Speranza
--- We are considering that strand in the work of Grice: 'presupposition', as pointed by Jones re: some work by Neale.
---- Some excerpts below on Collingwood on 'the science of absolute PRESUPPOSITIONS', as per wiki.
Jones has commented on that at the CITY OF ETERNAL TRUTH (this blogger).
It may, I hope, connect with Grice's serious idea of 'eschatology'. In "WoW", he cared to reprint, out of the blue, as it were, since it does not connect with much else, his 1987 (so this is not really a _reprint_) essay on "Philosophical eschatology". Recall that Section II of WoW he cared to title, "Explorations in Semantics and Metaphysics", so it fits.
For Grice, Metaphysics has two realms:
--- metaphysics proper, or ontology, rather.
--- eschatology.
It seems that ontology deals with categories as given -- the 'synthetic a priori', as it were?
But there should be room for a discipline that he calls "philosophical" eschatology (as opposed to theological eschatology, of course). The idea is that the "philosopher" (rather than the scientist, say, so here he may disagree with Collingwood in this being a _science_ (of absolute presuppositions) has the ability to CHALLENGE a given set of 'allegedly' absolute presuppositions.
The philosopher considers the categories that define an ontology, but he can also explore what Grice calls transcategorial barriers and epithets.
This is interesting in that Grice goes on to apply this to a trick of a word,
"right".
As in
"That's right"
"That's alright".
He takes up neo-Thrasymachus's position: 'right' is POLITICAL right. Grice opposes this view (which he identifies with Nagel's, a former student of his) with neo-Socrates (Rawls) for which the 'right' is the MORAL right.
The outcome of any dialogue between the positivist and the moralist then may well be defined in terms of eschatological remarks. It takes a change of the 'absolute' presuppositions to challenge that there is, say, a priority of the moral right over the political right. And so on.
--- And so on!
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Pierce/An_Essay_on_Metaphysics_(R._G._Collingwood)
Chapter IV of Collingwood's "Essay in metaphysics" is entitled, "On Presupposing".
There are statements, questions, and suppositions.
That which is stated is something that can be true or false.
Following a convention that he does not like, Collingwood will call this a proposition, and stating it is propounding it.
It is not clear that Collingwood makes an important distinction between a statement and a proposition.
Neither does he say explicitly that they are the same thing.
Every statement is the answer to a question.
This question is always logically prior to the statement.
In scientific thinking, the question is also temporally prior, although it persists while it is being answered.
For example, an everyday observation like
"That is a clothes-line"
is preceded logically, but perhaps not in time, by a question like
"What is that line for?"
Every question has a presupposition, which is logically prior to the question.
The question "What is that line for?" has the presupposition that the line is for something.
When a question has an unmade presupposition, it is said that the question does not arise.
For example, the question
"When did you stop beating your spouse?"
usually does not arise.
[I discussed this elsewhere. Grice refers to the wife in WoW:Presupp. and Conv. Impl, and most notably in that section that Neale was complaining Grice did not reprint in WoW, in "Causal theory of perception". Grice uses,
"When did you stop beating your wife?"
along with "My wife is in the kitchen or the bathroom", and "He has beautiful handwriting" and "She was poor but she was honest" as the FOUR examples. This one is of 'presupposition'. I discussed this elsewhere, "Tu non cessas comedere ferrum", You do not cease to eat iron, an old sophisma.
That a supposition causes a question to arise is the logical efficacy of the supposition.
The supposition need not be a proposition in order to have logical efficacy.
For example, in commerce, the supposition that people are dishonest causes receipts to be requested.
But a request for a receipt is not an accusation that somebody is in fact dishonest.
Assumptions are suppositions made by choice.
Not all suppositions are assumptions.
It can be rude to accuse people of making wrong assumptions when they are only making suppositions.
Presuppositions that are themselves answers to questions are relative presuppositions.
There are also absolute presuppositions, which are not answers to any questions.
--- These should interst us as we walk towards the city of eternal truth. Or not!
They are not propositions.
They are neither true or false.
For example, the pathologist works with the absolute presupposition that every disease has a cause.
This is not something that can be discovered or verified, like the existence of microbes.
It is taken for granted.
The metaphysician's job is not to propound this or that absolute presupposition, because it cannot be done.
The metaphysician's job is to propound the proposition that this or that supposition is an absolute presupposition.
The next Chapter, V, Collingwood entitles, "[Metaphysics as] The Science of Absolute Presuppositions".
Thinking comes in grades.
In low-grade, unscientific thinking, we do not recognize that every thought answers a question, much less that every question has a presupposition.
Low-grade thinking cannot give rise to metaphysics.
It does give rise to the "realist" theory whereby knowledge is "intuition" or "apprehension" of what confronts us.
The harm of Realism comes from thinking that it is re-doing, only better, what people like Descartes and Kant have done.
As higher animals can use energy in bursts to overcome obstacles, so humans can use high-grade, scientific thinking to transform their world.
High-grade thinking depends on:
1. Increased mental effort, with which comes the asking of questions.
2. Skill in directing this effort:
Questions that may be grammatically one, although they are logically many, must be
disentangled and resolved into their components; arranged so that a question whose answer is presupposed by another question precedes that question.
This work of disentangling and arranging is analysis.
It is the work of detecting presuppositions.
Detecting absolute presuppositions is metaphysical analysis.
But all analysis raises the question of whether a given presupposition is relative or absolute.
Thus metaphysics is born together with science. (Surely Collingwood was well read in Carnap -- and Grice was _hearing_ all this).
As invented by Aristotle, metaphysics (after the nonsense of ontology is removed) is the science of absolute presuppositions.
This will be shown by the examples in Part III. Meanwhile, we are working what this formulation of metaphysics means.
Telling whether a presupposition is relative or absolute:
--- can be difficult, since acknowledging the existence of absolute presuppositions is out of fashion in modern Europe;
--- cannot be done by introspection, since this only focusses on what we are already aware of, and in low-grade thinking, we are not even aware of the questions that our propositions answer;
requires analysis.
This analysis can be done with a willing subject trained in some scientific work, but unused to metaphysics.
He will be "ticklish" about his absolute presuppositions, but not the relative.
He will accept an invitation to try to justify the latter, but not the former. However, the subject will lose value as he gains experience.
It is better to experiment on oneself.
Ordinary science identifies relative presuppositions for future study.
Metaphysics, absolute presuppositions.
Absolute presuppositions can cause "numinous terror" (in the terminology of Rudolf Otto).
In the past, people had "magical" ways to deal with this terror.
Now we have abolished magic, so we frown on metaphysics, denying the existence of absolute presuppositions.
This is neurosis. Successful eradication of metaphysics will eradicate science and civilisation.
Pseudo-metaphysics asks whether a given absolute presupposition is true, and why.
Answers to such questions are nonsense.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Thursday, November 3, 2011
"Have you stopped beating your wife?" Grice and Collingwood on absolute presuppositions
Speranza
Grice, WoW: 279, ref. to: "the inquiry whether you have left off beating your wife".
Neale was referring to this when he was objecting ("bad judgement"?, "error in judgement"?) on the part of Grice to EXclude the four examples in "Causal theory". These were:
Have you stopped beating your wife?
My wife is either in the kitchen or in the bathroom [garden].
She was poor, but she was honest (and her parents were the same, till she met a city feller and she lost her honest name, cfr. variant version: victim of a squire's whim, first he loved her, then he left her, and she lost her honest naym."
He has beautiful handwring.
Grice:
"This [Third] Section is here omitted,
since the material which it presents
is substantially [but not accidentally,
Neale argues] the same as that discussed
in ['Logic and Conversation']. Under the
general heading of "Implication"[loaded], I
introduced
FOUR
examples, one exemplifying what is
commonly [oh, so commonly] called
the notion of 'presupposition'
----- "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
--- the other THREE being instances
of what I later [in 1965, "Logic and
Conversation", Oxford lectures, now in
the Grice collection] called 'implicature'.
In one case of conventional implicature
----- "She was poor, but, boy, wasn't she honest."
---
"... and in the other two of nonconventional implicature"
to wit:
"He has beautiful handwriting" -- particularised.
"My wife? Either in the garden or the kitchen, I expect" -- generalised.
-----
"With regard to the four selected
examples I raised FOUR
different questions, on the answers
to which depended some IMPORTANT
[oh, so importantly important!]
distinctions [he said smugly] between
the examples. These questions were
--- whether the truth of what is implied
is a necessary condition of the original statement [or query, as in "Have you stopped...?"]'s possessing a truth-value.
---- whether the implication possessed one
or both of the features of detachability
and cancellability.
---- whether the presence of the implication
is ["or is not", Grice redundantly adds] a
matter of the meaning of some particular
word or phrase.
"I also raised the question of the connection, in some cases, of the implciation and general principles governing the use of language, in particular ["the the 'wife in the garden or kitchen' example] with what I later called the first maxim of Quality." This should read, "Quantity", since it's all about a conversational move being OVER-Strong, or under-weak, as it were. "On the basis of this material I suggested the possibility of the existence of a class of nonconventional imlpications which I later called conversational implicatures."
I.e. "Have you stopped beating your wife?" left far behind! _Pace_ Strawson!
Cheers.
Grice, WoW: 279, ref. to: "the inquiry whether you have left off beating your wife".
Neale was referring to this when he was objecting ("bad judgement"?, "error in judgement"?) on the part of Grice to EXclude the four examples in "Causal theory". These were:
Have you stopped beating your wife?
My wife is either in the kitchen or in the bathroom [garden].
She was poor, but she was honest (and her parents were the same, till she met a city feller and she lost her honest name, cfr. variant version: victim of a squire's whim, first he loved her, then he left her, and she lost her honest naym."
He has beautiful handwring.
Grice:
"This [Third] Section is here omitted,
since the material which it presents
is substantially [but not accidentally,
Neale argues] the same as that discussed
in ['Logic and Conversation']. Under the
general heading of "Implication"[loaded], I
introduced
FOUR
examples, one exemplifying what is
commonly [oh, so commonly] called
the notion of 'presupposition'
----- "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
--- the other THREE being instances
of what I later [in 1965, "Logic and
Conversation", Oxford lectures, now in
the Grice collection] called 'implicature'.
In one case of conventional implicature
----- "She was poor, but, boy, wasn't she honest."
---
"... and in the other two of nonconventional implicature"
to wit:
"He has beautiful handwriting" -- particularised.
"My wife? Either in the garden or the kitchen, I expect" -- generalised.
-----
"With regard to the four selected
examples I raised FOUR
different questions, on the answers
to which depended some IMPORTANT
[oh, so importantly important!]
distinctions [he said smugly] between
the examples. These questions were
--- whether the truth of what is implied
is a necessary condition of the original statement [or query, as in "Have you stopped...?"]'s possessing a truth-value.
---- whether the implication possessed one
or both of the features of detachability
and cancellability.
---- whether the presence of the implication
is ["or is not", Grice redundantly adds] a
matter of the meaning of some particular
word or phrase.
"I also raised the question of the connection, in some cases, of the implciation and general principles governing the use of language, in particular ["the the 'wife in the garden or kitchen' example] with what I later called the first maxim of Quality." This should read, "Quantity", since it's all about a conversational move being OVER-Strong, or under-weak, as it were. "On the basis of this material I suggested the possibility of the existence of a class of nonconventional imlpications which I later called conversational implicatures."
I.e. "Have you stopped beating your wife?" left far behind! _Pace_ Strawson!
Cheers.
"Have you stopped beating your wife?" Grice on presuppositions
Speranza
Of course, this is about Lacan. See what happens when you start to using Husserlian jargon without disimpicating it.
The Impossibility of Philosophy without Presuppositions; Sublation
In the introduction to the first chapter of his Greater Logic ,[63] Hegel discusses his goal of creating
"a philosophy without presuppositions".
The locus classicus then is Hegel.
To put it simply, Hegel concludes that it is impossible to begin a logical analysis without intentionally, if tentatively, adopting presuppositions.
One needs an initial working hypothesis or abduction.
We have just explained that Hegel criticized other philosophers for basing their theories on unexamined presuppositions.
Does this mean that Hegel himself is open to the same criticism despite his denials?
Hegel would argue
"No."
The problem with most philosophers is not that they start from presuppositions, which is inevitable.
It is that they never return to critique their initial presuppositions.
Presuppositions should only be accepted tentatively as working hypotheses to be developed and tested.
Hegel argued that his totalizing philosophy and dialectic logic of Aufhebung (frequently translated into the dreadful English word "sublation") always turns back on itself.
This enables one not only to develop the logical consequences of a hypothesis but also to return to and analyze the starting point—to test the hypothesis.
The essential requirement for the science of logic is not so much that the beginning be a pure immediacy, but rather that the whole of the science be within itself a circle in which the first is also the last and the last is also the first.
"For how can I start stopping beating my wife," asked the unmarried bachelor.
Sublation, then, is the concept we need to understand Grice's disimplicature.
It is a process by which internal contradictions of earlier concepts are resolved, but not in the sense of suppressing difference.
The German word aufheben means paradoxically to preserve as well as negate.
("No, I'm not married" -- "The Bachelor's Diary").
"To sublate" [i.e., "aufheben"] has a twofold meaning in [German]: on the one hand it means to preserve, to maintain, and equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to.
Even "to preserve" includes a negative element, namely, that something is removed from its immediacy and so from an existence which is open to external influences, in order to preserve it.
A bachelor can hardly start stopping beating his wife.
Thus what is sublated is at the same time preserved.
It has only lost its immediacy but it is not by that account annihilated.[66]
Heidegger noted this when he remarked,
"But then, Noth noths." Carnap laughed at this.
In trying to understand the dialectic, many Americans are hampered by having been taught a crude caricature of sublation as a simplistic trinity of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
That is, a thesis is presented, an internal contradiction or antithesis in the original thesis is identified, and the two are resolved in a harmonizing synthesis, which destroys all previous contradictions.
This serves as a new thesis, starting the logical process over.
This formula is designed more as a means to discredit Karl Marx (who expropriated Hegel's method) than to understand philosophy.
Indeed, this is how I was introduced to it in kindergarten. ("This is not your pencil.")
The problem with this description is that it suggests that sublation destroys all difference and deviation by converting them into an oppressive compromise.
Rather, as the German term implies, sublation preserves, as well as negates, the prior concept. Sublation is not merely tertiary—it is quadratic.
Thesis and antithesis exist in contradiction.
Through sublation these contradictions are simultaneously resolved into synthesis so that at one moment thesis and antithesis are revealed as identical.
Yet there always remains an unmediated moment, a hard kernel of unsublated contradiction, a phantom fourth, the trace or differance of deconstruction, that resists mediation.
That is, in sublation (or disimplicature, if you mustn't) we have not only the thesis and antithesis and the moment of identity of synthesis, but also simultaneously the moment of difference which resists sublation.
In sublation the difference identified in the earlier stage is always preserved because it is always a necessary moment in the development of the later.
To gussy it up with more fashionable terminology, the earlier concept is at one moment always already the subsequent concept, but simultaneously the very existence of the latter concept requires that the earlier concept is not yet the later concept.
Now, if we change the 'rules', as Quine has it, and allow that a bachelor can 'get a wife', he surely can later start stopping beating her. Or not.
Sublation (i.e., synthesis) can never destroy the differentiation between self and other (thesis and antithesis) precisely because sublation is the recognition that at one moment self and other are truly the same while at another moment they are truly different.
Moreover, the moment of identity is itself different from the self-identity of self and other.
In other words, in the differentiation of self and other, identity is a possibility.
It is through sublation that the possibility of identity is actualized. But at the same time, self and other must remain differentiated in order for actualization to remain possible.
Hence Hegel's famous slogan,
"the identity of identity and non-identity."
-- now in the coat of arms of the Hegel family, in Hanover.
This is a necessary result of the circularity of the dialectic.
Although worded in terms of the proactive resolution of what initially appeared to be contradictions into an implicit and inevitable whole, sublation is simultaneously the retroactive breakdown of what initially appeared as a harmonious whole into unresolved inherent contradiction.
And so on.
Of course, this is about Lacan. See what happens when you start to using Husserlian jargon without disimpicating it.
The Impossibility of Philosophy without Presuppositions; Sublation
In the introduction to the first chapter of his Greater Logic ,[63] Hegel discusses his goal of creating
"a philosophy without presuppositions".
The locus classicus then is Hegel.
To put it simply, Hegel concludes that it is impossible to begin a logical analysis without intentionally, if tentatively, adopting presuppositions.
One needs an initial working hypothesis or abduction.
We have just explained that Hegel criticized other philosophers for basing their theories on unexamined presuppositions.
Does this mean that Hegel himself is open to the same criticism despite his denials?
Hegel would argue
"No."
The problem with most philosophers is not that they start from presuppositions, which is inevitable.
It is that they never return to critique their initial presuppositions.
Presuppositions should only be accepted tentatively as working hypotheses to be developed and tested.
Hegel argued that his totalizing philosophy and dialectic logic of Aufhebung (frequently translated into the dreadful English word "sublation") always turns back on itself.
This enables one not only to develop the logical consequences of a hypothesis but also to return to and analyze the starting point—to test the hypothesis.
The essential requirement for the science of logic is not so much that the beginning be a pure immediacy, but rather that the whole of the science be within itself a circle in which the first is also the last and the last is also the first.
"For how can I start stopping beating my wife," asked the unmarried bachelor.
Sublation, then, is the concept we need to understand Grice's disimplicature.
It is a process by which internal contradictions of earlier concepts are resolved, but not in the sense of suppressing difference.
The German word aufheben means paradoxically to preserve as well as negate.
("No, I'm not married" -- "The Bachelor's Diary").
"To sublate" [i.e., "aufheben"] has a twofold meaning in [German]: on the one hand it means to preserve, to maintain, and equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to.
Even "to preserve" includes a negative element, namely, that something is removed from its immediacy and so from an existence which is open to external influences, in order to preserve it.
A bachelor can hardly start stopping beating his wife.
Thus what is sublated is at the same time preserved.
It has only lost its immediacy but it is not by that account annihilated.[66]
Heidegger noted this when he remarked,
"But then, Noth noths." Carnap laughed at this.
In trying to understand the dialectic, many Americans are hampered by having been taught a crude caricature of sublation as a simplistic trinity of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
That is, a thesis is presented, an internal contradiction or antithesis in the original thesis is identified, and the two are resolved in a harmonizing synthesis, which destroys all previous contradictions.
This serves as a new thesis, starting the logical process over.
This formula is designed more as a means to discredit Karl Marx (who expropriated Hegel's method) than to understand philosophy.
Indeed, this is how I was introduced to it in kindergarten. ("This is not your pencil.")
The problem with this description is that it suggests that sublation destroys all difference and deviation by converting them into an oppressive compromise.
Rather, as the German term implies, sublation preserves, as well as negates, the prior concept. Sublation is not merely tertiary—it is quadratic.
Thesis and antithesis exist in contradiction.
Through sublation these contradictions are simultaneously resolved into synthesis so that at one moment thesis and antithesis are revealed as identical.
Yet there always remains an unmediated moment, a hard kernel of unsublated contradiction, a phantom fourth, the trace or differance of deconstruction, that resists mediation.
That is, in sublation (or disimplicature, if you mustn't) we have not only the thesis and antithesis and the moment of identity of synthesis, but also simultaneously the moment of difference which resists sublation.
In sublation the difference identified in the earlier stage is always preserved because it is always a necessary moment in the development of the later.
To gussy it up with more fashionable terminology, the earlier concept is at one moment always already the subsequent concept, but simultaneously the very existence of the latter concept requires that the earlier concept is not yet the later concept.
Now, if we change the 'rules', as Quine has it, and allow that a bachelor can 'get a wife', he surely can later start stopping beating her. Or not.
Sublation (i.e., synthesis) can never destroy the differentiation between self and other (thesis and antithesis) precisely because sublation is the recognition that at one moment self and other are truly the same while at another moment they are truly different.
Moreover, the moment of identity is itself different from the self-identity of self and other.
In other words, in the differentiation of self and other, identity is a possibility.
It is through sublation that the possibility of identity is actualized. But at the same time, self and other must remain differentiated in order for actualization to remain possible.
Hence Hegel's famous slogan,
"the identity of identity and non-identity."
-- now in the coat of arms of the Hegel family, in Hanover.
This is a necessary result of the circularity of the dialectic.
Although worded in terms of the proactive resolution of what initially appeared to be contradictions into an implicit and inevitable whole, sublation is simultaneously the retroactive breakdown of what initially appeared as a harmonious whole into unresolved inherent contradiction.
And so on.
Presuppositionless pragmatics -- (Was: presuppositional apologetics)
Speranza
Oddly, wiki has this entry, presupposition,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presupposition_(philosophy)
that is totally unhelpful (They keep asking, "was this helpful to you?" -- such a presupposition-loaded query).
It reads:
"In epistemology, presuppositions relate to a belief system, or Weltanschauung, and are required for it to make sense."
Weltanschauung is a good one, and I will analyse it:
welt--- world
an----- German for 'in', or 'on', I'm never sure.
shau -- English: 'show' as in "Broadway show"
ung --- English -ing.
worldinshowing, as it were.
"A variety of Christian apologetics, called presuppositional apologetics, argues that the existence or non-existence of God is the basic presupposition of all human thought, and that all men arrive at a worldview which is ultimately determined by the theology they presuppose."
Or fail to presuppose. Indeed Grice grew tired of Strawson's Sticking with the King of France existing or failing to exist (before we can deem him bald or not). Perhaps the existence of (a bald?) God is more powerful?
"Evidence and arguments are only marshalled after the fact in an attempt to justify the theological assumptions already made. According to this view, it is impossible to demonstrate the existence of God unless one presupposes that God exists"
Ditto for the king of France.
Dummett, typically, argued that to demonstrate that
the QUEEN of England (he means Elizabeth I) was bald is just as otiose. He notes that there is a way to verify that (or not). He calls himself an intuitionist.
--- Recall that Russell ended the polemic by noting that a "Hegelian, who likes a synthesis" will possibly conclude that the king wears a wig.
----
This all escaped Strawson, who has "the king of France is _wise_" rather -- NOW THAT is presuppositionless!
"; modern science is incapable of discovering the supernatural because it relies on methodological naturalism and thereby fashions a Procrustean bed which rejects any observation which would disprove the naturalistic assumption. The best the apologist can do is to argue that the resulting worldview is somehow inconsistent with itself and therefore irrational (for example, via the Argument from morality or via the Transcendental argument for the existence of God)."
And so on!
Oddly, wiki has this entry, presupposition,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presupposition_(philosophy)
that is totally unhelpful (They keep asking, "was this helpful to you?" -- such a presupposition-loaded query).
It reads:
"In epistemology, presuppositions relate to a belief system, or Weltanschauung, and are required for it to make sense."
Weltanschauung is a good one, and I will analyse it:
welt--- world
an----- German for 'in', or 'on', I'm never sure.
shau -- English: 'show' as in "Broadway show"
ung --- English -ing.
worldinshowing, as it were.
"A variety of Christian apologetics, called presuppositional apologetics, argues that the existence or non-existence of God is the basic presupposition of all human thought, and that all men arrive at a worldview which is ultimately determined by the theology they presuppose."
Or fail to presuppose. Indeed Grice grew tired of Strawson's Sticking with the King of France existing or failing to exist (before we can deem him bald or not). Perhaps the existence of (a bald?) God is more powerful?
"Evidence and arguments are only marshalled after the fact in an attempt to justify the theological assumptions already made. According to this view, it is impossible to demonstrate the existence of God unless one presupposes that God exists"
Ditto for the king of France.
Dummett, typically, argued that to demonstrate that
the QUEEN of England (he means Elizabeth I) was bald is just as otiose. He notes that there is a way to verify that (or not). He calls himself an intuitionist.
--- Recall that Russell ended the polemic by noting that a "Hegelian, who likes a synthesis" will possibly conclude that the king wears a wig.
----
This all escaped Strawson, who has "the king of France is _wise_" rather -- NOW THAT is presuppositionless!
"; modern science is incapable of discovering the supernatural because it relies on methodological naturalism and thereby fashions a Procrustean bed which rejects any observation which would disprove the naturalistic assumption. The best the apologist can do is to argue that the resulting worldview is somehow inconsistent with itself and therefore irrational (for example, via the Argument from morality or via the Transcendental argument for the existence of God)."
And so on!
"You're the cream in my coffee!"-- Grice on disimplicature
Speranza
I am using this example, because in unpublished (but never unwritten) notes, Grice has this marginal comment,
"You're the cream in my coffee!"
-- the 'disimplicature' being TOTAL!
--- I may have written something about this elsewhere in the Grice Club. Now for some running commentary on Jones, as I focus then on this notion of
"disimplicature"
(which may be behind much talk on presupposition, presupposition cancellation, loose, undeterminacy, and so on...)
Jones writes:
"I thought I might say a little about why I was curious about Grice's views on presupposition. This is in the context of our "conversation between Carnap and Grice", which has been dormant for a while. It seemed to me, though I don't believe this comes from Carnap, that Carnap's position on ontology as given in his "Empiricism Semantics and Ontology" is a bit like saying that ontological questions external to some language framework (which Carnap considers meaningless) might well be considered common presuppositions to any assertion in the language."
I would think, but we would need to trace this, that this is Collingwood's idea of 'presupposition'. Collingwood is particularly interest in that, like Grice and Strawson, he is "Oxford" (or Oxonian). It MAY relate, since Collingwood was a bit of a continental, with Husserl:
"Philosophy without presuppositions."
I never understood that term! But you are right, also that it connects with Grice's appeal to English -- an English philosopher works with the categories of the English language, and so on.
"Presupposition to any assertion" is a good one. Horn once wrote on this, on what he called 'assertive inertia," I think. I pointed out to him that, for Grice, this extends BEYOND assertion: questions ("Who killed Cock Robin?") and orders ("Do it!") also _presuppose_. While there is this idea that
presupposing
conflicts with _stating_ or asserting (what Grice, as Neale notes, calls central speech acts), as opposed to 'implying', it also applies to central speech acts which are NOT assertion. There is a recent book by Palgrave Publishers on "Assertion" which might consider at this pont.
Jones continues:
"The question is then whether Grice would have any objection to that way of talking about a non-natural language. My impression is however, that Grice's objection to presuppositions is exclusively related to his objecting to truth value gaps in natural languages."
Indeed. For we can see that System G, as we call it, or System GHP, strictly: a highly powerful version of System G, is about:
syntax
semantics
pragmatics
Most of the alleged divergences between 'and' and '&', say, can be dealt with syntactically. In SOME cases, we need an appeal to the 'semantic' truth-tables. The whole enterprise starts to loose sense if we allow that in truth-value assignment we are allowed NOT to assign a truth-value.
By distinguishing syntax-semantics here I am being a traditionalist. By syntax, Grice and I refer to Gentzen-type of 'natural' deduction, introduction and elimination of symbols. Consider the introduction of 'and', or the elimination of 'and', and so on.
The 'semantics' for "and" is a different animal. Here we see that "p & q" receives the same truth-table that "q & p" does. The commutability of "and" then is 'semantic' rather than 'syntactic'. In the case of 'negation', perhaps it's both. And so on. For each operator, we need to consider this. In the case of the definite description, we need to focus on the introduction/elimination (syntax) of the iota operator, and the truth-table for the iota operator. Grice considers this in terms of what he calls the
Russellian expansion
in WoW. I.e.
"The king of France is not bald"
thus gets expanded in THREE conjuncts. A & B & C. In none of them he considers the 'iota operator', but we have to trace the 'iota' operator to its very definition. E.g. its reliance on Leibniz's Law of the equivalence of indiscernibles, and so on. For 'iota' is a DERIVED symbol. But it DOES depend on the symbol for "=", identity. There is a closure clause for defining iota-x, such that there is no other "y" such that... "=" itself is a derived sign. So we need to consider all the primitive syntax behind "the". Then, we identify the minimal syntactic rules, and THEN we deal with the semantics.
The pragmatics for System G would allow for things like:
"Jones's butler was clumsy."
He meant, "Jones's gardener," since U wrongly thought that the man with protruding ears was Jones's butler (he was dressed as one, and Jones indeed had him dress as a butler for that special party). Grice wants to say that 'clumsy' attaches truthfully to that individual that the utterer describes as "Jones' butler". The utterance in itself is _false_. And so on. In any case, there is a pragmatic explanation for any divergence as regards the truth values of things like descriptions. Neale does not consider this, but I would think the expansion,
"whoever he is"
works very well. In some cases, when we use a description, such as "the president of Ruritania", "whoever he is", "must have it easy". In other cases, it is totally uncalled for. You can NOT add, "whoever he is". "The president of the USA, whoever he is, is meeting the president of Italy, whoever he is." This sounds as _too loose_. Grice sometimes, as Neale notes, introduces some devices that LOOK like formal, but they ain't. In some cases, the typography fails. Grice uses square-brackets, the WoW reprint does not. The joke is lost. In other cases, Grice uses SMALL CAPITALS: "JONES'S BUTLER", as oposed to "Jones's butler". In one case, it is IDENTIFICATORY; in the other it is not -- Grice unimaginatively, but he would rather be seen dead than using Donnellan's vocabulary -- says 'non-identificatory' (Donnellan: attributive/referential).
And so on...
Jones continues:
"In the case I had in mind, the presupposition does not result in truth value gaps.
Not at least in the language itself, though Carnap's view on these external questions, that they are meaningless, does result in no truth value for the external question."
Good. We would need to discuss this in
Husserl: title of his book: philosophy without presuppositions. What are the presuppositions of philosophy? Suppose materialism versus empiricism. The existence of sense-data, or the mind. Is that a 'presupposition'? What is Husserl aiming at? He thinks that Phenomenology discusses things, philosophically, and does not need any presupposition as to what's there.
Then there's Collingwood. He is considering things like the idea of history, etc. And he notes that there are 'presuppositions'. Grice et al, in "Metaphysics" in Pears, The nature of metaphysics, discusses this particular use of 'presupposition' as it was influential in Oxford pre-analytic philosophy of metaphysics. Collingwood was the prof. of metaphysics, at the time Grice was writing that.
And then there's Carnap, and Strawson misusing a word with recognised pedigree, as 'presupposition' was, to simple things like,
"By uttering 'the king of France is not bald,' the utterer IMPLIES that there is a king of France, which happens to have hair." And so on.
Typically Grice would not stand such loose use!
Jones continues:
"Carnap himself I think would consider the question of truth value gaps in natural languages (and indeed most questions about natural languages) as
belonging to some science (linguistics?) because natural languages are contingent, rather than to philosophy."
Grice would of course aim at deeper, more committed view! Why leave it to linguistics, or some empirical science, what philosophers DO with language or lingo? He wants to say that truth-assignment (central meaning, in Strand 5) is so basic, that without it, there's no room for the analytic-synthetic distinction. It all depends on the alethic view on things. This is NOT something that can be refuted, say, by a Chinese speaker who says, "Hey, in my dialect, "The moon is made of cheese" displays a truth-value gap."
--- And so on!
Jones continues:
"However, he softened on the question of the limits of philosophy, and would problably not want to press that kind of objection to ordinary language philosophy later in his life."
