens,
then, we should add, within the scope of
the initial quantifier, the following
clause: "& U's purpose in effect that
∀x (......) is that (ƎR')(∀z)(R''shaggy' z≡z ϵ y
(y is hairy-coated))."
(Grice, Utterer´s meaning, sentence meaning, and word meaning. WoW:133n -- originally in Foundations of Language, 1968.
So much for Grice's alleged 'sentence primacy'! (in Stainton's words). As a note of historical interest, it should be noted that the reference/predication complications instilled on much of Searle's own DPhil for Oxford, under Grice's own tuttee: P. F. Strawson.
Now, translate that to
(4a) On the top shelf.
and the 'property' it is denoted, and imagine if we, alla Gibbs (I admire him!) we were to think of a lab protocol to _test_ just that!
GRICEANS, PHENOMENOLOGISTS AT HEART, never behaviourist.
Stainton, who has studied nonsententials philosophically, makes a point about philosophers, like Grice, being comfy with sentences. They provide the right sort of evidence.
In general, Griceans, when relying on their intuitions, are thinking they are being _experimental_. It was a prejudice in the history of psychology, they claim, that intution and introspection should not, by Wundt, be seen as proper evidence in psychological research.
An example:
On this point, Grice's excellent reliance on Hans Sluga [He came out as "Shuga",
unfortunately, in the Academic-Press reprint, and Grice omitted the name of Sluga
altogether in WoW:271 -- vis-a-vis:
(15) The king of France is bald.
(15b) (ɩx.Fx)Gx
vs.
(15c) G(ɩx.Fx)
as providing the subpropositional 'logical form' regarding the particular "iota operator" (ɩ) allegedly involved in an utterance of 'The king of France
is bald' "the iota-operator ... treated as being syntactically analogous
to a quantifier" vs. it being treated as "a device for forming a term".
Grice explicitly acknowledges Sluga's participation in the Berkeley
seminars, and notes that it is Grice's "intuitions" regarding _negation_ which
have him opting for (b)).
And why would a philosopher be so concerned about "ɩ" if he were not to think that much of the alleged "sentence primacy" relies on more basic, nonresultant procedures, which, as Grice suggests -- WoW:VI -- are those "from which those resultant procedures indeed descend" (or words to that effect).
(Grice makes a further point, which relates to Carston's above, "on the top shelf +> of THIS cupboard" -- about 'the' involving or implicating a 'hidden indexical', or as he prefers to say, "quasi-demonstrative". I have discussed that elsewhere. The symbol that Grice here uses for the quasi-demonstrative being the predicate phi).
Why Wundt is wrong. “What Grice would have said” – but merely “implicated”
In general, from what I browsed from the linguistics (rather than
philosophy) literature on this, the attitude towards an exegesis of Grice
remains patronising (most notably in this author who keeps referring to 'the
purportedly Gricean interpretation' of this -- not caring to explore on
Grice's many publications and unpublications on the subject!). In this respect,
it is a GREAT thing that Grice cared to keep ALL the seminar material he
shared with Sir Peter Strawson when giving courses on 'logical form' and
'categories' (substantials/non-substantials) at Oxford. (They are listed
by Chapman in her book on _Grice_, Palgrave).
HOW PROPOSITIONAL can children and (some) animals (not parrots, etc.) be? Grice's Kantotelian reflections
What would Grice then say about 'animal' (so-called) 'thought' (so-called)? Possibly something along these lines: so-called.
There is a related area of interest, which is explored by M. Green and
collaborator Bar-On (and Bar-On below) It refers to something like an
obsession with Grice: squarrels. They are like squirrels, but allow for closer
ethological inspection. You possibly have noted that the first utterances
babies (miscalled ‘infants’) utter are 'subpropositional' at best (or
'pre-propositional' in some cases). A. Hall makes a very good point about this. We
should call them 'pre-propositional' because they cannot feature as
'premises' in explicit pieces of reasoning. They are'pre-rational' in this
technical sense. They need an expansion before they can count as steps in a
reasoning chain. Green and Bar-On (in their joint "Lionspeak", available online)
consider this area of interest (also explored by T. Wharton in his book on
the pragmatics of 'gestures'). Their example I adapt by using Lewis
Carroll:
Phylogenesis: the case of non-human animals:
(16) DOVE (hatching eggs, as she perceives long-necked Alice): Serpent!
