Grice not "wholly sympathetic towards the conclusions" which Donnellan drawsn from the existence of the identificatory/non-identificatory distinction. KEYWORDS: Herbert Paul Grice, Keith S. DONNELLAN.

Speranza

In "Vacuous Names", the Oxonian philosopher H. P. Grice refers to the famous essay by K. S. Donnellan (of Cornell, etc.), "Reference & Definite Descriptions, Philosophical Review, 75.

Grice is not sure that he is "wholly sympathetic towards the conclusions" which Donnellan draws from the existence of the distinction" [between what Donnellan had dubbed an
"attributive" and a "referential" use of a definite description (Grice, op.cit. p.145).

The implicature is that Grice thinks the conclusion is implicatural, and Donnellan seems to implicate it's semantical, rather.

Grice's two corresponding usages of definite descritpions he calls in "Vacuous Names are
"non-identificatory" (symbolised by italics) and"identificatory" (symbolised by capitals):

viz (p.141):

  1. Jones's butler will be seeking a new position.

     *The F* is G.

  2. Jones's butler got the hats and coats mixed up.

     THE F is G
Grice wants to refer to these different 'usages' of definite descriptions' as pertaining
to pragmatics (utterer's intentions and conversational implicature), rather
than semantics (logical form):

Grice writes:

"It is important to bear in mind that I am NOT suggesting that the difference between these devices represents a difference in the MEANING or SENSE which a descriptive phrase may have on different occasions; on the contrary, I am suggesting that descriptive phrases have no relevant systematic duplicity of meaning: their meaning is given by a Russellian account" --
(p.143) -- referring to Donnellan's arch-enemy: Lord Bertie Russell -- Grice is again robbing Peter (Strawson) to pay Paul (Grice) himself.

Grice is here concerned with what we may regard as 'knowledge by acquaintance', or to use G Evans's phrase (in The Varieties of Reference), 'recognition-based identification'.

For this, Grice provides a linguistic device or test, namely, the appropriateness or not of the addition, to any definite description, of the phrase, 'whoever he [it/she] may be" (or 's/h/it', as Geary prefers)

Grice notes that only the attributive (or non-identificatory) usage allows for the addition of the phrase:

Jones's butler, whoever he may be, will be seeking a new position.

The utterance of

   *Jones's butler, whoever he may be, got the hats and coats mixed up.

sounds odd and triggers the wrong implicature, ALWAYS.
Grice writes:
  
"We may say with respect to [the referential or identificatory
   use] that some particular individual has been 'described as'
   [or 'MISdescribed as', as the case may be. Speranza], 'REFERRED to as',
   or 'called' Jones's butler by the [utterer]. No such comments are
   in place with respect to [attributive or non-identificatory
   usages]" (p.141).

It is in this context that Grice introduces the notion of a "dossier" associated to a definite description.

In this he is, as Evans notes, more or less following Strawson in 'Identifying Reference & Truth Values' (now repr. in Strawson's Logico-Linguistic Papers, Methuen), although not explicitly using the notion of 'information'.

Grice defines a dossier as follows:

   Let us say that utterer U has a dossier for a definite description
   D if there is a set of definite descriptions which includes D, all
   the members of which U supposes to be satisfied by one and the same
   item. In [the non-identificatory usages], unlike [the identificatory
   ones], the [utterer] intends the audience to think (via the recognition
   that he is so intended)
  
   1. that U has a dossier for the definite description D which he has used,
  
   and
  
   2. that U has selected D from this dossier at least partly IN THE HOPE
   THAT THE HEARER HAS A DOSSIER FOR D WHICH 'OVERLAPS' the utterer's
   dossier for D. p.142.

This is labelled a 'tremendously important feature of referring expressions' by Evans, and given a kind of cognitive background:
 
[An] organism must have more than the simple capacity to
  find previously encountered objects familiar; a recognitional
  capacity must be associated with (i.e. enable the subject
  to recall) the appropriate dossier of information. Under
  these circumstances, selection pressures would strongly
  favour organisms which possessed, or were capable to
  developing, this capacity. G Evans, "The Varieties of Reference",
  Oxford University Press, p.276.
  (Grice also cited on pages 50 and 306).

Grice proposes a method having to do with semantic interpretation (rather
than the syntactical one involving the 'whoever he may be' idiom) when
stressing the fact that the existence of BOTH these two non-identificatory
and identificatory uses conform to truth-conditional semantics.

The apparent difference is explained in terms of the distinction between what the utterer
EXPLICITLY communicates, or SAYS - rendered by means of the logical form - and what he generally MEANS (rendered by the communicative intentions):

   the truth-conditions for a statement [of the identificatory type]
   no less than for a statement [of the non-identificatory type],
   can be thought of as being given by a Russellian account of definite
   descriptions. Though what a [utterer] has SAID may be FALSE [in
   the identificatory use] what he MEANT may be true (for example,
   that a certain particular individual (who is in fact Jones's gardener)
   mixed up the hats and coats. p.142.

