How to Disquote Grice

-- Tarski, the Polish philosopher and logician, is often misquoted -- but then he wrote in Polish. Apparently, his most popular, "The semantic conception of truth" is NOT where to look for the Convention T that Davidson popularised. This came from a longer essay by Tarksi, etc.

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J. writes:

[For Tarski]: ""Louis XVI was beheaded" iff Louis was, in fact, beheaded (recalling Quine vaguely on this chestnut). So the object language is in " " and the metalanguage, the extra-linguistic perception, like...an event, without the " ". Then the..so what? He doesn't at all show how the object-phrase relates to the meta/perception, does he. semantics-- like philosophy sans metaphysics. It may work for code, but it's not really a proof of any sort, IMHE."

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Indeed.

Incidentally, I suppose Grice was trying to be _clever_ (which he was, but you can still try -- right?). I don't think I've found in all his opus (as opposed to every other sentence by Tarski, Davidson, etc.) along the lines:

"Snow is white" is true iff snow is white.

Or

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But I should have to revise that.

Consider, -- sorry about that! --

"Fido is shaggy".

This Grice claims stands for something pretty complex.

Notably,

"shaggy" means 'hairy-coated'.

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I would think that a Tarskian would rather have concentrated on disquotional contexts alla:

"Fido is shaggy" iff Fido is shaggy.

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Incidentally, 'shaggy' is of course a metaphor, and thus a Conversational Implicature. Fido is _not_ a shag, which is a noun meaning wool-material. Still, Fido not _literally_ 'shaggy'. Rather, Fido is, as Grice correctly indicates, 'hairy-coated'.

In fact, all dogs are!

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