ALICE: I'm not a serpent. I'm a little girl. ---- (as the conversation
develops). It's true I do I eat eggs -- at breakfast.
DOVE: SERPENT!
(Discussed by Sutherland, "Language and Lewis Carroll", Mouton).
Bar-On and Green focus on pre- (rather than sub-) propositional)
'utterances' like a bird's cry of alarm above (“Serpent!”). It would be pedantic
to refer to the _content_ of this 'psychological' attitude on the part of
the dove as involving a full proposition, complete with logical form.
Doves do not need to be Aristotelian, in this sense. The point would be then
to explore the role of pre-propositional 'content' in the,
say, phylogenesis and ontogenesis of ... meaning. A topic which while
peripheral in terms of Grice's central concerns was at the root of his
long-time interest in providing "philosophical grounds of rationality:
intentions, categories, ends" (P.G.R.I.C.E., for short).
Relation was for Grice, notably, a category -- used by Kant, to supersede
on Aristotle. If Grice stuck with 'relevance' ('be relevant') as a
paraphrase of this rather abstract 'category of thought' (and turn it into a
'conversational category' as he was wont of saying) this should not
preclude us from always keeping in mind the central role of the original
category in our 'system of thought'.
Ontogenesis: nonsentences in HUMAN children.
Children are of course different. When Morley-Bunker wanted to test,
empirically, some claims about analytic/synthetic propositions (cited by
Sampson, "Making sense"), "he explicitly excluded philosophers or philosophy
students; they are corrupted already"). Similarly, Chapman recalls how Grice
would _test_ some of his claims not with his children, but with his children's playmates ("Can a thing be red and green all over? No spots allowed"). When is the first level of _propositional_ reasoning shown in children? (Cfr. Why is
it that _quantificational_ (or predicate logic) is deemed prior to
_propositional_ or sentential logic, though?) (Piaget was obsessed with this and there is a French-language philosopher, Grize, who wrote almost the same as Grice did, but in French).
Grice´s favourite critter was the ´pirot´. It is like a parrot, but can talk _intelligently_. In my "Pirot talk", with R. B. Jones, I elaborate on the sort of implicatures one can expect from one´s parrot-pirot, as they karulise elatically.
The cock´s tail. MEANING AND BEYOND: Grice and Peacocke on the ‘sense’ of our ‘sense data’
Incidentally, Carston's types of examples, "A red pillar-box" -- cfr. her
"On the top shelf"), versus the fully propositional “That pillar-box seems
_red_ to me” is a rather complex one. (She compares it with G. E. Moore
uttering "My hand!" rather than what he did utter at Harvard, "This is _my_
hand"). For one, and taking into account H. Beck's point about 'making
sense' in his latest (echoing, as it were, Geoffrey Sampson's book by that
title, "Making sense", Oxford: Clarendon), it should *not* be much of a
stretch to introduce a philosophical notion of 'sense' involved here.
Note that the FIRST strand in Grice's retrospective epilogue to WoW is
all about that philosophical term of art, if ever there was one,
"sense-datum". For Russell, sense data were notably _not_ propositional in nature --
"This" was the paradigm of a sense-datum if I recall his stuff – cfr. ‘
logical proper name’). This line of analysis is best explored within the
Oxonian tradition by C. A. B. Peacocke (who, with Schiffer -- "Things we
mean" -- would expand on his views at seminars at Oxford and elsewhere),
and for one, succeeded Sir Peter Strawson as professor of metaphysics at
Oxford (his inaugural lecture was a 'transcendental' justification of
'content'!). This view would emphasise the non-propositional, subpropositional
(or what have you) _content_ of our 'sense' experiences (and note that
Grice was first and foremost, historically speaking, a 'philosopher of perception'
-- vide his early "Some remarks about the senses", and that's how he was
regarded at Oxford for a time). In a way, it's a bit like a full circle
(Cfr. Paul, Is there a problem about sense data?).
