Hare objected to some of the usages of "Gricean conversational implicature".
"Should I hear, "There is an animal in the backyard", surely I don't want to informed at a later stage that the utterer's aunt, or even a bacterium was lying there."
Why? Are we supposed to report only with Gricely Bears in view?
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Speranza, could you flesh this one out a bit? Not clear to me what Hare objected to, or what the question is.
ReplyDeleteOK. Good.
ReplyDeleteI thought you were going to object,
"I'm surprised Hare did not object to the uttering of "There's a hare in the backyard".
It's in Practical Inferences. When Hare died, some time ago -- his son has all the (c)s -- I revised my Gricean notes on Hare. In this little volume, Practical Inferences, Hare has this example:
A: There is an animal in the bottom of the garden.
He says that 'animal' is implicated to mean, or meant to implicate, as you may prefer,
"medium-sized mammal"
"not my aunt or a bacterium" he adds.
One wonders why. This may have to do with the quirk if quirk it is, as noted by the _other_ Larry, 'we drive in parkways and park in driveways'.
And e.g. 'animal' as analysed by Grice WoW:iii from
'a member of the animal (sic) kingdom'
to 'beast'.
And 'beast' is NOT a bacterium or one's aunt. (Oddly nephews usually are for Aunts).
Clear?
Gricely bear was my tribute to a recent post by Bayne in "The History of Analytic Philosophy" he writes -- and it is archived, too, in a more or less jocular vein:
"Now, Speranza is said to eat Grice Crispies, eats them at gricy spoons, and says "WOW!" more than any other living philosopher; moreover he is alleged to have been a a frequent guest on "The Grice is Right" or was that "The Grice is always Right"? And he killed him a gricely bear when he was only
three! Is the grice ever going to melt? What is the grice/earnings ratio for Grice toy manufacturers?"
So many questions to consider! But I _have_ time (Don't you hate that cliche, "So many [insert something you like, women, etc.], so little time" -- and hey, what's the good of the Grice Club if _I_ have to answer all the questions!
Etc.