Grice, Cross-Examined

-- by J. L. Speranza,
--- for the Grice Club

It´s excellent to have Kramer´s commentary on his take on Grice´s take on "cross-examination", which I mentioned tangentially vis a vis J´s copetitive scenario of "two white-collar corporate executive sharing a firm handshake."

Let us revise Grice´s wording then, about the cross-examination. First let´s revise briefly the cooperative principle and its four categories and maxims:

CP: Cooperate

Qual -- 1. try to make a trustworthy move.
------- 2. try to have adequate evidence
Quant - 3. be as informative as you should be.
------- 4. don´t be MORE informative than you should be.
Relatio 5. be relevant
Modus 6. avoid ambiguity
------- 7. be brief, i.e. avoid unnecessary prolixity (sic).
------- 8. be orderly
------- 9. be perspicuous (sic) -- avoid obscurity of expression
-------10. frame what you say in terms that faciliate any reply.

Grice writes:

"We have to remember to take into account a secondary range of cases"

-- the primary ones being the one HE is concerned with, qua philosopher lecturing in Harvard about "logic and conversation". Although this wording is 1987, so he knew his thing had been applied to a number of fields, etc.

He goes on:

like cross-examinations,"

--- I noted that "Kramer will dislike the 'like'", but I was being a pedant. There is hardly a way to avoid a solecism here. My amusement with: "such as" hardly saves the problem, "such as cross-examination", because the comparative particle reappears in "as". The best way is perhaps, "sc.".

Grice goes on to expand on why he found cross-examination of interest.

"in ((cross-examination)) even the common

objectives are *spurious*."


One may quib as to what he means by "common objective". When I wrote my PhD dissertation, on rationality and conversation (or something like that -- it was entitled, "Thing you need to write for people to call you ´doctor´" only to have to tell people that I dislike being called a ´doctor´ which I restrict to the medics --) I played with symbols like

GA in intersection with GA = nonzero.

I.e. there must be an objective held by A and an objective held by A. This is what we mean "common". It means, "shared". It means "mutual". It does NOT mean "common or garden"! I was such a minimalist in my PhD dissertation -- I wanted to avoid ANY mention of "substance" -- such is the scare of the counter-examples! -- that I assumed such "common objective" to be a "meta" one. I.e. A and B agree to share on how they will try and respect the REAL ground-floor or first-floor objectives that they may have. So talk of "common objective", even if following Grice´s strict wording in "Logic and Conversation" IS a trick, and in the 1967 wording he does refer to "second-order" goal, etc. This second-order goal, incidentally, applies to the OTHER type of scenario that Grice discusses again in 1987, the "over the fence" talk "we engage from time to time". (I skipped that passage in the "copetitive" post Kramer was commenting -- and I may copy and paste the passage in a future post, or something).

Grice goes on then that cross-examination relates to the "common objective". He also notes that this ´common objective´is then

apparent rather than
real;

---- I take Grice as amusing himself there, as he amused me, who once tried to read Bradley´s book, "Appareance and reality" -- and failed! (It IS a handsome volume, though). The whole point of philosophy is to DENY Bradley´s book! There is no such thing as "apparent" VERSUS real. I know Grice is not talking chairs and tables here, but -- still!

---

He goes on to refer to cross examination as a

"joint enterprise ((which)) is a
simulation, rather than an instance,
of even the most minimal conversational
cooperation;"

Indeed, as Kramer suggests, Grice is going over the board here. Cross-examination can be a neat thing. No wonder so many films (and even theatre plays) feature long stretches of them. It´s fascinating for a closer study along Gricean lines as I think C. C. Heath has done in England. (His contributions to that excellent collection, ed. by Atkinson (of Oxford), and Heritage, "Conversation analysis", opened a new door for me -- the courtroom´s door!).

Grice goes on that cross-examination still

"honour the cooperative principle"

and its attendant maxims --. It is important here to see the cooperative principle as COMPRISING the maxims. The cooperative principle DOES NOT EXIST without the maxims. I have to be explicit about this because in some attempts to calculate an implicature, one hears of steps that "skip" the maxims and go straight to the "principle" as if it made any sense sans the maxims. E.g. one aims at being "relevant" (or informative, or clear, or trustworthy) only provided that one aims at being cooperative.

And Grice says that cross-examination HONOURS the cooperative principle and its ((10)) attendant maxims -- what I´ve called the conversational catalogue that surely Moses brought from Sinai, too --

"at least to the exent
of aping its application."

This also amuses me, since I like an ape. Recall Burrough´s novel, "King of the Apes". I think Grice, who was a good "philosophical biologist" should have shown more respects for the beasts. Striclty, we are apes.

Now onto Kramer:

"I'm not sure I share Grice's take on cross-examination. He is,
of course, right that a cross-examination is not a conversation between the lawyer and the witness."

Where people are starting to use "conversation" in scare quotes. I once wrote a paper for a meeting of the International Semiotic Association, which I entitled, "Conversation and ""Conversation"". I argued that Grice is interested in "conversation", not in conversation. A nice conversation followed the presentation, but perhaps it was a "conversation".

Kramer:

"The first principle of cross-examination is
-----
----- "Never ask a question to which you
----- do not know the answer.""
-----

Excellent!

Kramer editorialises:

"What kind of conversation has one party
contribute no new information to his
interlocutor?"

