Grice writes that rather than arguing for the new precept or slogan, his
"primary aim", rather "is to determine
how any such distinction between
meaning and use is to be drawn,"
---- but this is what Ullman tried, and Ullman is no philosopher. So Grice goes on:
"and where lie the limits
of its PHILOSOPHICAL utility"
----- People (I don't care about people but I do care when people include philosophers!) usually forget about those manifestos by Grice. There is another in the earlier reprints of, e.g. "Presupposition and conversational implicature" -- not in WoW --: i.e. manifestos about the 'philosophical utility'.
Grice was NEVER interested in the nature of conversation per se, or the helpfulness, or cooperative principle, or even IMPLICATURE. He was a philosopher, not a linguist! His only interest was in the 'philosophical utility', which he found MAJOR when it came to 'implicature' (if conversational, rather than 'conventional').
In a way, it reminds me (and others -- e.g. my tutor E. A. Rabossi) J. L. Austin in the last lecture for the William James series -- "How to do things with words". After pedantic distinctions on rhemic, phonic, phatic, illocution, perlocution, locution, and explicit performatives, Austin adds, "And the fun is when you start to apply this to philosophy!".
----
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The "Meaning = use" (or meaning ≠ use) issue entertains for a few nano-seconds. "Meaning as use" seems to imply a somewhat anthropological view of language. Wittgenstein's PI, while not our fave work of philosophastry was not lacking at least a few behaviorist elements...tho' that interpretation tends to irritate traditional and/or religious Witt.-types.
ReplyDeleteIn some circumstances, M.= U. would hold. Say a thieves' jargon, or that of gangsters. Or even techie jargon. The word "blog" and many other computing/net terms had no meaning until what last 10 years or so. So, per "ord. language" the meaning of words does change, and depend on how people use it, though many words (the main latin roots....) will remain unchanged.
Even then ...the fundamental latinate words (or hellenic perhaps) might be used (or misused for some language mavens) in odd or ironic ways.
"Get thee to a nunnery!" said Hamlet to Ophelia. Read the footnote and some Oxbridge type informs you that "nunnery" was also slang for...whorehouse at the time. Same for spanish and phrench to some degree (tho' it's quite difficult for most Mericans to pick up on a parisian's wit). Double-entendre, as they say. But I don't think that's a topic most academic philo-types address. They want the language controlled at all time, except perhaps for the flights of whimsy typical of Oxbridge.
My lawyerish view is that "meaning" is wholly arbitrary, like "legal tender." When we say that a word "means" something (semantically, not like spots vis a vis measles), we mean that the word can be offered as legal tender of a given usage.
ReplyDeleteR: I offer to paint your fence for $5.
E: I accept.
What does "accept" mean? You can scour the dictionary for meanings, but all it means in the given context is that the offeroR has to paint the fence, and the offereE has to pay R $5, and R has to accept $5 as payment.
No one cares what "accept" means; what we care about is what it DOES: it creates a contract in the context in which it is used, because that's the law. If E had merely meant to say "I accept my fate" or "I accept your willingness to paint my fence for $5 but not your offer to do so," E would have had to say more than "I accept, and in each case, "accept" would have "meant" something different because it would have communicated something different.
I realize that "I accept" is a stark example of an illocutionary act, but the point holds for less dramatic situations:
Q. Which way to the Crete?
A. Go left at the fork.
Do I care what "left" means? My guide has used it to tender the advice that I can get to Crete by heading Westish at a fork on my current north-facing road. If I don't get there by doing so, I can criticize my guide, because "left" is "legal tender" of the advice I have taken from it. It is useful to say that "left" means "toward the side we commonly know by that word" just as it makes sense to say that it will take several hours to complete the journey, when we mean more precisely that the minute hand on my watch will circle the dial several times before I get to Crete.
Time is just a medium of exchange, as is money, as is "meaning." Thus, whenever A might ask "what does 'x' mean," A could as well ask "what can I actionably infer from U's using 'x' in this context?" In the absence of special facts, the answer depends on how people who speak our common language would understand "x" in that context. We reify that common understanding with the word "meaning," but it's merely shorthand for the "actionable inferences of usage." I suggest that serious discussion of the use of words is better served by asking what actionable inference can be drawn from the use of a locution than by asking what it, or any consituent of it, "means."
Very good points, J and Larry. I will analyse tender (on occasion).
ReplyDeleteIndeed 'x means' is vague. Perhaps the clearest Grice got here was, naturally enough, back in 1948, before the corruptions!
So I will quote. I especially love his use of 'vaguely'.