As an application. Consider, again, the two constituents of the 'propositional complex', The cat is on the mat (* Grice is explicit that he wants to restrict 'what is said' to a rather 'abstract' notion -- "Wilson is a brave man" and "the current British prime minister is a brave man" may be said, on occasion, to _say_ the same (thing). With that pretty 'loose' appreciation of 'what is said', which I, on weekdays, share, it's no wonder nonsentences he should feel he can cope with in a similar fashion. (And again, cfr. Stainton on Kenyon on the analogy of the propositional underdeterminacy of an implicatum and a non-sentence)
(13) On the mat.
(14) The cat.
as appropriate sub-sentential replies to appropriate questions. What is it involved in having a 'psychological' attitude (as Grice has it) towards that
propositional complex, '
sub-propositional constituents does it involve? How do we expand them, unless in
terms of any 'behavioural' response on the part of alleged 'holder' of
such a psychological attitude' -- cfr. Grice and Strawson, "In defense of a
dogma").
So, for the predicates, "F" (cat) and "G" (mat) (and cfr. above about alpha and beta constituents -- we have to provide _perceptual content_ for each. ¨What you mean "mat"? That´s a _rug_!". ¨What d´you mean "cat". That´s a tiger." And so on. Never mind "on" (as in "on the mat"). "It would be otiose to focus to much on the meaning of "on"" -- apres Grice WoW:III on the meaning of "to").
A. Hall dwells with a further complication: subsentential
(subpropositional) items can _hardly_ be said to play a role in 'reasoning'. How are we to modify something like Grice's "Principle of Economy of Rational Effort"
to allow that, on occasion, reasoners DO rely on subpropositional items
for calculating what follows from a given set of premisses? (Allott's PhD
work on rationality and pragmatics seems relevant to this).
Grice did not want to regard 'propositions' as primitive items in his
vocabulary, and his constructivist approach to them was in agreement with the
pragmatist tenor of a remark by his once collaborator G. Myro (cited by
Grice in "Reply to Richards"). In a pragmatist vein, 'propositions' rely on
different justifications: not just as 'pegs' on which to hang our logical
(or rational) laws, but, more humanistically, as contents of our, er,
'propositional' attitudes!
I won't burden this blog post with further Griceana _on this_, I hope, but
listers know where to go for some quick references, then!
References
Allott, N. PhD Rationality and pragmatics. Available online. He cites from Grice 1975a.
Bar-On, D. Grice and the naturalisation of semantics. Pacific Philosophical
-- Quarterly, vol. 76.
Carston, R. 'Linguistic meaning, communicated meaning and cognitive pragmatics' Mind & Language 17.
Carston, Thoughts and utterances. Macmillan. (Based on her PhD for UCL).
Chapman, Grice. Palgrave.
Grice, H. P. – and Strawson. Seminar material on “Logical Form”. Oxford.
--- Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre. Repr. in Conception of Value.
--- Aspects of reason. Oxford: Clarendon.
---. Reply to Richards’, in P. G. R. I. C. E. (Oxford, Clarendon), ed. by R. Grandy and R. Warner -- Grice´s multiple personality: Richards.
Grice, WoW. Way of Words. Harvard, 1989.
--- Presupposition and conversational implicature. On 'quasi-demonstratives'.
Hall, A. Working Papers in Linguistics.
--- PhD, UCL. Department of Linguistics.
Jones, R. B. Grice on Vacuous Names. At rbjones.com/rbjpub/pp/doc/t037.pdf
Kant, I. on "Relation" ("Table of Categories"), Critique of Pure Reason.
Paul, Is there a problem about sense data? Aristotelian Society
Peacocke, C. A. B.
--- Inaugural lecture as Prof. of Metaphysical Philosophy, Oxford.
--- Sense and content. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Schiffer, S. R. On referring. Synthese.
Speranza, J. L. This and that. For the Grice Circle, etc. At the Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Speranza, Bordighera.
Sperber, D. & Deirdre Susan Moir Wilson. 1977 On Grice´s theory of conversation. Pragmatics microfiches. Repr. in Werth.
--- Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Blackwell.
Stainton. Subsentences and the philosophy of language.
--- Grice, in "Modern American Philosophers"
--- Introduction to "Nonsentential speech". Comments on Kenyon
Stanley, J. Papers. Oxford: Clarendon.
Wharton, T. Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment