by JLS
for the GC
Re: Griceian cats.
"What is the natural expression of intention? —Look at a cat when it stalks a bird; or a beast when it wants to escape."
Was ist der natürliche Ausdruck einer Absicht? Sieh eine Katze an, wenn sie sich an einen Vogel heranschleicht; oder ein Tier, wenn es entfliehen will.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §647 (courtesy of R. Paul).
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Feline implicature
Sieh eine Katze an, wenn sie sich an einen Vogel heranschleicht; oder ein Tser, wenn es entfliehen will.
Feline implicature
by JLS
for the GC
Re: Griceian cats.
"What is the natural expression of intention? —Look at a cat when it stalks a bird; or a beast when it wants to escape."
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §647 (courtesy of R. Paul).
for the GC
Re: Griceian cats.
"What is the natural expression of intention? —Look at a cat when it stalks a bird; or a beast when it wants to escape."
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §647 (courtesy of R. Paul).
Impiegatura
Grisotto alla milanese.
Latin,
implico
plico -- in + plico, implico.
plicatura
implicatura
---
Latin,
impiegatura
cfr. piegatura.
And so on.
---- ("Grisotto alla milanese" is the title of Horn's talk somewhere in Lombardy).
Latin,
implico
plico -- in + plico, implico.
plicatura
implicatura
---
Latin,
impiegatura
cfr. piegatura.
And so on.
---- ("Grisotto alla milanese" is the title of Horn's talk somewhere in Lombardy).
Grisotto alla milanese
Impiegatura
Sort of fascinating that, if I'm not mistaken, 'implicare' gives English, 'employ'. Hence, Grice's implicature, in Italian would be impiegatura. In Latin it is of course 'inplicatura' or 'implicatura', which WAS used, as we know by Sidonius -- Loeb Classical Library.
---- the subject line is apres a talk by Horn in Lombardy.
Sort of fascinating that, if I'm not mistaken, 'implicare' gives English, 'employ'. Hence, Grice's implicature, in Italian would be impiegatura. In Latin it is of course 'inplicatura' or 'implicatura', which WAS used, as we know by Sidonius -- Loeb Classical Library.
---- the subject line is apres a talk by Horn in Lombardy.
Grice's Yawn
by JLS
for the GC
Suppose someone yawns in front of you. Suppose he is Grice. You may be able, on occasion, to draw the 'unwanted' implicature. If it is an implicature, it is of course 'wanted' (an implicature is not like a baby, which can be unwanted and yet a baby).
You may derive, "He is bored by what I say -- or something".
Yet, Grice was impressed by new developments in neurophysiology. So, what he 'meant', perhaps, was that
Grice's system was displaying part of a thermoregulatory response in order to cool the brain by shunting blood to Grice's facial muscles which thus acted as radiators offloading heat from the redirected blood.
One may wonder why he would like to 'mean' that.
M. Green wrote on "Grice's Frown", brilliantly. Now, THAT is a cryptic case by Grice. I was recently re-reading his "Meaning Revisited", and he has this example,
"By that gesture he meant that he was fed up".
So, Grice was still using 'mean' without scare quotes -- unlike Stevenson, who the early Grice worshipped.
This from today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/science/28qna.html
"As for why people yawn, “it is not entirely known,” Dr. Ebben said. “However, the most recent data suggests that it is part of a thermoregulatory response that helps cool the brain by shunting blood to facial muscles that act as radiators and offload heat from the redirected blood.”"
----
To reconsider, then, using Grice's neologism, almost, of 'mean':
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up"
---- "I mean 'that gesture' in the use apt for communication" -- or something, Grice has it.
----
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up."
Strictly, what that yawn 'meant' -- as Stevenson properly would have it in scare quotes -- is something else:
"That yawn 'meant' that the system is displaying a
part of a thermoregulatory response
to help cool the brain
--- and that response is effected
by
shunting blood to the facial muscles
which act as radiators and
thus offload heat from the redirected blood."
Or something.
And since some of our club members are such avid, intelligent reader, I will provide the few references, just because.
I was always (or allways, as I prefer) fascinated by Grice, but recently, a
few of his unpublications were made 'public'.
They are all deposited in the Bancroft Library, UC/Berkeley (He died in San Francisco, 1988 and his wife donated all his stuff to the Special Collections). One included an early talk -- transcripted -- on Peirce (circa 1947). So he was into 'semiotics'.
In 1944, Stevenson, a Yale Univ. Press philosopher, had published his
"Ethics and language", which Grice read and credits in "Meaning" (1948). There,
Stevenson thinks that 'mean' CAN be used for things like
"The barometer 'means' that..."
(I don't have his example to hand -- but I have cited elsewhere in the Club minutes).
I.e.
'mean',
one would think applies primarily to _people_ who have _minds_
(hence the root, 'm-n'). But Stevenson is saying that, in a figurative,
extensive, way, it can apply to what most classicist philosophers had as
"natural signs" (Hobbes, etc., and back to studies in semiotics among the
Greeks and the Romans by this disciple of Umberto Eco in Bologna).
Ockham, in his "Logic" writings, has a few interesting examples. A stone
outside a pub, he writes, may indicate ('significat naturaliter' or
'non-naturaliter', I forget) that wine is being sold. His two other, more
interesting, examples are:
-- a smile "significat naturaliter interiorem laetitiam" -- a smile
signifies naturally an inner joy.
-- a tear signifies interior pain.
In "Meaning", Grice wants to include those 'natural significations'
as falling within "mean". He is in a campaign AGAINST Peirce, who would use
Latinate terms; whereas Grice wants to stick with Anglo-Saxon 'mean'.
The "yawn" thing then comes out as naturally a case of a display of
behaviour which can "mean" or "mean-N", to use Grice's jargon. In "Meaning
Revisited", going evolutionary, Grice wants to say that non-iconic sign systems
such as languages like "English" develop out of natural displays like "Ouch"
and such. (The "ouch" theory of language evolution, I think it's called).
So, a point about 'yawn' can be analyse in this Grice's light:
--- First the point about animals is apt. I do have, somewhere, Darwin's
"The expression of emotions in man and animals" -- lovely illustrations --
and one should check with 'yawn'.
One may think (I owe the point to L. K. H.):
"I am first bored and then I yawn."
This is a good one. In "Method in philosophical psychology", which came out
in Grice's second book, "The conception of value" (1991) Grice defines
himself as a 'functionalist' alla Aristotle. He does not want to say that
mental states exist per se, but that they are _functions_ of two things: the
organism's perceptual input and the organism's behavioural output. It's a
black-box model of mentality. So he would refine the point about temporal
sequence here. Again, one should distinguish between introspection ("I am first
bored, and then I yawn"), from third-person reports. We do see agent A as
yawning and we assume that at an earlier time, t1
the 'behavioiural output'. The perceptual input, as you say, can be
anything -- e.g. a lecture.
As L. J. H. has pointed out, "Yawning, therefore, may be the result of a cooled-down brain and not the
cause of the cooling."
Yes. I'm not sure about that. I think it's good to keep talking of 'cause',
but at this stage we should be able to improve the vocabulary and 'add'
"reason", a fascinating term. Grice would say, "the reason the bridge fell
was that it was made of cellophane", say. So, we allow for 'reason' to be
used in "empirical" scenarios. Yet, I think Grice would have it that it may be
a trick to analyse,
"the reason why he was bored".
and
"he did it to bore him".
and so on. These are not impossible locutions, but one has to analyse the
scenarios somewhat carefully. If it is a matter of a physical response,
neurophysiologically explained, the 'reasons' have to be differentiated. It
would be possible to have someone _yawn_ by properly mechanical methods,
rather than having him to undergo a lecture, say. But I would need to analyse
all that.
Usually, Davidson, an American philosopher, is credited with having
discovered that 'reasons' can be causes and vice versa, but if you read the
obituary of D. F. Pears, online, in the Daily Telegraph, one could just as well
ascribe that discovery to Pears, and by extension, Grice. In "Meaning", he
does explore things which count as 'reason' and things which count as
'cause'. In fact, he proposes that Stevenson's theory is too causal to be true,
even.
Again, L. J. H., "If I'm watching an intriguing lecture on C-Span I do not yawn, but if I'm listening to something I feel duty-bound to pay attention to but am
nevertheless bored by it, e.g., a speech by a Democrat, I yawn."
So, let's revise the New York Times note that motivated this, which I does
append below. It may do to reanalyse Ray's jargon in Grice's one, or not.
Again, ultimately, my provocation was Prof. Green's article on "Grice's
Frown", which overanalyses, to excellent effect, how a piece of behaviour
which may 'naturally' be said to display this or that, can be used
manipulatively for effect. We have then the 'simulated yawn', and so. This fits nicely in the Griceian picture. It's only the answer in scientific terms that sort
of makes the Grice's picture even more interesting, in that humans already
_assess_ yawning 'semantically' even if Patricia Churchland (to quote a
favourite with McCreery) would think that is totally "out of place". Or
something.
Now, it's different if Grice SNEEZES. It may be that this is understood as
meaning, "I am cold" -- and rudely as "Turn on the heater" and things like
that. And so on. Or not. Another example is, 'by blushing [intentionally,
but she failed to see that] he meant that he was embarrassed'. Also by
'burping' loudly (as seems to be polite in Japanese circles), he meant that he
was satisfied with the food being offered, and so on. (Or, in general by
(faking) X, U meant that ... --). Etc.
The Yawning Gap. By C. CLAIBORNE RAY. Published: New York Times, June 27,
2011.
The somewhat naive question,
Q. Do people yawn when they are asleep? Why do they yawn in the first
place?
A.
C. C. Ray writes:
"Yawning is certainly less common during sleep, but cases of it have been
documented, said Matthew R. Ebben, director of laboratory operations at the
Center for Sleep Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell
Medical Center. As for why people yawn, “it is not entirely known,” Dr.
Ebben said. “However, the most recent data suggests that it is part of a
thermoregulatory response that helps cool the brain by shunting blood to facial
muscles that act as radiators and offload heat from the redirected blood.”
In a case study published in 2010 in the journal Sleep Breath, two women who
had chronic, debilitating bouts of yawning were studied. Despite getting
adequate sleep, they had frequent daytime attacks of yawning so severe that
their eyes watered and their noses ran. Both women found that they could
alleviate or postpone their symptoms by nasal breathing or applying cool
cloths to their foreheads. One woman found she could stop an attack by taking
a cold shower or swimming in cold water. The other woman discovered that
she had a half-degree drop in oral temperature after her attacks. The
researchers commented that the results were consistent with growing evidence
linking excessive yawning to temperature imbalances rather than to blood levels
of oxygen or carbon dioxide or some kind of sleep disorder."
And so on.
for the GC
Suppose someone yawns in front of you. Suppose he is Grice. You may be able, on occasion, to draw the 'unwanted' implicature. If it is an implicature, it is of course 'wanted' (an implicature is not like a baby, which can be unwanted and yet a baby).
You may derive, "He is bored by what I say -- or something".
Yet, Grice was impressed by new developments in neurophysiology. So, what he 'meant', perhaps, was that
Grice's system was displaying part of a thermoregulatory response in order to cool the brain by shunting blood to Grice's facial muscles which thus acted as radiators offloading heat from the redirected blood.
One may wonder why he would like to 'mean' that.
M. Green wrote on "Grice's Frown", brilliantly. Now, THAT is a cryptic case by Grice. I was recently re-reading his "Meaning Revisited", and he has this example,
"By that gesture he meant that he was fed up".
So, Grice was still using 'mean' without scare quotes -- unlike Stevenson, who the early Grice worshipped.
This from today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/science/28qna.html
"As for why people yawn, “it is not entirely known,” Dr. Ebben said. “However, the most recent data suggests that it is part of a thermoregulatory response that helps cool the brain by shunting blood to facial muscles that act as radiators and offload heat from the redirected blood.”"
----
To reconsider, then, using Grice's neologism, almost, of 'mean':
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up"
---- "I mean 'that gesture' in the use apt for communication" -- or something, Grice has it.
----
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up."
Strictly, what that yawn 'meant' -- as Stevenson properly would have it in scare quotes -- is something else:
"That yawn 'meant' that the system is displaying a
part of a thermoregulatory response
to help cool the brain
--- and that response is effected
by
shunting blood to the facial muscles
which act as radiators and
thus offload heat from the redirected blood."
Or something.
And since some of our club members are such avid, intelligent reader, I will provide the few references, just because.
I was always (or allways, as I prefer) fascinated by Grice, but recently, a
few of his unpublications were made 'public'.
They are all deposited in the Bancroft Library, UC/Berkeley (He died in San Francisco, 1988 and his wife donated all his stuff to the Special Collections). One included an early talk -- transcripted -- on Peirce (circa 1947). So he was into 'semiotics'.
In 1944, Stevenson, a Yale Univ. Press philosopher, had published his
"Ethics and language", which Grice read and credits in "Meaning" (1948). There,
Stevenson thinks that 'mean' CAN be used for things like
"The barometer 'means' that..."
(I don't have his example to hand -- but I have cited elsewhere in the Club minutes).
I.e.
'mean',
one would think applies primarily to _people_ who have _minds_
(hence the root, 'm-n'). But Stevenson is saying that, in a figurative,
extensive, way, it can apply to what most classicist philosophers had as
"natural signs" (Hobbes, etc., and back to studies in semiotics among the
Greeks and the Romans by this disciple of Umberto Eco in Bologna).
Ockham, in his "Logic" writings, has a few interesting examples. A stone
outside a pub, he writes, may indicate ('significat naturaliter' or
'non-naturaliter', I forget) that wine is being sold. His two other, more
interesting, examples are:
-- a smile "significat naturaliter interiorem laetitiam" -- a smile
signifies naturally an inner joy.
-- a tear signifies interior pain.
In "Meaning", Grice wants to include those 'natural significations'
as falling within "mean". He is in a campaign AGAINST Peirce, who would use
Latinate terms; whereas Grice wants to stick with Anglo-Saxon 'mean'.
The "yawn" thing then comes out as naturally a case of a display of
behaviour which can "mean" or "mean-N", to use Grice's jargon. In "Meaning
Revisited", going evolutionary, Grice wants to say that non-iconic sign systems
such as languages like "English" develop out of natural displays like "Ouch"
and such. (The "ouch" theory of language evolution, I think it's called).
So, a point about 'yawn' can be analyse in this Grice's light:
--- First the point about animals is apt. I do have, somewhere, Darwin's
"The expression of emotions in man and animals" -- lovely illustrations --
and one should check with 'yawn'.
One may think (I owe the point to L. K. H.):
"I am first bored and then I yawn."
This is a good one. In "Method in philosophical psychology", which came out
in Grice's second book, "The conception of value" (1991) Grice defines
himself as a 'functionalist' alla Aristotle. He does not want to say that
mental states exist per se, but that they are _functions_ of two things: the
organism's perceptual input and the organism's behavioural output. It's a
black-box model of mentality. So he would refine the point about temporal
sequence here. Again, one should distinguish between introspection ("I am first
bored, and then I yawn"), from third-person reports. We do see agent A as
yawning and we assume that at an earlier time, t1
the 'behavioiural output'. The perceptual input, as you say, can be
anything -- e.g. a lecture.
As L. J. H. has pointed out, "Yawning, therefore, may be the result of a cooled-down brain and not the
cause of the cooling."
Yes. I'm not sure about that. I think it's good to keep talking of 'cause',
but at this stage we should be able to improve the vocabulary and 'add'
"reason", a fascinating term. Grice would say, "the reason the bridge fell
was that it was made of cellophane", say. So, we allow for 'reason' to be
used in "empirical" scenarios. Yet, I think Grice would have it that it may be
a trick to analyse,
"the reason why he was bored".
and
"he did it to bore him".
and so on. These are not impossible locutions, but one has to analyse the
scenarios somewhat carefully. If it is a matter of a physical response,
neurophysiologically explained, the 'reasons' have to be differentiated. It
would be possible to have someone _yawn_ by properly mechanical methods,
rather than having him to undergo a lecture, say. But I would need to analyse
all that.
Usually, Davidson, an American philosopher, is credited with having
discovered that 'reasons' can be causes and vice versa, but if you read the
obituary of D. F. Pears, online, in the Daily Telegraph, one could just as well
ascribe that discovery to Pears, and by extension, Grice. In "Meaning", he
does explore things which count as 'reason' and things which count as
'cause'. In fact, he proposes that Stevenson's theory is too causal to be true,
even.
Again, L. J. H., "If I'm watching an intriguing lecture on C-Span I do not yawn, but if I'm listening to something I feel duty-bound to pay attention to but am
nevertheless bored by it, e.g., a speech by a Democrat, I yawn."
So, let's revise the New York Times note that motivated this, which I does
append below. It may do to reanalyse Ray's jargon in Grice's one, or not.
Again, ultimately, my provocation was Prof. Green's article on "Grice's
Frown", which overanalyses, to excellent effect, how a piece of behaviour
which may 'naturally' be said to display this or that, can be used
manipulatively for effect. We have then the 'simulated yawn', and so. This fits nicely in the Griceian picture. It's only the answer in scientific terms that sort
of makes the Grice's picture even more interesting, in that humans already
_assess_ yawning 'semantically' even if Patricia Churchland (to quote a
favourite with McCreery) would think that is totally "out of place". Or
something.
Now, it's different if Grice SNEEZES. It may be that this is understood as
meaning, "I am cold" -- and rudely as "Turn on the heater" and things like
that. And so on. Or not. Another example is, 'by blushing [intentionally,
but she failed to see that] he meant that he was embarrassed'. Also by
'burping' loudly (as seems to be polite in Japanese circles), he meant that he
was satisfied with the food being offered, and so on. (Or, in general by
(faking) X, U meant that ... --). Etc.
The Yawning Gap. By C. CLAIBORNE RAY. Published: New York Times, June 27,
2011.
The somewhat naive question,
Q. Do people yawn when they are asleep? Why do they yawn in the first
place?
A.
C. C. Ray writes:
"Yawning is certainly less common during sleep, but cases of it have been
documented, said Matthew R. Ebben, director of laboratory operations at the
Center for Sleep Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell
Medical Center. As for why people yawn, “it is not entirely known,” Dr.
Ebben said. “However, the most recent data suggests that it is part of a
thermoregulatory response that helps cool the brain by shunting blood to facial
muscles that act as radiators and offload heat from the redirected blood.”
In a case study published in 2010 in the journal Sleep Breath, two women who
had chronic, debilitating bouts of yawning were studied. Despite getting
adequate sleep, they had frequent daytime attacks of yawning so severe that
their eyes watered and their noses ran. Both women found that they could
alleviate or postpone their symptoms by nasal breathing or applying cool
cloths to their foreheads. One woman found she could stop an attack by taking
a cold shower or swimming in cold water. The other woman discovered that
she had a half-degree drop in oral temperature after her attacks. The
researchers commented that the results were consistent with growing evidence
linking excessive yawning to temperature imbalances rather than to blood levels
of oxygen or carbon dioxide or some kind of sleep disorder."
And so on.
Grice's Yawn
by JLS
for the GC
Suppose someone yawns in front of you. Suppose he is Grice. You may be able, on occasion, to draw the 'unwanted' implicature. If it is an implicature, it is of course 'wanted' (an implicature is not like a baby, which can be unwanted and yet a baby).
You may derive, "He is bored by what I say -- or something".
Yet, Grice was impressed by new developments in neurophysiology. So, what he 'meant', perhaps, was that
Grice's system was displaying part of a thermoregulatory response in order to cool the brain by shunting blood to Grice's facial muscles which thus acted as radiators offloading heat from the redirected blood.
One may wonder why he would like to 'mean' that.
M. Green wrote on "Grice's Frown", brilliantly. Now, THAT is a cryptic case by Grice. I was recently re-reading his "Meaning Revisited", and he has this example,
"By that gesture he meant that he was fed up".
So, Grice was still using 'mean' without scare quotes -- unlike Stevenson, who the early Grice worshipped.
This from today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/science/28qna.html
"As for why people yawn, “it is not entirely known,” Dr. Ebben said. “However, the most recent data suggests that it is part of a thermoregulatory response that helps cool the brain by shunting blood to facial muscles that act as radiators and offload heat from the redirected blood.”"
----
To reconsider, then, using Grice's neologism, almost, of 'mean':
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up"
---- "I mean 'that gesture' in the use apt for communication" -- or something, Grice has it.
----
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up."
