From: [PDF] The Linguist as Expert Witness - M Coulthard - the judge and/or jury. Even more difficult can be cross-examination which pits ...... Grice H P 1975 'Logic and conversation', in P Cole and J Morgan (eds), ...
www.business-english.ch/.../Linguist%20as%20Expert%20Witness.pdf
--- Coulthard is very good.
Variants:
"That's not really a conventional implicature; but more like a generalised conversational implicature".
"The report did not incur in any ambiguity -- or at least polysemy".
"He didn't say 'kill', did he?"
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"The issue is whether he was using the word poly-orthogonally".
"Aristotle would have agreed with his statement."
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"It's not a thing Kant would have said".
"The conviction does not follow".
""Electric chair"? I cannot see how THAT gets entailed."
----
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Although I see how Gricean implicature might apply in some courtroom scenarios, I would say on the whole it...doesn't. Taking time away from my busy schedule--er, sed-joo-wall, rather--to re-peruse the zany phunn of Logic and Convo., I note that, for one Grice claims that the convo. imp. follows from the...cooperative principle, which I think holds (tho'a bit vague), and he also suggests something like a contractural relation, which seems quite apt, ceteris paribus, as y'all say. But the courtroom, law, cops and robbbers--that is NOT ceteris paribus, JLster is it.
ReplyDeleteNow, a wealthy white collar suspect (Kelsey Grammar!) might agree, cooperate, and then his speech and testimony would probably show some Gricean-ness, quantity, maxims, so forth. But...Homie X doesn't play that game. That's not to say he's necessarily a dimwit, but he probably (not always) just rejects the contract (even in a somewhat...Hobbesian sense...like his interests are better served by being...a mobster, or outlaw, etc). So, while at times he might sort of follow some conversational rules, on the whole he probably doesn't--well he might cough up details, if he's aiming for a deal. Might not--might be combative, hostile, mendacious, etc. If he's like an "old school" wise guy, he might not say anything (plead the fifth, paysano).
Grice's system's seems a bit... genteel, at least in regard to the grimy realism of the American crime business.
Yes. And I was thinking:
ReplyDelete"She striped and went to bed"
--- This is Kramer's rewrite of Urmson's example, "He took of his trousers and went to bed". Urmson adds, "But surely I don't want in any way imply that he proceeded in the order of events I'm reporting". I gave the ref. to Horn and he quoted it in "Implicature" in the Blackwell Handbook of Pragmatics. It's from his "Philosophical Analysis", so now Urmson is one of the few Englishmen of Grice's generation listed in that thick (physically) volume!
----- Grice used the example again in "Presupposition and conversational implicature". I gave that ref. to Horn too, which merited his comment to the effect that Grice did some poor editing job of his own stuff! -- as a consequence, Horn could NOT quote directly from WoW, but had to provide the specific ref. for Grice's use of the 'trousers off' example.
Now, people focus on the malevolence of the attorney (surely exagerated) -- but I think it's best to focus on the ANSWERS as implicating:
"She took the pill and she died" -- "But I'm not suggesting in that order" -- SEEMS like irrational as a witness's report, but you never know.
In the case of "and" -- what it SAYS, for Grice, is just the truth-functional commutative thing, and there is no way that the utterer could be said to have breached the oath of truth. But my friend, Donal McEvoy, has suggested that a Griceian could surely NOT get away with his (CANCELLED) implicatures in the courtroom.
Consider:
"He didn't steal four cars: he stole five".
"Did he steal four cars?"
"Yes" (in fact he stole five). -- So again, it's the maximin, etc.
So Grice should have written:
"Some have objected that in cross-examination the cooperative principle does not hold. And I say: what gives? My WHOLE point in introducing it is that people LOSE their faith in rationality as a given. Rationality is NOT a given." When logicians build a calculus to represent the behaviour of "and" (as p /\ q) he is aiming at a MODEL. It's like frictionless pulleys, as Grice says. Surely one shouldn't be in the LEAST interest in mendacious chicanery.