A third device, of the linguistic type, that Grice introduces to distinguish
between these two uses is the effects of the replacement of the definite
description by a [proper] name, yielding:

  *Jones's butler* (let us call him Bill) will be seeking a new position.

  JONES'S BUTLER (let us call him Bill) got our coats and hats mixed up.

Here, there is an apparent asymmetry between which Grice analyses,
precisely, in terms of the distinction between a truth-value associated to
WHAT IS EXPLICITLY COMMUNICATED or SAID (for the non-identificatory use), as opposed to WHAT IS MEANT (for the identificatory use):

  A subsequent remark [to a non-identificatory use] containing
   [the newly introduced proper name] 'Bill' will have THE SAME
   TRUTH-VALUE as would have a corresponding remark in which
   *Jones's butler* replaces 'Bill'. If Jones has no butler,
   and if in consequence it is FALSE that *Jones's butler*
   will be seeking a new position, then it will be [also] false
   that Bill will be seeking a new position ... [However, in the
   case of an identificatory use], it will NOT be true that a a
   subsequent remark containing [a newly introduced proper name such
   as] 'Bill' will have the same truth-value as would have a
   corresponding remark in which 'Bill' is replaced by 'Jones's butler'.
   For the person whom the [utterer] proposes to call 'Bill' will be
   the person whom he MEANT when he said, 'Let us call JONES'S BUTLER
   [sic in capitals. JLS] Bill', viz. the person who looked after the
   hats and coats, [...] and if this person turns out to have been
   Jones's gardener and not Jones's butler, then it may be TRUE that
   Bill mixed up the hats and coats and FALSE that Jones's butler mixed
   up the hats and coats.

The distinction between the non-identificatory and the identificatory use is
based thus on the way in which they react to the replacement of the definite
description by a proper name:

   [In the identificatory use] remarks of the form 'Bill is such-and-
   such' will be INFLEXIBLY TIED, as regards truth-value, not to
   possible remarks of the form 'Jones's butler is such-and-such", but
   to possible remarks of the form 'The person whom U meant when he said
   'Let us call Jones's Butler 'Bill' is such-and-such'.
p.143.

Grice further considers the issue of "vacuous" descriptions, in connection
the concerns of Strawson -- Donnellan's second arch-enemy after Russell.

Grice writes of the different uses of 'vacuous
definite descriptions', even when used in an identificatory way - including
what he calls 'parasitic' uses:

  "It is important to note that, for a definite description used
  in explanation of a name to be employed in an IDENTIFICATORY way,
  it is NOT required that the item which the explainer MEANS
  (is referring to) when he uses the description should ACTUALLY EXIST.
  A person may establish or explain a use for a name A by saying
  'Let us call THE F A' or 'THE F is called A' even though every definite
  description in his dossier for 'the F' is vacuous. He may mistakenly
  think, or merely deceitfully intend his hearer to think, that the
  elements in the dossier are non-vacuous and satisfied by a single item;
  and in secondary or 'parasitic' types of case, as in the narration of
  or commentary upon fiction, that this is so may be something which
  the speaker non-deceitfully pretends or 'feigns'".

Grice, p.144.

Incidentally, when Donnellan replied to criticisms by A. Mckay] to his
'Reference & Definite Descriptions' (which we have seen is cited by Grice in
'Vacuous Names'), as e.g. 'Putting Humpty Dumpty Together Again'
(Philosophical Review 1967) he relies on Grice's intentional stance.
Donnellan is concerned with A. Mckay's allegation of 'linguistic anarchism'
(as when an utterer can mean what he wishes, as Humpty Dumpty does in Alice
in Wonderland). Donnellan then explicitly refers to the Oxonian philosopher H. P. Grice:

   In the analysis of meaning given by Grice [In Meaning, reprinted in
   Studies in the Way of Words], a speaker means something by an utterance
   when he has a certain complex kind of intention involving recognition
   on the part of his audience of his intention ... It does not follow from
   this analysis that speakers might, out of the blue, mean anything at all
   by any utterance.
Donnellan, p.212.

Donnellan's example is using 'the book' to mean a rock:

   "Suppose there is a rock on my shelf that has been carefully
   carved to resemble a book and that I know the person I am
   speaking to cannot recognise it for what it is. I say to him
   'Bring me the book with the blue binding'.
   It seems at least plausible to say that I referred to a rock.
   When a speaker uses a definite description referentially
   [or as Grice would have it, in an identificatory way. Speranza]
   he intends his audience to take the descritption as
   characterising what it is he want s to talk about."

Donellan, p.214.

An interdisciplinary note: the linguistic-philosophical literature on
definite descriptions is also dealt with, from a cognitive linguistic point
of view, by P N Johnson-Laird and A Garnham, of the Centre for Research on
Perception & Cognition at the University of Sussex, in their essay,
'Descriptions & Discourse Models' (Linguistics & Philosophy, 3, 371-393).