Grice the theorist

In what I call "Julie's Adventures in Griceland" (only when I want to be VERY irreverent), I note that I love the way Grice quotes, out of the blue, a paper that nobody (almost) has read. This is by one Julie M. Jack -- a tutoress at Somerville. She entitled her essay,

"The rights -- and wrongs -- of Grice"

It got to Grice. He was pretty offended, but loved it! He replies at length to Julie, and notes the distinction, made by Furberg, etc.

-- meaning
-- meanings

Grice wants to say that it would be counter-intuitive (!) to think that it's a THEORY that provides meanings for us. Meanings, he claims, and I follow suit, are a matter of 'intuition', not 'theory'.

In fact, I apply that to his own "Meaning". He is just providing an intuitive (yes, MY intuitions are complex) account of how to expand on "... means ...".

It provides a meaning of meaning, as it were. A meaning of 'meaning' -- strictly.

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On the other hand, when it comes to 'meaning', while one can think that Grice is providing some linguistic botanising on the English lexeme "... means ..." (Kemmerling notes that none of what Grice says applies to German! They don't have THAT Gricean meaning of meaning -- yet he managed to get his PhD on Grice! I love him!) Grice grants that one can just as well be providing an 'analysis' (reductive, rather than reductionist).

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So one has to be careful -- if one wants. This below, via google:

The Blackwell guide to the philosophy of language - Google Books Result
Michael Devitt, Richard Hanley - 2006 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 446 pages

"In a compositional semantic theory, the canonical theorems specifying the truth conditions of used sentences will be derived from axioms that specify the ..."
books.google.com/books?isbn=0631231412...

So it may do to explore this 'theorem' idea. Theo-rem is indeed cognate with 'theory'. This relates to 'compositional' then as per 'compositional semantic theory'. It's all about the theorems.

When I read Grice's reply to Jack, I was already familiar with Grice, "Method in philosophical pscyhology" (repr. Grice 1991, though). So I knew what Grice had in mind when he meant 'theory'. As Schiffer and others have pointed out, Grice's and others' use of 'theory' (functionalist?) is a pretty complex one. In "Method" Grice revises Ramsey's attempts of reduction of theoretical to observational and failing -- and so on.

So, we have the theory, the theorem, and the theorist.