The genteelness of the Griceian approach then is double-edged. The cooperative principle and its maxims, as he writes are "things any honest chap should abide by" -- never mind a criminal!
--- BUT on the other hand, you can't -- or rather you KANT -- as Strawson was arguing, call a logician a CRIMINAL because he is thinking that "and" is 'p /\ q' -- when nobody, Strawson seems to suggest, would take "She got an abortion and flew to England (but I don't suggest that she proceeded in that order") as the paradigm of 'and'.
---- (If she had the abortion in SPAIN she is a criminal; not on English soil).
Grice, on the other hand, prefers to stick to a very minimal semantic interpretation, where 'and' IS thought of as being represtented by 'p /\ q' AND any 'divergence' in use -- such as by clever logicians, or criminals in courtrooms -- should be thought of as 'unreasonable' or not as the case may be.
Plus, if robbers and criminals were to set the rule, surely we shouldn't be generalising via transcendental argumentation. It's the model of frictionless pulleys of two rational agents in perfect ideal conditions exchanging 'information' (which is regarded as 'true') that provides the model -- not 'repair' actions such as courtroom chitchat, or stuff.
Re-reading Log. AND Convo. I ...had, had a moment of doubt when Grice insists that natural language involves implications that formal logic cannot describe or something. In a courtroom, the formality is...already present; it may not be formal logic ala Bertrand Russell, but formal, and logical to an extent (tho' more evidentiary than deductive..at least initially. Or, ala Toulmin, they establish the warrant (the laws themselves, really), and backing, in hopes of proving the claim...ie guilt).
ReplyDeleteThe suspects/defendants might not be so interested in the legal formalism, but the lawyers and judges are (and jury sort of following orders), at least...ostensibly or something. So, it's not conversation per se. It's more like ...rule-following. A game of chess perhaps a better metaphor...conversations between educated humans at least might have some rules, but not like a courtroom or chess game does..that said, I found Grice's point on the contractural nature of discourse interesting, even sort of ...PoMo-ish (like yr dude Habermas)
Diogenes J.
Recall: I had to write on Juergen. I mean, I love him! -- but it was some sort of collaborative effort with this expert on Juergen who was giving the seminar, etc.
ReplyDeleteYes, good points about the formality. When Roger Jones was discussing the slogans in the retrospective epilogue to WoW (Studies in the Way of Words), to which I appended a few notes on what Grice initially called the retrospective foreword (later just titled, "foreword"), we noted that on strand 5 he goes in good detail as to what he meant by "FORMALITY" -- I suppose there is a sequence of short posts in this blog precising as per a precis the main idea.
So, it IS interesting to compare the use of 'formal' in the "Log. and Conv.", where he speaks indeed of the FORMALISTS (he never mentions ONE) and the informalists (he mentions Strawson, only, and in the previous lecture). To compare it, that is, with the use of 'formal' in his rather different use. It may not be surprising that Grice later changed the labels to "modernists" and "neo-traditionalists" to identify the 'formalists' and the 'informalists'.
Indeed, cross-examination is ALL about formality, and no implicatures really should be welcomed. They are, after all, not Logical!
If someone be transcribing in logical form what a witness is SAYING, the whole point of the manoeuvre by Grice is to stick to the truth-conditions. And if a truth-functor is used, stick to the truth-table for such a functor.
In which case, the lawyer has to be very intelligent, as they are, to have everything so tidy that, implicature-free, the questions will lead to a neat implicature-free report.
--- When Kramer was referring to a 'second' conversation occurring where the input is the implicature of the question that's still a different, 'structural' or organisational plane, I would think. At the level of what is SAID, no implicature, in principle, should be brought in.
Of course, there are pragmatic 'intrusions', as it were, but we have to be careful:
[Something killed Cock Robin. After all, he IS dead -- time counts]. Who killed him?
The fox or the sparrow or the hawk or ...
--- Grice is being optimistic about the 'finiteness' of the disjuncts. But he makes the point that reason alone is insufficient, and that it will all boil down to 'observation'. Unless he totally fled, of course.