Strictly, what that yawn 'meant' -- as Stevenson properly would have it in scare quotes -- is something else:
"That yawn 'meant' that the system is displaying a
part of a thermoregulatory response
to help cool the brain
--- and that response is effected
by
shunting blood to the facial muscles
which act as radiators and
thus offload heat from the redirected blood."
Or something.
for the GC
Suppose someone yawns in front of you. Suppose he is Grice. You may be able, on occasion, to draw the 'unwanted' implicature. If it is an implicature, it is of course 'wanted' (an implicature is not like a baby, which can be unwanted and yet a baby).
You may derive, "He is bored by what I say -- or something".
Yet, Grice was impressed by new developments in neurophysiology. So, what he 'meant', perhaps, was that
Grice's system was displaying part of a thermoregulatory response in order to cool the brain by shunting blood to Grice's facial muscles which thus acted as radiators offloading heat from the redirected blood.
One may wonder why he would like to 'mean' that.
M. Green wrote on "Grice's Frown", brilliantly. Now, THAT is a cryptic case by Grice. I was recently re-reading his "Meaning Revisited", and he has this example,
"By that gesture he meant that he was fed up".
So, Grice was still using 'mean' without scare quotes -- unlike Stevenson, who the early Grice worshipped.
This from today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/science/28qna.html
"As for why people yawn, “it is not entirely known,” Dr. Ebben said. “However, the most recent data suggests that it is part of a thermoregulatory response that helps cool the brain by shunting blood to facial muscles that act as radiators and offload heat from the redirected blood.”"
----
To reconsider, then, using Grice's neologism, almost, of 'mean':
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up"
---- "I mean 'that gesture' in the use apt for communication" -- or something, Grice has it.
----
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up."
Strictly, what that yawn 'meant' -- as Stevenson properly would have it in scare quotes -- is something else:
"That yawn 'meant' that the system is displaying a
part of a thermoregulatory response
to help cool the brain
--- and that response is effected
by
shunting blood to the facial muscles
which act as radiators and
thus offload heat from the redirected blood."
Or something.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Grice's Yawn
by JLS
for the GC
M. Green wrote on "Grice's Frown", brilliantly. Now, THAT is a cryptic case by Grice. I was recently re-reading his "Meaning Revisited", and he has this example,
"By that gesture he meant that he was fed up".
So, Grice was still using 'mean' without scare quotes -- unlike Stevenson, who the early Grice worshipped.
This from today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/science/28qna.html
"As for why people yawn, “it is not entirely known,” Dr. Ebben said. “However, the most recent data suggests that it is part of a thermoregulatory response that helps cool the brain by shunting blood to facial muscles that act as radiators and offload heat from the redirected blood.”"
----
To reconsider, then, using Grice's neologism, almost, of 'mean':
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up"
---- "I mean 'that gesture' in the use apt for communication" -- or something, Grice has it.
----
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up."
Strictly, what that yawn 'meant' -- as Stevenson properly would have it in scare quotes -- is something else:
"That yawn 'meant' that the system is displaying a
part of a thermoregulatory response
to help cool the brain
--- and that response is effected
by
shunting blood to the facial muscles
which act as radiators and
thus offload heat from the redirected blood."
Or something.
Cheers.
for the GC
M. Green wrote on "Grice's Frown", brilliantly. Now, THAT is a cryptic case by Grice. I was recently re-reading his "Meaning Revisited", and he has this example,
"By that gesture he meant that he was fed up".
So, Grice was still using 'mean' without scare quotes -- unlike Stevenson, who the early Grice worshipped.
This from today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/science/28qna.html
"As for why people yawn, “it is not entirely known,” Dr. Ebben said. “However, the most recent data suggests that it is part of a thermoregulatory response that helps cool the brain by shunting blood to facial muscles that act as radiators and offload heat from the redirected blood.”"
----
To reconsider, then, using Grice's neologism, almost, of 'mean':
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up"
---- "I mean 'that gesture' in the use apt for communication" -- or something, Grice has it.
----
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up."
Strictly, what that yawn 'meant' -- as Stevenson properly would have it in scare quotes -- is something else:
"That yawn 'meant' that the system is displaying a
part of a thermoregulatory response
to help cool the brain
--- and that response is effected
by
shunting blood to the facial muscles
which act as radiators and
thus offload heat from the redirected blood."
Or something.
Cheers.
If I'm not mistaken
by JLS
for the GC
The script in Woody Allen's film, "Midnight in Paris", has this dialogue with Paul Bates, an intellectual lecturing at Sorbonne (played brilliantly by Welsh actor, M.
Sheen):
"If I'm not mistaken, ..."
he prefaces EACH of his utterances. This gives him an air of guarded
intellectuality that charms Carla Bruni, who is also in the film.
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
---
In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
But
"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.
From which we get
~~p ⊃ p
which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes
p ⊃ p
---.
Another route:
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
is equivalent to
p v (I am mistaken)
p v ~p
--- another tautology.
Q. E. D.
Next: the 'implicature'.
It proceeds by pointing to the 'inexistence' (or rare use) of "if I'm right" as an equivalent hedge.
It combines with a view that
To utter a tautology (Grice, War is war, women are women) is to utter something which is totally NON-INFORMATIVE, at the level of what is being said (dictum, phrastic).
Therefore,
"if I'm not mistaken"
turns your conversational move, pedantically, into a nullity.
----
"The statue was dedicated to Rodin's wife."
Carla Bruni: Not his wife, his _lover_.
Paul Bates: I DID say, 'if I'm not mistaken'.
Carla Bruni: You _are_ a pedant, aren't you?!
----
It is a good strategy to look for idioms which may count as variants on "if I'm not mistaken". I suggest,
"I may be wrong, but ..."
But this poses a problem. There was an old music-hall song,
"I may be crazy, but I love you."
Note thta
"I may be wrong, but I love you"
does not quite tell what
"I may be mistaken, but I love you."
"wrong" may be thought as applying to the _fact_ that the utterer is in love with the addressee, NOT that he is doubting whether he loves the addressee. And so on.
We have to distinguish a Goedel-type paradox here:
If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken. --- this is an otiosity. It is a vacuous tautology.
If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken.
Since, "If I'm not mistaken" is a Griceian otiosity -- an otiosity by
Griceian standards, not one that Grice commits, "if I AM mitaken" is rather a
contradictory hedge. It turns everything into something that BREAKS the
conversational maxims. "If I'm mistaken", too, but in subtler ways -- or not.
Note that it's only when _I_ is used (as in Epemenidides' Liar paradox).
Thus, "If Bates is not mistaken, p" (cfr. "unless Bates is mistaken, p")
triggers different implicatures frrom those that "if _I_ am not mistaken"
does (cfr. "It is raining, but I don't believe it" and 'It is raining but
Bates does not believe it" -- Moore paradox).
Goedel may be thrown in into the bargain.
On the other hand,
"If I'm mistaken, I'm not mistaken" -- is a self-contradiction at the object-language level.
Note that J. Stanley may disagree:
"If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken"
is not, he would say, _clear_ enough. Note that,
"If I'm not mistaken that God is eternal, it rains."
is odd.
The implicature, or impliciture as Bach would confusingly have it, is that
"If I'm not mistaken"
refers anaphorically to the next clause:
"If I'm not mistaken about what I'll utter, i.e. p, p"
So:
"If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken"
should be clearly distinguished from:
"If I'm mistaken, I'm not mistaken".
Symbolising both reaches surprising conclusions.
And so on.
for the GC
The script in Woody Allen's film, "Midnight in Paris", has this dialogue with Paul Bates, an intellectual lecturing at Sorbonne (played brilliantly by Welsh actor, M.
Sheen):
"If I'm not mistaken, ..."
he prefaces EACH of his utterances. This gives him an air of guarded
intellectuality that charms Carla Bruni, who is also in the film.
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
---
In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
But
"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.
From which we get
~~p ⊃ p
which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes
p ⊃ p
---.
Another route:
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
is equivalent to
p v (I am mistaken)
p v ~p
--- another tautology.
Q. E. D.
Next: the 'implicature'.
It proceeds by pointing to the 'inexistence' (or rare use) of "if I'm right" as an equivalent hedge.
It combines with a view that
To utter a tautology (Grice, War is war, women are women) is to utter something which is totally NON-INFORMATIVE, at the level of what is being said (dictum, phrastic).
Therefore,
"if I'm not mistaken"
turns your conversational move, pedantically, into a nullity.
----
"The statue was dedicated to Rodin's wife."
Carla Bruni: Not his wife, his _lover_.
Paul Bates: I DID say, 'if I'm not mistaken'.
Carla Bruni: You _are_ a pedant, aren't you?!
----
It is a good strategy to look for idioms which may count as variants on "if I'm not mistaken". I suggest,
"I may be wrong, but ..."
But this poses a problem. There was an old music-hall song,
"I may be crazy, but I love you."
Note thta
"I may be wrong, but I love you"
does not quite tell what
"I may be mistaken, but I love you."
"wrong" may be thought as applying to the _fact_ that the utterer is in love with the addressee, NOT that he is doubting whether he loves the addressee. And so on.
We have to distinguish a Goedel-type paradox here:
If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken. --- this is an otiosity. It is a vacuous tautology.
If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken.
Since, "If I'm not mistaken" is a Griceian otiosity -- an otiosity by
Griceian standards, not one that Grice commits, "if I AM mitaken" is rather a
contradictory hedge. It turns everything into something that BREAKS the
conversational maxims. "If I'm mistaken", too, but in subtler ways -- or not.
Note that it's only when _I_ is used (as in Epemenidides' Liar paradox).
Thus, "If Bates is not mistaken, p" (cfr. "unless Bates is mistaken, p")
triggers different implicatures frrom those that "if _I_ am not mistaken"
does (cfr. "It is raining, but I don't believe it" and 'It is raining but
Bates does not believe it" -- Moore paradox).
Goedel may be thrown in into the bargain.
On the other hand,
"If I'm mistaken, I'm not mistaken" -- is a self-contradiction at the object-language level.
Note that J. Stanley may disagree:
"If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken"
is not, he would say, _clear_ enough. Note that,
"If I'm not mistaken that God is eternal, it rains."
is odd.
The implicature, or impliciture as Bach would confusingly have it, is that
"If I'm not mistaken"
refers anaphorically to the next clause:
"If I'm not mistaken about what I'll utter, i.e. p, p"
So:
"If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken"
should be clearly distinguished from:
"If I'm mistaken, I'm not mistaken".
Symbolising both reaches surprising conclusions.
And so on.
If I'm not mistaken
by JLS
for the GC
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
---
In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
But
"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.
From which we get
~~p ⊃ p
which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes
p ⊃ p
---.
Another route:
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
is equivalent to
p v (I am mistaken)
p v ~p
--- another tautology.
Q. E. D.
Next: the 'implicature'.
It proceeds by pointing to the 'inexistence' (or rare use) of "if I'm right" as an equivalent hedge.
It combines with a view that
To utter a tautology (Grice, War is war, women are women) is to utter something which is totally NON-INFORMATIVE, at the level of what is being said (dictum, phrastic).
Therefore,
"if I'm not mistaken"
turns your conversational move, pedantically, into a nullity.
----
"The statue was dedicated to Rodin's wife."
Carla Bruni: Not his wife, his _lover_.
Paul Bates: I DID say, 'if I'm not mistaken'.
Carla Bruni: You _are_ a pedant, aren't you?!
----
It is a good strategy to look for idioms which may count as variants on "if I'm not mistaken". I suggest,
"I may be wrong, but ..."
But this poses a problem. There was an old music-hall song,
"I may be crazy, but I love you."
Note thta
"I may be wrong, but I love you"
does not quite tell what
"I may be mistaken, but I love you."
"wrong" may be thought as applying to the _fact_ that the utterer is in love with the addressee, NOT that he is doubting whether he loves the addressee. And so on.
We have to distinguish a Goedel-type paradox here:
If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken. --- this is an otiosity. It is a vacuous tautology.
On the other hand,
"If I'm mistaken, I'm not mistaken" -- is a self-contradiction at the object-language level.
Note that J. Stanley may disagree:
"If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken"
is not, he would say, _clear_ enough. Note that,
"If I'm not mistaken that God is eternal, it rains."
is odd.
The implicature, or impliciture as Bach would confusingly have it, is that
"If I'm not mistaken"
refers anaphorically to the next clause:
"If I'm not mistaken about what I'll utter, i.e. p, p"
And so on.
for the GC
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
---
In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
But
"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.
From which we get
~~p ⊃ p
which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes
p ⊃ p
---.
Another route:
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
is equivalent to
p v (I am mistaken)
p v ~p
--- another tautology.
Q. E. D.
Next: the 'implicature'.
It proceeds by pointing to the 'inexistence' (or rare use) of "if I'm right" as an equivalent hedge.
It combines with a view that
To utter a tautology (Grice, War is war, women are women) is to utter something which is totally NON-INFORMATIVE, at the level of what is being said (dictum, phrastic).
Therefore,
"if I'm not mistaken"
turns your conversational move, pedantically, into a nullity.
----
"The statue was dedicated to Rodin's wife."
Carla Bruni: Not his wife, his _lover_.
Paul Bates: I DID say, 'if I'm not mistaken'.
Carla Bruni: You _are_ a pedant, aren't you?!
----
It is a good strategy to look for idioms which may count as variants on "if I'm not mistaken". I suggest,
"I may be wrong, but ..."
But this poses a problem. There was an old music-hall song,
"I may be crazy, but I love you."
Note thta
"I may be wrong, but I love you"
does not quite tell what
"I may be mistaken, but I love you."
"wrong" may be thought as applying to the _fact_ that the utterer is in love with the addressee, NOT that he is doubting whether he loves the addressee. And so on.
We have to distinguish a Goedel-type paradox here:
If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken. --- this is an otiosity. It is a vacuous tautology.
On the other hand,
"If I'm mistaken, I'm not mistaken" -- is a self-contradiction at the object-language level.
Note that J. Stanley may disagree:
"If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken"
is not, he would say, _clear_ enough. Note that,
"If I'm not mistaken that God is eternal, it rains."
is odd.
The implicature, or impliciture as Bach would confusingly have it, is that
"If I'm not mistaken"
refers anaphorically to the next clause:
"If I'm not mistaken about what I'll utter, i.e. p, p"
And so on.
Grice, of Norfolk
by JLS
for the GC
by courtesy of R. P.
---
Origins of the Grice surname. (Thanks to C. Grice, of Griceland)
The following article appears on several different Grice web sites, but none of them credit the original source.
I made a copy here in case those other sites disappear.
Please email me if you know the orginal source of this text.
Careful research by professional analysts using such ancient manuscripts as the Domesday Book (compiled in 1086 by William the Conqueror), the Ragman Rolls, the Wace poem, the Honour Roll of the Battei Abbey, The Curia Regis, Pipe Rolls, the Falaise Roll, tax records, baptismals, family genealogies, and local parish and church records shows the first record of the name
"Grice"
was found in Norfolk where conjecturally they were, in
1066,
Lords of the Manor of Brockdish, the King's land, whose feudal Lord was William de Noyers, Count of Nevers seated originally at Poitevin and St-Cyr de Nevers in Normady.
Sir William de Noyers, Count of Nevers, also held Grayhurst Manor through Bishop Odo from King William of Normandy.
From this family also descend the Lords Monson and Viscounts Castlemaine.
The original estates were, however, sold in 1327.
The village now consists of a church, St. Edmunds, which has both Saxon and Norman windows, obviously predating the Norman Conquest by many years.
Many alternate spellings of the name "Grice" were found.
They were typically linked to a common root, usually one of the Norman nobles at the Battle of Hastings.
The name "Grice" occurs in many references, and from time to time, the surname included the spellings of
"Grice",
"Gryce",
"Grise",
"Grisewood",
"DeGrice",
"Grycie",
"Griese",
and many more.
Scribes recorded and spelled the name as it sounded.
It was not unlikely that a person would be born with one spelling, married with another, and buried with a headstone which showed another.
All three spellings related to the same person.
Sometimes preferences for different spelling variations either came from a division of the family, or, for religious reasons, or sometimes patriotic reasons.
The family surname
"Grice" is believed to be descended originally from the Norman race.
They were commonly believed to be of French origin but were,, more accurately, of Viking origin.
The Vikings landed in the Orkneys and Northern Scotland about the year 870 AD, under their Chief, Stirgud the Stout.
Later, under their Jarl, Thorfinn Rollo they invaded France about 940 AD.
The French King, Charles the Simple, became the first Duke of Normandy, the territory of the north men.
Duke William who invaded and defeated England in 1066, was descended from the first Duke Rollo of Normandy.
Duke William took a census of most of England in 1068, and recorded it in the Domesday Book.
A family name capable of being traced back to this document, or to Hastings, was a signal of honour for most families during the middle ages, and even to this day.
In the process of researching this distinguished family name the most ancient grant of Coat of Arms was traced from the branches which developed their own Arms.
The most ancient grant of a Coat of Arms found was:
red and blue quartered background,
on a silver sash,
three black boars, tusked.
The crest is a wild boar with a gold crown.
The surname
"Grice"
emerged as a notable English family name in the country of Norfolk where the original estates and village evolved from Bodise, then Brodiso, then Brockdish, and later Brokedish, and was, at one time, even mispelt Brokedisk.
"Grice" has been *incorrectly* related affectionately to a small pig by some historians, but more properly it is translated as
"the Grey".
The family also gave their name to
"Grisewood" from an ancient estate.
By the 13th century at least one branch of the family had been lured north by Earl David of Huntingdon's (King David of Scotland) promise to the Norman nobles of lands in Scotland.
Mungo Gryse
was associated with the Abbot of Sweetheart Abbey in 1555, and later, during the religious turmoils of the 17th century,
Robert Gricie
of Buittle was accused of being a papist.
Meanwhile, in England, the main stem of the family acquired estates in Iver in Buckinghamshire and at Littleton in Middlesex.
They also branched to Essex.
Notable amongst the family at this time was Grice of Brokedish.
The surname "Grice" contributed much to local politics and in the affairs of England or Scotland.
During the 12th century many of these Norman families moved north to Scotland, following Earl David of Huntingdon who would become King of Scotland.
Later, in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries England and Scotland were ravaged be religious and political conflict.
The Monarchy, the Church and Parliament fought for supremacy.
The unrest caused many to think of distant lands.
Settlers in Ireland became known as the "Adventurers for the land in Ireland".
They "undertook" to keep the Protestant faith, and were granted lands previously owned by the Irish.
Elizabeth Grice was married to Alderman Daniel Hutchinson, Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1651. Elizabeth was descended from the main branch of Brokedish.
The attractions of the New World spread like wildfire.
Many sailed aboard the fleet of sailing ships known as the "White Sails"
In North America, migrants which could be considered a kinsman of the family name "Grice", or variable spellings of that same family name included Katherine Grice settled in Maryland in 1774 and H. Grice arrived in San Francisco in 1850.
Other settlers named "Gries" or "Griess" are unrelated and are of Germanic origin.
From the port of arrival many settlers joined the wagon trains westward.
During the War of Independence some declared their loyalty to the Crown and moved northward into Canada and became know as the United Empire Loyalists.
Meanwhile, the family name was active in the social stream.
There were many notables of this name, "Grice".
Benning Moore Grice, Supreme Court Justice of Georgia, U.S.A. , and his father Justice Warren Grice.
--- Further:
The name "Le Grice", however it is spelt, has three possible meanings.
The first is a direct transition from Old French and simply means The Grey.
Probably referring to hair ie "The Grey-haired Ones".
But if we keep digging it also means "Swine-herd" or "Pig Farmer".
This translation is similar in both Middle French, Old French and even Icelandic.
Nothing is proven yet but via the Normans from Normandy in France a link can probably be traced back to Norseman who raided the European coastline as Vikings.
The third meaning is "The Well-Nourished One" and may be a play on the name Le Gros, meaning "The Big" .
The Le Grys/Le Grice family is reported by the College of Arms to be one of only eighty families in England who can trace their lineage back to 1066.
----
for the GC
by courtesy of R. P.
---
Origins of the Grice surname. (Thanks to C. Grice, of Griceland)
The following article appears on several different Grice web sites, but none of them credit the original source.
I made a copy here in case those other sites disappear.
Please email me if you know the orginal source of this text.