Exactly. What kind of conversation. But one can say, aping the word, "what kind of "conversation"". It would be naive to think that Grice, qua philosopher, is wedded to a NOTION of conversation. I don´t think it is the task of a philosopher (of language, even) to DEFINE "conversation". So, since what he refers to when he says "converation" can encompass things that other people may NOT see as "conversation" is best to have the scare quotes to hand. Recall that Grice is trying to be witty. In 1955, in "Ethics", Nowell-Smith (who was a tutor at Trinity, the college that shares a wall with Grice´s: St. John´s) was already offering a VERY sophisticated theory of what he called "contextual implication". In 1962, he was expanding on that in the Aristotelian Society. Grice had to stick to his own emphasis, and speak of "conversational" implicature, which is merely Nowell-Smith´s "contextual implication" with a vengeance.

(When Nowell-Smith died last year, his obit disclosed that he left Trinity because he found Grice overwhelming).

Kramer:

"But I think HPG is mistaking the phsyical "conversation" between
the lawyer and witness for the logical one between the witness and
the jury. In that conversation, the part of the jury is
played by the lawyers."

Excellent point.

"First, the jury "says" to the witness, through
the lawyer who called him,
-----
-----"Tell us things you know that will
-----make us find for the party for whom
-----you are testifying."
-----
-----The witness responds."

Very good. I agree.

"As ((the witness responds)), opposing counsel
can challenge his testimony, i.e., enforce some of
the maxims, by objection."

Excellent to have them.

"The classic objections are that testimony is "incompetent, irrelevant, or immaterial.""

Kramer goes on to summarise them for us:

"Incompetence is about structural, as opposed
to personal, credibility. Hearsay evidence is
the classic case of incompetent testimony. The witness
didn't observe the events he is reporting. He is,
therefore, an unreliable reporter of those events. He
is violating the maxim of quality."

-- Indeed, maxim 2, if one needs to be a pedant. (I don´t!). But I think Grice is right in distinguishing a supermaxim:

the truth maxim: SAY THE TRUTH! (and nothing but the truth)

and the two aspects conductive to it:
-- avoid falsehoods. -- the same thing, really, and
-- be reliable.

"Do NOT say that for which you lack adequate evidence."

This emphasis on the "adequate evidence" I take to be Grice "aping" Gettier, who had criticised Ayer (never mind him!) AND Plato, and was challenging the theory of "knowledge" as "justified true belief", where justified HAS to refer to "adequate" versus other types of "evidence". And how do we define "adequate" in non-circular ways? Surely, if "adequate" relies on the truth-value of the proposition in question, these TWO aspects of the category Grice is considering would be conflated. Nothing wrong with THAT, but if one is amusing oneself with Kant and Kantian echoes, one may want to ignore that.

Kramer continues to the SECOND type of objection. Challenge to "irrelevance".ç

"Relevance speaks for itself."

In fact, the OED is clear about this: ´relevant´ was introduced in the English language (I believe) as a technical piece of jargon in SCOTS (if you can believe that), "law". That´s why Grice´s maxim, "be relevant", is hard to translate to the classical languages, or lingos deriving from the classics -- such as French or Italian.

Kramer goes on within his expansion on this second type of "objection" to a witness being cross-examined:

"A witness must answer the jury's question with information
the jury can reasonably find useful to its deliberations. Irrelevant
questions are not allowed. ("Did you see the man
who is accused of murder steal a car two year ago?").

And then, as we´ve seen in films, plays, etc. -- there´s the objection to the objection. Till the film or the play MUST proceed, and no further objections to objections are allowed, or something.

Regarding the third dimension on which an objection can be raised, Kramer comments:

"Materiality, I think, had to do with information
that is irrelevant on account of its degree. In Federal
courts, relevance and materiality are now handled
by the requirement that the testimony
be "of consequence." As any conversational move should be!"

--- Yes. Plus, it brings Hume back to the picture! For what IS a "consequence". An import. It should be "of consequence". This is different from the testimony HAVING "a consequence". Surely a consequentialist will argue that all testimony is, some way or other, "of consequence". Consequence also deals with the dovetailing principle emphasised by Grice. A conversational move m" should dovetail with move m´. m" should somehow "follow" from m´. It´s all Sequiturs. Nonsequiturs are, literally, of "no consequence". They don´t follow!

Kramer comments:

"But opposing counsel cannot object to
there being too little information in the witness's
testimony."

Right. Note that 3 and 4 -- i.e. maxims 3 and 4 -- especially 4, which Kasher finds VERY otiose -- he could do with some otium -- disfavours EXTRA-informative ("do not be MORE informative than is required"). Surely it would be a very rude cooperative principle that disfavours lovely volunteered conversational expansions (As Nowell-Smith liked to say, there´s nothing you can do against conversational boorishness, or something).

Kramer:

"For that, we need cross-examination. That's where
the jury asks, this time through the mouth of the opposing
counsel, "What else should we know?" and the witness is
made to reveal his drug-addiction, his near-sightedness, his
personal feelings toward one or the other of the parties, his
affair with the prosecutor, and whatever else the maximum of quantity
demands for a full response to the jury's question about what
the witness knows that will help it decide the case."

--- Usually, that´s where the film (or theatre play) gets interesting, too.

Kramer:

"During cross-examination, the first party's counsel gets
to enforce the maxims, and he may call the witness
on "re-direct" examination to answer any more questions
that he believes the jury would want answered."

That´s very good:

So, we now have to expand Grice´s rather hasty commentary:

"secondary-type of exchange"

such as "cross-examination". Footnote: "And redirect examination" vide:

"redirect examination in Griceaian key" -- the International Journal of International Pragmatics.

Kramer:

"This procedure is repeated until the maxims
have been satisfied, i.e., until the conversation
has appropriately ended."

-- which is very good. So, beware of Grice´s "apes" and stuff! He does NOT mean bad!