To think that the Carnap papers somewhere deposited in a uni deploy such varied views! Grice, too, later in his life, changed his views. And to think that what he left in the Grice papers could fill VOLUMES!
Jones:
"I just had a look at the Strawson paper in the Carnap Schillp volume, which is about the relative merits of constructed and natural languages in analytic philosophy. Strawson seems rather dismissive of the case for formality. He misses however a central issue, which is the difference between his (Strawson's) conception of philosophical analysis and Carnap's. He is assuming that in advocating formal languages for philosophy Carnap is advocating their use for the kind of philosophy which Strawson is doing, i.e. the analysis of ordinary language. But Carnap doesn't consider that to be philosophy,"
Lovely. Grice, at least, KNEW that! He relished (if that's the word) in that anecdote. When Gustav Bergmann (whoever he was) was invited to attend a Saturday morning with Austin, Bergmann allegedly replied:
"I rather do things other than spending a Saturday morning with a group of English futilitarians."
---- Grice was being reactionary, and by sticking to the implicatures of idioms he KNEW he was not doing philosophy (or Philosophy) but he loved not doing it!
----
Jones:
"and so its very unlikely that he intended to advocate formal languages specifically for that purpose. Grice's neo-traditional line of argument sometimes sounds more like an exploration than a statement of conviction on Grice's part.
He wants to contradict those who argue that the logic of ordinary discourse must diverge from "classical" logic in various respects, but it's not clear from my own reading of Grice that he is not playing "devil's advocate", perhaps having a less dogmatic view on this than appears."
Too true. I LOVE your reading of him!
"In "Vacuous names" which is part of that enterprise, Grice looks very exploratory and experimental. It has a flavour of "lets see how far we can take this" (can we have our cake and eat it?) and devotes very little energy to the question whether ordinary language really is like "system Q"."
Too true. He is especially exploratory in that he starts the thing by noting that Quine disallows "names" in his system. So, seeing that there are no NAMES, who (i.e. Quine) cares if some of them (i.e. names) are vacuous? It is very sad that Quine, in his "Reply to Grice", notes that he rather not even GO there. He finds all the subscript notation totally otiose, when there is a re-write to hand. He notes, too, that for "Fa" there's Ax & Fx -- i.e. a name like "Marmaduke Bloggs" (a) becomes the predicate, "being-Marmaduke Bloggs", and so on. He should at least pay some attention to the later segment on descriptions as such. But Quine was very confused about propositional attitudes. He thought that 'believing that the sun is red' is an unanalysed predicate (notably in "Words and objects"). The logical form of
"Peter thinks Paul is good"
is Fa -- where 'a' is Peter, and "F" is "-- thinks that Paul is good"; to be further analysed by denying status to "a" and replacing it for the further predicate 'being Peter"
"There is something that holds the property of being-Peter and such that it also holds the property of thinking that Paul is good".
We know that Quine never understood philosophy as Carnap did. We know that Quine made BAD use of some ideas he just took from Carnap, and we KNOW that Quine used Carnap to bring in his own programme against anaytic philosophy, by proposing a scepticism towards what makes the venture of analytic philosophy worth being pursued, but that's another topic!
Jones continues:
"One trick [Grice] misses in this is the possibility of retaining a two-valued logic by "looseness"."
I love that. I point that using 'disimplicature' helps as well.
"U implicates" -- Grice spends some time elucidating. Let us revise what he says about "disimplicate", in the Grice Club, using the search engine, "disimplicature", some other time?
----
Grice's examples:
Hamlet saw his father on the ramparts at Elinore.
Hamlet's father is dead.
In a context where utterer assumes his addressee assumes that the utterer assumes that Hamlet's father is dead, the utterer "is not committed to the usual entailment", as we may say, that Hamlet's father was on the ramparts.
Bill intends to climb Everest next week.
When context (looseness?) makes it obvious tahat there are forces that prevent us from fulfilling an intention, as we may say, one may utter
"Bill intends to climb Everest next week."
WITHOUT committing to the usual entailment. The utterer DISIMPLICATES that Bill is SURE, for example, or KNOWS, that he will climb Everest, "just because everyone knows of the possibly prohibitive difficulties involved," as we might say.
Implicature is a matter of meaning more than we say -- to entailed meaning, as it were.
With disimplicature, Grice is allowing that the MEANING conveyed by an utterer (who utters 'x') in a context may in fact be LESS than is entailed (as we might say) by 'x'. The entailment, to use Grice's word, is "dropped" in context.
Grice notes that 'disimplicature' is "total", as in "You are the cream in my coffee"" (Grice Papers). The remark appears in parentheses. In a context which makes the WHOLE of 'what is said', as it were, untenable, it can be replaced with an implicated (metaphorical) meaning ("You're my pride and joy"). The mechanism of disimplicature does not diverge from that of imlpicature. Disimplicature is explained in terms of the assumption that the conversationalist is abiding by the conversational 'maxims' (and principle), particularly those enforcing 'qualitas' (truthfulness) -- submaxim 1 in particular. If one of all the entailments of 'what is said' are PLAINLY *false*, they can be assumed NOT to arise on that particular occasion of use. S. Yablo noted, with scepticism: Implicatures happen. But then they often don't. Disimplicatures happen, then.
And so on.
Jones goes on:
"One obtains a loose semantics by using principles to constrain the interpretation of one or more constructs without making the constructs completely definite."
This, charming, looks like a semantic (or systemic) regimentation for what may be eventually, a process of a pragmatic nature (as disimplicature is). But it is welcomed in allowing to observe what type of looseness is involved, and so on.
"This is one way of dealing with partial functions in classical first order set theory. Under this scheme a definite description denotes some value even if the description is not satisfied, but in that case we have no way of knowing which function it denotes."
Very good. It may relate to 'dossier'. Neale does not mention this, but Evans does in his "Ways of Reference". Evans takes up the notion of a 'dossier' that Grice introduces in "Vacuous Names". When conversationalist A meets conversationalist B they have to work on the overlap of a dossier. An example from Urmson, "Intentions and Intentions", Aristotelian Society, may apply:
"I saw Mary's husband today."
----- It turns out that he saw the postman. "Why didn't you say, "the postman", rather than "Mary's husband"? -- I.e. A and B, as they converse, have dossiers:
Philip: Mary's husband, the postman.
--- When we hold a conversation, we apply the definite description that we think fits best "in the context of utterance", as it were. This may relate to what Strawson, before Grice, for once, called,
Principle of the Presumption of Ignorance
Principle of the Presumption of Knowledge
Principle of Relevance ("Identifying reference and truth-values").
Without a bit of each, conversation could not even start. If we all share the same knowledge, what's the point of INFORMING, say? And so on. These pragmatic dimensions may implinge on the semantic looseness that Jones is referring to. Or not!
Jones:
"This works fine in a two valued logic and is the usual way of treating Hilbert's choice function (which corresponds to indefinite description)."
Lovely. Grice was OBSESSED with 'indefinite descriptions'. Apparenly, he never saw farther than:
"He is meeting A WOMAN this evening." Implicature: not his wife.
----
"I found a tortoise in a house." (Not my tortoise in my house).
"She broke a finger" -- the nurse. Not hers?
And so on. This is in WoW: III. He is discussing the logical form of indefinite descriptions, and is like precisely refuting a view like Cohen's:
Cohen would like to say that 'a' (as in "an x") has DIFFERENT _senses_ according to context. Grice sticks to just the logical form of the canonical system, with glosses for any further implicature (or disimplicature) that may arise in context.
I never use "a" or "an" in indefinite descriptions. To me, "a" means "one" ("He is meeting ONE woman this evening."). I use 'some' -- I follow Warnock there, "Metaphysics in Logic" -- "Some kings of France are not bald," say.
--- Note that in the paraphrasis for "(Ex)" in WoW:II Grice gives "some (at least one)". The use of 'one' to replace (Ex) seems colloquial.
Jones concludes his interesting post:
"Though this way of dealing with the problem is quite old, the possibility of "looseness" of this kind is not often alluded to by philosophers, but might possibly be the best way to interpret natural languages as two valued logics."
Indeed. Keyword then: LOOSENESS. Cfr. VAGUENESS, FUZZY, DISIMPLICATURE, and keep counting!
Cheers.
I am using this example, because in unpublished (but never unwritten) notes, Grice has this marginal comment,
"You're the cream in my coffee!"
-- the 'disimplicature' being TOTAL!
--- I may have written something about this elsewhere in the Grice Club. Now for some running commentary on Jones, as I focus then on this notion of
"disimplicature"
(which may be behind much talk on presupposition, presupposition cancellation, loose, undeterminacy, and so on...)
Jones writes:
"I thought I might say a little about why I was curious about Grice's views on presupposition. This is in the context of our "conversation between Carnap and Grice", which has been dormant for a while. It seemed to me, though I don't believe this comes from Carnap, that Carnap's position on ontology as given in his "Empiricism Semantics and Ontology" is a bit like saying that ontological questions external to some language framework (which Carnap considers meaningless) might well be considered common presuppositions to any assertion in the language."
I would think, but we would need to trace this, that this is Collingwood's idea of 'presupposition'. Collingwood is particularly interest in that, like Grice and Strawson, he is "Oxford" (or Oxonian). It MAY relate, since Collingwood was a bit of a continental, with Husserl:
"Philosophy without presuppositions."
I never understood that term! But you are right, also that it connects with Grice's appeal to English -- an English philosopher works with the categories of the English language, and so on.
"Presupposition to any assertion" is a good one. Horn once wrote on this, on what he called 'assertive inertia," I think. I pointed out to him that, for Grice, this extends BEYOND assertion: questions ("Who killed Cock Robin?") and orders ("Do it!") also _presuppose_. While there is this idea that
presupposing
conflicts with _stating_ or asserting (what Grice, as Neale notes, calls central speech acts), as opposed to 'implying', it also applies to central speech acts which are NOT assertion. There is a recent book by Palgrave Publishers on "Assertion" which might consider at this pont.
Jones continues:
"The question is then whether Grice would have any objection to that way of talking about a non-natural language. My impression is however, that Grice's objection to presuppositions is exclusively related to his objecting to truth value gaps in natural languages."
Indeed. For we can see that System G, as we call it, or System GHP, strictly: a highly powerful version of System G, is about:
syntax
semantics
pragmatics
Most of the alleged divergences between 'and' and '&', say, can be dealt with syntactically. In SOME cases, we need an appeal to the 'semantic' truth-tables. The whole enterprise starts to loose sense if we allow that in truth-value assignment we are allowed NOT to assign a truth-value.
By distinguishing syntax-semantics here I am being a traditionalist. By syntax, Grice and I refer to Gentzen-type of 'natural' deduction, introduction and elimination of symbols. Consider the introduction of 'and', or the elimination of 'and', and so on.
The 'semantics' for "and" is a different animal. Here we see that "p & q" receives the same truth-table that "q & p" does. The commutability of "and" then is 'semantic' rather than 'syntactic'. In the case of 'negation', perhaps it's both. And so on. For each operator, we need to consider this. In the case of the definite description, we need to focus on the introduction/elimination (syntax) of the iota operator, and the truth-table for the iota operator. Grice considers this in terms of what he calls the
Russellian expansion
in WoW. I.e.
"The king of France is not bald"
thus gets expanded in THREE conjuncts. A & B & C. In none of them he considers the 'iota operator', but we have to trace the 'iota' operator to its very definition. E.g. its reliance on Leibniz's Law of the equivalence of indiscernibles, and so on. For 'iota' is a DERIVED symbol. But it DOES depend on the symbol for "=", identity. There is a closure clause for defining iota-x, such that there is no other "y" such that... "=" itself is a derived sign. So we need to consider all the primitive syntax behind "the". Then, we identify the minimal syntactic rules, and THEN we deal with the semantics.
The pragmatics for System G would allow for things like:
"Jones's butler was clumsy."
He meant, "Jones's gardener," since U wrongly thought that the man with protruding ears was Jones's butler (he was dressed as one, and Jones indeed had him dress as a butler for that special party). Grice wants to say that 'clumsy' attaches truthfully to that individual that the utterer describes as "Jones' butler". The utterance in itself is _false_. And so on. In any case, there is a pragmatic explanation for any divergence as regards the truth values of things like descriptions. Neale does not consider this, but I would think the expansion,
"whoever he is"
works very well. In some cases, when we use a description, such as "the president of Ruritania", "whoever he is", "must have it easy". In other cases, it is totally uncalled for. You can NOT add, "whoever he is". "The president of the USA, whoever he is, is meeting the president of Italy, whoever he is." This sounds as _too loose_. Grice sometimes, as Neale notes, introduces some devices that LOOK like formal, but they ain't. In some cases, the typography fails. Grice uses square-brackets, the WoW reprint does not. The joke is lost. In other cases, Grice uses SMALL CAPITALS: "JONES'S BUTLER", as oposed to "Jones's butler". In one case, it is IDENTIFICATORY; in the other it is not -- Grice unimaginatively, but he would rather be seen dead than using Donnellan's vocabulary -- says 'non-identificatory' (Donnellan: attributive/referential).
And so on...
Jones continues:
"In the case I had in mind, the presupposition does not result in truth value gaps.
Not at least in the language itself, though Carnap's view on these external questions, that they are meaningless, does result in no truth value for the external question."
Good. We would need to discuss this in
Husserl: title of his book: philosophy without presuppositions. What are the presuppositions of philosophy? Suppose materialism versus empiricism. The existence of sense-data, or the mind. Is that a 'presupposition'? What is Husserl aiming at? He thinks that Phenomenology discusses things, philosophically, and does not need any presupposition as to what's there.
Then there's Collingwood. He is considering things like the idea of history, etc. And he notes that there are 'presuppositions'. Grice et al, in "Metaphysics" in Pears, The nature of metaphysics, discusses this particular use of 'presupposition' as it was influential in Oxford pre-analytic philosophy of metaphysics. Collingwood was the prof. of metaphysics, at the time Grice was writing that.
And then there's Carnap, and Strawson misusing a word with recognised pedigree, as 'presupposition' was, to simple things like,
"By uttering 'the king of France is not bald,' the utterer IMPLIES that there is a king of France, which happens to have hair." And so on.
Typically Grice would not stand such loose use!
Jones continues:
"Carnap himself I think would consider the question of truth value gaps in natural languages (and indeed most questions about natural languages) as
belonging to some science (linguistics?) because natural languages are contingent, rather than to philosophy."
Grice would of course aim at deeper, more committed view! Why leave it to linguistics, or some empirical science, what philosophers DO with language or lingo? He wants to say that truth-assignment (central meaning, in Strand 5) is so basic, that without it, there's no room for the analytic-synthetic distinction. It all depends on the alethic view on things. This is NOT something that can be refuted, say, by a Chinese speaker who says, "Hey, in my dialect, "The moon is made of cheese" displays a truth-value gap."
--- And so on!
Jones continues:
"However, he softened on the question of the limits of philosophy, and would problably not want to press that kind of objection to ordinary language philosophy later in his life."
To think that the Carnap papers somewhere deposited in a uni deploy such varied views! Grice, too, later in his life, changed his views. And to think that what he left in the Grice papers could fill VOLUMES!
Jones:
"I just had a look at the Strawson paper in the Carnap Schillp volume, which is about the relative merits of constructed and natural languages in analytic philosophy. Strawson seems rather dismissive of the case for formality. He misses however a central issue, which is the difference between his (Strawson's) conception of philosophical analysis and Carnap's. He is assuming that in advocating formal languages for philosophy Carnap is advocating their use for the kind of philosophy which Strawson is doing, i.e. the analysis of ordinary language. But Carnap doesn't consider that to be philosophy,"
Lovely. Grice, at least, KNEW that! He relished (if that's the word) in that anecdote. When Gustav Bergmann (whoever he was) was invited to attend a Saturday morning with Austin, Bergmann allegedly replied:
"I rather do things other than spending a Saturday morning with a group of English futilitarians."