Careful research by professional analysts using such ancient manuscripts as the Domesday Book (compiled in 1086 by William the Conqueror), the Ragman Rolls, the Wace poem, the Honour Roll of the Battei Abbey, The Curia Regis, Pipe Rolls, the Falaise Roll, tax records, baptismals, family genealogies, and local parish and church records shows the first record of the name
"Grice"
was found in Norfolk where conjecturally they were, in
1066,
Lords of the Manor of Brockdish, the King's land, whose feudal Lord was William de Noyers, Count of Nevers seated originally at Poitevin and St-Cyr de Nevers in Normady.
Sir William de Noyers, Count of Nevers, also held Grayhurst Manor through Bishop Odo from King William of Normandy.
From this family also descend the Lords Monson and Viscounts Castlemaine.
The original estates were, however, sold in 1327.
The village now consists of a church, St. Edmunds, which has both Saxon and Norman windows, obviously predating the Norman Conquest by many years.
Many alternate spellings of the name "Grice" were found.
They were typically linked to a common root, usually one of the Norman nobles at the Battle of Hastings.
The name "Grice" occurs in many references, and from time to time, the surname included the spellings of
"Grice",
"Gryce",
"Grise",
"Grisewood",
"DeGrice",
"Grycie",
"Griese",
and many more.
Scribes recorded and spelled the name as it sounded.
It was not unlikely that a person would be born with one spelling, married with another, and buried with a headstone which showed another.
All three spellings related to the same person.
Sometimes preferences for different spelling variations either came from a division of the family, or, for religious reasons, or sometimes patriotic reasons.
The family surname
"Grice" is believed to be descended originally from the Norman race.
They were commonly believed to be of French origin but were,, more accurately, of Viking origin.
The Vikings landed in the Orkneys and Northern Scotland about the year 870 AD, under their Chief, Stirgud the Stout.
Later, under their Jarl, Thorfinn Rollo they invaded France about 940 AD.
The French King, Charles the Simple, became the first Duke of Normandy, the territory of the north men.
Duke William who invaded and defeated England in 1066, was descended from the first Duke Rollo of Normandy.
Duke William took a census of most of England in 1068, and recorded it in the Domesday Book.
A family name capable of being traced back to this document, or to Hastings, was a signal of honour for most families during the middle ages, and even to this day.
In the process of researching this distinguished family name the most ancient grant of Coat of Arms was traced from the branches which developed their own Arms.
The most ancient grant of a Coat of Arms found was:
red and blue quartered background,
on a silver sash,
three black boars, tusked.
The crest is a wild boar with a gold crown.
The surname
"Grice"
emerged as a notable English family name in the country of Norfolk where the original estates and village evolved from Bodise, then Brodiso, then Brockdish, and later Brokedish, and was, at one time, even mispelt Brokedisk.
"Grice" has been *incorrectly* related affectionately to a small pig by some historians, but more properly it is translated as
"the Grey".
The family also gave their name to
"Grisewood" from an ancient estate.
By the 13th century at least one branch of the family had been lured north by Earl David of Huntingdon's (King David of Scotland) promise to the Norman nobles of lands in Scotland.
Mungo Gryse
was associated with the Abbot of Sweetheart Abbey in 1555, and later, during the religious turmoils of the 17th century,
Robert Gricie
of Buittle was accused of being a papist.
Meanwhile, in England, the main stem of the family acquired estates in Iver in Buckinghamshire and at Littleton in Middlesex.
They also branched to Essex.
Notable amongst the family at this time was Grice of Brokedish.
The surname "Grice" contributed much to local politics and in the affairs of England or Scotland.
During the 12th century many of these Norman families moved north to Scotland, following Earl David of Huntingdon who would become King of Scotland.
Later, in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries England and Scotland were ravaged be religious and political conflict.
The Monarchy, the Church and Parliament fought for supremacy.
The unrest caused many to think of distant lands.
Settlers in Ireland became known as the "Adventurers for the land in Ireland".
They "undertook" to keep the Protestant faith, and were granted lands previously owned by the Irish.
Elizabeth Grice was married to Alderman Daniel Hutchinson, Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1651. Elizabeth was descended from the main branch of Brokedish.
The attractions of the New World spread like wildfire.
Many sailed aboard the fleet of sailing ships known as the "White Sails"
In North America, migrants which could be considered a kinsman of the family name "Grice", or variable spellings of that same family name included Katherine Grice settled in Maryland in 1774 and H. Grice arrived in San Francisco in 1850.
Other settlers named "Gries" or "Griess" are unrelated and are of Germanic origin.
From the port of arrival many settlers joined the wagon trains westward.
During the War of Independence some declared their loyalty to the Crown and moved northward into Canada and became know as the United Empire Loyalists.
Meanwhile, the family name was active in the social stream.
There were many notables of this name, "Grice".
Benning Moore Grice, Supreme Court Justice of Georgia, U.S.A. , and his father Justice Warren Grice.
--- Further:
The name "Le Grice", however it is spelt, has three possible meanings.
The first is a direct transition from Old French and simply means The Grey.
Probably referring to hair ie "The Grey-haired Ones".
But if we keep digging it also means "Swine-herd" or "Pig Farmer".
This translation is similar in both Middle French, Old French and even Icelandic.
Nothing is proven yet but via the Normans from Normandy in France a link can probably be traced back to Norseman who raided the European coastline as Vikings.
The third meaning is "The Well-Nourished One" and may be a play on the name Le Gros, meaning "The Big" .
The Le Grys/Le Grice family is reported by the College of Arms to be one of only eighty families in England who can trace their lineage back to 1066.
----
Monday, June 27, 2011
If I'm not mistaken
by JLS
for the GC
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
---
In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
But
"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.
From which we get
~~p ⊃ p
which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes
p ⊃ p
---.
Another route:
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
is equivalent to
p v (I am mistaken)
p v ~p
--- another tautology.
Q. E. D.
Next: the 'implicature'.
It proceeds by pointing to the 'inexistence' (or rare use) of "if I'm right" as an equivalent hedge.
It combines with a view that
To utter a tautology (Grice, War is war, women are women) is to utter something which is totally NON-INFORMATIVE, at the level of what is being said (dictum, phrastic).
Therefore,
"if I'm not mistaken"
turns your conversational move, pedantically, into a nullity.
----
"The statue was dedicated to Rodin's wife."
Carla Bruni: Not his wife, his _lover_.
Paul Bates: I DID say, 'if I'm not mistaken'.
Carla Bruni: You _are_ a pedant, aren't you?!
----
It is a good strategy to look for idioms which may count as variants on "if I'm not mistaken". I suggest,
"I may be wrong, but ..."
But this poses a problem. There was an old music-hall song,
"I may be crazy, but I love you."
Note thta
"I may be wrong, but I love you"
does not quite tell what
"I may be mistaken, but I love you."
"wrong" may be thought as applying to the _fact_ that the utterer is in love with the addressee, NOT that he is doubting whether he loves the addressee. And so on.
for the GC
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
---
In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
But
"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.
From which we get
~~p ⊃ p
which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes
p ⊃ p
---.
Another route:
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
is equivalent to
p v (I am mistaken)
p v ~p
--- another tautology.
Q. E. D.
Next: the 'implicature'.
It proceeds by pointing to the 'inexistence' (or rare use) of "if I'm right" as an equivalent hedge.
It combines with a view that
To utter a tautology (Grice, War is war, women are women) is to utter something which is totally NON-INFORMATIVE, at the level of what is being said (dictum, phrastic).
Therefore,
"if I'm not mistaken"
turns your conversational move, pedantically, into a nullity.
----
"The statue was dedicated to Rodin's wife."
Carla Bruni: Not his wife, his _lover_.
Paul Bates: I DID say, 'if I'm not mistaken'.
Carla Bruni: You _are_ a pedant, aren't you?!
----
It is a good strategy to look for idioms which may count as variants on "if I'm not mistaken". I suggest,
"I may be wrong, but ..."
But this poses a problem. There was an old music-hall song,
"I may be crazy, but I love you."
Note thta
"I may be wrong, but I love you"
does not quite tell what
"I may be mistaken, but I love you."
"wrong" may be thought as applying to the _fact_ that the utterer is in love with the addressee, NOT that he is doubting whether he loves the addressee. And so on.
If I'm not mistaken
by JLS
for the GC
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
---
In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
But
"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.
From which we get
~~p ⊃ p
which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes
p ⊃ p
---.
Another route:
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
is equivalent to
p v (I am mistaken)
p v ~p
--- another tautology.
Q. E. D.
Next: the 'implicature'.
It proceeds by pointing to the 'inexistence' (or rare use) of "if I'm right" as an equivalent hedge.
It combines with a view that
To utter a tautology (Grice, War is war, women are women) is to utter something which is totally NON-INFORMATIVE, at the level of what is being said (dictum, phrastic).
Therefore,
"if I'm not mistaken"
turns your conversational move, pedantically, into a nullity.
----
"The statue was dedicated to Rodin's wife."
Carla Bruni: Not his wife, his _lover_.
Paul Bates: I DID say, 'if I'm not mistaken'.
Carla Bruni: You _are_ a pedant, aren't you?!
---
for the GC
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
---
In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
But
"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.
From which we get
~~p ⊃ p
which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes
p ⊃ p
---.
Another route:
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
is equivalent to
p v (I am mistaken)
p v ~p
--- another tautology.
Q. E. D.
Next: the 'implicature'.
It proceeds by pointing to the 'inexistence' (or rare use) of "if I'm right" as an equivalent hedge.
It combines with a view that
To utter a tautology (Grice, War is war, women are women) is to utter something which is totally NON-INFORMATIVE, at the level of what is being said (dictum, phrastic).
Therefore,
"if I'm not mistaken"
turns your conversational move, pedantically, into a nullity.
----
"The statue was dedicated to Rodin's wife."
Carla Bruni: Not his wife, his _lover_.
Paul Bates: I DID say, 'if I'm not mistaken'.
Carla Bruni: You _are_ a pedant, aren't you?!
---
If I'm not mistaken
by JLS
for the GC
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
---
In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
But
"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.
From which we get
~~p ⊃ p
which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes
p ⊃ p
---.
Another route:
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
is equivalent to
p v (I am mistaken)
p v ~p
--- another tautology.
Q. E. D.
Next: the 'implicature'.
for the GC
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
---
In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
But
"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.
From which we get
~~p ⊃ p
which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes
p ⊃ p
---.
Another route:
~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p
is equivalent to
p v (I am mistaken)
p v ~p
--- another tautology.
Q. E. D.
Next: the 'implicature'.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
If I'm not mistaken
by JLS
for the GC
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
for the GC
From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":
"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with
“if I’m not mistaken”
is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."
"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Grice, the authority
by J. L. Speranza
for the Grice Club.
Is "author" an otiose word? Is "authority" an ever more otiose one? Consider one´s claims to what one implicates (or not), as part of a claim as to what one (or other) means (or other).
I should revise all this, but recently, out of a discussion, elsewhere, as to whether it is possible for an utterer to misunderstand himself (or ´his self´, as I prefer), I came across this bit by Grice which reminded me of Aune´s brilliant autobiography, and the point about Grice´s expressed interest in Aune on avowals.
Grice is considering a specific scenario, but he wants to suggest that,
"By uttering x, I mean that p"
is a bit of an avowal, where "a bit of" is just a redundant otiosity.
He is considering a pupil (or tutee, as I prefer). Since Strawson was one such, allow me:
Grice: You should bring a paper tomorrow.
Strawson: You mean a newspaper? Will the "Independent" do?
Grice: No. I don´t mean a _newspaper_. I mean "a piece of written work."
Strawson: By _me_, expect.
Grice is considering further challenges. Consider a journal entry -- Grice´s favourite scenario for "Griceian utterer´s meaning withot an audience or addresee". "In retrospect, now that I think of it, perhaps when I did say, "You should bring a paper tomorrow I meant a "newspaper". Rather, Grice considers a challenge by, say, Strawson. Of the form:
"Are you _sure_ you mean "a piece of written work" and not a newspaper?"
Grice´s commentary comes out in "Studies in the Way of Words" (that Aune quotes). It belongs to a rather early piece by Grice totally concerned with something quite different: philosopher (as Moore called him) and his paradoxes.
Grice writes of a possible challenge by, say, Strawson,
"I expect you ultimately do mean, "a newspaper"".
---- (cfr. Freud on slips which mean other than they say, as it were).
Grice comments, and here is where this indirect reference to Aune can be made.
"It would be absurd at this point for the pupil to say,
"Perhaps you only think, mistakenly, that you mean 'a piece of written work', whereas you
really mean 'a newspaper'."
Grice goes on to propose an analogy with,
"I have a headache".
"((And)) ((T))his absurdity seems the absurdity
of suggesting to someone who says he has a
pain in his arm that perhaps he is mistaken
(unless the suggestion is to be taken as saying
that perhaps there is nothing physically wrong
with him, however his arm feels)."
I regret that Grice did not expand on the "unless", because it´s quite central to the issue at large, as to the incorrigibility or privileged access or "avowals", that Grice also considers, indirectly, in "Method in philosophical psychology", now repr. in "Conception of Value" --- For Grice, for any psychological attitude psi, held by agent A, it is plausible to add an iteration of it. "I believe that p", "I believe that I believe that p". "I want that p", "I want that I want that p", and so on. He goes on to represent these iterated attitudes by means of a subscript, "believe-2" ("He believes-2 that p") standing for this higher order belief (Grice´s terminology is on "judging" and "willing" there, and generalising over "accepting").
Grice goes on note a caveat against a simplistic analogy of an avowal as "I have a headache" with "I mean a piece of written work".
"It is important", Grice notes, "to notice that
although there is a point of analogy between
MEANING SOMETHING and having a pain, there
are striking differences."
--- These concern the space-time coordiantes, as it were.
"A pain may start and stop at specifiable times"
-- ditto a willing, or a belief (or judgement).
Grice goes on:
"((E))qually something may begin to look red to one at
2:00 P.M. and cease to look read at one at 2:05 P.M."
-- a very important illustration that pertains to the most philosophical side of avowals as it relates to sense-data of the type that Grice will later defend in "A causal theory of perception".
"But it would be ABSURD", Grice notes, as he focuses on the particulars of "... means...",
"for my pupil ... to say to me,
"When did you begin to MEAN that?"
or
"Have you stopped meaning it yet?"
--- This may have to do with the _standing_ status of an intention. If meaning RESOLVES in intending, there shouldn´t be much of a problem to qualify things here: "I spent all day yesterday intending to travel to France, and then I changed my mind". Cfr. "I spent all day yesterday meaning, by "bachelor" something OTHER than "unmarried"".
Grice notes another disanalogy between "I mean "a piece of written work" and "I have a toothache".
"Again there is no LOGICAL objection to a pain arising in any set
of concomitant circumstances; but it is SURELY ABSURD to
suppose that I *might* find myself _meaning_ that is
it is raining when I say, 'I want a paper'".
This surely requires qualification, since, by Grice´s "Deutero-Esperanto" and his reduction of expression meaning to utterer´s meaning, that sounds like a highly plausible scenario, in Griceian terms.
Grice expands, in this early piece, as follows:
"Indeed, it is odd to speak at all of ´my finding
myself MEANING SO AND SO,´ though it is not
odd to speak of my finding myself suffering from a pain."
It is in the next passage that he illustrates this oddity when it comes to "meaning that p", or, "q", by uttering x:
Grice:
"At best, only VERY special circumstances (if any)
could enable me to say 'I want a paper' MEANING THEREBY
that it is raining."
Or, as I prefer,
"By uttering "glory", Davidson meant "a nice knockdown argument" -- Davidson, "A nice derangement of epitaphs", in Grandy/Warner, PGRICE -- "Glory for Grice".
Grice concludes with a nod to "avowals" and "declarations of intention":
"In view of these differences, we may perhaps prefer to
label such statements as
"I mean a piece of written work'
(in the conversation with my pupil) as "declarations""
-- or avowals, in B. Aune's parlance. The bibliography on avowal was only starting to grow, and no wonder Grice displayed such a genuine interest when he heard Aune addressing the topic in a direct and fresh way in his talk Corpus Christi. -- vide Aune, "Autobiography", in Bayne´s site.
Grice goes on:
"rather than as "introspection reports"".
Grice may be having in mind this idea that Hampshire took from Grice. Grice had written on "Intention and disposition" early on in his career. The paper is at the Bancroft library. Grice then possibly found that Hampshire (now paired with Hart) had expressed such a view (neo-Stoutian, as it were) in "Intention and Certainty". This triggered Grice to change his view, just because, and label it neo-Prichardian, rather, in "Intention and uncertainty" -- his British Academy lecture (1971).
Grice goes on:
"Such statements as these are perhaps like declarations
of intention, which also have AN AUTHORITATIVE STATUS in
some ways like and in some ways unlike that of a statement
about one's own current pains."
One would think that since this is all tangential to the matter at course -- "philosopher´s paradoxes" -- Grice would leave it at that. Instead, always the analytic, he goes on to provide an expansion on what we mean by "authoritative". A rather hateful word, when we think that "author" = "utterer", more or less, in Grice.
Grice then notes:
"((But)) ((T))he immediately relevant point
with regard to such statements about MEANING as
the one I have just been discussing is that, insofar as they have
the AUTHORITATIVE status which they SEEM to have, they are NOT
statements which the speaker ((or rather, author, utterer -- JLS)) could
have come to accept AS THE RESULT OF a [Popperian, empirical]
INVESTIGATION or of a train of ((logical)) argumentation. To revert
to the conversation with my pupil, when I say,
"I mean a piece of written work."
it would be QUITE INAPPROPRIATE for my pupil to
say,
"How did you _discover_ that you meant that?"
or
"What *convinced* you that you meant that?".
Grice THEN concludes, for the time being:
"And I think we can see why a "meaning" statement
cannot be *BOTH* SPECIALLY AUTHORITATIVE and also
the conclusion of an ((logical)) argument or an ((empirical))
investigation."
The reason is clarified:
"If a statement is accepted on the strength of an
argument or an investigation, it always makes sense
(although it may be FOOLISH) to suggest that
the ((logical)) argument is unsound or that the
investigation has been improperly conduced ((as per
the canons of Mill´s methods, say)); and if this is
conceivable, then the statement MAY be mistaken, in which
case, of course, his statement has NOT go the
authoritative character which I have mentioned."
("Studies in the Way of Words", Harvard U. Press).
And so on. Thus, I just wanted to share with the forum this ´historical´ bit as it pertains to the relevance of a philosophical discussion of avowals and such.
for the Grice Club.
Is "author" an otiose word? Is "authority" an ever more otiose one? Consider one´s claims to what one implicates (or not), as part of a claim as to what one (or other) means (or other).
I should revise all this, but recently, out of a discussion, elsewhere, as to whether it is possible for an utterer to misunderstand himself (or ´his self´, as I prefer), I came across this bit by Grice which reminded me of Aune´s brilliant autobiography, and the point about Grice´s expressed interest in Aune on avowals.
Grice is considering a specific scenario, but he wants to suggest that,
"By uttering x, I mean that p"
is a bit of an avowal, where "a bit of" is just a redundant otiosity.
He is considering a pupil (or tutee, as I prefer). Since Strawson was one such, allow me:
Grice: You should bring a paper tomorrow.
Strawson: You mean a newspaper? Will the "Independent" do?
Grice: No. I don´t mean a _newspaper_. I mean "a piece of written work."
Strawson: By _me_, expect.
Grice is considering further challenges. Consider a journal entry -- Grice´s favourite scenario for "Griceian utterer´s meaning withot an audience or addresee". "In retrospect, now that I think of it, perhaps when I did say, "You should bring a paper tomorrow I meant a "newspaper". Rather, Grice considers a challenge by, say, Strawson. Of the form:
"Are you _sure_ you mean "a piece of written work" and not a newspaper?"
Grice´s commentary comes out in "Studies in the Way of Words" (that Aune quotes). It belongs to a rather early piece by Grice totally concerned with something quite different: philosopher (as Moore called him) and his paradoxes.
Grice writes of a possible challenge by, say, Strawson,
"I expect you ultimately do mean, "a newspaper"".
---- (cfr. Freud on slips which mean other than they say, as it were).
Grice comments, and here is where this indirect reference to Aune can be made.
"It would be absurd at this point for the pupil to say,
"Perhaps you only think, mistakenly, that you mean 'a piece of written work', whereas you
really mean 'a newspaper'."
Grice goes on to propose an analogy with,
"I have a headache".
"((And)) ((T))his absurdity seems the absurdity
of suggesting to someone who says he has a
pain in his arm that perhaps he is mistaken
(unless the suggestion is to be taken as saying
that perhaps there is nothing physically wrong
with him, however his arm feels)."
