Modes Other Than the Indicative ("Arrest the intruder" -- WoW:281)

Grice writes:

"We may, finally, consider the employment of the square brackets device to handle the possible difficulties for the Russellian account connected with the appearance of definite descriptions in sentences couched in a mood other than the indicative". A desideratum of the first paragraph or so.

"Arrest the intruder!"

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Logical form:

!([(E1x) (x is an intruder &] (Ay)(y is an intruder ) you will arrest y))

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since ! is 'of the denominational type T', this gets rewritten as:

(E1x)(x is an intruder) & !(Ay)(y is an intruder ) you will arrest y).

----- This move above is important, because Grice has extracted a 'presupposition' embedded in "!" -- so that the existence of an intruder is a matter of a noncontroversial _belief_ rather than within the range of the order. This is an implicature, for Grice? The problem is complex:

"Don't arrest the intruder!"

---- is different:

"I'm not worried that he won't arrest the intruder -- since there is no intruder".

(I can see what point "Don't arrest the intruder!" may have if the utterer knows or believes that there is no intruder).

Grice goes on to provide a still different rewrite:

(E1z)(z is an intruder) & !((E1x)(x is an intruder & (Ay)(y is an intruder ) you will arrest y)).

---- which looks like my cup of tea (complex enough to allow for an easy formulation of the implicatum and the entailment).

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Grice's gloss:

"Since the first clause of [the above] STATES [as per central speech act] that there is just one intruder, the

IMPERATIVAL CLAUSE

*cannot* be taken as enjoining taht the addressee SEE to it that there is JUST ONE INTRUDER."

which was the problem he had foreseen in the first paragraphs about Russell on this.

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But the considerations go deeper than that. In a way, it deals with Collingwood's ideas of 'presuppositions' involved everywhere. How pervasive can presuppositions be?

One may say that NOTHING has been STATED (Grice's word, WOW:281) when one utters

"Arrest the intruder!"

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Indeed, the first logical form he provides -- (2) -- has the existence quantifier WITHIN the imperative indicator.

So, it is a 'pragmatic' reading that turns the "Arrest the intruder!" into a case of stating -- and order proper.

This is different from

"The king of France is bald" ENTALING 'there is a king of France'

and

"The king of France is not bald" merely IMPLICATING that there is a king of France.

It would thus do to play with cancellation cases:

For "King of France" cases it is easy enough:

"The king of France ain't bald; France is a republic".

It is less obvious, as we have seen, to play with cancellation cases for imperatival moves that flout those presupposition requirements:

"Don't arrest the intruder!"

"Arrest the intruder!"

--- Perhaps, "Arrest the intruder, if you find it!"

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Grice's desiderata -- in dealing with Searle -- had been:

"A third objection [to Russell] (voiced by Searle, among others) is that one gets into trouble with the Russellian theory where one considers moods other than the indicative. To say, for example:

Give these flowers to your wife!

does not LOOK as if it translates into something like

"Make it the case that there is one and only one person who is married to you, who is female, and who is given these flowers to you."

---- actually, if it's a bunch of emerald flowers -- or 'flowers' -- as given by Lord Speranza to his heir, that may well be what is meant.

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