This and That

In "Reply to Richards", p. 77ff, Grice offers a rather subtle analysis of the subpropositional constituents of a 'complex':


"[W]e associate with the subject-expression of a canonically formulated sentence a
set of at least second order. 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. ...
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. ... If the subject-expression is
a universal quantificational 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."

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 mat".

(As per 'The cat is on the mat'). [Note, incidentally, that J. Stanley would make MUCH of a harmless case of _syntactic ellipsis_ which Grice invokes:

A: Where does C live?
B: Somewhere in the South of France.

rather than the clumsy, "C lives somewhere in the South of France" --
WoW:II].

I see that Grice uses 'subsentential' in at least two places of WoW: V
and VI. In particular, it would be good to play around, philosophically,
with what I have elsewhere called Grice's shaggy-dog story. Note that in

"Jones's dog (Fido) is shaggy, i.e. hairy-coated",

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) By uttering,
"Jones's dog"
U referred to Fido.

and

(b) By uttering
"Shaggy!"
U predicated hairy-coatedness (-- cfr. Carston, 'denotes a property') of
Fido. (Grice, WoW, and his typical complications, as per footnote to p. 133:

"To have explicited correlated X with each member of a set K, not only must
I have intentionally effected that a particular relation R holds between X
and all those (and only those) items which belong to K, but also my
purpose or end in setting up this relationship must have been to perform an act
as a restult of which there will be some relation 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 quantier, the
following clause: "& U's purpose in effect that Ax (......) is that (ER')
(Az)(R' 'shaggy' z=zEy (y is hairy-coated))."

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.

There is a related area of interest, which is explored by M. Green and
collaborator Bar-On. 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 utter are
'subpropositional' (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 pieces of reasoning. They are
'pre-rational'. Vide:

Bar-On, D. Grice and the naturalisation of semantics. Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly, vol. 76.

Green and Bar-On (elsewhere, "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:

DOVE (hutching 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

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).



1. "A red pillar-box" --

versus the fully propositional

2. That pillar-box seems _red_ to me.

--- is a complex one. (Compare it with E. Moore uttering "My hand!"
rather than what he did utter at Harvard, "This is _my_ hand").

For one, and taking into account a 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). 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.

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!Or not!