I regret that Grice did not expand on the "unless", because it´s quite central to the issue at large, as to the incorrigibility or privileged access or "avowals", that Grice also considers, indirectly, in "Method in philosophical psychology", now repr. in "Conception of Value" --- For Grice, for any psychological attitude psi, held by agent A, it is plausible to add an iteration of it. "I believe that p", "I believe that I believe that p". "I want that p", "I want that I want that p", and so on. He goes on to represent these iterated attitudes by means of a subscript, "believe-2" ("He believes-2 that p") standing for this higher order belief (Grice´s terminology is on "judging" and "willing" there, and generalising over "accepting").
Grice goes on note a caveat against a simplistic analogy of an avowal as "I have a headache" with "I mean a piece of written work".
"It is important", Grice notes, "to notice that
although there is a point of analogy between
MEANING SOMETHING and having a pain, there
are striking differences."
--- These concern the space-time coordiantes, as it were.
"A pain may start and stop at specifiable times"
-- ditto a willing, or a belief (or judgement).
Grice goes on:
"((E))qually something may begin to look red to one at
2:00 P.M. and cease to look read at one at 2:05 P.M."
-- a very important illustration that pertains to the most philosophical side of avowals as it relates to sense-data of the type that Grice will later defend in "A causal theory of perception".
"But it would be ABSURD", Grice notes, as he focuses on the particulars of "... means...",
"for my pupil ... to say to me,
"When did you begin to MEAN that?"
or
"Have you stopped meaning it yet?"
--- This may have to do with the _standing_ status of an intention. If meaning RESOLVES in intending, there shouldn´t be much of a problem to qualify things here: "I spent all day yesterday intending to travel to France, and then I changed my mind". Cfr. "I spent all day yesterday meaning, by "bachelor" something OTHER than "unmarried"".
Grice notes another disanalogy between "I mean "a piece of written work" and "I have a toothache".
"Again there is no LOGICAL objection to a pain arising in any set
of concomitant circumstances; but it is SURELY ABSURD to
suppose that I *might* find myself _meaning_ that is
it is raining when I say, 'I want a paper'".
This surely requires qualification, since, by Grice´s "Deutero-Esperanto" and his reduction of expression meaning to utterer´s meaning, that sounds like a highly plausible scenario, in Griceian terms.
Grice expands, in this early piece, as follows:
"Indeed, it is odd to speak at all of ´my finding
myself MEANING SO AND SO,´ though it is not
odd to speak of my finding myself suffering from a pain."
It is in the next passage that he illustrates this oddity when it comes to "meaning that p", or, "q", by uttering x:
Grice:
"At best, only VERY special circumstances (if any)
could enable me to say 'I want a paper' MEANING THEREBY
that it is raining."
Or, as I prefer,
"By uttering "glory", Davidson meant "a nice knockdown argument" -- Davidson, "A nice derangement of epitaphs", in Grandy/Warner, PGRICE -- "Glory for Grice".
Grice concludes with a nod to "avowals" and "declarations of intention":
"In view of these differences, we may perhaps prefer to
label such statements as
"I mean a piece of written work'
(in the conversation with my pupil) as "declarations""
-- or avowals, in B. Aune's parlance. The bibliography on avowal was only starting to grow, and no wonder Grice displayed such a genuine interest when he heard Aune addressing the topic in a direct and fresh way in his talk Corpus Christi. -- vide Aune, "Autobiography", in Bayne´s site.
Grice goes on:
"rather than as "introspection reports"".
Grice may be having in mind this idea that Hampshire took from Grice. Grice had written on "Intention and disposition" early on in his career. The paper is at the Bancroft library. Grice then possibly found that Hampshire (now paired with Hart) had expressed such a view (neo-Stoutian, as it were) in "Intention and Certainty". This triggered Grice to change his view, just because, and label it neo-Prichardian, rather, in "Intention and uncertainty" -- his British Academy lecture (1971).
Grice goes on:
"Such statements as these are perhaps like declarations
of intention, which also have AN AUTHORITATIVE STATUS in
some ways like and in some ways unlike that of a statement
about one's own current pains."
One would think that since this is all tangential to the matter at course -- "philosopher´s paradoxes" -- Grice would leave it at that. Instead, always the analytic, he goes on to provide an expansion on what we mean by "authoritative". A rather hateful word, when we think that "author" = "utterer", more or less, in Grice.
Grice then notes:
"((But)) ((T))he immediately relevant point
with regard to such statements about MEANING as
the one I have just been discussing is that, insofar as they have
the AUTHORITATIVE status which they SEEM to have, they are NOT
statements which the speaker ((or rather, author, utterer -- JLS)) could
have come to accept AS THE RESULT OF a [Popperian, empirical]
INVESTIGATION or of a train of ((logical)) argumentation. To revert
to the conversation with my pupil, when I say,
"I mean a piece of written work."
it would be QUITE INAPPROPRIATE for my pupil to
say,
"How did you _discover_ that you meant that?"
or
"What *convinced* you that you meant that?".
Grice THEN concludes, for the time being:
"And I think we can see why a "meaning" statement
cannot be *BOTH* SPECIALLY AUTHORITATIVE and also
the conclusion of an ((logical)) argument or an ((empirical))
investigation."
The reason is clarified:
"If a statement is accepted on the strength of an
argument or an investigation, it always makes sense
(although it may be FOOLISH) to suggest that
the ((logical)) argument is unsound or that the
investigation has been improperly conduced ((as per
the canons of Mill´s methods, say)); and if this is
conceivable, then the statement MAY be mistaken, in which
case, of course, his statement has NOT go the
authoritative character which I have mentioned."
("Studies in the Way of Words", Harvard U. Press).
And so on. Thus, I just wanted to share with the forum this ´historical´ bit as it pertains to the relevance of a philosophical discussion of avowals and such.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Whether or not: The Griceian implicature
"Whether or not" is redundant an overwhelming majority of the time.
The main exception seems to be when no real alternative exists and whether or not is used for emphasis.
Here’s an example:
I’m leaving whether you like it or not.
You certainly can’t change this to:
I’m leaving whether you like it.
The main exception seems to be when no real alternative exists and whether or not is used for emphasis.
Here’s an example:
I’m leaving whether you like it or not.
You certainly can’t change this to:
I’m leaving whether you like it.
Whether or not -- ungrammatical
The GMAT does not like to add “or not”, because the GMAT considers the “or not” redundant.
If you see “whether or not” anywhere in an answer choice, this is most likely wrong.
If you see “whether or not” anywhere in an answer choice, this is most likely wrong.
Whether or not, and Grice, "Avoid unnecessary prolixity"
“Determine whether or not the process is in control”
may be better than
“Determine whether the process is in control”.
On the other hand,
“Determine whether the process is in control”
does have an obvious implied (implicated, even entailed) second alternative.
Here's what my dictionary of choice (WordWeb (http://www.wordweb.info)) has to say about whether:
Conjunction: whether
1. Introduces two alternatives
"it will take ages whether you drive or fly"
"whether or not" will make most serious grammarians cringe.
Since "whether" indicates two alternatives, the "or not" is egregiously redundant.
"Determine whther the process is under control."
No "...or not...";
No "...if...";
No "...in control..." (unless the process is, in fact, controlling something).
Whether, dammit.
Is it more acceptable if the "or not" is moved to the end?
As in
"Determine whether the process is under control or not."
Personally, I've heard the "whether or not" construction so many times in formal and informal settings that I assumed it was OK. Maybe it's idiomatic.
One pointless nitpick:
"Determine whether the process is under control."
probably shouldn't have the capital D and a full stop because it's not a complete sentence - unless it's an imperative command.
"Hey! You over there! Yeah, I'm talking to you! Determine whether the process is under control! NOW!"
Regardless of placement, the "or not" is redundant.
"Whether" includes (or, strictly, entails) the "or not", just like "descending down the stairs," where descending includes "down."
Yes, it's commonly used, and yes, it's grammatically repetitive.
I'd like to add that the only time "or not" is correct is when either of two situations applies:
"We're going on the picnic whether it rains or not."
"Whether the allegations are true or not, they have seriously injured the senator's reputation."
And so on.
may be better than
“Determine whether the process is in control”.
On the other hand,
“Determine whether the process is in control”
does have an obvious implied (implicated, even entailed) second alternative.
Here's what my dictionary of choice (WordWeb (http://www.wordweb.info)) has to say about whether:
Conjunction: whether
1. Introduces two alternatives
"it will take ages whether you drive or fly"
"whether or not" will make most serious grammarians cringe.
Since "whether" indicates two alternatives, the "or not" is egregiously redundant.
"Determine whther the process is under control."
No "...or not...";
No "...if...";
No "...in control..." (unless the process is, in fact, controlling something).
Whether, dammit.
Is it more acceptable if the "or not" is moved to the end?
As in
"Determine whether the process is under control or not."
Personally, I've heard the "whether or not" construction so many times in formal and informal settings that I assumed it was OK. Maybe it's idiomatic.
One pointless nitpick:
"Determine whether the process is under control."
probably shouldn't have the capital D and a full stop because it's not a complete sentence - unless it's an imperative command.
"Hey! You over there! Yeah, I'm talking to you! Determine whether the process is under control! NOW!"
Regardless of placement, the "or not" is redundant.
"Whether" includes (or, strictly, entails) the "or not", just like "descending down the stairs," where descending includes "down."
Yes, it's commonly used, and yes, it's grammatically repetitive.
I'd like to add that the only time "or not" is correct is when either of two situations applies:
"We're going on the picnic whether it rains or not."
"Whether the allegations are true or not, they have seriously injured the senator's reputation."
And so on.
Whether or not: the unwanted implicature
It has become widely accepted to use "whether or not" as a shortcut, such as saying
"I don’t know whether or not I should go"
instead of
I don’t know whether I should go or stay.
In the former example, "whether" is not being used correctly since the alternative has not been introduced, but since it’s implied, you’re certainly not going to hear many people complain about its use in this way, especially in informal situations.
In the latter example, "whether" is used as intended, introducing two well-defined alternatives.
What is clearly incorrect is using "whether or not" with well-defined alternatives, such as
I don’t know whether or not I should go or stay.
since this example introduces more possibilities than intended.
In the example, it introduces four alternatives:
i. going,
ii. not going,
iii. staying, and
iv. not staying, as opposed to the intended two.
This example mirrors some other issues.
Enough people use "whether or not" with well-defined alternatives for it to have gained acceptance.
**************GRICE'S CAVEAT*****************
However, acceptance of something that is not logical is not the best way to communicate.
“I don’t know whether or not I should go or stay”
two alternatives, not four…your claim that four alternatives are introduced is not logical…not the statement.
I don’t know whether I should stay or go gives two alternatives as does I don’t know whether or not I should stay; the combination of the two–I don’t know whether or not I should stay or go–is redundant.
On the other hand, there is the following case:
“I will go whether or not it rains.”
In this case, “whether or not” is used in place of “regardless of whether.” Is the latter preferable in such a case?
And what about the following instance:
“I don’t know whether I should go.”
Would this be better, stylistically, than “I don’t know if I should go”?
Or not?
"I don’t know whether or not I should go"
instead of
I don’t know whether I should go or stay.
In the former example, "whether" is not being used correctly since the alternative has not been introduced, but since it’s implied, you’re certainly not going to hear many people complain about its use in this way, especially in informal situations.
In the latter example, "whether" is used as intended, introducing two well-defined alternatives.
What is clearly incorrect is using "whether or not" with well-defined alternatives, such as
I don’t know whether or not I should go or stay.
since this example introduces more possibilities than intended.
In the example, it introduces four alternatives:
i. going,
ii. not going,
iii. staying, and
iv. not staying, as opposed to the intended two.
This example mirrors some other issues.
Enough people use "whether or not" with well-defined alternatives for it to have gained acceptance.
**************GRICE'S CAVEAT*****************
However, acceptance of something that is not logical is not the best way to communicate.
“I don’t know whether or not I should go or stay”
two alternatives, not four…your claim that four alternatives are introduced is not logical…not the statement.
I don’t know whether I should stay or go gives two alternatives as does I don’t know whether or not I should stay; the combination of the two–I don’t know whether or not I should stay or go–is redundant.
On the other hand, there is the following case:
“I will go whether or not it rains.”
In this case, “whether or not” is used in place of “regardless of whether.” Is the latter preferable in such a case?
And what about the following instance:
“I don’t know whether I should go.”
Would this be better, stylistically, than “I don’t know if I should go”?
Or not?
Whether or not: the implicature
The word "whether" implies (or rather, entails) two alternatives:
a. “whether so,” and
b. “whether not.”
Thus, "or not" is redundant and “usually unnecessary” (NYPL).
However, M-WDEU testifies to the use of whether or not by authoritative writers for over a century and insists that the usage is legitimate.
IRA authors are urged to avoid the unnecessary “or not.”
Griceian editors should use discretion in deciding whether (or not?) to delete the phrase, especially in Tamil.
a. “whether so,” and
b. “whether not.”
Thus, "or not" is redundant and “usually unnecessary” (NYPL).
However, M-WDEU testifies to the use of whether or not by authoritative writers for over a century and insists that the usage is legitimate.
IRA authors are urged to avoid the unnecessary “or not.”
Griceian editors should use discretion in deciding whether (or not?) to delete the phrase, especially in Tamil.
Whether or not
Whether (or not) to add 'or not'
In yes/no situations, utterers sometimes add "or not" to "whether."
With whether, it can go immediately after, or at the end of the clause.
"We're trying to decide whether (or not) to go to the party."
"I wonder whether it will rain tomorrow or not."
We're leaving for the party, whether or not David is ready.
We're going for a walk, whether it's raining or not.
In the first two sentences with "whether" the utterer is talking about making a choice or about what might happen in the future, in the second two we are saying we will do something whatever an already existing situation is, or regardless of that already existing situation.
In the second pair of sentences, we need that 'or not'.
But in the first pair, the 'or not' is not really necessary for the meaning, as it is already implied. ("entailed").
Using words that are not really necessary is sometimes called 'redundancy'.
Redundancy
This is a very trendy word on grammar and writing style websites.
It has nothing to do with people being laid off (losing their jobs) -- ha!
Redundant means not needed, and some people get very worked up about it.
It's definitely worth a whole post to itself one day.
The thing is a lot of us automatically add or not when the Griceian purist says we shouldn't.
In most circumstances this probably doesn't matter, after all even course books do it.
But if you want to major in English at Oxford, or impress your grammar-conscious friends, it's probably best to leave "or not" out, especially in writing (especially a love letter).
Sometimes utterers use it, sometimes utterers don't.
Look at these two sentences for example:
Whether it will rain is the big question.
Whether we can wait that long is debatable.
While the second sounds fine without 'or not', in the first the 'whether' seems a bit lonely, and people would probably add 'or not'.
Don't ask me the difference, but I think it might have something to do with the length of the whether clause.
Another possibility is that utterers don't feel they need "or not" if there is an adverbial involved.
I have to confess I find this indignation about the use of 'redundant' or not a bit of a storm in a teacup.
After all we often use redundancy in conversation.
For example we use question tags when we aren't really expecting an answer -
'Lovely day, isn't it?'.
Here's another example. When an American walks into a British shop and says,
'How are you?'
to a shop assistant who he's never seen before, after the initial shock of being greeted like this by a total stranger, the shop assistant will answer,
'Fine, thanks'
or something similar.
Meanwhile the American is already over on the other side of the shop.
From a British perspective that question was totally redundant, as an answer was never expected.
It turns out 'How are you' is in fact American for 'Hello'.
Ex. 4 - Is the or not redundant (or not)?
You are trying to really impress a pedantic grammarian.
Decide whether the "or not" is redundant (or not).
Select 'Leave it out' if it is unnecessary, 'Keep it in' if we definitely need it.
Leave
it out Keep
it in
***********************
1.
************
Whether the sun is shining or not, I'm going to the beach.
2.
I don't know whether to go to the beach or not.
3.
We always support our team, whether they win or not.
4.
I'm going to do it, whether you agree or not.
5.
I don't know whether to tell her or not.
6.
We haven't decided whether or not to buy a new car.
7.
Whether or not we buy a new car I'm not driving all that way.
8.
Whether or not we buy a new car is something we will have to consider carefully.
And so on.
Grice's answer: ALWAYS delete 'or not'.
In yes/no situations, utterers sometimes add "or not" to "whether."
With whether, it can go immediately after, or at the end of the clause.
"We're trying to decide whether (or not) to go to the party."
"I wonder whether it will rain tomorrow or not."
We're leaving for the party, whether or not David is ready.
We're going for a walk, whether it's raining or not.
In the first two sentences with "whether" the utterer is talking about making a choice or about what might happen in the future, in the second two we are saying we will do something whatever an already existing situation is, or regardless of that already existing situation.
In the second pair of sentences, we need that 'or not'.
But in the first pair, the 'or not' is not really necessary for the meaning, as it is already implied. ("entailed").
Using words that are not really necessary is sometimes called 'redundancy'.
Redundancy
This is a very trendy word on grammar and writing style websites.
It has nothing to do with people being laid off (losing their jobs) -- ha!
Redundant means not needed, and some people get very worked up about it.
It's definitely worth a whole post to itself one day.
The thing is a lot of us automatically add or not when the Griceian purist says we shouldn't.
In most circumstances this probably doesn't matter, after all even course books do it.
But if you want to major in English at Oxford, or impress your grammar-conscious friends, it's probably best to leave "or not" out, especially in writing (especially a love letter).
Sometimes utterers use it, sometimes utterers don't.
Look at these two sentences for example:
Whether it will rain is the big question.
Whether we can wait that long is debatable.
While the second sounds fine without 'or not', in the first the 'whether' seems a bit lonely, and people would probably add 'or not'.
Don't ask me the difference, but I think it might have something to do with the length of the whether clause.
Another possibility is that utterers don't feel they need "or not" if there is an adverbial involved.
I have to confess I find this indignation about the use of 'redundant' or not a bit of a storm in a teacup.
After all we often use redundancy in conversation.
For example we use question tags when we aren't really expecting an answer -
'Lovely day, isn't it?'.
Here's another example. When an American walks into a British shop and says,
'How are you?'
to a shop assistant who he's never seen before, after the initial shock of being greeted like this by a total stranger, the shop assistant will answer,
'Fine, thanks'
or something similar.
Meanwhile the American is already over on the other side of the shop.
From a British perspective that question was totally redundant, as an answer was never expected.
It turns out 'How are you' is in fact American for 'Hello'.
Ex. 4 - Is the or not redundant (or not)?
You are trying to really impress a pedantic grammarian.
Decide whether the "or not" is redundant (or not).
Select 'Leave it out' if it is unnecessary, 'Keep it in' if we definitely need it.
Leave
it out Keep
it in
***********************
1.
************
Whether the sun is shining or not, I'm going to the beach.
2.
I don't know whether to go to the beach or not.
3.
We always support our team, whether they win or not.
4.
I'm going to do it, whether you agree or not.
5.
I don't know whether to tell her or not.
6.
We haven't decided whether or not to buy a new car.
7.
Whether or not we buy a new car I'm not driving all that way.
8.
Whether or not we buy a new car is something we will have to consider carefully.
And so on.
Grice's answer: ALWAYS delete 'or not'.
Wheher or not
"...will you go and see it and tell me whether they murder it or not" - GB Shaw, letter, 28 Nov 1895
"...never knew whether or not to insert the names of his parents" - John Updike, Couples, 1968
The option of mitting "or not" only exists when the clause introduced by "whether" serves as the subject of the sentence or as the object of a preposition or verb. When the clause has an adverbial function, "or not" must be retained:
"Whether or not one agrees with Vidal's judgments, there are some trenchant formulations" Simon 1980
"...never knew whether or not to insert the names of his parents" - John Updike, Couples, 1968
The option of mitting "or not" only exists when the clause introduced by "whether" serves as the subject of the sentence or as the object of a preposition or verb. When the clause has an adverbial function, "or not" must be retained:
"Whether or not one agrees with Vidal's judgments, there are some trenchant formulations" Simon 1980
Whether or not to bring my umbrella
One quick way to trim a couple of words at a time from your writing (and your speech), Grice thought, is to keep an eye on the “whether” – the “whether or not,” that is.
Consider:
I can’t decide whether or not to bring my umbrella.
Advice: lose the “or not” in that instance, and you’re fine. Just don’t lose your umbrella. Ha!
Consider:
I can’t decide whether or not to bring my umbrella.
Advice: lose the “or not” in that instance, and you’re fine. Just don’t lose your umbrella. Ha!
