Friday, January 29, 2010

Grice's Early Piece of Cake

His definition of "I" as studied by heart by me -- via Perry -- and cited by Chapman in extenso (p. 27 -- we are getting closer! I'm reading her book backwards as I drop these marginalia):

"someone hears a noise"

iff

"a (past) hearing of a nose is an elemnet in
a t. t. s. which is a member
of a series of t. t. s.'s such that
every member of the series EITHER

would, given certain conditions,
contain as al element a MEMORY
of some EXPERIENCE which is an element
in some previous member,

OR

contains as an element some experience
a memory of which would,
given certain conditions, occur as an
element in some subsequent member;

there being no subject of members
which is independent from all the rest."

Who was in the Editorial Board -- I can't think G. Ryle cared to understand this -- as he allowed publication in his _Mind_ for 1941.

Granted, it was wartime.

-- Actually, I love Grice's analysis. It fails to provide a complete 'implicature' of 'noise' though -- meaning "bad" hearing.

1 comment:

  1. "someone hears a noise"

    iff

    "a (past) hearing of a nose is an elemnet in
    a t. t. s. which is a member
    of a series of t. t. s.'s such that
    every member of the series EITHER

    would, given certain conditions,
    contain as al element a MEMORY
    of some EXPERIENCE which is an element
    in some previous member,

    OR

    contains as an element some experience
    a memory of which would,
    given certain conditions, occur as an
    element in some subsequent member;

    there being no subject of members
    which is independent from all the rest."

    A beautiful analysis!

    ReplyDelete