Grice's Reduced Temperature

Speranza

Grice’s Reduced Temperature

T. Fjeld was discussing ‘symptoms’ and ‘systems,’ which got me into thinking about ‘mean.’

Grice had a MA Lit Hum which means that Greek was second nature to him. Yet, he was also an Englishman (“and, therefore, brave.”). Getting a Lit. Hum. meant at that time that Grice was qualified to teach

(a)    Classics

(b)   Philosophy

Since he later became a Fellow at St. John’s, he opted to teach philosophy and became the “Tutor in Philosophy” at St. John’s. St. John’s only has two tutors – the other during Grice’s time there, was J. D. Mabbott, a Scot.

So, Grice started to see philosophy as separable from ‘the classics.’ When in 1948 he presented his essay on ‘Meaning,’ he was interested in how Englishmen used ‘mean.’ Had he taught classics, he would never have ventured into these Anglo-Saxonisms, but stuck with ‘significare,’ are such. The only essay Grice quotes in “Meaning” is Stevenson’s “Ethics and Language,” one of which examples is:

              

"a reduced temperature  'means' convalescence"(Stevenson, p. 38.

Grice would possibly rephrase that: “That Mary has a reduced temperature means that Mary is convalescent,” or something. I.e. “means” must be followed by a full proposition, of the “that”-form.

In any case, it is VERY INTERESTING that Stevenson is using ‘scare quotes’ here. A reduced temperature, strictly, does not mean ANYTHING, since, in Anglo-Saxon, ‘mean’ is cognate with ‘mind,’ and surely a reduced temperature cannot have a ‘mind’ (never mind ‘mean’ this or that).

If we DO use ‘mean’ LOOSELY as applied to things like reduced temperatures is because we are not good at classics!

By the same token, we may say that the barometre means this or that. We mean ‘mean’: strictly, the barometre ‘means’ that p.

Fjeld comments:

“[O]ne is distracted by Moominpappa's observation, when informed by Moomintroll that Snufkin has migrated South due to the upcoming snowy season, that, "Uh, snow? Let's go and read the barometre." Possible Implicature: Let's not be so loose about our prophesies.”

When one reads the barometre, one is looking for ‘signs’.

A reduced temperature is a ‘sign’ of convalescence. In this case, we do not NEED to use ‘scare quotes,’ because ‘sign’ is neutral enough (Grice hated the lexeme ‘sign’ – “Words, for all that Locke wrote, are NOT signs.”)

At this point, Grice was feeling like teaching his tuttees the rudiments of Peirce’s semiotics (on which Stevenson bases his theories), and Grice ends up simplifying Perice’s ‘krypto-technicisms’ so much that his tuttees had all the time in the world to engage in what Grice loved most: a good game of good cricket!

Cheers,

Speranza