Grice and The Lone Ranger

Speranza

Grice on the implicatures of Russellian vacuous definite descriptions vis-à-vis their counterpart Fregeian yet also vacuous proper names (Was: "The Lone Ranger")

will be hastening to tell me that The Lone Ranger never killed anyone.  He merely shot the guns out of their hands and tied them up for the Sheriff; which is pretty much the sort of thing Daredevil likes to do.  Speranza might think that the Lone Ranger was from Texas, but not so, he first appeared in Detroit in 1933 on radio station WXYZ."

This seems to minimise all the action at Bryant's Gap.  

Matter of fact, lThe Lone Ranger" (call him "Paul Grice"?) was thus described because he is the only survivor of a group of six Texas Rangers, and NOT -- this is a disimplicature -- because he seems to 'work' alone (he doesn't: he is accompanied by his companion, or attendiing implicature, "Tonto" -- is that a proper name alla Frege or a description, if not a definite one?)

So, "The Lone Ranger" would be what Grice in "Vacuous Names" (partially reprinted in "Definite Descriptions", MIT) calls a "vacuous definite description" (His example, "the winged horse," Pegasus.)

Speranza

Grice on the implicatures of Russellian vacuous definite descriptions vis-à-vis their counterpart Fregeian yet also vacuous proper names (Was: "The Lone Ranger")

Some may hastening to say that The Lone Ranger never killed anyone.  He merely shot the guns out of their hands and tied them up for the Sheriff; which is pretty much the sort of thing Daredevil likes to do.  

Some might think that the Lone Ranger was from Texas, but not so, he first appeared in Detroit in 1933 on radio station WXYZ."

This seems to minimise all the action at Bryant's Gap.  

Matter of fact, "The Lone Ranger" (call him "Paul Grice"?) was thus described because he is the only survivor of a group of six Texas Rangers, and NOT -- this is a disimplicature -- because he seems to 'work' alone (he doesn't: he is accompanied by his companion, or attendiing implicature, "Tonto" -- is that a proper name alla Frege or a description, if not a definite one?)

So, "The Lone Ranger" would be what Grice in "Vacuous Names" (partially reprinted in "Definite Descriptions", MIT) calls a "vacuous definite description" (His example, "the winged horse," Pegasus.)

This poses an obvious, yet complex, implicature.

Although the Lone Ranger's SURNAME in the radio shows Helm refers to is given as "Reid," his FIRST name (cfr. "Bellephoron") is oddly never specified in any of the radio or television shows. 

Various radio reference books, beginning with Radio's Golden Age (Eastern Valley Press), give "the Lone Ranger"'s complete name as "John Reid."

His mother possibly referred to him as "Jack."

Some cite the anniversary radio programme in as the source of this vacuous first name -- which is odd given that "The Lone Ranger"'s alleged proper name ("John") is *never* mentioned in that episode.

In the final chapter of the Republic "The Lone Ranger" film serial, "The Lone Ranger" is revealed to be a Texas Ranger bearing the proper name of "Allen King"!

In the second serial, "The Lone Ranger Rides Again" he identifies himself, however, by the vacuous name "Bill Andrews" (possibly a relation to both Julie Andrews and The Andrews Sisters).

"The Lone Ranger"'s vacuous Fregeian proper name is also thought NOT to have been mentioned in contemporary Lone Ranger newspaper comics, comic books, and tie-in premiums, though some have stated that the vacuous Fregeian proper name "John Reid" is notably used in an illustration of the grave marker which appears in a comic book version of the character's origin story or in a record set.

The vacuous Fregeian proper name "John Reid" is used in a scene in the film "The Legend of The Lone Ranger," in which the surviving Reid romantically digs an extra grave for himself. 

"The Lone [Texas] Ranger" also bears the vacuous Fregeian proper name "John Reid" in "Dynamite Entertainment"'s licensed Lone Ranger comic book series and in the Disney film The Lone Ranger (Disney thought that the Fregeian "John Reid" was 'catchy' enough).

The vacuous Fregeian proper name "Luke Hartman" (of all names!) was used in the TV-movie/unsold series pilot.

Since "The Lone Ranger" besides delivering the villains to "The Sheriff," always uses perfect grammar and precise speech devoid of slang and colloquialisms yet filled with implicature, I tend to call him "Paul Grice," one of the six surviving Texas Rangers (A posse of six members of the Texas Ranger Division pursuing a band of outlaws led by Bartholomew "Butch" Cavendish is betrayed by a civilian guide named Collins and is ambushed in a canyon named Bryant's Gap -- and the rest is vacuous history). 

Some, just to be different, may attempts to prove dialytically that the Russellian definite description "The Longe Ranger" hides the proper name of Sir Karl Raymond Popper (note that both have selves and free wills -- "even if Popper is "less cartoonish."")

REFERENCES

Frege, Sense and Reference

Russell, On denoting

Strawson, On referring

Russell, Mr Strawson on referring

Grice, Definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular

Grice, Name and descriptions, repr, in "Definite descriptions," MIT