The Dale Law -- and Its Speranza Corollary

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

R. E. Dale wrote in his commentary to R. B. Jones, "Formal Semantics"

"Hi Roger. Let me know when you post. My
email is [...]. I don't always know how
to figure out if there is something on
this blog that someone wants me to
respond to [...] "

Indeed. I think it follows from Griceian maxims. We are polite at the Grice Club. In fora I have participated in the past, I would use to (or used to, even) to ask directly. "So, Mr. Smith, do you think that free will exists?". I found out that came out as rude. Rude to myself! I mean, why would poor Mr. Smith feel obliged to answer -- or 'respond' as Dale puts it?

There is Warnock's paradox. I learned about this via another forum. It is not, alas, my beloved Warnock, but another Warnock. This Warnock posted that when you post stuff, you are never sure if you are meant to respond.

I usually google for Griceian hits, and find the most extravagant blogs where all the right discussion is taking place. Then I click to participate, and the link goes, "Participation closed on this thread."

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DALE LAW.

An analysis:

"I don't always know how to figure out if there is something on this blog that someone wants me to respond to."

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Implicature (not entailment) of 'always': "I sometimes".

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Disimplicating 'know' to Gettier-free 'belief':

"I sometimes believe how to figure out if there is something in the minutes of the Grice Club that someone (+> or other) wants me to respond to."

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By replacing 'respond' with Strawsonian ("Freedom and Resentment and other essays") 'responsible' we get:

"Oftentimes do I believe the method to grasp if somewhat in the minutes of the Grice Club is worth me caring if someone (+> or other) wants to me to make me feel responsible about."

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My current pet is the use of 'one' to mean 'people':

"someone" (or other).

I wonder if this comes from the French. I mean, it IS colloquial. But why is it that we can say,

"One never knows" -- meaning 'one person' never knows, rather than, say, one dog never knows. I don't suppose this relies on Grice's paper on "Personal Identity" (Mind, 1941) but then why wouldn't I suppose that?

I think the source was already problematic for Dodgson, in one of the passages that Gardner finds among the saddest in the Alice books:

Humpty Dumpty: "How old did you say you were?"
Alice: "Seven years and six months.'
'Seven years and six months!' Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. `An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked my advice, I'd have said "Leave off at seven" -- but it's too late now.'
`I never ask advice about growing,' Alice said Indignantly.
`Too proud?' the other inquired.
Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. `I mean,' she said, `that one can't help growing older.'
`One can't, perhaps,' said Humpty Dumpty, `but two can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven.'

---- or something.
Anyway, take it jocularly. And ALLways feel free to respond! -- even if you don't feel asked! (I'm currently studying implicatures of 'feel free', too!)
----

We can make the code that we absolutely necessitate respondations (sic) we can use the 'label' -- "Attn. H. P. Grice" meaning -- "I wish H. P. Grice would respond on that" -- or something.

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But seriously, in some fora, I have become so reluctant to even ask people, that I have avoided the interrogative mode altogether. I have also avoided the dubitative mode. So, what transpires is this: I usually write a public post (to a forum) wishing some reply. But I don't want to sound as if I _need_ a reply, for this is an indeterministic universe, etc. Plus, it's better to feel that people do volunteer replies, etc. -- The result is that my posts come out as more cryptic than they are by the fact that I never express the information gaps I'm sinning against, or something.

----------- Scholars tend to be different! Imagine if I publish something in a journal. As I have done. Then ... silence. You never learn if someone has responded! When I come to think of it: I read Descartes's "Metaphysical meditations" and feel like I want to respond, or ask him something. Too late, one may think. But it seems that at the rate that things get published today, it is not the typical 'response' from a friend one expects.

Grice was perhaps lucky enough not to care. At the Play Group (this is retold best by Warnock in his "Saturday Mornings") they never cared to publish, because they cared for responses within the people attending the particular meeting of the play group. In informal seminars perhaps Grice cared for responses from individual members of the seminars. Chapman tells (in her "Grice", Palgrave 2006) that a tape of one of Grice's classes is particularly boring in that he goes into great detail in a sort of Socratic fashion (not boring to me, I hasten to add), as to what this particular student was thinking (and trying to express). He was one for online responses, as it were.

----- In his best collaboration ever, with Strawson, it was almost the other way round. There was so intimate rapport between them that dialogue was hardly necessary, and their exchanges, he later recalled (in "Reply to Richards") were usually unintelligible to third parties (including Strawson's wife, of course!).

--- Or something.