Grice and O'Shaughnessy on the wrong implicatures of 'trying'

From O'Shaughnessy's obituary, today:

"all physical action involves trying or striving. Even when you effortlessly lift your arm, the movement is generated by trying to move your arm, and the physical action of moving your arm is a complex of this trying, together with the physical movement which is its successful upshot."

Grice would disagree.

Grice is best remembered at Brandeis for a series of lectures in 1963, entitled, "Trying".

His example was:

"A man tries to topple a wall. He does not do it to topple the wall -- but to exercise his muscles".

In general, though, he agreed that there is a silly insidious implicature.

Note that people do say,

"It failed to shine, the sun, yesterday".

I.e. they use 'fail' in most loose contexts -- implicating little.

"Peter failed to remember my birthday".

-- Peter never TRIED to keep it in his silly mind!

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