Whether or not
Many people find "whether or not" redundant. Grice did. His father did, too.
A sentences like
"The editor will decide whether to delete the redundant phrase"
cannot, however, be easily substituted, as Grice and his father thought, with "if".
A sentences like
"The editor will decide whether to delete the redundant phrase"
cannot, however, be easily substituted, as Grice and his father thought, with "if".
Whether or not
"whether" then draws a distinction.
One usually can't say
"whether it's hot".
One rather says
"whether it's hot or cold"
or one can say
"whether or not it's hot".
That is,
"whether" requires the "or".
"Not", now, is a stand-in if you don't want to make the disjunction explicit.
"Whether or not" can be used as a "pleonasm", with true redundancy:
"We'll go whether or not it's hot or cold".
----
One usually can't say
"whether it's hot".
One rather says
"whether it's hot or cold"
or one can say
"whether or not it's hot".
That is,
"whether" requires the "or".
"Not", now, is a stand-in if you don't want to make the disjunction explicit.
"Whether or not" can be used as a "pleonasm", with true redundancy:
"We'll go whether or not it's hot or cold".
----
Whether or not: the implicature (oversupply and Grice's maxim, "Avoid avoidable unnecessitated prolixity items, if you can."
Whether or not they are professional writers, many people are confused about whether or not they should use the phrase “or not” after “whether.”
The issue is whether or not it generates a horrid implicature.
The answer is simple. It depends (on stuff).
In the sentence above, it’s yes in the first case and no in the second:
"Whether or not they are professional writers, many people are confused about whether they should use the phrase “or not” after “whether.”
Often, the addition of "or not" is redundant after "whether", but not, mind, always.
The phrase may ordinarily be omitted in these cases:
--- When the whether clause is the object of a verb:
She wonders whether the teacher will attend.
(The clause is the object of wonders.)
When the clause is the object of a preposition:
The teacher will base his decision on whether the car has been repaired.
(The clause is the object of on.)
When the clause is the subject of the sentence:
Whether the car will be ready depends on the mechanic.
(The clause is the subject of depends.)
But when a "whether"-clause modifies a verb, "or not" is actually needed, and hardly Grice's "avoidable unnecessitated prolixity item."
They will play tomorrow whether or not it rains.
(The clause modifies play.)
Put more briefly, “whether” can generally stand alone when its clause is functioning as a noun, but not when the clause is serving as an adverb.
Another test:
“or not” is necessary when the phrase “whether or not” means “regardless of whether.”
Here are several recent lapses, erring one way or the other:
Whether she ever runs for anything else, Ms. Palin has already achieved a status that has become an end in itself: access to an electronic bully pulpit, a staff to guide her, an enormous income and none of the bother or accountability of having to govern or campaign for office.
It should be “whether or not.”
Use the test:
it’s the equivalent of “regardless of whether she ever runs …".
Whether any such approach works, the founders would have expected us to do something about this unconstitutional filibuster.
Ditto.
Make it “whether or not any such approach works” (or, “whether any such approach works or not …”)
•••
Commentators in the English media often bemoan the national team’s lack of elite strikers.
Manager Fabio Capello has tried Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Darren Bent as partners to the mercurial Wayne Rooney.
*************************
And then there has been the long-running saga about whether or not to recall Michael Owen for the World Cup in South Africa.
**********************
No need for “or not.” The “whether” phrase is the object of “about.”
*****************
The Reserve Bank has sent PayPal a list of questions, focusing on whether or not personal payments to people in India qualify as remittances, or wire transfers of cash, PayPal said.
************
Here, too, “or not” is superfluous.
"whether or not" then means "regardless of whether"
while
"whether"
means something very close to "if" -- although a direct substitution of "if" for "whether" typically sounds awkward but nontypically doesn't.
----
It may be argued that one comes close to getting this question correct.
Why don't we say what we mean?
When we mean "regardless of whether," why not use that phrase?
Or is that phrase simply too long?
"Regardless of its extra length, that phrase is much clearer than the (almost idiomatic) expression "whether or not."
Or not.
Plus, it seems like you should be able to split
"whether or not"
to turn, e.g.
"They will play tomorrow whether or not it rains."
into
"... whether it rains or not."
If you can't split it, then, it can be argued, "or not" seems to be ALWAYS redundant.
Grice's test: replace "whether" by "if":
Can't "if" be substituted for "whether" or "whether or not" in many cases?
It can.
For example,
"The teacher will base his decision on if the car has been repaired"
or
"If any such approach works, the founders would have expected us...."
And so on.
The issue is whether or not it generates a horrid implicature.
The answer is simple. It depends (on stuff).
In the sentence above, it’s yes in the first case and no in the second:
"Whether or not they are professional writers, many people are confused about whether they should use the phrase “or not” after “whether.”
Often, the addition of "or not" is redundant after "whether", but not, mind, always.
The phrase may ordinarily be omitted in these cases:
--- When the whether clause is the object of a verb:
She wonders whether the teacher will attend.
(The clause is the object of wonders.)
When the clause is the object of a preposition:
The teacher will base his decision on whether the car has been repaired.
(The clause is the object of on.)
When the clause is the subject of the sentence:
Whether the car will be ready depends on the mechanic.
(The clause is the subject of depends.)
But when a "whether"-clause modifies a verb, "or not" is actually needed, and hardly Grice's "avoidable unnecessitated prolixity item."
They will play tomorrow whether or not it rains.
(The clause modifies play.)
Put more briefly, “whether” can generally stand alone when its clause is functioning as a noun, but not when the clause is serving as an adverb.
Another test:
“or not” is necessary when the phrase “whether or not” means “regardless of whether.”
Here are several recent lapses, erring one way or the other:
Whether she ever runs for anything else, Ms. Palin has already achieved a status that has become an end in itself: access to an electronic bully pulpit, a staff to guide her, an enormous income and none of the bother or accountability of having to govern or campaign for office.
It should be “whether or not.”
Use the test:
it’s the equivalent of “regardless of whether she ever runs …".
Whether any such approach works, the founders would have expected us to do something about this unconstitutional filibuster.
Ditto.
Make it “whether or not any such approach works” (or, “whether any such approach works or not …”)
•••
Commentators in the English media often bemoan the national team’s lack of elite strikers.
Manager Fabio Capello has tried Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Darren Bent as partners to the mercurial Wayne Rooney.
*************************
And then there has been the long-running saga about whether or not to recall Michael Owen for the World Cup in South Africa.
**********************
No need for “or not.” The “whether” phrase is the object of “about.”
*****************
The Reserve Bank has sent PayPal a list of questions, focusing on whether or not personal payments to people in India qualify as remittances, or wire transfers of cash, PayPal said.
************
Here, too, “or not” is superfluous.
"whether or not" then means "regardless of whether"
while
"whether"
means something very close to "if" -- although a direct substitution of "if" for "whether" typically sounds awkward but nontypically doesn't.
----
It may be argued that one comes close to getting this question correct.
Why don't we say what we mean?
When we mean "regardless of whether," why not use that phrase?
Or is that phrase simply too long?
"Regardless of its extra length, that phrase is much clearer than the (almost idiomatic) expression "whether or not."
Or not.
Plus, it seems like you should be able to split
"whether or not"
to turn, e.g.
"They will play tomorrow whether or not it rains."
into
"... whether it rains or not."
If you can't split it, then, it can be argued, "or not" seems to be ALWAYS redundant.
Grice's test: replace "whether" by "if":
Can't "if" be substituted for "whether" or "whether or not" in many cases?
It can.
For example,
"The teacher will base his decision on if the car has been repaired"
or
"If any such approach works, the founders would have expected us...."
And so on.
Whether or not: the explicature ("He is coming, whether you like it (or not)"
It's best to formalise the conjunction "whether" with the horseshoe (Grice, 'if').
'whether' is used to introducing a direct interrogative question (often with correlative "or") which indicates doubt between alternatives.
1526, William Tyndale, trans. Bible, Mark II:
"whether ys it easyer to saye
to the sicke of the palsey, thy
synnes ar forgeven the: or to saye,
aryse, take uppe thy beed and walke?
1616, William Shakespeare, King John, I.i:
Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge, [...]
Or the reputed sonne of Cordelion?
Also, "whether" is used to introduce an indirect interrogative question that consists of multiple alternative possibilities (usually with correlative "or").
"He chose the correct answer, but whether by luck or by skill I don't know."
Without a correlative, used to introduce a simple indirect question; if, whether or not.
"Do you know whether he's coming?"
"Do you know whether he's coming or not?"
"Whether" is also used to introduce a disjunctive adverbial clause which qualifies the main clause of the sentence (with correlative "or").
"He's coming, whether you like it or not."
But hardly: "He's coming, whether you don't like it."
----
Note that there is some implicatural overlap in usage between Usage 2 and Usage 3, in that a "yes-or-no" interrogative content clause can list the two possibilities explicitly in a number of ways:
"Do you know whether he's coming or staying?"
"Do you know whether he's coming?"
"Do you know whether he's coming or not?"
"Do you know whether or not he's coming?
Further, in the first two of these examples, the "or staying" and
"or not"
may be added as an implicatural (cancellability-oriented) afterthought (sometimes indicated in writing with a comma before), such that the "whether" may be uttered in Usage 3 and then amended to Usage 2.
Usage 4 does not have a counterpart that introduces only a single possibility;
*"He's coming, whether you like it" is felt by many to be ungrammatical.
In traditional grammar, the clauses headed by whether in Usages 2 and 3 are classified as noun clauses. Those headed by whether in Usage 4 are classified as adverb clauses.
'whether' is used to introducing a direct interrogative question (often with correlative "or") which indicates doubt between alternatives.
1526, William Tyndale, trans. Bible, Mark II:
"whether ys it easyer to saye
to the sicke of the palsey, thy
synnes ar forgeven the: or to saye,
aryse, take uppe thy beed and walke?
1616, William Shakespeare, King John, I.i:
Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge, [...]
Or the reputed sonne of Cordelion?
Also, "whether" is used to introduce an indirect interrogative question that consists of multiple alternative possibilities (usually with correlative "or").
"He chose the correct answer, but whether by luck or by skill I don't know."
Without a correlative, used to introduce a simple indirect question; if, whether or not.
"Do you know whether he's coming?"
"Do you know whether he's coming or not?"
"Whether" is also used to introduce a disjunctive adverbial clause which qualifies the main clause of the sentence (with correlative "or").
"He's coming, whether you like it or not."
But hardly: "He's coming, whether you don't like it."
----
Note that there is some implicatural overlap in usage between Usage 2 and Usage 3, in that a "yes-or-no" interrogative content clause can list the two possibilities explicitly in a number of ways:
"Do you know whether he's coming or staying?"
"Do you know whether he's coming?"
"Do you know whether he's coming or not?"
"Do you know whether or not he's coming?
Further, in the first two of these examples, the "or staying" and
"or not"
may be added as an implicatural (cancellability-oriented) afterthought (sometimes indicated in writing with a comma before), such that the "whether" may be uttered in Usage 3 and then amended to Usage 2.
Usage 4 does not have a counterpart that introduces only a single possibility;
*"He's coming, whether you like it" is felt by many to be ungrammatical.
In traditional grammar, the clauses headed by whether in Usages 2 and 3 are classified as noun clauses. Those headed by whether in Usage 4 are classified as adverb clauses.
Whether or not: the implicature
It may be argued taht the adding of 'or not' to "whether" doesn't add any EXPLICAture to the meaning of what you've explicated. Never mind the implicature.
In most cases, "whether" is used as a pompous synonym of "if" (Grice on 'if').
"We don't know whether the performance is going ahead."
In symbols
~Ka(p)
However, use "whether or not" when there are two alternatives of equal weight.
"Whether or not you decide to come to town with us or stay at home, it won't influence our decision."
And so on.
In most cases, "whether" is used as a pompous synonym of "if" (Grice on 'if').
"We don't know whether the performance is going ahead."
In symbols
~Ka(p)
However, use "whether or not" when there are two alternatives of equal weight.
"Whether or not you decide to come to town with us or stay at home, it won't influence our decision."
And so on.
Whether or not: the implicature
"Whether or Not"
According to Fowler's "Modern English Usage", "whether or not" is not strictly incorrect.
It's only nonstrictly incorrect.
The pertinent article acknowledges that "whether or not" can be a legitimate contraction of
"whether it will or will not".
Nevertheless, you should avoid the construction, Grice suggests, as it is less often used than abused.
There are three scenarios to consider whether (or not) to use "whether or not".
(i) Where the alternatives are immaterial:
"Whether or not literature is available on computer, readers are likely to continue to cherish books."
Prefer:
"Regardless of whether literature is available on computer, readers are likely to continue to cherish books."
(ii) Where a simple alternative exists:
What the government decides to do depends on whether or not the bill passes.
Prefer:
"What the government decides to do depends on whether the bill passes."
[fails].
(Explicitly state the alternative on which you wish to place the most emphasis.)
iii. Where emphasis on both alternatives is desired:
Whether or not Canadians agree, tax revenues must increase.
Prefer:
Whether Canadians agree or [whether] they don't, tax revenues must increase.
Avoid at all costs:
Whether or not you drive or take the bus, the trip will take 30 minutes.
(Clearly wrong, as
"or not"
cannot apply to the other alternative, which is both positive and explicitly stated.)
Fowler, H.W. 1984. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage—2nd ed. Oxford University Press.
According to Fowler's "Modern English Usage", "whether or not" is not strictly incorrect.
It's only nonstrictly incorrect.
The pertinent article acknowledges that "whether or not" can be a legitimate contraction of
"whether it will or will not".
Nevertheless, you should avoid the construction, Grice suggests, as it is less often used than abused.
There are three scenarios to consider whether (or not) to use "whether or not".
(i) Where the alternatives are immaterial:
"Whether or not literature is available on computer, readers are likely to continue to cherish books."
Prefer:
"Regardless of whether literature is available on computer, readers are likely to continue to cherish books."
(ii) Where a simple alternative exists:
What the government decides to do depends on whether or not the bill passes.
Prefer:
"What the government decides to do depends on whether the bill passes."
[fails].
(Explicitly state the alternative on which you wish to place the most emphasis.)
iii. Where emphasis on both alternatives is desired:
Whether or not Canadians agree, tax revenues must increase.
Prefer:
Whether Canadians agree or [whether] they don't, tax revenues must increase.
Avoid at all costs:
Whether or not you drive or take the bus, the trip will take 30 minutes.
(Clearly wrong, as
"or not"
cannot apply to the other alternative, which is both positive and explicitly stated.)
Fowler, H.W. 1984. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage—2nd ed. Oxford University Press.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Or not
--- dedicated to L. J. Kramer
------ by JLS
---------- for the GC
PERHAPS L. J. KRAMER WAS the first, here, and rhetorically, to make systematic use of:
"P. Or not"
Where "P" stands for discourse. His point, rhetorical, is that, whatever the illocutionary force of whatever he was defending, by adding, "or not", he is really NOT adding anything. On the other hand, it may be claimed that there is an extra implicature to the effect that "P" is contigent. That is,
2 + 2 = 4. Or not.
Sounds odd. Because "2 + 2 = 4" is meant as necessary, analytic, a priori, or what have you.
Now. "or not" features in Hamlet's question:
"To be -- or not"
i.e.
"To be or not to be".
Suppose this is a question:
"To be, or not to be?"
The answer, meant by Hamlet is:
either "to be" or "not to be". Hardly, "To be or not to be, that is the answer" _should_ count as an answer.
Cfr.
"Should I see Dylan or not?"
"Are you leaving?"
--- versus "Are you leaving -- or not?"
----
"An irrational agent may (but then again he may not) care whether he is irrational (or not)"
So, the issue is to consider natural occurrences of 'or not' and analyse implicatures.
Recall
Jennings, "The Genealogy of Disjunction".
And Grice's etymological notes:
"or" derives from "other" -- meaning 'second'.
Grice considers the implicature of:
"My wife is in the garden."
"My wife is in the kitchen."
"My wife is in the garden or in the kitchen."
--- BUT _NOT_:
"My wife is in the kitchen -- or not."
-----
Wood considered this in his "Mind" review of a textbook on Logic, cited by Peacocke.
It derives from the problems of 'or'--inclusive. "Or"-inclusive is THE ONLY logical operator in English, qua vernacular. It may be argued that "or"--exclusive can be rendered via implicatum from "or"--inclusive.
It is still a question to provide a derivation of "or not" implicatures in various contexts. Or not.
------ by JLS
---------- for the GC
PERHAPS L. J. KRAMER WAS the first, here, and rhetorically, to make systematic use of:
"P. Or not"
Where "P" stands for discourse. His point, rhetorical, is that, whatever the illocutionary force of whatever he was defending, by adding, "or not", he is really NOT adding anything. On the other hand, it may be claimed that there is an extra implicature to the effect that "P" is contigent. That is,
2 + 2 = 4. Or not.
Sounds odd. Because "2 + 2 = 4" is meant as necessary, analytic, a priori, or what have you.
Now. "or not" features in Hamlet's question:
"To be -- or not"
i.e.
"To be or not to be".
Suppose this is a question:
"To be, or not to be?"
The answer, meant by Hamlet is:
either "to be" or "not to be". Hardly, "To be or not to be, that is the answer" _should_ count as an answer.
Cfr.
"Should I see Dylan or not?"
"Are you leaving?"
--- versus "Are you leaving -- or not?"
----
"An irrational agent may (but then again he may not) care whether he is irrational (or not)"
So, the issue is to consider natural occurrences of 'or not' and analyse implicatures.
Recall
Jennings, "The Genealogy of Disjunction".
And Grice's etymological notes:
"or" derives from "other" -- meaning 'second'.
Grice considers the implicature of:
"My wife is in the garden."
"My wife is in the kitchen."
"My wife is in the garden or in the kitchen."
--- BUT _NOT_:
"My wife is in the kitchen -- or not."
-----
Wood considered this in his "Mind" review of a textbook on Logic, cited by Peacocke.
It derives from the problems of 'or'--inclusive. "Or"-inclusive is THE ONLY logical operator in English, qua vernacular. It may be argued that "or"--exclusive can be rendered via implicatum from "or"--inclusive.
It is still a question to provide a derivation of "or not" implicatures in various contexts. Or not.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Owen Barfield (1898-1997) and H. P. Grice (1913-1988)
by JLS
for the GC
--- D. E. Russell, in his PhD dissertation, has explored some strands in the Griceian fabric. I offer the following. I haven't done much research on this, though. I think it MAY relate to an essay by Holloway, "Philosophy of language in England". Holloway, of "Language and Intelligence" fame (Hart reviewed it for Philosophical Quarterly in 1952, first mentioning Grice's "Meaning" in print).
One learns from Wiki.
Owen Barfield was born in London on 9 November 1898, and died in Sussex 14 December 1997. He was an English Oxford-educated philosopher (alma mater: Wadham) author, poet, and critic.
Barfield was born in London.
He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford.
In 1920 received a 1st class degree in English language and literature.
After finishing his B. Litt., which became
"Poetic Diction"
with the crucial Griceian subtitle with Griceian echoes:
"a study in meaning"
(1928), Barfield worked as a solicitor.
Because of Barfield's career as a solicitor, he contributed to philosophy as
a non-academic -- publishing however numerous essays, books, and articles.
Barfield's primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of
consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings.
Barfield, rather than a pre-Griceian, is most famous today as a friend of C. S. Lewis and as the author of "Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry" -- another study -- cfr. Grice, "studies in the way of words".
Barfield met Irish author C. S. Lewis in 1919.
In 1923 Barfield married the stage-designer Maud Douie.
They adopted three children: Alexander, Lucy, and Geoffrey.
C. S. Lewis wrote his 1949 book "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" for Lucy
Barfield and dedicated "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" to her brother
Geoffrey in 1952.
Barfield died in Forest Row in Sussex, in 1997. (Obituary in "The Independent").
Barfield has been known as "the first and last Inkling".
Barfield was one of the initial members of the Inklings literary discussion group
based in Oxford -- more specifically, at the "Bird and Baby" pub across
Grice's college (St Giles) -- St. John's. (Grice preferred to socialise at the "Lamb and Flag").
Barfield had a strong influence on C. S. Lewis, and, through his 'study in meaning',
(originally Oxon thesis), "Poetic Diction" (1928), an
appreciable effect on J. R. R. Tolkien.
C. S. Lewis was a good friend of Barfield since 1919, and termed Barfield
--- "the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers".