---- Grice was being reactionary, and by sticking to the implicatures of idioms he KNEW he was not doing philosophy (or Philosophy) but he loved not doing it!
----
Jones:
"and so its very unlikely that he intended to advocate formal languages specifically for that purpose. Grice's neo-traditional line of argument sometimes sounds more like an exploration than a statement of conviction on Grice's part.
He wants to contradict those who argue that the logic of ordinary discourse must diverge from "classical" logic in various respects, but it's not clear from my own reading of Grice that he is not playing "devil's advocate", perhaps having a less dogmatic view on this than appears."
Too true. I LOVE your reading of him!
"In "Vacuous names" which is part of that enterprise, Grice looks very exploratory and experimental. It has a flavour of "lets see how far we can take this" (can we have our cake and eat it?) and devotes very little energy to the question whether ordinary language really is like "system Q"."
Too true. He is especially exploratory in that he starts the thing by noting that Quine disallows "names" in his system. So, seeing that there are no NAMES, who (i.e. Quine) cares if some of them (i.e. names) are vacuous? It is very sad that Quine, in his "Reply to Grice", notes that he rather not even GO there. He finds all the subscript notation totally otiose, when there is a re-write to hand. He notes, too, that for "Fa" there's Ax & Fx -- i.e. a name like "Marmaduke Bloggs" (a) becomes the predicate, "being-Marmaduke Bloggs", and so on. He should at least pay some attention to the later segment on descriptions as such. But Quine was very confused about propositional attitudes. He thought that 'believing that the sun is red' is an unanalysed predicate (notably in "Words and objects"). The logical form of
"Peter thinks Paul is good"
is Fa -- where 'a' is Peter, and "F" is "-- thinks that Paul is good"; to be further analysed by denying status to "a" and replacing it for the further predicate 'being Peter"
"There is something that holds the property of being-Peter and such that it also holds the property of thinking that Paul is good".
We know that Quine never understood philosophy as Carnap did. We know that Quine made BAD use of some ideas he just took from Carnap, and we KNOW that Quine used Carnap to bring in his own programme against anaytic philosophy, by proposing a scepticism towards what makes the venture of analytic philosophy worth being pursued, but that's another topic!
Jones continues:
"One trick [Grice] misses in this is the possibility of retaining a two-valued logic by "looseness"."
I love that. I point that using 'disimplicature' helps as well.
"U implicates" -- Grice spends some time elucidating. Let us revise what he says about "disimplicate", in the Grice Club, using the search engine, "disimplicature", some other time?
----
Grice's examples:
Hamlet saw his father on the ramparts at Elinore.
Hamlet's father is dead.
In a context where utterer assumes his addressee assumes that the utterer assumes that Hamlet's father is dead, the utterer "is not committed to the usual entailment", as we may say, that Hamlet's father was on the ramparts.
Bill intends to climb Everest next week.
When context (looseness?) makes it obvious tahat there are forces that prevent us from fulfilling an intention, as we may say, one may utter
"Bill intends to climb Everest next week."
WITHOUT committing to the usual entailment. The utterer DISIMPLICATES that Bill is SURE, for example, or KNOWS, that he will climb Everest, "just because everyone knows of the possibly prohibitive difficulties involved," as we might say.
Implicature is a matter of meaning more than we say -- to entailed meaning, as it were.
With disimplicature, Grice is allowing that the MEANING conveyed by an utterer (who utters 'x') in a context may in fact be LESS than is entailed (as we might say) by 'x'. The entailment, to use Grice's word, is "dropped" in context.
Grice notes that 'disimplicature' is "total", as in "You are the cream in my coffee"" (Grice Papers). The remark appears in parentheses. In a context which makes the WHOLE of 'what is said', as it were, untenable, it can be replaced with an implicated (metaphorical) meaning ("You're my pride and joy"). The mechanism of disimplicature does not diverge from that of imlpicature. Disimplicature is explained in terms of the assumption that the conversationalist is abiding by the conversational 'maxims' (and principle), particularly those enforcing 'qualitas' (truthfulness) -- submaxim 1 in particular. If one of all the entailments of 'what is said' are PLAINLY *false*, they can be assumed NOT to arise on that particular occasion of use. S. Yablo noted, with scepticism: Implicatures happen. But then they often don't. Disimplicatures happen, then.
And so on.
Jones goes on:
"One obtains a loose semantics by using principles to constrain the interpretation of one or more constructs without making the constructs completely definite."
This, charming, looks like a semantic (or systemic) regimentation for what may be eventually, a process of a pragmatic nature (as disimplicature is). But it is welcomed in allowing to observe what type of looseness is involved, and so on.
"This is one way of dealing with partial functions in classical first order set theory. Under this scheme a definite description denotes some value even if the description is not satisfied, but in that case we have no way of knowing which function it denotes."
Very good. It may relate to 'dossier'. Neale does not mention this, but Evans does in his "Ways of Reference". Evans takes up the notion of a 'dossier' that Grice introduces in "Vacuous Names". When conversationalist A meets conversationalist B they have to work on the overlap of a dossier. An example from Urmson, "Intentions and Intentions", Aristotelian Society, may apply:
"I saw Mary's husband today."
----- It turns out that he saw the postman. "Why didn't you say, "the postman", rather than "Mary's husband"? -- I.e. A and B, as they converse, have dossiers:
Philip: Mary's husband, the postman.
--- When we hold a conversation, we apply the definite description that we think fits best "in the context of utterance", as it were. This may relate to what Strawson, before Grice, for once, called,
Principle of the Presumption of Ignorance
Principle of the Presumption of Knowledge
Principle of Relevance ("Identifying reference and truth-values").
Without a bit of each, conversation could not even start. If we all share the same knowledge, what's the point of INFORMING, say? And so on. These pragmatic dimensions may implinge on the semantic looseness that Jones is referring to. Or not!
Jones:
"This works fine in a two valued logic and is the usual way of treating Hilbert's choice function (which corresponds to indefinite description)."
Lovely. Grice was OBSESSED with 'indefinite descriptions'. Apparenly, he never saw farther than:
"He is meeting A WOMAN this evening." Implicature: not his wife.
----
"I found a tortoise in a house." (Not my tortoise in my house).
"She broke a finger" -- the nurse. Not hers?
And so on. This is in WoW: III. He is discussing the logical form of indefinite descriptions, and is like precisely refuting a view like Cohen's:
Cohen would like to say that 'a' (as in "an x") has DIFFERENT _senses_ according to context. Grice sticks to just the logical form of the canonical system, with glosses for any further implicature (or disimplicature) that may arise in context.
I never use "a" or "an" in indefinite descriptions. To me, "a" means "one" ("He is meeting ONE woman this evening."). I use 'some' -- I follow Warnock there, "Metaphysics in Logic" -- "Some kings of France are not bald," say.
--- Note that in the paraphrasis for "(Ex)" in WoW:II Grice gives "some (at least one)". The use of 'one' to replace (Ex) seems colloquial.
Jones concludes his interesting post:
"Though this way of dealing with the problem is quite old, the possibility of "looseness" of this kind is not often alluded to by philosophers, but might possibly be the best way to interpret natural languages as two valued logics."
Indeed. Keyword then: LOOSENESS. Cfr. VAGUENESS, FUZZY, DISIMPLICATURE, and keep counting!
Cheers.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Presupposition
By Roger Bishop Jones for The Grice Club
Thanks to Speranza for his exhaustive commentary on Neale's review of WOW.
I thought I might say a little about why I was curious about Grice's views on presupposition.
This is in the context of our "conversation between Carnap and Grice", which has been dormant for a while.
It seemed to me, though I don't believe this comes from Carnap, that Carnap's position on ontology as given in his "Empiricism Semantics and Ontology" is a bit like saying that ontological questions external to some language framework (which Carnap considers meaningless) might well be considered common presuppositions to any assertion in the language.
The question is then whether Grice would have any objection to that way of talking about a non-natural language.
My impression is however, that Grice's objection to presuppositions is exclusively related to his objecting to truth value gaps in natural languages.
In the case I had in mind, the presupposition does not result in truth value gaps.
Not at least in the language itself, though Carnap's view on these external questions, that they are meaningless, does result in no truth value for the external question.
Carnap himself I think would consider the question of truth value gaps in natural languages (and indeed most questions about natural languages) as
belonging to some science (linguistics?) because natural languages are contingent, rather than to philosophy.
However, he softened on the question of the limits of philosophy, and would problably not want to press that kind of objection to ordinary language philosophy later in his life.
I just had a look at the Strawson paper in the Carnap Schillp volume, which is about the relative merits of constructed and natural languages in analytic philosophy.
Strawson seems rather dismissive of the case for formality.
He misses however a central issue, which is the difference between his (Strawson's) conception of philosophical analysis and Carnap's.
He is assuming that in advocating formal languages for philosophy Carnap is advocating their use for the kind of philosophy which Strawson is doing, i.e. the analysis of ordinary language.
But Carnap doesn't consider that to be philosophy, and so its very unlikely that he intended to advocate formal languages specifically for that purpose.
Grice's neo-traditional line of argument sometimes sounds more like an exploration than a statement of conviction on Grice's part.
He wants to contradict those who argue that the logic of ordinary discourse must diverge from "classical" logic in various respects, but its not clear from my own reading of Grice that he is not playing "devil's advocate", perhaps having a less dogmatic view on this than appears.
In "vacuous names" which is part of that enterprise, Grice looks very exploratory and experimental. It has a flavour of "lets see how far we can take this" (can we have our cake and eat it?) and devotes very little energy to the question whether ordinary language really is like "system Q".
One trick he misses in this is the possibility of retaining a two-valued logic by "looseness". One obtains a loose semantics by using principles to constrain the interpretation of one or more constructs without making the constructs completely definite. This is one way of dealing with partial functions in classical first order set theory. Under this scheme a definite description denotes some value even if the description is not satisfied, but in that case we have no way of knowing which function it denotes. This works fine in a two valued logic and is the usual way of treating Hilbert's choice function (which corresponds to indefinite description).
Though this way of dealing with the problem is quite old, the possibility of "looseness" of this kind is not often alluded to by philosophers, but might possibly be the best way to interpret natural languages as two valued logics.
Roger Jones
Thanks to Speranza for his exhaustive commentary on Neale's review of WOW.
I thought I might say a little about why I was curious about Grice's views on presupposition.
This is in the context of our "conversation between Carnap and Grice", which has been dormant for a while.
It seemed to me, though I don't believe this comes from Carnap, that Carnap's position on ontology as given in his "Empiricism Semantics and Ontology" is a bit like saying that ontological questions external to some language framework (which Carnap considers meaningless) might well be considered common presuppositions to any assertion in the language.
The question is then whether Grice would have any objection to that way of talking about a non-natural language.
My impression is however, that Grice's objection to presuppositions is exclusively related to his objecting to truth value gaps in natural languages.
In the case I had in mind, the presupposition does not result in truth value gaps.
Not at least in the language itself, though Carnap's view on these external questions, that they are meaningless, does result in no truth value for the external question.
Carnap himself I think would consider the question of truth value gaps in natural languages (and indeed most questions about natural languages) as
belonging to some science (linguistics?) because natural languages are contingent, rather than to philosophy.
However, he softened on the question of the limits of philosophy, and would problably not want to press that kind of objection to ordinary language philosophy later in his life.
I just had a look at the Strawson paper in the Carnap Schillp volume, which is about the relative merits of constructed and natural languages in analytic philosophy.
Strawson seems rather dismissive of the case for formality.
He misses however a central issue, which is the difference between his (Strawson's) conception of philosophical analysis and Carnap's.
He is assuming that in advocating formal languages for philosophy Carnap is advocating their use for the kind of philosophy which Strawson is doing, i.e. the analysis of ordinary language.
But Carnap doesn't consider that to be philosophy, and so its very unlikely that he intended to advocate formal languages specifically for that purpose.
Grice's neo-traditional line of argument sometimes sounds more like an exploration than a statement of conviction on Grice's part.
He wants to contradict those who argue that the logic of ordinary discourse must diverge from "classical" logic in various respects, but its not clear from my own reading of Grice that he is not playing "devil's advocate", perhaps having a less dogmatic view on this than appears.
In "vacuous names" which is part of that enterprise, Grice looks very exploratory and experimental. It has a flavour of "lets see how far we can take this" (can we have our cake and eat it?) and devotes very little energy to the question whether ordinary language really is like "system Q".
One trick he misses in this is the possibility of retaining a two-valued logic by "looseness". One obtains a loose semantics by using principles to constrain the interpretation of one or more constructs without making the constructs completely definite. This is one way of dealing with partial functions in classical first order set theory. Under this scheme a definite description denotes some value even if the description is not satisfied, but in that case we have no way of knowing which function it denotes. This works fine in a two valued logic and is the usual way of treating Hilbert's choice function (which corresponds to indefinite description).
Though this way of dealing with the problem is quite old, the possibility of "looseness" of this kind is not often alluded to by philosophers, but might possibly be the best way to interpret natural languages as two valued logics.
Roger Jones
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Conversational rules and how to ignore them
Speranza
Neale, in "Ling and Phil" has a footnote:
"It should be stressed that, unlike some who have appealed to the notion of implicature, Grice himself was very much opposed to the idea of postulating idiosyncratic pragmatic rules with which to derive certain standard cases of generalized conversational implicature. To posit such rules is to abandon both the letter and the spirit of his theory. For Grice, the conversational implicatures that attach to particular utterances must be explicable in terms of the Cooperative Principle and maxims, construed as quite general antecedent assumptions about the rational nature of conversational practice (see section 2)."
Agreed!
Only, that if one does a textual analysis of "Logic and conversation" -- the Harman/Davidson reprint, say -- one does find (I think) at least once, the phrase,
"conversational rule".
I know because I once found in Grice's writings not just this collocation:
"converational rule"
but
"conversational move"
and
"conversational game".
The idea that it's all a game, which is a rule-governed one, and where one's contributions are 'moves' in the game.
Of course Neale is right that this is not the redundant rule of Searle's regulative rule. So it's not a rule.
Yet, the phrase, 'conversational rule' is a good one, provided you care to ignore it!
---- vide, "Wittgenstein on rule-following", Croom-Helm.
Neale, in "Ling and Phil" has a footnote:
"It should be stressed that, unlike some who have appealed to the notion of implicature, Grice himself was very much opposed to the idea of postulating idiosyncratic pragmatic rules with which to derive certain standard cases of generalized conversational implicature. To posit such rules is to abandon both the letter and the spirit of his theory. For Grice, the conversational implicatures that attach to particular utterances must be explicable in terms of the Cooperative Principle and maxims, construed as quite general antecedent assumptions about the rational nature of conversational practice (see section 2)."
Agreed!
Only, that if one does a textual analysis of "Logic and conversation" -- the Harman/Davidson reprint, say -- one does find (I think) at least once, the phrase,
"conversational rule".
I know because I once found in Grice's writings not just this collocation:
"converational rule"
but
"conversational move"
and
"conversational game".
The idea that it's all a game, which is a rule-governed one, and where one's contributions are 'moves' in the game.
Of course Neale is right that this is not the redundant rule of Searle's regulative rule. So it's not a rule.
Yet, the phrase, 'conversational rule' is a good one, provided you care to ignore it!
---- vide, "Wittgenstein on rule-following", Croom-Helm.
Shropshire
Speranza
Good example by Neale, "Ling. and Phil."
