Warrants and premises in Grice's schemata

In "Lord Grice", J adds to the polemic.

We are considering J:

"It can be...upgraded, sort of--add the stats/data/evidence or whatever as backing.""

I proposed emotivism. Emotivism, the theory of meaning, etc., put forward by C. L. Stevenson, which Grice adored, is all about the _emotions_ provoked by this or that, and the intention on the part of utterers to provoke those emotions in one's recipients, as in

"She is a bitch".


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J comments:

"Likely, but a posteriori, JLS. All or some of the time? Wd need a pie graph, per Toulmin-- "Bitchness quotient" or something."

Yes. "Bitch" tends to get overused. Cfr.

Grice,

"You're the cream in my coffee". (metaphor qua conversational implicature).

Strictly, as per Quine's 'meaning postulates' which he abhorred,

it's like

"No bachelor is married"

BACHELORx --> -MARRIEDx

For 'bitch' we have

CANINEx & FEMALEx

But there is an unwanted implicature. Similarly, Chomsky observed that while the decompositional analysis of 'woman' is female-adult.

To say, 'She is a pretty female adult' projects different implicatures 'than' (or 'from') 'She is a pretty woman'.

Odd.

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Note that 'bitchy' can be used of MALES, too, and hardly 'metaphorical'.

"His remark was bitchy".

---- It would be otiose to think that only a _bitch_ (female dog) can utter 'bitchy' remarks. Etc.

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In Italian, 'bitch' is always mistranslated as 'whore', which brings a new sort of decompositional elements.

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In English, there is a cancellability of an 'explicature', for a change. As Grice did not say:

"You hardly hear, "She is the daughter of a bitch", but the briefer (but hardly truth-conditional equivalent), "She is a bitch". On the other hand, you hear, 'son of bitches' all the time, and they tell us it's not a feminist culture".

J goes on:

"Granted Toulmin's schema is pretty dull stuff, compared to Borges or Conrad.. But probably superior to Foxnews windbag-speak (or parisian maoists)."

---- Yes, it's a neat paperback. It's good for courses in American unis to have it in their uni bookshops. "Oh, I see Toulmin's Uses of Arguments is required reading for "Informal logic" -- PHI 271 --". Sort of stuff.

Toulmin wrote other stuff. I think I once saw in a book by Toulmin an illustration of

"The cat is on the mat"

--- as per a drawing. But I have never been able to retrieve that drawing, even if I must have it somewhere (to scan) since I used it in publications and lectures. Etc.

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And as you say, Toulmin, like Grice, contributed to the 'festschrift' for Quine, "Words and objections".

I think Toulmin was the literary executor of Hanson, too. Of "Patterns of Discovery" infame.

J goes on:

"HG Wells wrote clean, precise prose and was reportedly a bright lad though a bit....quotidian IMHE. ORwell also in that class."

Yes. Perhaps the most quotidian stuff by Orwell (ne Blair) is

"Keep the aspidistra flying"

I saw it with Bonham Carter in title role ("The Aspidistra"). It was translated in the USA as "The merry war", for some reason.

Orwell was a bright lad. Very middle-Class English, even if born in India hisself.

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Wells was good. Kipps and Co. He has a lot of 'lowbrow' as Huxley called it stuff. The invisible man Borges found philosophical. Time machine is possibly related to M. A. E. Dummett's arguments against pro-reactive time causation.

Etc.