That Barfield did not consider philosophy merely intellectually is
illustrated by a well-known interchange that took place between Lewis and
Barfield.
Lewis one day made the mistake of referring to philosophy as "a subject-matter."
"It wasn't a subject-matter to Plato," said Barfield, "It was a way" -- as in Grice's "way of words".
Lewis refers to Barfield as the "Second Friend" in "Surprised by Joy":
"But the Second Friend (aka Barfield) is the man who disagrees with you about everything."
"Barfield is not so much the alter ego as the anti-self."
"Of course Barfield shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all."
"But Barfield approaches them all at a different angle."
"Barfield has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one."
"It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it."
"How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right?"
Barfield became an anthroposophist after attending a lecture by Rudolf Steiner on March 3, 1924.
Barfield studied the work and philosophy of Steiner throughout his life
and translated some of his works (to English), and had some early essays published in anthroposophical publications.
A study of Steiner's basic texts provides information on some of the ideas
that influenced Barfield's work.
But Barfield's work ought not be considered derivative of Steiner's.
Barfield expert G. Tennyson suggests the relation.
"Barfield is to Steiner as Steiner was to Goethe."
----
cfr. "Schiffer is to Grice as Grice was to Plato." (Speranza).
Barfield might be characterised as both a Christian writer, and a learned
anti-reductionist writer.
By 2007 all of his books were in print again and include
"Unancestral Voice"
"History, Guilt, and Habit"
"Romanticism Comes of Age" -- cfr. Speranza, "Griceianism Comes of Age".
"The Rediscovery of Meaning" -- cfr. Speranza, "The rediscovery of Griceian meaning".
"Speaker's Meaning"
and
"Worlds Apart."
"History in English Words" seeks to retell the history of Western civilization by exploring the change in meanings of various words -- notably 'car' (cfr. Grice, 'wheeled vehicle').
"Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry" is on the 1999 100 Best
Spiritual Books of the Century list by Philip Zaleski (He also lists "The Bible").
Barfield was also an influence on T. S. Eliot who called Barfield's book
"Worlds Apart"
---- "a journey into seas of thought very far from ordinary routes of
intellectual shipping."
It is a fictional dialogue between a physicist, a biologist, a psychiatrist, a lawyer-philologist, a linguistic analyst, a theologian, a retired
Waldorf School teacher, and a young man employed at a rocket research station.
His name is "Tom".
During a period of three days, these various characters (Speranza set it to music and turned into an opera -- tenor, baritone, etc. --) discuss first principles.
In her book "Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World",
Verlyn Flieger analyzes the influence of Barfield's "Poetic Diction: a study in
meaning" (1928) on the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien.
More recent discussions of Barfield's work are published in Stephen
Talbott's "The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst",
Neil Evernden's "The Social Creation of Nature", Daniel Smitherman's "Philosophy
and the Evolution of Consciousness", Morris Berman's "The Reenchantment of
the World", and Gary Lachman's "A Secret History of Consciousness."
During 1996, Lachman conducted perhaps the last interview with Barfield,
versions of which appeared in Gnosis magazine and the magazine Lapis.
In a foreword to "Poetic Diction: a study in meaning" (1928), Howard
Nemerov, US Poet Laureate, stated:
"Among the poets and teachers
of my acquaintance who know Barfield's
"Poetic diction: a study in meaning" (1928),
it has been valued not only as a secret
book, but nearly as a sacred one."
Saul Bellow, the Nobel-Prize winning novelist, wrote:
"We are well supplied with
interesting writers, but Owen Barfield,
of Speaker Meaning fame, is not
content to be merely interesting."
"Barfield's ambition is to set us free.
Free from what? From the prison we have made
for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our
limited and false habits of thought, our
‘common sense'."
James Hillman, a noted culture critic and psychologist, called Barfield
---- "one of the most neglected important thinkers of the 20th century."
"Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning" (1994), co-produced and written by G. B.
Tennyson and David Lavery, directed and edited by Ben Levin, is a
documentary portrait of Barfield.
"Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry"
"Saving the Appearances" explores some three thousand years of history—
particularly the history of human consciousness.
Barfield argues that the evolution of nature is inseparable from the evolution of consciousness.
What we call "matter" interacts with "mind" and wouldn't exist without it.
In the Barfield's lexicon, there is an
"unrepresented"
underlying base of reality that is "extra-mental".
This is comparable to Kant's notion of the "noumenal world".
--- cfr. Grice's theory of 'representation' (three tenets) in "Studies in the way of words" -- For Grice primal representation is natural and iconic.
Similar conclusions have been made by others, and the book has influenced,
for example, the physicist Stephen Edelglass (who wrote "The Marriage of
Sense and Thought"), and the Christian existentialist philosopher Gabriel
Marcel, who wanted the book to be translated into French -- until he realised that only a very ignorant Frenchman would be unable to read Barfield in the vernacular (English).
Barfield points out that the "real" world of physics and particles is
completely different from the world we see and live in of things with
properties.
("Marcel should be translated to English.")
In our critical thinking as physicists or philosophers, we imagine
ourselves set over against an objective world consisting of particles, in which we
do not participate at all.
In contrast, the phenomenal, or familiar, world is said to be riddled with our subjectivity.
In our daily, uncritical thinking, on the other hand, we take for granted the solid, objective reality of the familiar world, assume an objective, lawful manifestation of its qualities such as colour, sound, and solidity, and even write natural scientific treatises about the history of its phenomena—all while ignoring the human consciousness that (by our own, critical account) determines these phenomena
from the inside in a continually changing way.
Clear?
The particle world of physics is independent of human thought, and only
indirectly accessible to humans.
The world we see and perceive directly is dependent on and alterable by human thought.
This is not to say there aren't or are limits.
Both are 'real' or 'unreal' depending on the meaning of "real".
This change over time in human thought is exactly Barfield's point.
*************************
"Poetic Diction:
a study in meaning"
(1928, originally Oxon dissertation).
Barfield's dissertation, "Poetic Diction: a study in meaning" (1928) opens
with a few examples of "felt changes" arising in reading poetry.
It goes on to discuss how these "felt changes" relate to general principles of poetic composition and intepretation.
Barfield's greater agenda is "a study of meaning" -- like Grice's, later.
Using poetic examples, Barfield attempts to demonstrate how the "imagination" (Grice's intuition and intention) works with words and metaphors to create what Barfield calls "utterer's meaning".
Barfield shows how the "imagination" of the poet (or 'utterer') creates new meaning (via what Grice will have as 'implicature'), and how this same process has been active, throughout human experience, to create and continuously expand language -- metonymy, metaphor, and metaphtonymy.
For Barfield this is not just literary criticism.
It is, more broadly, evidence for the evolution of human consciousness ('mind' out of 'meaning' and vice versa).
This, for many readers, is his real accomplishment.
Barfield's is a unique presentation of "not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry, and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge".
Barfield's theory of meaning was developed directly from a close study of
the evolution of words and meaning, starting with the relation between the
primitive mind's myth making capacity, and the formation of words.
Barfield uses numerous examples to demonstrate that words originally had a
unified "concrete and undivided" meaning, which we now distinguish as
several distinct concepts.
For example, the single Greek word "pneuma" (which can be variously
translated as "breath", "spirit", or "wind") reflects, Barfield argues, the
primordial unity of these concepts of air, spirit, wind, and breath, all
included in one "holophrase".
This Barfield considers not the application of analogy to natural
phenomena, but the discernment of its pre-existence.
This is the perspective Barfield believes is original in the evolution of
consciousness, which was "fighting for its life", as he phrases it, in the
philosophy of Plato, and which, in a regenerate and more sophisticated form,
benefiting from the development of rational thought, needs to be recovered
if consciousness is to continue to evolve.
**********
For a full bibliography including
all essays, see
Hipolito,
"Bibliography of the published Writings of Owen Barfield".
They include:
The Silver Trumpet: a novel. (1925)
History in English Words (1926)
****************************************
Poetic Diction:
A Study In Meaning
(1928)
*****************************************
Romanticism Comes of Age (1944)
Greek Thought in English Words (1950)
Essay in: G. Rostrevor Hamilton, ed. (1950), Essays and Studies 1950, 3,
London: John Murray, pp. 69–81
This Ever Diverse Pair (1950)
Saving the Appearances:
a Study in Idolatry (1957)
Evolution – Der Weg des Bewusstseins: Zur Geschichte des Europaischen Denkens. (1957) in German,
Markus Wulfing (trans.)
Salvare le apparenze: Uno studio sull’idolatrie
(2010) in Italian, Giovanni Maddalena, Stephania Scardicchio (editors)
Worlds Apart:
A Dialogue of the 1960s (1963)
Unancestral Voice (1965)
*****************************
Speaker's Meaning (1967)
*****************************
What Coleridge Thought (1971)
**********************************
The Rediscovery of Meaning
**********************************
and Other Essays (1977)
History, Guilt, and Habit (1979)
Review of Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
Bicameral Mind (1979) essay in: Teachers College Record, 80, 1979-02, pp.
602–604
Language, Evolution of Consciousness, and
**************************************
the Recovery of Human Meaning (1981)
**************************************
Essay reprinted in "Toward the Recovery of Wholeness: Knowledge, Education,
and Human Values", ISBN 978-0807727584, p 55-61.
The Evolution Complex (1982) essay in Towards 2.2, 6, Spring 1982, pp. 14–
16
Introducing Rudolf Steiner (1983)
Essay in Towards 2.4, 42, Fall-Winter
1983
Orpheus verse drama. (1983)
Listening to Steiner (1984)
Review in Parabola 9.4, 1985, pp. 94–100
Reflections on C.S. Lewis, S.T. Coleridge and R. Steiner:
An Interview with Barfield (1985)
in: Towards 2.6, Spring-Summer 1985, pp. 6–13
Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis (1989) G. B. Tennyson (ed.)
The Child and the Giant (1988)
Short story in: Child and Man: Education as
an Art, 22, July 1988, pp. 5–7
Das Kind und der Riese — Eine orphische Erzählung (1990) in German,
Susanne Lin (trans.)
A Barfield Reader:
Selections from the Writings of Owen Barfield (1990)
G. B. Tennyson (ed.)
A Barfield Sampler: Poetry and Fiction by Owen Barfield (1993)
edited by Jeanne Clayton Hunter and Thomas Kranidas
References: Lavery,
"How Barfield Thought", p. 5 -- The Independent,
"Obituary: Owen Barfield" -- Hooper, "C.S. Lewis Companion and Guide", p. 622 --
Flieger, "Splintered Light". -- C.S. Lewis, "Surprised by Joy", p. 225. --
C.S. Lewis, "Surprised by Joy", pp. 199-200. -- Blaxland-De Lange, p.27. --
Grant, pp. 113-125
Tennyson, "Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning".
-- Philip Zaleski, '100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century, Harper-Collins,
http://www.gradresources.org/worldview_articles/book.shtml -- Flieger -- Lachman, "One Man's Century",
p. 8. -- Lachman, "Owen Barfield" -- "Poetic Diction", p. 1. -- Bellow,
"History, Guilt and Habit: Editorial review". -- Lavery, "Interview with
James Hillman". --
"Encyclopaedia barfieldiana: The Unrepresented"
(entry). --
Remark of Barfield. In Sugerman, Evolution of Consciousness", p. 20.
Barfield, "Worlds Apart" as quoted here
Sources: David Lavery,
"How Barfield Thought:The Creative Life of Owen Barfield",
The Collected Works of David Lavery,
_http://davidlavery.net/Collected_Works/Essays/How_Barfield_Thought.pdf_
(http://davidlavery.net/Collected_Works/Essays/How_Barfield_Thought.pdf) ,
Hooper, Walter (19 December 1997). "Obituary: Owen Barfield". The
Independent (London).
_http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-owen-barfield-1289580.html_
(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-owen-barfield-1289580.html) .
Walter Hooper (1998), C.S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide, HarperCollins,
ISBN 9780060638801
Verlyn Flieger (2002), Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's
World, Kent: Kent State University Press,
Barfield's influence is the main thesis of this book.
C.S. Lewis (1998), Surprised by Joy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Simon Blaxland-De Lange (2006), Owen Barfield,
Romanticism Comes of Age: a Biography, London: Temple Lodge
Patrick Grant (1982),
"The Quality of Thinking: Owen Barfield as Literary Man and Anthroposophist",
Seven 3
Gary Lachman,
"One Man's Century: Visiting Owen Barfield"
Gnosis 40: 8
Gary Lachman, "Owen Barfield and the Evolution of Consciousness", Lapis 3
Owen Barfield (1928), Poetic Diction: A Study In Meaning
Saul Bellow, History, Guilt and Habit: Editorial Review, Amazon,
_http://www.amazon.com/History-Guilt-Habit-Owen-Barfield/dp/1597311081_
(http://www.amazon.com/History-Guilt-Habit-Owen-Barfield/dp/1597311081)
David Lavery, Interview with James Hillman,
_http://davidlavery.net/barfield/friends_of_barfield/Hillman.html_
(http://davidlavery.net/barfield/friends_of_barfield/Hillman.html)
David Lavery, Encyclopedia Barfieldiana,
_http://www.davidlavery.net/Barfield/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana.html_
(http://www.davidlavery.net/Barfield/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana.htm
l)
G.B. Tennyson; David Lavery (1996), Ben Levin, ed.,
Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning documentary (VHS),
Encino, California: OwenArts Productions, pp. 40 min.
Shirley Sugerman (2008),
"A Conversation with Owen Barfield",
Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in Polarity, San Rafael, Calif.: Barfield Press, pp.
3–28.
The work is a festschrift honoring Barfield at age 75.
Owen Barfield (2010),
Worlds Apart (A Dialogue of the 1960's), Middletown,
Conn: Barfield Press UK.
Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Chicago: Advent. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
Hipolito, Jane W. (2008),
"Bibliography of the published Writings of Owen Barfield".
In Shirley Sugerman, Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in
Polarity, San Rafael, Calif.: Barfield Society, pp. 227–261, http://barfieldsociety.org/BarfieldBibliog.pdf, retrieved 2011-03-27
Lionel Adey. C.S. Lewis's 'Great War' with Owen Barfield Victoria, BC:
University of Victoria (English Literary Studies No. 14) 1978.
Humphrey Carpenter. The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles
Williams, and Their Friends. London: Unwin Paperbacks. 1981.
Diana Pavlac Glyer. The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien
as Writers in Community. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. 2007.
ISBN 978-0-87338-890-0
Roger Lancelyn Green & Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography. Fully
revised & expanded edition. HarperCollins, 2002. ISBN 0-00-628164-8
Karlson, Henry (2010). Thinking with the Inklings. ISBN 1450541305.
[edit] External links
Owen Barfield Literary Estate
- permissions, publications, academic research on Owen Barfield
Journal of Inklings Studies peer-reviewed journal on Barfield and his
literary circle, based in Oxford
The Owen Barfield Society
Owen Barfield website
for the GC
--- D. E. Russell, in his PhD dissertation, has explored some strands in the Griceian fabric. I offer the following. I haven't done much research on this, though. I think it MAY relate to an essay by Holloway, "Philosophy of language in England". Holloway, of "Language and Intelligence" fame (Hart reviewed it for Philosophical Quarterly in 1952, first mentioning Grice's "Meaning" in print).
One learns from Wiki.
Owen Barfield was born in London on 9 November 1898, and died in Sussex 14 December 1997. He was an English Oxford-educated philosopher (alma mater: Wadham) author, poet, and critic.
Barfield was born in London.
He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford.
In 1920 received a 1st class degree in English language and literature.
After finishing his B. Litt., which became
"Poetic Diction"
with the crucial Griceian subtitle with Griceian echoes:
"a study in meaning"
(1928), Barfield worked as a solicitor.
Because of Barfield's career as a solicitor, he contributed to philosophy as
a non-academic -- publishing however numerous essays, books, and articles.
Barfield's primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of
consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings.
Barfield, rather than a pre-Griceian, is most famous today as a friend of C. S. Lewis and as the author of "Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry" -- another study -- cfr. Grice, "studies in the way of words".
Barfield met Irish author C. S. Lewis in 1919.
In 1923 Barfield married the stage-designer Maud Douie.
They adopted three children: Alexander, Lucy, and Geoffrey.
C. S. Lewis wrote his 1949 book "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" for Lucy
Barfield and dedicated "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" to her brother
Geoffrey in 1952.
Barfield died in Forest Row in Sussex, in 1997. (Obituary in "The Independent").
Barfield has been known as "the first and last Inkling".
Barfield was one of the initial members of the Inklings literary discussion group
based in Oxford -- more specifically, at the "Bird and Baby" pub across
Grice's college (St Giles) -- St. John's. (Grice preferred to socialise at the "Lamb and Flag").
Barfield had a strong influence on C. S. Lewis, and, through his 'study in meaning',
(originally Oxon thesis), "Poetic Diction" (1928), an
appreciable effect on J. R. R. Tolkien.
C. S. Lewis was a good friend of Barfield since 1919, and termed Barfield
--- "the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers".
That Barfield did not consider philosophy merely intellectually is
illustrated by a well-known interchange that took place between Lewis and
Barfield.
Lewis one day made the mistake of referring to philosophy as "a subject-matter."
"It wasn't a subject-matter to Plato," said Barfield, "It was a way" -- as in Grice's "way of words".
Lewis refers to Barfield as the "Second Friend" in "Surprised by Joy":
"But the Second Friend (aka Barfield) is the man who disagrees with you about everything."
"Barfield is not so much the alter ego as the anti-self."
"Of course Barfield shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all."
"But Barfield approaches them all at a different angle."
"Barfield has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one."
"It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it."
"How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right?"
Barfield became an anthroposophist after attending a lecture by Rudolf Steiner on March 3, 1924.
Barfield studied the work and philosophy of Steiner throughout his life
and translated some of his works (to English), and had some early essays published in anthroposophical publications.
A study of Steiner's basic texts provides information on some of the ideas
that influenced Barfield's work.
But Barfield's work ought not be considered derivative of Steiner's.
Barfield expert G. Tennyson suggests the relation.
"Barfield is to Steiner as Steiner was to Goethe."
----
cfr. "Schiffer is to Grice as Grice was to Plato." (Speranza).
Barfield might be characterised as both a Christian writer, and a learned
anti-reductionist writer.
By 2007 all of his books were in print again and include
"Unancestral Voice"
"History, Guilt, and Habit"
"Romanticism Comes of Age" -- cfr. Speranza, "Griceianism Comes of Age".
"The Rediscovery of Meaning" -- cfr. Speranza, "The rediscovery of Griceian meaning".
"Speaker's Meaning"
and
"Worlds Apart."
"History in English Words" seeks to retell the history of Western civilization by exploring the change in meanings of various words -- notably 'car' (cfr. Grice, 'wheeled vehicle').
"Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry" is on the 1999 100 Best
Spiritual Books of the Century list by Philip Zaleski (He also lists "The Bible").
Barfield was also an influence on T. S. Eliot who called Barfield's book
"Worlds Apart"
---- "a journey into seas of thought very far from ordinary routes of
intellectual shipping."
It is a fictional dialogue between a physicist, a biologist, a psychiatrist, a lawyer-philologist, a linguistic analyst, a theologian, a retired
Waldorf School teacher, and a young man employed at a rocket research station.
His name is "Tom".
During a period of three days, these various characters (Speranza set it to music and turned into an opera -- tenor, baritone, etc. --) discuss first principles.
In her book "Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World",
Verlyn Flieger analyzes the influence of Barfield's "Poetic Diction: a study in
meaning" (1928) on the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien.
More recent discussions of Barfield's work are published in Stephen
Talbott's "The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst",
Neil Evernden's "The Social Creation of Nature", Daniel Smitherman's "Philosophy
and the Evolution of Consciousness", Morris Berman's "The Reenchantment of
the World", and Gary Lachman's "A Secret History of Consciousness."
During 1996, Lachman conducted perhaps the last interview with Barfield,
versions of which appeared in Gnosis magazine and the magazine Lapis.
In a foreword to "Poetic Diction: a study in meaning" (1928), Howard
Nemerov, US Poet Laureate, stated:
"Among the poets and teachers
of my acquaintance who know Barfield's
"Poetic diction: a study in meaning" (1928),
it has been valued not only as a secret
book, but nearly as a sacred one."
Saul Bellow, the Nobel-Prize winning novelist, wrote:
"We are well supplied with
interesting writers, but Owen Barfield,
of Speaker Meaning fame, is not
content to be merely interesting."
"Barfield's ambition is to set us free.
