Speranza as a Gricean automaton

In unpublished papers, Eva Kittay got so tired of my counterexamples that she christened a mechanical apparatus she had deviced, "Speranza".

She wrote:

"We program "Speranza" with a rigid, sexist view of the world. The following categorising propositions are added to "Speranza"'s meaning relationships:


1. Anything that is a psycholoigst
necessarily is a man.

2. Anything that is a man
necessarily is not a woman.

3. Anything that is a woman
necessarily is not a man.

Now we tell "Speranza".

4. Enyon is a psychologist.

and ask

5. Can you deduce anything new?

Since "Speranza" believes

1. All psychologists are men.

Speranza naturally concludes

6. Enyon is a man.

Now suppose we input

7. Enyon is a woman.

and then watch the cognitive processing (so-called) that results. First, as we
predicted, "Speranza" turns red, he then deduces

8. Contrary to what you've just said,
Enyon is not a woman,
based on the inference principle, 1.
Aything that is a man
necessarily is not a woman.

From there, Speranza's cognitive processing continues as follows:

9. You _seem_ to think that Enyon is a woman.
But Enyon is, notably, not a woman.

"Speranza" emerges from cognitive processing, and finally responds:

10. Taken literally, that seems impossible,
given that Enyon is a man.
I accept the statement, though,
taken _figuratively_.

"Speranza" then adds

11. It is as if Enyon is a woman.

to his initial set of beliefs.

Now, Kittay (who is a philosopher) axes: What could

11. It is as if Enyon is a woman.

possibly mean?

It doesn't seem like anything a normal human conversationalist would conclude.

Are there any analogous behaviors among humans? What happens in metaphor recognition when an utterer and an addressee have very different beliefs about what is true and false?"

12. Depends on your point of view.

By courtesy of "Speranza"
Chair, Grice Circle.
who sleeps inside the box.