"He hasn't been to prison yet"

When lecturing in Buenos Aires once I re-visited Grice's first example of a conversational particularised implicature -- as per header.

I proposed instead:

"How do you like Buenos Aires"

"The weather is pleasant, --" as I overheard it at the Congress of the International Philosophical Association I was attending -- this was published officially, my thing, too --

"... the people are friendly ... (silence)

... and I haven't been mugged yet".

I discuss this vis a vis

Grice's views on

∞

in its guise as 'optimality'.

I argue that the _expression_ "I haven't been mugged yet" cannot mean "someone is potentially dishonest".

Cfr. Grice

"He hasn't been to prison yet"

meaning "He is potentially dishonest" (Grice's gloss).

For the way to _say_ or mean, via expression-meaning

"he is potentially dishonest"

is OPTIMALLY, as per ∞ (the optimality conditions), to say

"He is potentially dishonest".

"He hasn't been to prison yet" is _less optimal_ even if More Optimal on occasion. Very tricky.

What I recall, and I cared to include this in my published version -- 'you are free to add one page with comments to your talk --

was a conference participant -- the full professor of logic, no less -- and his reaction,

"Surely I haven't been mugged in Stockholm either -- but you won't implicate the things you are dirtily implicating in my straight face here" (or words).

*Kramer commented that 'perlocutionary' is redundant in "or words to that perlocutionary effect". "Deal" he adds. I am, and shorening the idiom, now, to 'or words'.