"Warm": A Griceian Analysis

CARNAP, rightly, sort of complained that 'warm' (and 'cold', 'freezing cold', 'hot', etc.) were _vague_. "Temperature", Carnap holds, is the scientific way to deal with the vagueness of such ordinary-language terms. Grice would agree. One special area for Griceian research is the 'scale':



It is said that if it is hot, it is not warm. But this involves some sort of 'metalinguistic' negation. Grice's point being that we don't utter "It is warm" when it is "hot" not because it is FALSE that it is warm, but because it is not informative enough. I.e. it is not the thing to 'assert' -- not the optimal move in the conversational game. I agree. Strictly, "It is not warm; it's hot" is thus 'illogical'.

The point may be improved by distinguishing things with subscripts. Consider 't'. Is that to be given a quantum? Surely. We have t-1, t-2, t-3, etc. There is also the possibility of using other subscripts. Following Wright, I propose t-r, to be read, "tee" sub "r" -- for 'room temperature'. The result is a paradox of analysis:

"It doesn't matter what temperature the room is, it's always
room temperature." -- Steven Wright
American, Comedian Quotes