Free from what? From the prison we have made
for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our
limited and false habits of thought, our
‘common sense'."
James Hillman, a noted culture critic and psychologist, called Barfield
---- "one of the most neglected important thinkers of the 20th century."
"Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning" (1994), co-produced and written by G. B.
Tennyson and David Lavery, directed and edited by Ben Levin, is a
documentary portrait of Barfield.
"Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry"
"Saving the Appearances" explores some three thousand years of history—
particularly the history of human consciousness.
Barfield argues that the evolution of nature is inseparable from the evolution of consciousness.
What we call "matter" interacts with "mind" and wouldn't exist without it.
In the Barfield's lexicon, there is an
"unrepresented"
underlying base of reality that is "extra-mental".
This is comparable to Kant's notion of the "noumenal world".
--- cfr. Grice's theory of 'representation' (three tenets) in "Studies in the way of words" -- For Grice primal representation is natural and iconic.
Similar conclusions have been made by others, and the book has influenced,
for example, the physicist Stephen Edelglass (who wrote "The Marriage of
Sense and Thought"), and the Christian existentialist philosopher Gabriel
Marcel, who wanted the book to be translated into French -- until he realised that only a very ignorant Frenchman would be unable to read Barfield in the vernacular (English).
Barfield points out that the "real" world of physics and particles is
completely different from the world we see and live in of things with
properties.
("Marcel should be translated to English.")
In our critical thinking as physicists or philosophers, we imagine
ourselves set over against an objective world consisting of particles, in which we
do not participate at all.
In contrast, the phenomenal, or familiar, world is said to be riddled with our subjectivity.
In our daily, uncritical thinking, on the other hand, we take for granted the solid, objective reality of the familiar world, assume an objective, lawful manifestation of its qualities such as colour, sound, and solidity, and even write natural scientific treatises about the history of its phenomena—all while ignoring the human consciousness that (by our own, critical account) determines these phenomena
from the inside in a continually changing way.
Clear?
The particle world of physics is independent of human thought, and only
indirectly accessible to humans.
The world we see and perceive directly is dependent on and alterable by human thought.
This is not to say there aren't or are limits.
Both are 'real' or 'unreal' depending on the meaning of "real".
This change over time in human thought is exactly Barfield's point.
*************************
"Poetic Diction:
a study in meaning"
(1928, originally Oxon dissertation).
Barfield's dissertation, "Poetic Diction: a study in meaning" (1928) opens
with a few examples of "felt changes" arising in reading poetry.
It goes on to discuss how these "felt changes" relate to general principles of poetic composition and intepretation.
Barfield's greater agenda is "a study of meaning" -- like Grice's, later.
Using poetic examples, Barfield attempts to demonstrate how the "imagination" (Grice's intuition and intention) works with words and metaphors to create what Barfield calls "utterer's meaning".
Barfield shows how the "imagination" of the poet (or 'utterer') creates new meaning (via what Grice will have as 'implicature'), and how this same process has been active, throughout human experience, to create and continuously expand language -- metonymy, metaphor, and metaphtonymy.
For Barfield this is not just literary criticism.
It is, more broadly, evidence for the evolution of human consciousness ('mind' out of 'meaning' and vice versa).
This, for many readers, is his real accomplishment.
Barfield's is a unique presentation of "not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry, and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge".
Barfield's theory of meaning was developed directly from a close study of
the evolution of words and meaning, starting with the relation between the
primitive mind's myth making capacity, and the formation of words.
Barfield uses numerous examples to demonstrate that words originally had a
unified "concrete and undivided" meaning, which we now distinguish as
several distinct concepts.
For example, the single Greek word "pneuma" (which can be variously
translated as "breath", "spirit", or "wind") reflects, Barfield argues, the
primordial unity of these concepts of air, spirit, wind, and breath, all
included in one "holophrase".
This Barfield considers not the application of analogy to natural
phenomena, but the discernment of its pre-existence.
This is the perspective Barfield believes is original in the evolution of
consciousness, which was "fighting for its life", as he phrases it, in the
philosophy of Plato, and which, in a regenerate and more sophisticated form,
benefiting from the development of rational thought, needs to be recovered
if consciousness is to continue to evolve.
**********
For a full bibliography including
all essays, see
Hipolito,
"Bibliography of the published Writings of Owen Barfield".
They include:
The Silver Trumpet: a novel. (1925)
History in English Words (1926)
****************************************
Poetic Diction:
A Study In Meaning
(1928)
*****************************************
Romanticism Comes of Age (1944)
Greek Thought in English Words (1950)
Essay in: G. Rostrevor Hamilton, ed. (1950), Essays and Studies 1950, 3,
London: John Murray, pp. 69–81
This Ever Diverse Pair (1950)
Saving the Appearances:
a Study in Idolatry (1957)
Evolution – Der Weg des Bewusstseins: Zur Geschichte des Europaischen Denkens. (1957) in German,
Markus Wulfing (trans.)
Salvare le apparenze: Uno studio sull’idolatrie
(2010) in Italian, Giovanni Maddalena, Stephania Scardicchio (editors)
Worlds Apart:
A Dialogue of the 1960s (1963)
Unancestral Voice (1965)
*****************************
Speaker's Meaning (1967)
*****************************
What Coleridge Thought (1971)
**********************************
The Rediscovery of Meaning
**********************************
and Other Essays (1977)
History, Guilt, and Habit (1979)
Review of Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
Bicameral Mind (1979) essay in: Teachers College Record, 80, 1979-02, pp.
602–604
Language, Evolution of Consciousness, and
**************************************
the Recovery of Human Meaning (1981)
**************************************
Essay reprinted in "Toward the Recovery of Wholeness: Knowledge, Education,
and Human Values", ISBN 978-0807727584, p 55-61.
The Evolution Complex (1982) essay in Towards 2.2, 6, Spring 1982, pp. 14–
16
Introducing Rudolf Steiner (1983)
Essay in Towards 2.4, 42, Fall-Winter
1983
Orpheus verse drama. (1983)
Listening to Steiner (1984)
Review in Parabola 9.4, 1985, pp. 94–100
Reflections on C.S. Lewis, S.T. Coleridge and R. Steiner:
An Interview with Barfield (1985)
in: Towards 2.6, Spring-Summer 1985, pp. 6–13
Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis (1989) G. B. Tennyson (ed.)
The Child and the Giant (1988)
Short story in: Child and Man: Education as
an Art, 22, July 1988, pp. 5–7
Das Kind und der Riese — Eine orphische Erzählung (1990) in German,
Susanne Lin (trans.)
A Barfield Reader:
Selections from the Writings of Owen Barfield (1990)
G. B. Tennyson (ed.)
A Barfield Sampler: Poetry and Fiction by Owen Barfield (1993)
edited by Jeanne Clayton Hunter and Thomas Kranidas
References: Lavery,
"How Barfield Thought", p. 5 -- The Independent,
"Obituary: Owen Barfield" -- Hooper, "C.S. Lewis Companion and Guide", p. 622 --
Flieger, "Splintered Light". -- C.S. Lewis, "Surprised by Joy", p. 225. --
C.S. Lewis, "Surprised by Joy", pp. 199-200. -- Blaxland-De Lange, p.27. --
Grant, pp. 113-125
Tennyson, "Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning".
-- Philip Zaleski, '100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century, Harper-Collins,
http://www.gradresources.org/worldview_articles/book.shtml -- Flieger -- Lachman, "One Man's Century",
p. 8. -- Lachman, "Owen Barfield" -- "Poetic Diction", p. 1. -- Bellow,
"History, Guilt and Habit: Editorial review". -- Lavery, "Interview with
James Hillman". --
"Encyclopaedia barfieldiana: The Unrepresented"
(entry). --
Remark of Barfield. In Sugerman, Evolution of Consciousness", p. 20.
Barfield, "Worlds Apart" as quoted here
Sources: David Lavery,
"How Barfield Thought:The Creative Life of Owen Barfield",
The Collected Works of David Lavery,
_http://davidlavery.net/Collected_Works/Essays/How_Barfield_Thought.pdf_
(http://davidlavery.net/Collected_Works/Essays/How_Barfield_Thought.pdf) ,
Hooper, Walter (19 December 1997). "Obituary: Owen Barfield". The
Independent (London).
_http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-owen-barfield-1289580.html_
(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-owen-barfield-1289580.html) .
Walter Hooper (1998), C.S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide, HarperCollins,
ISBN 9780060638801
Verlyn Flieger (2002), Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's
World, Kent: Kent State University Press,
Barfield's influence is the main thesis of this book.
C.S. Lewis (1998), Surprised by Joy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Simon Blaxland-De Lange (2006), Owen Barfield,
Romanticism Comes of Age: a Biography, London: Temple Lodge
Patrick Grant (1982),
"The Quality of Thinking: Owen Barfield as Literary Man and Anthroposophist",
Seven 3
Gary Lachman,
"One Man's Century: Visiting Owen Barfield"
Gnosis 40: 8
Gary Lachman, "Owen Barfield and the Evolution of Consciousness", Lapis 3
Owen Barfield (1928), Poetic Diction: A Study In Meaning
Saul Bellow, History, Guilt and Habit: Editorial Review, Amazon,
_http://www.amazon.com/History-Guilt-Habit-Owen-Barfield/dp/1597311081_
(http://www.amazon.com/History-Guilt-Habit-Owen-Barfield/dp/1597311081)
David Lavery, Interview with James Hillman,
_http://davidlavery.net/barfield/friends_of_barfield/Hillman.html_
(http://davidlavery.net/barfield/friends_of_barfield/Hillman.html)
David Lavery, Encyclopedia Barfieldiana,
_http://www.davidlavery.net/Barfield/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana.html_
(http://www.davidlavery.net/Barfield/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana.htm
l)
G.B. Tennyson; David Lavery (1996), Ben Levin, ed.,
Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning documentary (VHS),
Encino, California: OwenArts Productions, pp. 40 min.
Shirley Sugerman (2008),
"A Conversation with Owen Barfield",
Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in Polarity, San Rafael, Calif.: Barfield Press, pp.
3–28.
The work is a festschrift honoring Barfield at age 75.
Owen Barfield (2010),
Worlds Apart (A Dialogue of the 1960's), Middletown,
Conn: Barfield Press UK.
Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Chicago: Advent. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
Hipolito, Jane W. (2008),
"Bibliography of the published Writings of Owen Barfield".
In Shirley Sugerman, Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in
Polarity, San Rafael, Calif.: Barfield Society, pp. 227–261, http://barfieldsociety.org/BarfieldBibliog.pdf, retrieved 2011-03-27
Lionel Adey. C.S. Lewis's 'Great War' with Owen Barfield Victoria, BC:
University of Victoria (English Literary Studies No. 14) 1978.
Humphrey Carpenter. The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles
Williams, and Their Friends. London: Unwin Paperbacks. 1981.
Diana Pavlac Glyer. The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien
as Writers in Community. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. 2007.
ISBN 978-0-87338-890-0
Roger Lancelyn Green & Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography. Fully
revised & expanded edition. HarperCollins, 2002. ISBN 0-00-628164-8
Karlson, Henry (2010). Thinking with the Inklings. ISBN 1450541305.
[edit] External links
Owen Barfield Literary Estate
- permissions, publications, academic research on Owen Barfield
Journal of Inklings Studies peer-reviewed journal on Barfield and his
literary circle, based in Oxford
The Owen Barfield Society
Owen Barfield website
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Born to be Grice
In "Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life" (Norton, 2009, pp. 153-6) Dacher Keltner shows a love for Griceian maxims. (Thanks to R. O. Doyle for sharing this with the club -- and to his wife for reading such interesting stuff!).
D. Keltner writes "THIS AND NOT THIS".
Keltner writes:
"In the mid-1960s, philosopher [H.] Paul Grice outlined four principles of communication that would profoundly shape the study of pragmatics - that is, how people speak."
Indeed. I would think, with R. O. Doyle, that 'principle' is overstated. Doyle and I share a love for all things Greek. He loves the old Greek philosophers who developed free-will, and I just love the Greek language. In Greek, 'principle' (principium, in Latin), is "arkhe". One may wonder if there could be more than ONE principle. I doubt it. I would think principles have to be ONE. For Grice, it was the co-operative principle (or principle of cooperation, as I prefer, since a principle, in principle, cannot be itself cooperative).
In his 1964 earlier lectures on Logic and Conversation (Oxford, rather than Harvard) Grice had talked of two different (two!, note!) principles: of self-love and benevolence (strictly, 'principle of conversational beneveolence' and 'principle of conversational self-love'. While it would be odd to think that Grice is echoing Kant in those earlier lectures, history did show that it was Kant who Grice was seriously echoing in the Harvard lectures. As he notes in "Retrospective Epilogue", the cooperative principle was meant to echo Kant's categorical imperative. Not so much in substance, but in the fact that from it one can derive, rationally, some _maxims_.
----
Keltner goes on:
"Sincere communication, according to Grice, involves utterances that are to be taken literally."
Indeed. I follow J. Saul in thinking that people are being, essentially, uncooperative when, e.g. they utter a metaphor. ("The moon is made of cheese"). Truly, Grice says that in metaphor (or any flout, really, to the cooperative principle) the SPIRIT, if not the letter, of the cooperative principle, is still being respected. But surely, there is a lot of misunderstanding that "The moon is made of cheese" can yield. For Davidson, who adhered to a truth-conditional semantics, "The moon is made of cheese" is true if and only if the moon is made of cheese. From which one yields that "The moon is made of cheese" means that the moon is made of cheese. Grice's example,
You're the cream in my coffee,
again, qua compliment, can yield a few misunderstandings. ("I didn't know I was a liquid").
---
Keltner goes on:
"These statements should adhere as closely as possible to four maxims (see table below)."
The use of "Table" is excellent and perfect in that it's _so_, oh, _so_ Kantian. (Tabel).
Keltner goes on:
"Statements should follow the rule of quality - they should be truthful, honest, and based in evidence."
While Grice does use 'conversational rule' on occasion, in the Harvard lectures, he is clear, from the "Prolegomena" that he is a campaign against Searle. As R. O. Doyle knows, Searle had and has the gift for the good, effective, phrase ("scandal of free will"). In this, Searle, following, I think, Rawls, had said that rules could be constitutive or regulative. Grice found that otiose, and his campaign was one where the idea of 'rule' was being minimised. Doyle, who has, like me, criticised Chomsky, understands the issue here: to think of a rule -- as in Witters on "following a rule" -- is a deep difficult question. Conversational 'rules', since they can be flouted so easily, are not cognitive like that. Grice also says, 'rules of the game', even 'conversational game' -- my PhD dissertation maintained that terminology --. But it is controversial that no conversation (qua game) is played if 'rules' are 'broken'. In my PhD dissertation, I argued, typically pedantically, that what is involved here is a _weak_ transcendental justification, alla Kant. For, not the 'existence' of 'conversational moves' ("it is raining", when utterer believes it is not -- a plain lie) but for the 'appropriateness' of 'conversational moves' (hence the paradox of Moore: "It is raining, but I don't believe it").
----
Keltner goes on:
"Statements should be appropriately informative - the rule of quantity - and avoid the Strunk and White catastrophes of being too wordy or opaquely succinct."
---
Again, Grice is _playing_ with Kant. And in Kant's table of categories (ontological categories, or epistemico-ontological), it's qualitas, quantitas, relatio, and modus. Kant is building on Aristotle. Indeed, simplifying Aristotle (who said categories were 10, rather than 4). Grice is 'echoing Kant' as he puts it, in sticking with those four categories, which Grice now dubs, within the context of the cooperative principle for the generation of conversational implicature, 'conversational categories'.
---
Keltner goes on:
"Statements should be relevant and on topic and avoid meandering into digressions, irrelevances, or stream-of-consciousness flights of fancy."
Again, this is Kant's relatio (Relation). A category in Aristotle, too. Along with qualitas and quantitas. Note that Relatio marks a divergence. Both qualitas and quantitas, in Latin, beging similarly, since the quale and the quantum are formations out of the root, qu-, which is common to both. This is maintained in Greek, too. Aristotle is indeed credited with having _coined_ 'qualitas' and 'quantity' in Greek.
Keltner goes on:
"Finally, in honoring the rule of manner, statements should be direct, clear, and to the point sorry if I've violated this one)."
---- The category of Modus (also in Aristotle and Kant). Note that this all applies to categories OTHER than 'substance' which is the primary category. Only when we have a substance (of conversation -- cfr. topic?) can we then go to apply these four categories to it: quality --. E.g. "Socrates is white". Quantity: "Socrates is one" -- "I have two eyes" -- Relatio: "Socrates is to the right of Plato" --. Modus: "Socrates is asleep". And so on. In Kant, these are categories of JUDGEMENTS. And so, there is a rather different treatment, e.g. of 'relatio', which relates (sic) to the three types of judgement (molecular judgement). In Kant, interestingly, and somewhat arbitrarily, there is systematically a three-fold division of each category. None of this limitation in Grice (or indeed Aristotle). Note that e.g. for Kant, in terms of qualitas, it is the affirmatio or negatio of a judgement that is quoted; and it is the distribution of Predicate P onto subject S that is assessed when it comes to Quantitas. The modus, which is rather secondary in Grice, relates to central issues for Kant, such as necessity and analyticity (apodeicticness).
----
Keltner goes on:
"Utterances that follow these four simple rules are on-record, end are to be taken literally. When an MD provides a prognosis about a life-threatening condition, she should follow these four piles of on-record communication. So too should the financial advisor announcing the unexpected loss of a family fortune -- these are not the best moments for exaggeration, intentional falsehoods, fantastical description, obvious repetition, digression, meandering, or catchy metaphors or poetic obliqueness. Much of our social life, in fact -- romantic declarations, sealing business deals, critiques at work, teaching young toddlers reaching to touch red-hot burners or rabid dogs -- transpires in this realm of literal on-record communication."
I'm not so sure about romantic declarations! But then blame Strawson on that. He said that to think that conversation follows rules is as abstract as to think that all romance should proceed along the guidelines provided by "Romance of the Rose"!
----
Keltner goes on to systematise:
"GRICE'S MAXIMS OF COMMUNICATION
LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLE CRITERION VIOLATIONS
QUALITY TRUTH EXAGGERATION, FANTASTICAL DESCRIPTION
QUANTITY INFORMATIVENESS REDUNDANCY, REPETITION, EXCESSIVE BREVITY
RELATION RELEVANCE DIGRESSION
MANNER CLARITY VAGUENESS, OBLIQUENESS, METAPHOR
----
A few nitpicks: I would think 'metaphor', for Grice, is a basic "Quality" flout: "The moon is made of cheese". "You are the cream in my coffee". Yes, manner is involved. But it's more like a flout to "be truthful". Note that Bach and Harnish, following Grice, think that everything has to be generalised. I did so in my PhD dissertation -- I was happy Habermas read it! -- So I had to be careful to AVOID 'truth' -- but 'trustworthiness' was used, rather. "Close the door!" can hardly be said to be _true_ (or false, for that matter). But a trustworthy utterance of "close the door!" is one meant to have the door closed. Grice considers countersuggestion. If I know (as in fact I did know, on occasion) that B will do exactly as I DON'T tell him to do, by uttering "Do x!" I may mean, in a sneaky fashion, that B is NOT to do x. But I'm not being trustworthy. E.g. "Please don't tell Dad about this!". And so on.
Keltner goes on:
"When we intentionally violate Grice's maxims, we signal that alternative interpretations of the utterance are possible. We say "this" with our words, and "not this" with violations of Grice's maxims, pointing to other possible meanings of our utterance."
Indeed. Good way of putting it. I used to call this "reading between the lines" -- but then I found that intralinear reading was a British custom which should be forbidden. To read between the lines was, originally, to read the English text of, say, Caesar's Gallic Wars. In Loeb's Classical Library -- that Doyle and I adore -- one cannot do that. One can read, 'across the page', but that's a different story.
---
Keltner goes on:
"We signal "not this" by resorting to obvious falsehoods or exaggerations of the truth (which violate the rule of quantity). We can provide too much information, for example in systematic repetition, or too little information, thus violating the rule of quantity. We can dwell in the irrelevant to violate the rule of relation. And we can resort to various linguistic acts - idiomatic expressions, metaphors, oblique references - that violate the rule of manner and its requirements of clarity and directness."
Indeed. Grice does not provide, for the record, too many examples of violations to "relatio"
---- A: Mrs. X is a windbag.
------- B: The weather has been deligthful this summer, so far, no?
