GRICE ON CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE -- The Oxford 1965 Lectures

Speranza

When composing the 'Implication' excursus to his Aristotelian Society paper, "The Causal Theory of Perception," Grice was still using 'implication'.

i. He implicated, by uttering, "He has beautiful handwriting," that he was hopeless at philosophy.

In "Causal Theory of Perception," he actually presents a sketch of a theory underlying the 'implication,' having to do with making a 'strong' rather than a 'weak' move in the conversational game.

A few years later, still at Oxford, he came up with "implicature" -- to distinguish it from a common-or-garden 'implication' -- and two desiderata and two principles behind it: a desideratum of conversational clarity, a desideratum of conversational candour, a principle of conversational self-interest, and a principle of conversational benevolence.

He would speak then of 'helpfulness,' not "cooperative," which he thought was perhaps too Latinate a term for his Oxonian tutees.

But the idea that 'rationality' underlies all this was always there!

And that's what makes Grice a Griceian!