"After uttering “Mr X has excellent handwriting and is always very punctual,” U might (without irony) continue “Moreover, Mr X’s recent modal proof of the immortality of the soul is a brilliant and original contribution to
philosophy.” In the light of the first comment, this addition might be rather odd, but it would not result in U contradicting himself."
Variations on the theme worth considering.
"Shropshire has beautiful handwriting; on top of that, his modal proof of the immortality of the soul is a brilliant and original contribution to philosophy -- as we know it."
----- For Shropshire on the immortality of the soul, vide Grice 2001.
Good example by Neale, "Ling. and Phil."
"After uttering “Mr X has excellent handwriting and is always very punctual,” U might (without irony) continue “Moreover, Mr X’s recent modal proof of the immortality of the soul is a brilliant and original contribution to
philosophy.” In the light of the first comment, this addition might be rather odd, but it would not result in U contradicting himself."
Variations on the theme worth considering.
"Shropshire has beautiful handwriting; on top of that, his modal proof of the immortality of the soul is a brilliant and original contribution to philosophy -- as we know it."
----- For Shropshire on the immortality of the soul, vide Grice 2001.
"Echoing Kant"
Speranza
Jones was suggesting that we take a look at Neale, in "Ling. and Phil." We are. I find that Grice's locution,
'echoing Kant'
-- a charming one -- may be a good reminder, when Neale writes:
"Subsumed under this general principle [Be helpful in conversation], Grice distinguishes four categories of more specific maxims and submaxims enjoining truthfulness, informativeness, relevance, and clarity (pp. 26–27): Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). Do not make your contribution more informative
than is required. Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true. Specifically: (1) Do not say what you believe to be false; (2) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. Relation: Be relevant. Manner: ..."
I would NEVER think that Grice would care to provide these four categories UNLESS he were citing or echoing, jocularly, Kant!
---- Or Kantotle, even.
Aristotle talks of categories, ontologically:
substance of course does not count. It's qualitas, and quantitas that start Aristotle being serious about categories. And there's relatio, and modus.
Kant took this up and thought he was doing transcendental work! (He was!)
So, Grice, already in the twentieth-century, wants to speak of
CONVERSATIONAL categories, alla Kantotle.
So, it's the 'echoing Kant', that he thought would amuse the Harvard audience. No such figure of speech in the earlier Oxonian, "Logic and conversation" lectures, where he speaks rather of a principle of conversational candour and a correlative principle of conversational benevolence.
Cheers.
Jones was suggesting that we take a look at Neale, in "Ling. and Phil." We are. I find that Grice's locution,
'echoing Kant'
-- a charming one -- may be a good reminder, when Neale writes:
"Subsumed under this general principle [Be helpful in conversation], Grice distinguishes four categories of more specific maxims and submaxims enjoining truthfulness, informativeness, relevance, and clarity (pp. 26–27): Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). Do not make your contribution more informative
than is required. Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true. Specifically: (1) Do not say what you believe to be false; (2) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. Relation: Be relevant. Manner: ..."
I would NEVER think that Grice would care to provide these four categories UNLESS he were citing or echoing, jocularly, Kant!
---- Or Kantotle, even.
Aristotle talks of categories, ontologically:
substance of course does not count. It's qualitas, and quantitas that start Aristotle being serious about categories. And there's relatio, and modus.
Kant took this up and thought he was doing transcendental work! (He was!)
So, Grice, already in the twentieth-century, wants to speak of
CONVERSATIONAL categories, alla Kantotle.
So, it's the 'echoing Kant', that he thought would amuse the Harvard audience. No such figure of speech in the earlier Oxonian, "Logic and conversation" lectures, where he speaks rather of a principle of conversational candour and a correlative principle of conversational benevolence.
Cheers.
That pillar box seems red to Grice
Speranza
Jones was suggesting that we take a look at Neale's "Ling and Phil." I am. Neale considers the 'address' to the Aristotelian Society. Not to be pedantic, but this is part of a symposium. I want to think that Grice indeed chose the topic! But Grice had to travel far enough! To Cambridge, to deliver it! Braithwaite was the Chair, and A. R. White responded.
I like to think it was Warnock's idea.
Warnock taught at Oxford.
Grice taught at Oxford.
Neale considers:
"Warnock taught at Oxford and Grice taught at Oxford."
Also:
"Warnock and Grice wrote, "Perception"".
I.e., as much as Grice and Strawson both taught at Oxford and wrote "In defence of a dogma", there are loads of stuff in the Grice Collection now belonging to this Warnock-Grice (intended) retrospective.
It is interesting that it is Warnock the only one who CARED to publish the whole symposium in full in 1967 ("The philosophy of perception", Oxford readings in philosophy") where he refers to the 'ingenioius' manoeuvre, 'resourceful' by Grice.
Neale notes:
"Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear who is supposed to have assailed the CTP in this way because “The Causal Theory of Perception” contains no reference to any work in which this “frequently propounded” objection appears."
This is too true. I think White explores this. But I like to think that Grice is having Witters in mind. In Strand 6, of "Retrospective Epilogue" he indeed states that his idea of 'implicature' came from his work in the philosophy of perception (problems with sense-datum theory). Only LATER did the application to problems of "LOGIC" and conversation proper came to his mind (influenced of course by Strawson's challenge which Russell had found odious, "Mr. Strawson on referring", Mind).
----
So, Grice, who indeed quotes from Price, and was giving joint seminars in the philosophy of perception with Warnock, just took the point about the 'causal theory of perception' for granted, and considered what he found objections as based on an inadequate treatment of the 'implications' of "seems" statements. Or something!
Cheers.
Jones was suggesting that we take a look at Neale's "Ling and Phil." I am. Neale considers the 'address' to the Aristotelian Society. Not to be pedantic, but this is part of a symposium. I want to think that Grice indeed chose the topic! But Grice had to travel far enough! To Cambridge, to deliver it! Braithwaite was the Chair, and A. R. White responded.
I like to think it was Warnock's idea.
Warnock taught at Oxford.
Grice taught at Oxford.
Neale considers:
"Warnock taught at Oxford and Grice taught at Oxford."
Also:
"Warnock and Grice wrote, "Perception"".
I.e., as much as Grice and Strawson both taught at Oxford and wrote "In defence of a dogma", there are loads of stuff in the Grice Collection now belonging to this Warnock-Grice (intended) retrospective.
It is interesting that it is Warnock the only one who CARED to publish the whole symposium in full in 1967 ("The philosophy of perception", Oxford readings in philosophy") where he refers to the 'ingenioius' manoeuvre, 'resourceful' by Grice.
Neale notes:
"Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear who is supposed to have assailed the CTP in this way because “The Causal Theory of Perception” contains no reference to any work in which this “frequently propounded” objection appears."
This is too true. I think White explores this. But I like to think that Grice is having Witters in mind. In Strand 6, of "Retrospective Epilogue" he indeed states that his idea of 'implicature' came from his work in the philosophy of perception (problems with sense-datum theory). Only LATER did the application to problems of "LOGIC" and conversation proper came to his mind (influenced of course by Strawson's challenge which Russell had found odious, "Mr. Strawson on referring", Mind).
----
So, Grice, who indeed quotes from Price, and was giving joint seminars in the philosophy of perception with Warnock, just took the point about the 'causal theory of perception' for granted, and considered what he found objections as based on an inadequate treatment of the 'implications' of "seems" statements. Or something!
Cheers.
Grice on Grice on Grice on Grice
Speranza
Actually, that should read:
Grice4 on Grice3 on Grice2 on Grice1.
It's a reference to Jones's idea of commenting on Neale, Ling. and Phil, who writes about WoW:i:
"Grice provides further examples in Essays 1 and 15."
-----
I.e. A-philosophical theses. In his website, R. B. Jones has provided extensive commentary on the A-philosopher. My point here is that, "Grice provides further examples" is a charming thing to say.
I am particularly fascinated by the fact that the most important, I hope, example, that Grice provides, is his OWN.
Grice 1967:i, i.e. "Prolegomena" to "Logic and conversation" cites from Grice, 1961, A causal theory of perception.
I.e. Grice is going on record as criticising his own former self.
In 1965, he had delivered a full set of "Logic and Conversation" lectures at Oxford, where he used 'implicature' extensively.
But he is now in the USA, and he draws back to an earlier self, "Causal theory". He is distinguishing between:
D-or-D implication,
"That pillar box seems red to me" (his example).
"In fact it IS".
---- Grice is suggesting that he is now in possession of a fuller theory to explain why that seems like an odd thing to say:
"Hey, that pillar box seems red to me, and is red." (Or: even odder: "That pillar box is red and seems red to me"?)
Cheers.
Actually, that should read:
Grice4 on Grice3 on Grice2 on Grice1.
It's a reference to Jones's idea of commenting on Neale, Ling. and Phil, who writes about WoW:i:
"Grice provides further examples in Essays 1 and 15."
-----
I.e. A-philosophical theses. In his website, R. B. Jones has provided extensive commentary on the A-philosopher. My point here is that, "Grice provides further examples" is a charming thing to say.
I am particularly fascinated by the fact that the most important, I hope, example, that Grice provides, is his OWN.
Grice 1967:i, i.e. "Prolegomena" to "Logic and conversation" cites from Grice, 1961, A causal theory of perception.
I.e. Grice is going on record as criticising his own former self.
In 1965, he had delivered a full set of "Logic and Conversation" lectures at Oxford, where he used 'implicature' extensively.
But he is now in the USA, and he draws back to an earlier self, "Causal theory". He is distinguishing between:
D-or-D implication,
"That pillar box seems red to me" (his example).
"In fact it IS".
---- Grice is suggesting that he is now in possession of a fuller theory to explain why that seems like an odd thing to say:
"Hey, that pillar box seems red to me, and is red." (Or: even odder: "That pillar box is red and seems red to me"?)
Cheers.
References to references
Speranza
Jones was referring to Neale, in "Ling. and Phil." For the record, Neale's set of references -- with the occasional commentary:
Adams, E. [1992]. Grice on Indicative Conditionals. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.
----- We were discussing titles to Grice's lectures. Lecture IV Grice entitles "Indicative conditionals" and the motto stuck!
---
Armstrong, D. (1971). Meaning and Communication. Philosophical Review 80, 427–447.
--- I like this. He disallows Humpty Dumpty as _meaning_ that there is 'glory' for Alice ("There's a nice knock-down argument for you!"). Humpty cannot intend that. Armstrong is an Australian philosopher.
Avramides, A. (1989). Meaning and Mind, Cambridge: MIT Press.
--- an elaboration of her DPhil (under Strawson).
Bach, K. (1987). On Communicative Intentions: A Reply to Récanati. Mind and
Language 2, 141–154.
Bach, K., and M. Harnish (1979). Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
---- Harnish, on 'and'-conjunction, in HIS paper.
Barwise, J., and R. Cooper (1981). Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language.
Linguistics and Philosophy 4, 159–219.
Bennett, J. (1976) Linguistic Behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
--- We were referring to this. ""Meaning" was published in 1957", but is dated 1948. Grice cares to date it 1948 in WoW. Bennett is making a connection between the 1956 "Defense of a dogma" and the 'later' "Meaning". Grice credits Bennett in WoW even if he does not follow Bennett's suggestion to re-order all the papers!
Blackburn, S. (1984). Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
--- formerly of Pembroke and one of my favourite philosophers, ever!
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Cohen, J. (1971). Some Remarks on Grice’s Views about the Logical Particles of Natural
Language. In Y. Bar-Hillel (ed.), Pragmatics of Natural Language. Dordrecht:
Reidel, 50–68.
--- Cohen continued with his reply to Walker, "Can the conversationalist be defended?". Cohen thinks it could not! Both pieces by Cohen now in his posthumous book. If I had not been a Griceite, I would possibly have been a Cohenite.
Donnellan, K. (1966). Reference and Definite Descriptions. Philosophical Review 77,
281–304.
--- cited by Grice, "Vacuous Names". Grice hastens to add that he'd rather have nothing to do with Donnellan. Luckily, the indifference was not reciprocal!
Gazdar, G. (1979). Pragmatics: Presupposition, Implicature, and Logical Form. New
York: Academic Press.
---- PhD, Dept. of Philosophy, Reading Univ.
Grandy, R. (1989). On Grice on Language. Journal of Philosophy, 514–525.
--- I love to quote this in full: since this had Jonathan Bennett chairing a thing rather pompously called, "Seminar on the thought of Paul Grice". This was for the American Philosophical Association, hence the irrelevance or over-informativeness of "the thought of Paul Grice", as opposed to, say, the "eyes of Paul Grice."
--- and so on. (Metaphysically more interesting is: Symposium on the Laughter of Paul Grice." Participants were: Baker, Grandy, Warner, and my favourite philosopher in MIT: Stalnaker!)
Grice, P. (1941). Personal Identity. Mind, 50 (1941), 330–350; reprinted in J. Perry (ed.),
Personal Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975, 73–95.
Grice, P. (1957). Meaning. Philosophical Review 66, 377–388.
---- Grice dates this 1948. I follow suit!
Grice, P. (1961). The Causal Theory of Perception. Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, suppl. vol. 35, 121–52.
---- this was a meeting at Cambridge. Chair was Braithwaite. Co-symposiast was A. R. White. It should be FORBIDDEN to reprint this unless it's in full. I always pity White. It was Warnock who reprinted the whole thing in full. And now Bayne, in his site. I find White's reply very charming, if slightly boring. He, like Armstrong, is an Autralian philosopher.
Grice, P. (1968). Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence Meaning and Word Meaning. Foundations
of Language 4, 225–242.
---- I like to think Grice submitted this to this VERY OBSCURE journal because his friend, Dutch author J. D. Staal, was in the editorial board!
Grice, P. (1969). Vacuous Names. In D. Davidson and J. Hintikka (eds.), Words and
Objections. Dordrecht: Reidel, 118–145.
---- This was Davidson's idea. Apparently, Grice's piece came latest, and hence, not repr. in Synthese.
Grice, P. (1969a). Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions. Philosophical Review 78, 147–177.
--- Grice chose this journal, because it was Strawson's choice back in 1956, when he, without telling Grice, got "Meaning" inside and envolope and submitted to the review. Lady Ann Strawson typed it. Grice was only communicated (if not meant) later on.
Grice, P. (1970). Lectures on Logic and Reality. University of Illinois at Urbana.
--- now in The Grice Collection. Also known as "How pirots karulise elatically: some simpler ways." This is a transcript. We'll never know if he favoured the spelling, 'karulise', or 'carulise', or 'carulize', for that other matter.
Grice, P. (1971). Intention and Uncertainty. Proceedings of the British Academy, 263–
279.
Grice, P. (1975). Method in Philosophical Psychology: From the Banal to the Bizarre.
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (1975) 23–
53.
--- now in 1991, as Neale notes.
Grice, P. (1975a). Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and
Semantics, vol. 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 41–58.
---- Lakoff likes to think he is the one who got this here. Grice always quoted from the rather more ordinary philosophical reprint (two-column format, typical textbook thing) in Harman/Davidson.
Grice, P. (1978). Further Notes on Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and
Semantics, vol. 9: Pragmatics, New York: Academic Press, 113–128.
Grice, P. (1981). Presupposition and Conversational Implicature. In P. Cole (ed.), Radical
Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, 183–198.
Grice, P. (1986). Reply to Richards. In R. Grandy and R. Warner (eds.), Philosophical
Grounds of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
--- of course the acronym comes in full with
P aul Grice hilosophical
G rice rounds of
R ice ationality
I ce ntentions
C e ategories
E ends
Clarendon objected: "Grice does not sell". This is ambiguous: Barbara Grice does sell.
Grice, P. (1991). The Carus Lectures, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
---- The conception of value.
Harman, G. (1974). Review of Meaning by S. Schiffer. Journal of Philosophy 70, 7.
