Tap-Dancing Grice

Tapper, who contributes here, should NOT be offended!

It's a lovely metaphor, or as he prefers, using the Duffy-sound, metaphtonymy.

You see, he was challenging Nowell-Smith. Nowell-Smith, _pace_ Grice, defines the 'contextual implication' as including 'logical sense'.

Tapper objects,

"Why, you might just as well say that if I say, "She has a bee in her bonnet", the sense is that an insect is in her head-cover, and that I am also implying that, on occasion."

The problem is "sense". People with "sense" don't use it (like Occam). Consider this from worldwide words, which I received today:


"'What the little boy shot at', signif[ies] an effort rewarded with nothing. The sense [emphasis mine. JLS] of it is that the little boy shot his gun, as little boys will, at nothing at all - his only target, you see, was the joy of shooting and the glorious noise it made."

The problem here is, for Frege, then, the 'reference'.


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Ref.
Frege, G. "On sense and reference", tr. from the Hun to the Angle by Peter Thomas Geach. Retr. again from the Hun to a more contemporary Angle by M. Beaney.