My Grice And Other Animals

It should not surprise us that 'grice' means various animals:

-- it is held to be the plural (or collective, as I prefer) of 'grouse'. As in Haddon's famous painting, The woodcocks. Surely it would be _sad_ if all our game from a play of hunting turns out to be _one_ grouse.

-- it means 'pig' in exctinct Scot. The thing survive in grice-berry, a weed that grows in Aberdeen. And in "Grice Law".

Himself, he was obsessed with 'pirot'.

-- He thought it cognate with Locke's parot (Essay Concerning Humane Undertanding, 1690).

-- but uncognate with OED, 'pirot', a sort of fish.



----

The problems are serious. The clearest source here is J. R. Perry, who contributes on this in PGRICE.

If we accept Grice's theory of meaning, it would seem as if animals can't mean. For Grice requires that 'x means that p' be turned to a quantifying in context regarding the availability of an inference element such that for some intended recipient on the part of the meaning creature to the effect that the correlation device in the implementation of a toke of X should get it across". "Surely my rat cannot do that", Perry complains.

Grice grants. "I grant that cockroaches will find it hard to 'mean' on my account, but what gives?"

The idea is that in

U intends that "p"

"p" is not understood as the "sentence" p, for pirots cannot, really, talk.


Kramer agrees. He proposes:

animals man


they perceive x they perceive x

they think

they think again ("Better think twice")

they ACT they act.



In his view ("Scared by Stevenson", this blog):


"Humans break up the inquiry [as to what spots mean, measles?], asking

i. first what the intellect
may infer from the thing perceived, and

ii. moving on the what action should follow."

I would propose that

a. Those spots mean measles

is a case in point. Vs.

b. The decrease of beatings in his
heart seems to indicate that
the decrease of temperature has
gotten so low that he is _dead_.

Implicating, "There is nothing really we can DO about it, NOW".

---


Kramer adds:

"In the case of more reflexive
[instinctive. JLS] responders
[that we are], the inference can
[nay, will. JLS] be skipped and
we can use "mean" where the thing
perceived gives the 'addressee'
if you must, a pretty good reason
to take a specific action.
To an antelope, the scent of
a lion means "run.""

--- I'm glad you use the scare quotes!