---- this is substantial. Neale will later collaborate with Schiffer closely. Harman proposes some criticisms to Schiffer, which Grice would call 'post-Schifferian'.
Harnish, M. (1976). Logical Form and Implicature. In T. Bever et al. (eds.), An
Integrated Theory of Linguistic Ability. Crowell: New York, pp. 313–391.
--- on 'and' reduction, amongst other zillion fascinating bits. My favourite Arizona professor.
Hugly P., and C. Sayward (1979). A Problem About Conversational Implicature.
Linguistics and Philosophy 3, 19–25.
--- not much of a problem to me! Pretentious title!
Jackson., F. (1988). Conditionals. Oxford: Blackwell.
Keenan, E. (1976). The Universality of Conversational Implicature. Language in Society
5, 67–80.
---- She is Ochs, maiden name. E. O. Keenan, as I like to quote her. In Pennsylvania, she was pretty influential. She thinks Malagasy speakers are anti-Griceian.
Kempson, R. (1975). Presupposition and the Delimitation of Semantics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
--- She created Dynamic Syntax, and loved it!
Kripke, S. (1977). Speaker Reference and Semantic Reference. In P. A. French, T. E.
Uehling, Jr., and H. K. Wettstein, Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of
Language. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 6–27.
--- he thinks he is Griceian. Stampe and Patton have criticised his Griceian considerations.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
--- He is from Gloucester. Educated London. He likes his Grice. Made Grice very popular in Lancaster.
Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
--- He went on to write a many-page book on Implicature. A gem.
Lewis, D. (1969). Convention. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Lewis, D. (1975). Languages and Language. In K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind, and
Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 3-35.
Loar, B. (1981). Mind and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
---- a genius, from Los Angeles's most interesting private university. He has Oxonian pedigree, too, having studied with Warnock. His DPhil thesis on "Sentence meaning".
McDowell, J. (1980). Meaning, Communication, and Knowledge. In Z. van Straaten
(ed.), Philosophical Subjects. Essays Presented to P. F. Strawson. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
---- a genius. I like to say that Peter Strawson, qua name, allows for a less rich acronym:
P philosophical peter
S subjects strawson.
This is a festchrift for Strawson, then.
Mackie, J. (1973). Truth, Probability, and Paradox. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Nagel, T. (1979). Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
--- Nagel was Grice's favourite student back at St. John's.
Neale, S. (1990). Descriptions, Cambridge: MIT Press.
Posner, R. (1980). Semantics and Pragmatics of Sentence Connectives in Natural
Language. In J. R. Searle et al (eds.), Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics. Dordrecht:
Reidel, 169–203.
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard.
---- Oddly, Rawls quotes from Grice's "Personal identity". This made Grice popular in Oxford among those styding 'reasons and persons': Parfit, etc.
Récanati, F. (1986). Defining Communicative Intentions. Mind and Language 1, 213–
242.
Ryle, G. (1949). The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchison.
--- Grice quotes him in "Intention and disposition", the Grice papers. A fascinating paper. Of course, Grice was anti-Rylean. Grice was a functionalist, not a behaviourist.
Sadock, J. (1978). On Testing for Conversational Implicature. In In P. Cole (ed.), Syntax
and Semantics, vol. 9: Pragmatics, New York: Academic Press, 281–298.
Schiffer, S. (1972). Meaning. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
---- he continued with his "Remnants of meaning". Russell Dale has elaborated on this.
SCHIFFER to Grice: I have a new book in print. It will be critical of you. (paraphrasis).
GRICE: I haven't precisely kept still myself.
----
Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. (1975). A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts. In K. Gunderson (ed.), Language,
Mind and Knowledge, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol VII.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 344–369.
Searle, J. (1979). Referential and Attributive. The Monist 62, 140–208. (Reprinted in
Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, 137–161.)
--- There's also Searle in PGRICE, Grandy/Richards, and a few of other Griceian papers of interest. His attempt and failure at a speech-act theory of conversation is charming -- "Speech acts and conversation" -- and his collaboration with Vanderveken a jewel.
Stenius, E. (1967). Mood and language-Game. Synthese 17, 254–274.
---- a good reference. Grice would quote from these authors: e.g. 'alethic' he borrowed from von Wright. Stenius on 'radical' and 'radix', etc.
Strawson, P. (1950). On Referring. Mind 59, 320–344. Reprinted in Strawson’s Logico-
Linguistic Papers. London: Methuen, 1971, 1–27.
Strawson, P. (1952). Introduction to Logical Theory. London: Methuen.
Strawson, P. (1964). Intention and Convention in Speech Acts. Philosophical Review, 73,
Strawson (1971), Reprinted in Strawson’s Logico-Linguistic Papers. London:
Methuen, 1971, 149–169.
Strawson, P. (1969). Meaning and Truth. Inaugural Lecture, University of Oxford,
November 1969. Reprinted in Strawson’s Logico-Linguistic Papers. London:
Methuen, 1971, 170–189.
Strawson, P. (1986). ‘If’ and ‘⊃’. In R. Grandy and R. Warner (eds.), Philosophical
Grounds of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 229–242.
--- repr. in his own collection! Grice dates this 1968, and it shows: Strawson refers to Grice's "Logic and Conversation" as being "unfortunately unpublished". It cannot be 1986, when the whole world was talking 'converational implicature'!
Suppes, P. (1986). The Primacy of Utterer’s Meaning. In R. Grandy and R. Warner
(eds.), Philosophical Grounds of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 109–
129.
--- I like him. Dengler knows him well, Stanfordite that he is.
Vlach, F. (1981). Speaker’s meaning. Linguistics and Philosophy 4, 359–381.
Walker, R. (1975). Conversational Implicatures. In S. Blackburn (ed.) Meaning,
Reference and Necessity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 133–181
--- this challenged Cohen to write, "Can the converationalist hypothesis be defended?" He thought it couldn't, but then he died.
Yu, P. (1979). On the Gricean Program about Meaning. Linguistics and Philosophy 3,
273–288.
--- I like to think of Grice as a channel, rather: with many programmes broadcast by it.
Cheers!
Jones was referring to Neale, in "Ling. and Phil." For the record, Neale's set of references -- with the occasional commentary:
Adams, E. [1992]. Grice on Indicative Conditionals. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.
----- We were discussing titles to Grice's lectures. Lecture IV Grice entitles "Indicative conditionals" and the motto stuck!
---
Armstrong, D. (1971). Meaning and Communication. Philosophical Review 80, 427–447.
--- I like this. He disallows Humpty Dumpty as _meaning_ that there is 'glory' for Alice ("There's a nice knock-down argument for you!"). Humpty cannot intend that. Armstrong is an Australian philosopher.
Avramides, A. (1989). Meaning and Mind, Cambridge: MIT Press.
--- an elaboration of her DPhil (under Strawson).
Bach, K. (1987). On Communicative Intentions: A Reply to Récanati. Mind and
Language 2, 141–154.
Bach, K., and M. Harnish (1979). Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
---- Harnish, on 'and'-conjunction, in HIS paper.
Barwise, J., and R. Cooper (1981). Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language.
Linguistics and Philosophy 4, 159–219.
Bennett, J. (1976) Linguistic Behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
--- We were referring to this. ""Meaning" was published in 1957", but is dated 1948. Grice cares to date it 1948 in WoW. Bennett is making a connection between the 1956 "Defense of a dogma" and the 'later' "Meaning". Grice credits Bennett in WoW even if he does not follow Bennett's suggestion to re-order all the papers!
Blackburn, S. (1984). Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
--- formerly of Pembroke and one of my favourite philosophers, ever!
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Cohen, J. (1971). Some Remarks on Grice’s Views about the Logical Particles of Natural
Language. In Y. Bar-Hillel (ed.), Pragmatics of Natural Language. Dordrecht:
Reidel, 50–68.
--- Cohen continued with his reply to Walker, "Can the conversationalist be defended?". Cohen thinks it could not! Both pieces by Cohen now in his posthumous book. If I had not been a Griceite, I would possibly have been a Cohenite.
Donnellan, K. (1966). Reference and Definite Descriptions. Philosophical Review 77,
281–304.
--- cited by Grice, "Vacuous Names". Grice hastens to add that he'd rather have nothing to do with Donnellan. Luckily, the indifference was not reciprocal!
Gazdar, G. (1979). Pragmatics: Presupposition, Implicature, and Logical Form. New
York: Academic Press.
---- PhD, Dept. of Philosophy, Reading Univ.
Grandy, R. (1989). On Grice on Language. Journal of Philosophy, 514–525.
--- I love to quote this in full: since this had Jonathan Bennett chairing a thing rather pompously called, "Seminar on the thought of Paul Grice". This was for the American Philosophical Association, hence the irrelevance or over-informativeness of "the thought of Paul Grice", as opposed to, say, the "eyes of Paul Grice."
--- and so on. (Metaphysically more interesting is: Symposium on the Laughter of Paul Grice." Participants were: Baker, Grandy, Warner, and my favourite philosopher in MIT: Stalnaker!)
Grice, P. (1941). Personal Identity. Mind, 50 (1941), 330–350; reprinted in J. Perry (ed.),
Personal Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975, 73–95.
Grice, P. (1957). Meaning. Philosophical Review 66, 377–388.
---- Grice dates this 1948. I follow suit!
Grice, P. (1961). The Causal Theory of Perception. Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, suppl. vol. 35, 121–52.
---- this was a meeting at Cambridge. Chair was Braithwaite. Co-symposiast was A. R. White. It should be FORBIDDEN to reprint this unless it's in full. I always pity White. It was Warnock who reprinted the whole thing in full. And now Bayne, in his site. I find White's reply very charming, if slightly boring. He, like Armstrong, is an Autralian philosopher.
Grice, P. (1968). Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence Meaning and Word Meaning. Foundations
of Language 4, 225–242.
---- I like to think Grice submitted this to this VERY OBSCURE journal because his friend, Dutch author J. D. Staal, was in the editorial board!
Grice, P. (1969). Vacuous Names. In D. Davidson and J. Hintikka (eds.), Words and
Objections. Dordrecht: Reidel, 118–145.
---- This was Davidson's idea. Apparently, Grice's piece came latest, and hence, not repr. in Synthese.
Grice, P. (1969a). Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions. Philosophical Review 78, 147–177.
--- Grice chose this journal, because it was Strawson's choice back in 1956, when he, without telling Grice, got "Meaning" inside and envolope and submitted to the review. Lady Ann Strawson typed it. Grice was only communicated (if not meant) later on.
Grice, P. (1970). Lectures on Logic and Reality. University of Illinois at Urbana.
--- now in The Grice Collection. Also known as "How pirots karulise elatically: some simpler ways." This is a transcript. We'll never know if he favoured the spelling, 'karulise', or 'carulise', or 'carulize', for that other matter.
Grice, P. (1971). Intention and Uncertainty. Proceedings of the British Academy, 263–
279.
Grice, P. (1975). Method in Philosophical Psychology: From the Banal to the Bizarre.
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (1975) 23–
53.
--- now in 1991, as Neale notes.
Grice, P. (1975a). Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and
Semantics, vol. 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 41–58.
---- Lakoff likes to think he is the one who got this here. Grice always quoted from the rather more ordinary philosophical reprint (two-column format, typical textbook thing) in Harman/Davidson.
Grice, P. (1978). Further Notes on Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and
Semantics, vol. 9: Pragmatics, New York: Academic Press, 113–128.
Grice, P. (1981). Presupposition and Conversational Implicature. In P. Cole (ed.), Radical
Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, 183–198.
Grice, P. (1986). Reply to Richards. In R. Grandy and R. Warner (eds.), Philosophical
Grounds of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
--- of course the acronym comes in full with
P aul Grice hilosophical
G rice rounds of
R ice ationality
I ce ntentions
C e ategories
E ends
Clarendon objected: "Grice does not sell". This is ambiguous: Barbara Grice does sell.
Grice, P. (1991). The Carus Lectures, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
---- The conception of value.
Harman, G. (1974). Review of Meaning by S. Schiffer. Journal of Philosophy 70, 7.
---- this is substantial. Neale will later collaborate with Schiffer closely. Harman proposes some criticisms to Schiffer, which Grice would call 'post-Schifferian'.
Harnish, M. (1976). Logical Form and Implicature. In T. Bever et al. (eds.), An
Integrated Theory of Linguistic Ability. Crowell: New York, pp. 313–391.
--- on 'and' reduction, amongst other zillion fascinating bits. My favourite Arizona professor.
Hugly P., and C. Sayward (1979). A Problem About Conversational Implicature.
Linguistics and Philosophy 3, 19–25.
--- not much of a problem to me! Pretentious title!
Jackson., F. (1988). Conditionals. Oxford: Blackwell.
Keenan, E. (1976). The Universality of Conversational Implicature. Language in Society
5, 67–80.
---- She is Ochs, maiden name. E. O. Keenan, as I like to quote her. In Pennsylvania, she was pretty influential. She thinks Malagasy speakers are anti-Griceian.
Kempson, R. (1975). Presupposition and the Delimitation of Semantics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
--- She created Dynamic Syntax, and loved it!
Kripke, S. (1977). Speaker Reference and Semantic Reference. In P. A. French, T. E.
Uehling, Jr., and H. K. Wettstein, Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of
Language. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 6–27.
--- he thinks he is Griceian. Stampe and Patton have criticised his Griceian considerations.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
--- He is from Gloucester. Educated London. He likes his Grice. Made Grice very popular in Lancaster.
Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
--- He went on to write a many-page book on Implicature. A gem.
Lewis, D. (1969). Convention. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Lewis, D. (1975). Languages and Language. In K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind, and
Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 3-35.
Loar, B. (1981). Mind and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
---- a genius, from Los Angeles's most interesting private university. He has Oxonian pedigree, too, having studied with Warnock. His DPhil thesis on "Sentence meaning".
McDowell, J. (1980). Meaning, Communication, and Knowledge. In Z. van Straaten
(ed.), Philosophical Subjects. Essays Presented to P. F. Strawson. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
---- a genius. I like to say that Peter Strawson, qua name, allows for a less rich acronym:
P philosophical peter
S subjects strawson.
This is a festchrift for Strawson, then.
Mackie, J. (1973). Truth, Probability, and Paradox. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Nagel, T. (1979). Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
--- Nagel was Grice's favourite student back at St. John's.
Neale, S. (1990). Descriptions, Cambridge: MIT Press.
Posner, R. (1980). Semantics and Pragmatics of Sentence Connectives in Natural
Language. In J. R. Searle et al (eds.), Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics. Dordrecht:
Reidel, 169–203.
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard.
---- Oddly, Rawls quotes from Grice's "Personal identity". This made Grice popular in Oxford among those styding 'reasons and persons': Parfit, etc.
Récanati, F. (1986). Defining Communicative Intentions. Mind and Language 1, 213–
242.
Ryle, G. (1949). The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchison.
--- Grice quotes him in "Intention and disposition", the Grice papers. A fascinating paper. Of course, Grice was anti-Rylean. Grice was a functionalist, not a behaviourist.
Sadock, J. (1978). On Testing for Conversational Implicature. In In P. Cole (ed.), Syntax
and Semantics, vol. 9: Pragmatics, New York: Academic Press, 281–298.
Schiffer, S. (1972). Meaning. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
---- he continued with his "Remnants of meaning". Russell Dale has elaborated on this.
SCHIFFER to Grice: I have a new book in print. It will be critical of you. (paraphrasis).
GRICE: I haven't precisely kept still myself.
----
Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. (1975). A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts. In K. Gunderson (ed.), Language,
Mind and Knowledge, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol VII.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 344–369.
Searle, J. (1979). Referential and Attributive. The Monist 62, 140–208. (Reprinted in
Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, 137–161.)
