Grice's Impetus

"A further impetus towards
a demand for the provision
of a visible"

on a clear day

"theory underlying ordinary
discourse came from my work"

-- all work and no play...

"on the idea
of Conversational Implicature,
which emphasised the radical
importance of distinguishing

(to speak loosely)

what OUR"

as Queen Victoria would have _them_,


"WORDS say or imply from
what WE"

as she again would have them,

"in uttering them IMPLY;
a distinction seemingly
denied by Wittgenstein, and
all too frequently ignored by Austin" (*)

But never by Queen Victoria.

i. We are amused.
ii. We are not amused.

The asymmetry, Grice notes, "here is not so much on the 'not', of "NOT amused" but on the external interpretation". "Is Her Majesty suggesting that "NOT" be taken as the "-" of, avant la lettre, Principia Mathematica?"

"The unviability of this suggestion is countersuggestive even to a non-royalist. For surely the utterer of (ii) won't be able to deny that _he_ does not exist as he utters (ii)."

"This leaves us with the internal reading only."

"The second problem is the privileged access. Are we to assume that Her Majesty has privileged access to her mind? We know she doth have privilege access to her beloved hubby of A Hun." "But that's neither here nor there", Grice adds in a footnote.

"Amused", "to conclude, is more of an implicatural thing unless you disclose the passive element to it. Aristotle's _pathos_. Surely the _content_ of what is said would require a full specification of the thing Her Majesty found unamusing _on context_." "I am told the disclosure is in her handwritten Journal, but frankly, I hvae a train to catch."

H P Grice, 'Reply to Richards', in R
Grandy/R Warner, eds. Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions,
Categories, Ends. Oxford, Clarendon Press, p.59