---- Grice's gloss: B means that A has committed a _gaffe_. It may well be the ONLY example Grice ever gave of this. Susan Mura has written on violations to Grice and she must have gathered other examples:
This from "Conversation":
A: How much are they paying you at XEROX?
B: I think I _will_ order the chocolate mousse.
----
Note that Grice couldn't have been thinking that "Relatio" (of this type) is of grand philosophical importance. In my PhD disseration, I focused on truth-functors for molecular utterances ('and', 'or', 'if') and so, did discuss how Relatio does fit in for each of these. But these are not really examples that Grice elaborates explicitly, even if the ideas are, of course, all there.
---
Keltner goes on:
"As important as sincere speech is to our social life, so too is this realm of nonliteral communication."
Perhaps 'literal' is too literal. It comes from Greek, 'graphos', littera. But surely oral communication (as evolutionary theory) shows is primary! So, we need perhaps a better monicker. I prefer, oddly, 'explicature' (explicatura, in Latin). To contrast it with 'implicatura' (as used by Sidonius). So, the explicatura is
"You ARE the cream in my coffee"
The implicatura is "I love you", almost.
---
So, the literal is "you are the cream in my coffee". The nonliteral, the implicature, the unsaid, is "You are my pride and joy".
Grice notes that implicatures can build one over another. "You are the cream in my coffee", NOT in a declaration of love, can be used, ironically, to mean, "You are my bane" (Grice's gloss, again).
----
Keltner goes on:
"Our brief utterances can take on the opposite meaning of what the words denote (irony, satire). We can connect disparate concepts in communicative acts that leap beyond narrow literal denotation (metaphor). We can endow our utterances with multiple layers of unbounded, aesthetically pleasing meaning (poetry). The relevance of Grice's maxims to teasing, ironically enough, is revealed in linguists Brown and Levinson's 1987 classic, "Politeness."
----- now a separate book.
"Brown and Levinson carefully document how in the world's languages speakers add a layer of politeness to their utterances when what they say risks embarrassing the listener or themselves."
Actually, it was Grice who formulated the rule,
"Be polite!"
He wrote. Lakoff (Robin Talmach) heard that. Penny Brown and Levinson, too. But since Grice (unlike, perhaps R. Lakoff, or P. Brown, or S. C. Levinson) was a philosopher, and giving the William James lectures at that, did not elaborate. Rather, he did.
He wanted to say that
"Be polite!"
is a DIFFERENT sort of maxim. It cannot be so central as to generate the type of implicature he was into -- the 'conversational' implicature -- a bit like Nowell-Smith, that Doyle and I adore -- and his 'contextual implications'. Grice's conversational implicature is a basic phenomenon for philosophical elucidation. Cf. the implicatures of "of his own free will".
"Be polite!", rather, works at a different level. It is not about the maximally efficient exchange of info. It works at a different level. Grice did recognise this level, and allowed it to exist, of course. Only that, as coiner of expressions, he asked please to be distinguished from generators of 'conversational implicature' proper.
Thus, when it comes to "Logic" -- recall that the title of the James lectures, and indeed the Oxford ones is "Logic and Conversation" -- there is little (if anything at all) that "be polite!" contributes to 'and', 'or' or 'if'.
By the same token, Grice formulates that 'be polite' may fall within other maxims which he dubs 'moral' (sic) or 'aesthetic'. This has Kantian relevance, in that the grounding of the cooperative principle on maxims which are _not_ moral makes the whole campaign NOT circular.
("moral", not 'utilitarian').
---
Keltner goes on:
"Politeness is achieved through systematic violations of Grice's four maxims. Consider the simple act of making a request. If someone asks you for the time, or directions, or to pass the rutabagas, or not to talk so loudly during the previews, that act is fraught with potential conflict."
Indeed, in an excellent development of this metaphor, R. Lakoff speaks of 'minding your ps and qs' ('p', for Grice and logicians, in logic, is short for 'proposition'; 'q' is an arbitrary symbol for 'proposition' other than given 'p')
Keltner goes on with the pragmatics of requests:
"The recipient of the request is imposed upon and risks being revealed as incompetent, boorish, or disinterested in social conventions. The requester risks being perceived as intrusive and impolite."
In a genial move that connected with Goffman, Levinson and Brown spoke of face, which, as we know -- or rather the Japanese, apparenty, knew, since this is an "Oriental" notion -- can be 'positive' or 'negative'.
Keltner goes on:
"To soften the impact of requests and other potentially impolite acts such as recommendations, or criticism, people violate Grice's maxims to communicate in more polite fashion. Say your best friend is being a bit boisterous, with elbows flying, at your Friday evening line dancing group that you've generously invited him to. To encourage a bit more restraint, you might politely resort to indirect questions ("Have you ever seen yourself dance?"), rhetorical questions ("Have you done line dancing before?"), metaphors ("Wow, you holler like a howler monkey")"
--- oddly, this is a comparison. "You holler, you howler monkey you" seems to _presuppose_ a metaphor, even. "You are a howler monkey" is the underlying pure metaphor).
Keltner continues:
"and obliqueness ("I bet you'd be a terrific clown"). We break the rules of sincere communication to be polite. Equipped with this analysis of nonliteral communication, a careful examination of the tease reveals that teasing and politeness are surprisingly close relatives. THE ART OF THE TEASE. What gives the tease the playful genius of the jester's satire are systematic violations of Grice's maxims."
What an excellent summary, analysis, and application Keltner has engaged us in.
Keltner concludes the Griceian reference:
"A first principle is exaggeration, which marks the playfulness of the tease by deviating from Grice's rule of quality. Teasing can involve copious detail, excessive profanity, or an exaggerated characterization."
and so on.
So, born to be Grice indeed, or the art (and science, why not) of a -- Grice's, say -- meaningful life.
(Thanks again to R. O. Doyle for sharing this Keltner reference with the club -- and indirectly, to his wife for reading the material in the first place!)
D. Keltner writes "THIS AND NOT THIS".
Keltner writes:
"In the mid-1960s, philosopher [H.] Paul Grice outlined four principles of communication that would profoundly shape the study of pragmatics - that is, how people speak."
Indeed. I would think, with R. O. Doyle, that 'principle' is overstated. Doyle and I share a love for all things Greek. He loves the old Greek philosophers who developed free-will, and I just love the Greek language. In Greek, 'principle' (principium, in Latin), is "arkhe". One may wonder if there could be more than ONE principle. I doubt it. I would think principles have to be ONE. For Grice, it was the co-operative principle (or principle of cooperation, as I prefer, since a principle, in principle, cannot be itself cooperative).
In his 1964 earlier lectures on Logic and Conversation (Oxford, rather than Harvard) Grice had talked of two different (two!, note!) principles: of self-love and benevolence (strictly, 'principle of conversational beneveolence' and 'principle of conversational self-love'. While it would be odd to think that Grice is echoing Kant in those earlier lectures, history did show that it was Kant who Grice was seriously echoing in the Harvard lectures. As he notes in "Retrospective Epilogue", the cooperative principle was meant to echo Kant's categorical imperative. Not so much in substance, but in the fact that from it one can derive, rationally, some _maxims_.
----
Keltner goes on:
"Sincere communication, according to Grice, involves utterances that are to be taken literally."
Indeed. I follow J. Saul in thinking that people are being, essentially, uncooperative when, e.g. they utter a metaphor. ("The moon is made of cheese"). Truly, Grice says that in metaphor (or any flout, really, to the cooperative principle) the SPIRIT, if not the letter, of the cooperative principle, is still being respected. But surely, there is a lot of misunderstanding that "The moon is made of cheese" can yield. For Davidson, who adhered to a truth-conditional semantics, "The moon is made of cheese" is true if and only if the moon is made of cheese. From which one yields that "The moon is made of cheese" means that the moon is made of cheese. Grice's example,
You're the cream in my coffee,
again, qua compliment, can yield a few misunderstandings. ("I didn't know I was a liquid").
---
Keltner goes on:
"These statements should adhere as closely as possible to four maxims (see table below)."
The use of "Table" is excellent and perfect in that it's _so_, oh, _so_ Kantian. (Tabel).
Keltner goes on:
"Statements should follow the rule of quality - they should be truthful, honest, and based in evidence."
While Grice does use 'conversational rule' on occasion, in the Harvard lectures, he is clear, from the "Prolegomena" that he is a campaign against Searle. As R. O. Doyle knows, Searle had and has the gift for the good, effective, phrase ("scandal of free will"). In this, Searle, following, I think, Rawls, had said that rules could be constitutive or regulative. Grice found that otiose, and his campaign was one where the idea of 'rule' was being minimised. Doyle, who has, like me, criticised Chomsky, understands the issue here: to think of a rule -- as in Witters on "following a rule" -- is a deep difficult question. Conversational 'rules', since they can be flouted so easily, are not cognitive like that. Grice also says, 'rules of the game', even 'conversational game' -- my PhD dissertation maintained that terminology --. But it is controversial that no conversation (qua game) is played if 'rules' are 'broken'. In my PhD dissertation, I argued, typically pedantically, that what is involved here is a _weak_ transcendental justification, alla Kant. For, not the 'existence' of 'conversational moves' ("it is raining", when utterer believes it is not -- a plain lie) but for the 'appropriateness' of 'conversational moves' (hence the paradox of Moore: "It is raining, but I don't believe it").
----
Keltner goes on:
"Statements should be appropriately informative - the rule of quantity - and avoid the Strunk and White catastrophes of being too wordy or opaquely succinct."
---
Again, Grice is _playing_ with Kant. And in Kant's table of categories (ontological categories, or epistemico-ontological), it's qualitas, quantitas, relatio, and modus. Kant is building on Aristotle. Indeed, simplifying Aristotle (who said categories were 10, rather than 4). Grice is 'echoing Kant' as he puts it, in sticking with those four categories, which Grice now dubs, within the context of the cooperative principle for the generation of conversational implicature, 'conversational categories'.
---
Keltner goes on:
"Statements should be relevant and on topic and avoid meandering into digressions, irrelevances, or stream-of-consciousness flights of fancy."
Again, this is Kant's relatio (Relation). A category in Aristotle, too. Along with qualitas and quantitas. Note that Relatio marks a divergence. Both qualitas and quantitas, in Latin, beging similarly, since the quale and the quantum are formations out of the root, qu-, which is common to both. This is maintained in Greek, too. Aristotle is indeed credited with having _coined_ 'qualitas' and 'quantity' in Greek.
Keltner goes on:
"Finally, in honoring the rule of manner, statements should be direct, clear, and to the point sorry if I've violated this one)."
---- The category of Modus (also in Aristotle and Kant). Note that this all applies to categories OTHER than 'substance' which is the primary category. Only when we have a substance (of conversation -- cfr. topic?) can we then go to apply these four categories to it: quality --. E.g. "Socrates is white". Quantity: "Socrates is one" -- "I have two eyes" -- Relatio: "Socrates is to the right of Plato" --. Modus: "Socrates is asleep". And so on. In Kant, these are categories of JUDGEMENTS. And so, there is a rather different treatment, e.g. of 'relatio', which relates (sic) to the three types of judgement (molecular judgement). In Kant, interestingly, and somewhat arbitrarily, there is systematically a three-fold division of each category. None of this limitation in Grice (or indeed Aristotle). Note that e.g. for Kant, in terms of qualitas, it is the affirmatio or negatio of a judgement that is quoted; and it is the distribution of Predicate P onto subject S that is assessed when it comes to Quantitas. The modus, which is rather secondary in Grice, relates to central issues for Kant, such as necessity and analyticity (apodeicticness).
----
Keltner goes on:
"Utterances that follow these four simple rules are on-record, end are to be taken literally. When an MD provides a prognosis about a life-threatening condition, she should follow these four piles of on-record communication. So too should the financial advisor announcing the unexpected loss of a family fortune -- these are not the best moments for exaggeration, intentional falsehoods, fantastical description, obvious repetition, digression, meandering, or catchy metaphors or poetic obliqueness. Much of our social life, in fact -- romantic declarations, sealing business deals, critiques at work, teaching young toddlers reaching to touch red-hot burners or rabid dogs -- transpires in this realm of literal on-record communication."
I'm not so sure about romantic declarations! But then blame Strawson on that. He said that to think that conversation follows rules is as abstract as to think that all romance should proceed along the guidelines provided by "Romance of the Rose"!
----
Keltner goes on to systematise:
"GRICE'S MAXIMS OF COMMUNICATION
LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLE CRITERION VIOLATIONS
QUALITY TRUTH EXAGGERATION, FANTASTICAL DESCRIPTION
QUANTITY INFORMATIVENESS REDUNDANCY, REPETITION, EXCESSIVE BREVITY
RELATION RELEVANCE DIGRESSION
MANNER CLARITY VAGUENESS, OBLIQUENESS, METAPHOR
----
A few nitpicks: I would think 'metaphor', for Grice, is a basic "Quality" flout: "The moon is made of cheese". "You are the cream in my coffee". Yes, manner is involved. But it's more like a flout to "be truthful". Note that Bach and Harnish, following Grice, think that everything has to be generalised. I did so in my PhD dissertation -- I was happy Habermas read it! -- So I had to be careful to AVOID 'truth' -- but 'trustworthiness' was used, rather. "Close the door!" can hardly be said to be _true_ (or false, for that matter). But a trustworthy utterance of "close the door!" is one meant to have the door closed. Grice considers countersuggestion. If I know (as in fact I did know, on occasion) that B will do exactly as I DON'T tell him to do, by uttering "Do x!" I may mean, in a sneaky fashion, that B is NOT to do x. But I'm not being trustworthy. E.g. "Please don't tell Dad about this!". And so on.
Keltner goes on:
"When we intentionally violate Grice's maxims, we signal that alternative interpretations of the utterance are possible. We say "this" with our words, and "not this" with violations of Grice's maxims, pointing to other possible meanings of our utterance."
Indeed. Good way of putting it. I used to call this "reading between the lines" -- but then I found that intralinear reading was a British custom which should be forbidden. To read between the lines was, originally, to read the English text of, say, Caesar's Gallic Wars. In Loeb's Classical Library -- that Doyle and I adore -- one cannot do that. One can read, 'across the page', but that's a different story.
---
Keltner goes on:
"We signal "not this" by resorting to obvious falsehoods or exaggerations of the truth (which violate the rule of quantity). We can provide too much information, for example in systematic repetition, or too little information, thus violating the rule of quantity. We can dwell in the irrelevant to violate the rule of relation. And we can resort to various linguistic acts - idiomatic expressions, metaphors, oblique references - that violate the rule of manner and its requirements of clarity and directness."
Indeed. Grice does not provide, for the record, too many examples of violations to "relatio"
---- A: Mrs. X is a windbag.
------- B: The weather has been deligthful this summer, so far, no?
---- Grice's gloss: B means that A has committed a _gaffe_. It may well be the ONLY example Grice ever gave of this. Susan Mura has written on violations to Grice and she must have gathered other examples:
This from "Conversation":
A: How much are they paying you at XEROX?
B: I think I _will_ order the chocolate mousse.
----
Note that Grice couldn't have been thinking that "Relatio" (of this type) is of grand philosophical importance. In my PhD disseration, I focused on truth-functors for molecular utterances ('and', 'or', 'if') and so, did discuss how Relatio does fit in for each of these. But these are not really examples that Grice elaborates explicitly, even if the ideas are, of course, all there.
---
Keltner goes on:
"As important as sincere speech is to our social life, so too is this realm of nonliteral communication."
Perhaps 'literal' is too literal. It comes from Greek, 'graphos', littera. But surely oral communication (as evolutionary theory) shows is primary! So, we need perhaps a better monicker. I prefer, oddly, 'explicature' (explicatura, in Latin). To contrast it with 'implicatura' (as used by Sidonius). So, the explicatura is
"You ARE the cream in my coffee"
The implicatura is "I love you", almost.
---
So, the literal is "you are the cream in my coffee". The nonliteral, the implicature, the unsaid, is "You are my pride and joy".
Grice notes that implicatures can build one over another. "You are the cream in my coffee", NOT in a declaration of love, can be used, ironically, to mean, "You are my bane" (Grice's gloss, again).
----
Keltner goes on:
"Our brief utterances can take on the opposite meaning of what the words denote (irony, satire). We can connect disparate concepts in communicative acts that leap beyond narrow literal denotation (metaphor). We can endow our utterances with multiple layers of unbounded, aesthetically pleasing meaning (poetry). The relevance of Grice's maxims to teasing, ironically enough, is revealed in linguists Brown and Levinson's 1987 classic, "Politeness."
----- now a separate book.
"Brown and Levinson carefully document how in the world's languages speakers add a layer of politeness to their utterances when what they say risks embarrassing the listener or themselves."
Actually, it was Grice who formulated the rule,
"Be polite!"
He wrote. Lakoff (Robin Talmach) heard that. Penny Brown and Levinson, too. But since Grice (unlike, perhaps R. Lakoff, or P. Brown, or S. C. Levinson) was a philosopher, and giving the William James lectures at that, did not elaborate. Rather, he did.
He wanted to say that
"Be polite!"
is a DIFFERENT sort of maxim. It cannot be so central as to generate the type of implicature he was into -- the 'conversational' implicature -- a bit like Nowell-Smith, that Doyle and I adore -- and his 'contextual implications'. Grice's conversational implicature is a basic phenomenon for philosophical elucidation. Cf. the implicatures of "of his own free will".
"Be polite!", rather, works at a different level. It is not about the maximally efficient exchange of info. It works at a different level. Grice did recognise this level, and allowed it to exist, of course. Only that, as coiner of expressions, he asked please to be distinguished from generators of 'conversational implicature' proper.
Thus, when it comes to "Logic" -- recall that the title of the James lectures, and indeed the Oxford ones is "Logic and Conversation" -- there is little (if anything at all) that "be polite!" contributes to 'and', 'or' or 'if'.
By the same token, Grice formulates that 'be polite' may fall within other maxims which he dubs 'moral' (sic) or 'aesthetic'. This has Kantian relevance, in that the grounding of the cooperative principle on maxims which are _not_ moral makes the whole campaign NOT circular.
("moral", not 'utilitarian').
---
Keltner goes on:
"Politeness is achieved through systematic violations of Grice's four maxims. Consider the simple act of making a request. If someone asks you for the time, or directions, or to pass the rutabagas, or not to talk so loudly during the previews, that act is fraught with potential conflict."
Indeed, in an excellent development of this metaphor, R. Lakoff speaks of 'minding your ps and qs' ('p', for Grice and logicians, in logic, is short for 'proposition'; 'q' is an arbitrary symbol for 'proposition' other than given 'p')
Keltner goes on with the pragmatics of requests:
"The recipient of the request is imposed upon and risks being revealed as incompetent, boorish, or disinterested in social conventions. The requester risks being perceived as intrusive and impolite."
In a genial move that connected with Goffman, Levinson and Brown spoke of face, which, as we know -- or rather the Japanese, apparenty, knew, since this is an "Oriental" notion -- can be 'positive' or 'negative'.
Keltner goes on:
"To soften the impact of requests and other potentially impolite acts such as recommendations, or criticism, people violate Grice's maxims to communicate in more polite fashion. Say your best friend is being a bit boisterous, with elbows flying, at your Friday evening line dancing group that you've generously invited him to. To encourage a bit more restraint, you might politely resort to indirect questions ("Have you ever seen yourself dance?"), rhetorical questions ("Have you done line dancing before?"), metaphors ("Wow, you holler like a howler monkey")"
--- oddly, this is a comparison. "You holler, you howler monkey you" seems to _presuppose_ a metaphor, even. "You are a howler monkey" is the underlying pure metaphor).
Keltner continues:
"and obliqueness ("I bet you'd be a terrific clown"). We break the rules of sincere communication to be polite. Equipped with this analysis of nonliteral communication, a careful examination of the tease reveals that teasing and politeness are surprisingly close relatives. THE ART OF THE TEASE. What gives the tease the playful genius of the jester's satire are systematic violations of Grice's maxims."
What an excellent summary, analysis, and application Keltner has engaged us in.
Keltner concludes the Griceian reference:
"A first principle is exaggeration, which marks the playfulness of the tease by deviating from Grice's rule of quality. Teasing can involve copious detail, excessive profanity, or an exaggerated characterization."
and so on.
So, born to be Grice indeed, or the art (and science, why not) of a -- Grice's, say -- meaningful life.
(Thanks again to R. O. Doyle for sharing this Keltner reference with the club -- and indirectly, to his wife for reading the material in the first place!)
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