--- There's also Searle in PGRICE, Grandy/Richards, and a few of other Griceian papers of interest. His attempt and failure at a speech-act theory of conversation is charming -- "Speech acts and conversation" -- and his collaboration with Vanderveken a jewel.
Stenius, E. (1967). Mood and language-Game. Synthese 17, 254–274.
---- a good reference. Grice would quote from these authors: e.g. 'alethic' he borrowed from von Wright. Stenius on 'radical' and 'radix', etc.
Strawson, P. (1950). On Referring. Mind 59, 320–344. Reprinted in Strawson’s Logico-
Linguistic Papers. London: Methuen, 1971, 1–27.
Strawson, P. (1952). Introduction to Logical Theory. London: Methuen.
Strawson, P. (1964). Intention and Convention in Speech Acts. Philosophical Review, 73,
Strawson (1971), Reprinted in Strawson’s Logico-Linguistic Papers. London:
Methuen, 1971, 149–169.
Strawson, P. (1969). Meaning and Truth. Inaugural Lecture, University of Oxford,
November 1969. Reprinted in Strawson’s Logico-Linguistic Papers. London:
Methuen, 1971, 170–189.
Strawson, P. (1986). ‘If’ and ‘⊃’. In R. Grandy and R. Warner (eds.), Philosophical
Grounds of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 229–242.
--- repr. in his own collection! Grice dates this 1968, and it shows: Strawson refers to Grice's "Logic and Conversation" as being "unfortunately unpublished". It cannot be 1986, when the whole world was talking 'converational implicature'!
Suppes, P. (1986). The Primacy of Utterer’s Meaning. In R. Grandy and R. Warner
(eds.), Philosophical Grounds of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 109–
129.
--- I like him. Dengler knows him well, Stanfordite that he is.
Vlach, F. (1981). Speaker’s meaning. Linguistics and Philosophy 4, 359–381.
Walker, R. (1975). Conversational Implicatures. In S. Blackburn (ed.) Meaning,
Reference and Necessity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 133–181
--- this challenged Cohen to write, "Can the converationalist hypothesis be defended?" He thought it couldn't, but then he died.
Yu, P. (1979). On the Gricean Program about Meaning. Linguistics and Philosophy 3,
273–288.
--- I like to think of Grice as a channel, rather: with many programmes broadcast by it.
Cheers!
The bandaged leg
Speranza
Neale, "Ling. & Phil.", as referred to by Jones:
"He seems to be worried that in cases like ... [that of the bandaged leg -- by displaying his bandaged leg, Bill means that his leg is bandaged] there is something approximating natural meaning that interferes with the idea of ... Bill nonnaturally meaning that Bill has a bandaged leg."
-----
I agree, but this is subtle.
Grice seems to have been too problematic about 'mean', and he avoided 'sign' like the rats. But for Romance Speakers, it's all about the SIGN. It's signs that are natural or non-natural, or conventional if you mustn't.
Now, what _is_ a sign? In this case, we seem to be just registering the case of the belief, on the part of the addressee:
Bill's leg is bandaged.
Bill has displayed a bandaged leg.
------ cfr. "natural" uses of 'mean'. As in "The Rainbow Implies Rain" ("Dictionary of Philosophy"). We are not comfy with true 'natural' signs being 'signs' at all. Seth Sharpless has commented on this, and Wharton has credited him in his recent book.
So the thing is PRETTY subtle, and as Neale notes, it involves 'intuitions' on the part of Grice (as to how and when to use 'mean', 'imply', and the rest of them!). Cheers!
Neale, "Ling. & Phil.", as referred to by Jones:
"He seems to be worried that in cases like ... [that of the bandaged leg -- by displaying his bandaged leg, Bill means that his leg is bandaged] there is something approximating natural meaning that interferes with the idea of ... Bill nonnaturally meaning that Bill has a bandaged leg."
-----
I agree, but this is subtle.
Grice seems to have been too problematic about 'mean', and he avoided 'sign' like the rats. But for Romance Speakers, it's all about the SIGN. It's signs that are natural or non-natural, or conventional if you mustn't.
Now, what _is_ a sign? In this case, we seem to be just registering the case of the belief, on the part of the addressee:
Bill's leg is bandaged.
Bill has displayed a bandaged leg.
------ cfr. "natural" uses of 'mean'. As in "The Rainbow Implies Rain" ("Dictionary of Philosophy"). We are not comfy with true 'natural' signs being 'signs' at all. Seth Sharpless has commented on this, and Wharton has credited him in his recent book.
So the thing is PRETTY subtle, and as Neale notes, it involves 'intuitions' on the part of Grice (as to how and when to use 'mean', 'imply', and the rest of them!). Cheers!
The bandaged leg
Speranza
We were discussing this.
Neale, in Ling. Phil. refers to the very example by Grice, WoW:
"[I]n response to an invitation to play squash, Bill displays his bandaged leg (p. 109). According to Grice, we do not want to say that ... Bill meant that his leg was bandaged (though we might want to say that he meant that he could not play squash,
or even that he had a bad leg)."
According to me, either!
--
Grice is playing here with
"mean"
and
"imply"
--- unbeknownst to him, perhaps.
In most Romance Languages, there is no distinction between 'mean' and 'imply'!
("Si chiama 'mente' perche mente", the slogan goes -- we call it 'mind' because it lies!).
----
By uttering his bandaged leg, U meant that his leg was bandaged.
---- VERY HARSH thing to say!
What about
"By uttering his bandaged leg, U meant he was not going to play squash." VERY GOOD.
"By uttering his bandaged leg, U meant that his leg was bad." LESS GOOD, but still good enough.
For what LIES behind a bandage?
-----
Now use 'imply'.
By uttering 'p', U meant that p.
By uttering 'p', U implied that p.
Here we are considering.
"My leg is bandaged"
in its version which is non-linguistic as it were.
As in:
"I have blue eyes."
or
"My nose is big." (Opera by Alfano).
----
The topic connects with something we were discussing with L. J. Kramer in this club.
We were considering the non-verbal behaviour of this revolutionary leader, who by means of lights and sounds, meant,
"The brits are coming!"
We were wondering if he could have LIED about it. He could. Could he have been IRONIC about it? Less clear.
-----
In English, there is 'imply', and there is, I submit, 'exply'. "Exply" is less frequently used.
I would say that
"By uttering 'x' [where 'x' is the non-verbal behavioural display, "I have a bandaged leg"] U EXPLIES that his leg is bandaged."
What he IMPLIES is that his leg is bad, and even that it would be, under the circumstances, be a bad thing to play squash.
-----
This connects only with 'p' and "that-p" clauses.
By uttering "It is raining", U means that it is raining. Does he _imply_ that it is raining?
This connects with Grice's further reluctance to treat Moore's paradox as an implicature:
"By uttering "p", U does not IMPLY that he believes that p; only he EXPRESSES his belief."
and so on...
Cheers!
We were discussing this.
Neale, in Ling. Phil. refers to the very example by Grice, WoW:
"[I]n response to an invitation to play squash, Bill displays his bandaged leg (p. 109). According to Grice, we do not want to say that ... Bill meant that his leg was bandaged (though we might want to say that he meant that he could not play squash,
or even that he had a bad leg)."
According to me, either!
--
Grice is playing here with
"mean"
and
"imply"
--- unbeknownst to him, perhaps.
In most Romance Languages, there is no distinction between 'mean' and 'imply'!
("Si chiama 'mente' perche mente", the slogan goes -- we call it 'mind' because it lies!).
----
By uttering his bandaged leg, U meant that his leg was bandaged.
---- VERY HARSH thing to say!
What about
"By uttering his bandaged leg, U meant he was not going to play squash." VERY GOOD.
"By uttering his bandaged leg, U meant that his leg was bad." LESS GOOD, but still good enough.
For what LIES behind a bandage?
-----
Now use 'imply'.
By uttering 'p', U meant that p.
By uttering 'p', U implied that p.
Here we are considering.
"My leg is bandaged"
in its version which is non-linguistic as it were.
As in:
"I have blue eyes."
or
"My nose is big." (Opera by Alfano).
----
The topic connects with something we were discussing with L. J. Kramer in this club.
We were considering the non-verbal behaviour of this revolutionary leader, who by means of lights and sounds, meant,
"The brits are coming!"
We were wondering if he could have LIED about it. He could. Could he have been IRONIC about it? Less clear.
-----
In English, there is 'imply', and there is, I submit, 'exply'. "Exply" is less frequently used.
I would say that
"By uttering 'x' [where 'x' is the non-verbal behavioural display, "I have a bandaged leg"] U EXPLIES that his leg is bandaged."
What he IMPLIES is that his leg is bad, and even that it would be, under the circumstances, be a bad thing to play squash.
-----
This connects only with 'p' and "that-p" clauses.
By uttering "It is raining", U means that it is raining. Does he _imply_ that it is raining?
This connects with Grice's further reluctance to treat Moore's paradox as an implicature:
"By uttering "p", U does not IMPLY that he believes that p; only he EXPRESSES his belief."
and so on...
Cheers!
D. E. Over on Grice and Donnellan
Speranza
A good source for this has been, for me, Over's reflections on this. Also for "Linguistics and Philosophy". Over taught in Northern England. Educated London. Great philosopher!
Re: Jones's butler, Jones's gardener.
A good source for this has been, for me, Over's reflections on this. Also for "Linguistics and Philosophy". Over taught in Northern England. Educated London. Great philosopher!
Re: Jones's butler, Jones's gardener.
Jones's gardener, Jones's butler
Speranza
Oddly, Jones was discussing this. Rather, Jones was referring to Neale judging Grice's "Vacuous Names" the gem that it is. Jones is aware of this.
In the Ling. & Phil. piece, Neale provides further evidence for why "Vacuous Names" is a gem. He Neale) is discussing material Neale will elaborate in his classic "Definite descriptions".
I always loved Grice's "Vacuous Names" for the references to the 'definite description' controversy. There's loads written on this, which I have researched motivated by the casual (not causal) reference by Grice to Donnellan, to the effect, "I don't agree with Donnellan".
But this is Neale bringing "Vacuous Names" to the fore, then:
"In fact, Grice disposes very neatly of the view that descriptions are ambiguous
between Russellian and referential readings. In “Vacuous Names” (which is unfortunately not included in Studies) Grice contrasts the following examples."
(1) SCENARIO I
A group of men is discussing the situation arising from the death of a business acquaintance, of whose private life they know nothing, except that (as they think) he lived extravagantly, with a household staff that included a butler. One of them says “Well, Jones’ butler will be seeking a new position.”
(2) SCENARIO II
"Earlier, another group has just attended a party at Jones’ house, at which their hats and coats were looked after by a dignified individual in dark clothes with a wing-collar, a portly man with protruding ears, whom they heard Jones addressing as “Old Boy,” and who at one point was discussing with an old lady the cultivation of vegetable marrows. One of the group says
i. “Jones’ butler got the hats and coats mixed up”
(p. 141).
Neale:
"Grice then highlights two important features of case (2)."
"First, only in case (2) has some particular individual been “‘described as’, ‘referred to as’, or ‘called’, Jones’ butler by the speaker” (ibid.)."
"Second, in case (2), someone who knew that Jones had no butler and who knew that the man with the protruding ears, etc., was actually Jones’ gardener “would also be in a position to claim that the speaker had misdescribed that individual as Jones’ butler” (p. 142)."
Neale:
"Whereas many philosophers used pairs of examples with these general features to motivate the view that descriptions are ambiguous between Russellian and referential readings [e.g. Donnellan 1966) [as cited indeed by Grice, "Vacuous Names" in a footnote, and being the locus classicus which originated much Griceian literature, since Kripke thought he was being Griceian by citing Donnellan!] Grice does not think there is a problem for Russell here."
Neale: "what U says is given by the Russellian expansion even if the description is used referentially (in an “identificatory way” as Grice puts it) as in case (2) above."
Grice provides typographical ways of distinguishing this:
JONES'S BUTLER
vs.
Jones's butler
One is identificatory; the other Grice unimaginatively (rather?) calls it non-identificatory.
Neale:
"In a referential case, U intends to communicate information about some particular individual; but all this means is that what U means diverges from what U says. This very natural move (which has subsequently received strong support from a variety of other sources [...]) provides a perfectly satisfactory account of what is going on when U uses a description that does not fit its target."
"If Jones’s butler did not get the hats and coats mixed up, but Jones’s gardener did, then when U uttered the sentence
“Jones’ butler got the hats and coats mixed up”
what U said was ****false**** [emphasis Speranza's and Grice's for that matter! If not Neale's!], but part of what U meant was true."
The problem is HOW MUCH, what percentage of what U meant (Just teasing!)
"Now it is important to see, as Grice does not, that when a description is used referentially there will always be a mismatch between what U says and what U means (even where the description uniquely fits the individual the speaker intends to communicate information about) because what is said is, on Russell’s account, analysable as a general proposition, whereas what is meant will always include a singular proposition."
And so on!
Oddly, Jones was discussing this. Rather, Jones was referring to Neale judging Grice's "Vacuous Names" the gem that it is. Jones is aware of this.
In the Ling. & Phil. piece, Neale provides further evidence for why "Vacuous Names" is a gem. He Neale) is discussing material Neale will elaborate in his classic "Definite descriptions".
I always loved Grice's "Vacuous Names" for the references to the 'definite description' controversy. There's loads written on this, which I have researched motivated by the casual (not causal) reference by Grice to Donnellan, to the effect, "I don't agree with Donnellan".
But this is Neale bringing "Vacuous Names" to the fore, then:
"In fact, Grice disposes very neatly of the view that descriptions are ambiguous
between Russellian and referential readings. In “Vacuous Names” (which is unfortunately not included in Studies) Grice contrasts the following examples."
(1) SCENARIO I
A group of men is discussing the situation arising from the death of a business acquaintance, of whose private life they know nothing, except that (as they think) he lived extravagantly, with a household staff that included a butler. One of them says “Well, Jones’ butler will be seeking a new position.”
(2) SCENARIO II
"Earlier, another group has just attended a party at Jones’ house, at which their hats and coats were looked after by a dignified individual in dark clothes with a wing-collar, a portly man with protruding ears, whom they heard Jones addressing as “Old Boy,” and who at one point was discussing with an old lady the cultivation of vegetable marrows. One of the group says
i. “Jones’ butler got the hats and coats mixed up”
(p. 141).
Neale:
"Grice then highlights two important features of case (2)."
"First, only in case (2) has some particular individual been “‘described as’, ‘referred to as’, or ‘called’, Jones’ butler by the speaker” (ibid.)."
"Second, in case (2), someone who knew that Jones had no butler and who knew that the man with the protruding ears, etc., was actually Jones’ gardener “would also be in a position to claim that the speaker had misdescribed that individual as Jones’ butler” (p. 142)."
Neale:
"Whereas many philosophers used pairs of examples with these general features to motivate the view that descriptions are ambiguous between Russellian and referential readings [e.g. Donnellan 1966) [as cited indeed by Grice, "Vacuous Names" in a footnote, and being the locus classicus which originated much Griceian literature, since Kripke thought he was being Griceian by citing Donnellan!] Grice does not think there is a problem for Russell here."
Neale: "what U says is given by the Russellian expansion even if the description is used referentially (in an “identificatory way” as Grice puts it) as in case (2) above."
Grice provides typographical ways of distinguishing this:
JONES'S BUTLER
vs.
Jones's butler
One is identificatory; the other Grice unimaginatively (rather?) calls it non-identificatory.
Neale:
"In a referential case, U intends to communicate information about some particular individual; but all this means is that what U means diverges from what U says. This very natural move (which has subsequently received strong support from a variety of other sources [...]) provides a perfectly satisfactory account of what is going on when U uses a description that does not fit its target."