(the killer -- sparrow -- I mean. To think a wren, wretched bird, was the causation of the tragedy irritates me).
So, it IS interesting to compare the use of 'formal' in the "Log. and Conv.", where he speaks indeed of the FORMALISTS (he never mentions ONE) and the informalists (he mentions Strawson, only, and in the previous lecture). To compare it, that is, with the use of 'formal' in his rather different use. It may not be surprising that Grice later changed the labels to "modernists" and "neo-traditionalists" to identify the 'formalists' and the 'informalists'.
ReplyDeleteWell, he means First order logic, really (tho'...leaves out Sir Iff ). But it's the political hints that interest me, somewhat, more than the "pragmatics". Grice's cooperative principle sounds nearly Rawlsian --or...related to social-contract theory, Lobbes, Hocke, et al......but like Rawls, Grice also has a slight Kantian aspect....tho' I say (and always have) along with Hobbes, rilly that any categorical imperative already presumes social order of some type, and law really. You don't universalize maxims in wars, riots, anarchies, famines, Katrinas, or get to speculate on the Original Position ala Rawls.
Even at the ugly level of discourse that holds. Polite, civil discussions are for the bourgeois (including the lawyerly and/or academic class); workers and the poor don't generally have time or the wherewithal.
That's not to say I don't respect Grice's maxims--I do. But it's about like IK's CI. Wouldn't it be swell if people did reflect on their actions, universalize (even "imagine yrself in his shoes," etc), engage in ethical discourse, BUT they don't. Ergo, Karl Marxes & CO appear to point out all the hypocritical BS of the philosophastry biz (not to say M's solutions are the right ones).
Good you focus on the political. It's refreshing. I was mentioning the use of 'formal' in his later writings because he can be very informal when he wants. I learned a few idioms by learning what he means by formal versus informal language. Or I saw them for the first time being used by a philosopher. Naive, informal idioms -- but to have a philosopher meditating on them was quite a thing.
ReplyDeleteYou are perfectly right about the bourgeoise thing. I recall being offended by reading Strawson's "Intellectual Autobiography" (in the Library of Living Philosophers): he credits al he is to Grice, really -- and goes on to tell a little anecdote while in Continental Europe. "But, sir, your approach is so petit-burgeoise it sucks!". "Well, I am a petit burgeoise", Sir Peter replied!
---- Grice was much more complex: He would not say his thing is a Rawlsian contract, but as he says in "Log. and Conv." -- I was discussing this elsehere with S. Bayne -- he is a quasi-contractualist. A quasi-contract has a specific definition to it!
And YES -- the point IS to be Kantian. When linguists forget about this -- or even anthropologists who think they are being Griceian -- you see the consequences. The charm of the scheme: 'principle' and 'maxims' -- and categories of quality, quantity, relation, and mode -- are so Kantian it hurts. Recall he does say he is "echoing Kant." In his previous lectures, he wasn't, and in his future lectures he will be even more (The Kant Lectures, no less, at Stanford).
But I think the charm of the intital Grice position does not rely on Form like that. In does not even rely on a close analysis of meaning. He is just saying -- to Strawson 1952 --: "and" is just truth-functional. If, when you say, "She had an abortion and flew to England", you implicate that the things happened in that order, that's NOTHING to do with logic -- but with a 'pragmatic pressure' (as he called it in his 1961 lectures) --. These 'pragmatic' factors are very general -- and so one is surprised that he thought cross-examinations, which give you a forehead ache anyway -- were extempt from them. The important thing is to distinguish between truth-conditions (and logical form) which pertains to 'semantic' (or expression meaning) and implicatre which pertains to another type of 'inference' other than monotonic. Since he is insistent that implicatures ARE cancellable without need to lose 'rational' face, it shouldn't do to emphasise the ultra-formal aspect of those pressures that originate them. It is this 'reactionary' Grice that appeals some (including me). As Horn would say, "Grice saves -- but then, there is no such thing as a free lunch"!