Grice's shaggy-dog story and predicate calculus

--- by J. L. Speranza
----- for the Grice Club, etc.

OF COURSE GRICE IS RIGHT IN providing some charming illustration with Jones's dog being hairy-coated (colloquially 'shaggy'). For 'shaggy' is, after all, a predicate. And what we are dealing with here is what I think Dale calls 'a first-order language', i.e. a predicate calculus.

Dale indeed plays with the idea of J-English. English, as it comprises only one sentence: "June loves to dance".

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Similarly one can imagine

S-English.

S-English only contains:

"Fido is shaggy"

--- Grice provides an ostensive definition of 'shaggy' -- too, in the remaining bits of WoW:VI.

Dale touches on that fascinating point in the theory of Fodor that the meaning of "Mentalese" is 'circumscribed' as it were, by grasping the non-logical terms (i.e. the predicates) involved. Dale plays with 'cows' (property of being a cow -- cfr. Grice, "the property of being hairy-coated", _sic_ in WoW:VI for those who think he is only a committed extensionalist).

Dale also plays with 'dog' and Schiffer's 'schmdog'.

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One point to consider here may have a historical side to it. I recall having to pass a seminar -- using Greek Loeb -- on ancient scepticism. So I read all the Sextus, and in looking for contemporary literature, came across a review by Dummett on "The language of appearance". The idea that there are noumenal- and phenomenal-predicates as it were.

It would seem that 'shaggy' belongs to the sort of physicalist (or physical, or naturalistic) predicates.

Pirot A says to Pirot B:

----- "What kind of dog are you buying?"

----- "A shaggy one"

'Shaggy' does not seem a _primitive_ predicate. Grice I think would hold that 'RED' is a primitive predicate (discussed extensively in his "Remarks about the senses", in WoW).

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Then there's 'sofa' that Dale also mentions!

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I tend to think that had it not been for Strawson's 'mistake' in "Introduction to Logical Theory" in finding formal logic otiose, Grice would have explored areas that perhaps interested him more intrinsically, like the philosophy of perception.

Why is it that a PIROT may need to tell another,

"That pillar-box isn't red"

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"It SEEMS red"

("Causal theory of perception" -- unfortunately the section II on 'implication' not repr. in WoW).

Talking of 'red', it was good to find, online, a reply by Fodor to Schiffer indeed on 'simple compositionality', as it were. The concept of a 'red flag' I think it is -- with Fodor arguing how this cannot mean but a 'pirot' being equipped with the concept 'red' AND the concept 'flag'.

Grice seems to have been charmingly obsessed with things like:

"The pillar-box seems red"
"The pillar-box looks red".

Why is it that '... looks ...' carries this (what Grice calls) 'doubt-or-denial' implicature? Surely cancellable. What else can a red pillar box do but LOOK red? (the philosopher of perception -- Grice, and, why not? I -- wonders).

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One little bit about the politics behind Grice may be in order before too long. But in a different blog post.