"If Jones’s butler did not get the hats and coats mixed up, but Jones’s gardener did, then when U uttered the sentence
“Jones’ butler got the hats and coats mixed up”
what U said was ****false**** [emphasis Speranza's and Grice's for that matter! If not Neale's!], but part of what U meant was true."
The problem is HOW MUCH, what percentage of what U meant (Just teasing!)
"Now it is important to see, as Grice does not, that when a description is used referentially there will always be a mismatch between what U says and what U means (even where the description uniquely fits the individual the speaker intends to communicate information about) because what is said is, on Russell’s account, analysable as a general proposition, whereas what is meant will always include a singular proposition."
And so on!
Wrote (In Alphabetical Order)
Speranza
Jones and I are discussing
Neale, S, B. Stoud, B. Vermazen, and B. Williams, "Grice", In Memoriam, University of California/Berkeley.
----
This from Neale, Ling. & Phil. SHOULD relate!
"Of course, there may well be uses of the English word ‘and’
that resist Gricean analysis — as in (e.g.)
‘Insult me again and I’ll divorce you’ — but all
I am trying to illustrate is that where
semantic and pragmatic accounts handle the same
range of data, the pragmatic account is
preferable. It seems unlikely that all
occurrences of ‘and’ that conjoin (e.g.)
noun phrases can be analysed in terms
of logical conjunction. While a sentence like
(i) Grice and Strawson taught at Oxford.
might be analysable in terms of the
conjunction of (ii) and (iii),
(ii) Grice taught at Oxford.
(iii) Strawson taught at Oxford.
such a proposal is quite unsuitable for
(iv) Grice and Strawson wrote “In Defence of a Dogma.”
--- Variations on a theme:
"Grice and Strawson wrote "In defence of a dogma"".
Pedant variant: "Grice and Strawson wrote "In defense of a dogma"".
--- It speaks VERY HIGHLY of Strawson that with the zillion of publications and republications (is that republican?) and reprints and compilations he has, he NEVER cared to have
Grice/Strawson, In defence of a dogma
reprinted ANYWHERE!
(He felt or found that Grice had written it!)
----- This was very okay. Yet, I was disappointed to see that, for all his love for Grice, Strawson DID care to republish his "If and )" in his "Identity" volume.
What's the good of a book supposed to be a "festschrift" if people (contributors) are going to REPRINT the thing elsewhere? Davidson did the same: his "A nice derangement of epitaphs" appeared elsewhere. Perhaps the prize goes for Nancy Cartwright, who contributed "Facts and equations" to the Grice festschrift. She writes, "I will be clearer about this in the next chapter." But next chapter is Judith Baker's. So my implicature is of course that Cartwright (Mrs. Hamsphire) just provided the chapter for her forthcoming "How the laws of nature lie."
And so on...
""In defence of a dogma"", Bennett wrote, "was written in 1956. Grice's "Meaning" came out in 1957: an obvious continuation." -- "Linguistic behaviour". But while we all love Bennett, the problem is that "Meaning" is dated 1948. I discussed this elsewhere. It does paint a lovely picture:
Grice/Strawson 1956 -- defending Carnap contra Quine.
Grice 1957 -- providing a non-circular account of "... means..."
The story is more convoluted and Oxonian (or convolutedly Oxonian) than THAT!
Cheers!
Jones and I are discussing
Neale, S, B. Stoud, B. Vermazen, and B. Williams, "Grice", In Memoriam, University of California/Berkeley.
----
This from Neale, Ling. & Phil. SHOULD relate!
"Of course, there may well be uses of the English word ‘and’
that resist Gricean analysis — as in (e.g.)
‘Insult me again and I’ll divorce you’ — but all
I am trying to illustrate is that where
semantic and pragmatic accounts handle the same
range of data, the pragmatic account is
preferable. It seems unlikely that all
occurrences of ‘and’ that conjoin (e.g.)
noun phrases can be analysed in terms
of logical conjunction. While a sentence like
(i) Grice and Strawson taught at Oxford.
might be analysable in terms of the
conjunction of (ii) and (iii),
(ii) Grice taught at Oxford.
(iii) Strawson taught at Oxford.
such a proposal is quite unsuitable for
(iv) Grice and Strawson wrote “In Defence of a Dogma.”
--- Variations on a theme:
"Grice and Strawson wrote "In defence of a dogma"".
Pedant variant: "Grice and Strawson wrote "In defense of a dogma"".
--- It speaks VERY HIGHLY of Strawson that with the zillion of publications and republications (is that republican?) and reprints and compilations he has, he NEVER cared to have
Grice/Strawson, In defence of a dogma
reprinted ANYWHERE!
(He felt or found that Grice had written it!)
----- This was very okay. Yet, I was disappointed to see that, for all his love for Grice, Strawson DID care to republish his "If and )" in his "Identity" volume.
What's the good of a book supposed to be a "festschrift" if people (contributors) are going to REPRINT the thing elsewhere? Davidson did the same: his "A nice derangement of epitaphs" appeared elsewhere. Perhaps the prize goes for Nancy Cartwright, who contributed "Facts and equations" to the Grice festschrift. She writes, "I will be clearer about this in the next chapter." But next chapter is Judith Baker's. So my implicature is of course that Cartwright (Mrs. Hamsphire) just provided the chapter for her forthcoming "How the laws of nature lie."
And so on...
""In defence of a dogma"", Bennett wrote, "was written in 1956. Grice's "Meaning" came out in 1957: an obvious continuation." -- "Linguistic behaviour". But while we all love Bennett, the problem is that "Meaning" is dated 1948. I discussed this elsewhere. It does paint a lovely picture:
Grice/Strawson 1956 -- defending Carnap contra Quine.
Grice 1957 -- providing a non-circular account of "... means..."
The story is more convoluted and Oxonian (or convolutedly Oxonian) than THAT!
Cheers!
Excellence in the eye of the beholder?
Speranza
There is a new film coming out, "The eye of a storm", with lovely Charlotte Rampling. "The eye" is a good idiomatic trigger.
"the eye of the beholder" was this Irishwoman's idea of beauty:
"Beauty," she claimed, "is in the idea of the beholder."
Neale (referred to by R. B. Jones, vis-a-vis Ling. & Phil) is right that "Causal theory of perception" was edited by Grice. He (Grice) found that it would be too repetitive (if 'too' applies here) to have the WHOLE thing which so much overlaps with the spirit (if not the letter -- don't you hate this legalistic cliche?) of "Logic and Conversation"
Consider:
Warnock (to Grice, at Collections): Smith has beautiful handriting.
(Grice uses "Jones", oddly).
Grice infers that Warnock does not find Smith's _philosophy_ beautiful enough.
Neale:
"the example concerning Professor U’s evaluation of Mr X. By uttering the sentence “Mr X has excellent handwriting and is always very punctual,” U..."
I would love to play on variations on this. Call me iconoclast.
Jones's handwriting is excellent.
Jones's handriting is beautiful.
"He has excellent handwriting".
"He has beautiful handwriting."
I would think that Grice, quoting Kantotle, of course, would say that 'excellent' is value-oriented in a transcendental way, in a way that 'beautiful' is not.
"Mona Lisa, a beautiful painting."
"Mona Lisa, an excellent painting."
Of course there will be art colleges that aim at "excellence" rather than beauty, but that's another animal.
In any case, this was back in the day, when tutors still had access to things like 'handwriting' at all!
----- Or something!
There is a new film coming out, "The eye of a storm", with lovely Charlotte Rampling. "The eye" is a good idiomatic trigger.
"the eye of the beholder" was this Irishwoman's idea of beauty:
"Beauty," she claimed, "is in the idea of the beholder."
Neale (referred to by R. B. Jones, vis-a-vis Ling. & Phil) is right that "Causal theory of perception" was edited by Grice. He (Grice) found that it would be too repetitive (if 'too' applies here) to have the WHOLE thing which so much overlaps with the spirit (if not the letter -- don't you hate this legalistic cliche?) of "Logic and Conversation"
Consider:
Warnock (to Grice, at Collections): Smith has beautiful handriting.
(Grice uses "Jones", oddly).
Grice infers that Warnock does not find Smith's _philosophy_ beautiful enough.
Neale:
"the example concerning Professor U’s evaluation of Mr X. By uttering the sentence “Mr X has excellent handwriting and is always very punctual,” U..."
I would love to play on variations on this. Call me iconoclast.
Jones's handwriting is excellent.
Jones's handriting is beautiful.
"He has excellent handwriting".
"He has beautiful handwriting."
I would think that Grice, quoting Kantotle, of course, would say that 'excellent' is value-oriented in a transcendental way, in a way that 'beautiful' is not.
"Mona Lisa, a beautiful painting."
"Mona Lisa, an excellent painting."
Of course there will be art colleges that aim at "excellence" rather than beauty, but that's another animal.
In any case, this was back in the day, when tutors still had access to things like 'handwriting' at all!
----- Or something!
True colours
Speranza
(Sorry, I'll try to look for a better image -- I need access to the "Oxford dictionary of proverbs" -- under 'colour' -- also "Oxford dictionary of idiomatic expressions").
Jones was referring to Neale, Ling. and Phil.
Neale writes in a footnote:
"Taken this way, conventional implicature would seems very close to what Frege calls “coloring” or “tone.” According to Frege, the connectives ‘and’ and ‘but’ have the same sense (as do the nouns ‘horse’ and ‘steed’) but differ in coloring. Together with other features of Frege’s theory, this ensures that substituting ‘but’ for ‘and’ in a sentence will not lead to a difference in sense or a difference in
truth value (reference)."
Which is fascinating. For the record, Neale expanded on this in the Cosenza conference. I.e. "Legacy of Grice", or "Heritage of Grice", rather ("Legacy of Grice" is the Hall conference, i.e. the conference on Grice ed. by K. Hall). Cosenza edited this conference held at San Marino. Neale's contribution is on "Farbung" indeed.
And so on. Horn has become pretty 'obsessed' if that's not the word, with Frege of late. He is talking of F-implicatures, by which he means Fregean ones. Horn's German impresses me greatly. Frege's wording can be colourful, and Horn quotes from this Leeds professor's attempt to render Fregean prose anglophonically intelligible (and perhaps succeeding in the attempt!). Cheers.
(Sorry, I'll try to look for a better image -- I need access to the "Oxford dictionary of proverbs" -- under 'colour' -- also "Oxford dictionary of idiomatic expressions").
Jones was referring to Neale, Ling. and Phil.
Neale writes in a footnote:
"Taken this way, conventional implicature would seems very close to what Frege calls “coloring” or “tone.” According to Frege, the connectives ‘and’ and ‘but’ have the same sense (as do the nouns ‘horse’ and ‘steed’) but differ in coloring. Together with other features of Frege’s theory, this ensures that substituting ‘but’ for ‘and’ in a sentence will not lead to a difference in sense or a difference in
truth value (reference)."
Which is fascinating. For the record, Neale expanded on this in the Cosenza conference. I.e. "Legacy of Grice", or "Heritage of Grice", rather ("Legacy of Grice" is the Hall conference, i.e. the conference on Grice ed. by K. Hall). Cosenza edited this conference held at San Marino. Neale's contribution is on "Farbung" indeed.
And so on. Horn has become pretty 'obsessed' if that's not the word, with Frege of late. He is talking of F-implicatures, by which he means Fregean ones. Horn's German impresses me greatly. Frege's wording can be colourful, and Horn quotes from this Leeds professor's attempt to render Fregean prose anglophonically intelligible (and perhaps succeeding in the attempt!). Cheers.
Grice, William James.
Speranza
Jones was referring to Neale, Ling. & Phil. Neale writes:
"Parts of Lectures VIII and IX were published as Grice (1968)." There seems to be a typo there, or two typos. I discussed this with T. Wharton elsewhere. I would think it is part of lecture VI which was published as Grice (1968).
The Grice Collection, at Bancroft, contains all the relevant stuff: Grice's own handwritten notes, the typed versions, all the reprints --.
The lectures, originally, had no titles. The titles in WoW are revised in 1987, taking into account the (1968) reprint, which is credited on the 'publication details' page.
And so on.
Jones was referring to Neale, Ling. & Phil. Neale writes:
"Parts of Lectures VIII and IX were published as Grice (1968)." There seems to be a typo there, or two typos. I discussed this with T. Wharton elsewhere. I would think it is part of lecture VI which was published as Grice (1968).
The Grice Collection, at Bancroft, contains all the relevant stuff: Grice's own handwritten notes, the typed versions, all the reprints --.
The lectures, originally, had no titles. The titles in WoW are revised in 1987, taking into account the (1968) reprint, which is credited on the 'publication details' page.
And so on.
Grice, "Philosophical Papers" (Clarendon)
Speranza
---- Not yet a volume, but who knows?
R. B. Jones was referring to Neale, Ling & Phil, vol. 15 -- where Neale writes:
"Four previously published papers are _not_ [Speranza's emphasis] to be found in Studies: Grice’s first publication “Personal Identity” (1941); his contribution to a collection for W. V. Quine, “Vacuous Names” (1969); his British Academy lecture “Intention and Uncertainty” (1971); and his APA Presidential Address “Method in Philosophical Psychology: From the Banal to the Bizarre” (1975). Each of these papers is a minor classic and hooks up in interesting ways with the work on display in Studies. In view of the relative difficulty in obtaining the volumes in which the last three appear, it is hoped that each will be republished in subsequent volumes of Grice’s work. (“Method in Philosophical Psychology” has recently been reprinted in Grice (1991))."
Comment:
"Four previously published papers are _not_ [Speranza's emphasis] to be found in Studies."
Indeed. Here the focus is on 'published' or 'previously published'. When Horn was discussing un- formations, I mentioned "unpublication", which got us into seeing if Grice ever used the thing, "This is one of my unpublications" -- other than in scare quotes. He does, in "Reply to Richards": "the number of my unpublications by far exceed the number of my publications". We disagreed with Horn on this: Horn takes the un- to have minimal scope: an unpublication is something that could have been published, but wasn't. My view, oddly, is more Wittgensteinian on this ("I never published this, but I 'published' it".
Neale continues:
"[to wit:] Grice’s first publication “Personal Identity” (1941)"
Indeed, _Mind_, and cleverly reprinted by Perry, in his book that should be in the NY Best-selling list, because it is, for once, a "University of California Press" publication! Based in Berkeley. It is called, perhaps unimaginatively, but I love Perry, "Personal identity". It has some lovely intro by Perry (a man I love): discussing LOCKE, as he should, and Grice, and interestingly enough, Quinton, the late Lord.
"; his contribution to a collection for W. V. Quine, “Vacuous Names” (1969)"
As I was mentioning, Ostertag somewhat oddly reprinted this IN PART: only the slightly boring last section on "Definite descriptions" -- sans "Marmaduke Bloggs". MIT, "Definite descriptions: a reader". This was later than Neale's piece, beware.
"; his British Academy lecture “Intention and Uncertainty” (1971)"
This IS a gem. OUP indeed did publish it as an offprint, but, the snob that I am, I prefer to quote from the Proceedings of the British Academy, with a higher page reference. It is a lovely piece, and a much-awaited one, seeing that Grice was member of the BA (FBA 1966) and only delivered his stuff in 1971. A nice occasion to revisit the London of his Admiralty days.
"; and his APA Presidential Address “Method in Philosophical Psychology: From the Banal to the Bizarre” (1975)."
As Neale notes in a footnote, this is repr. by Baker in "Conception of Value" by Grice (1991).
Neale:
"Each of these papers is a minor classic and hooks up in interesting ways with the work on display in Studies."
We may venture ways:
"Intention and uncertainty": the idea that if you intend something, you will it, and you think you will it. But "Intention and uncertainty" indeed is such a DEEP essay that it would look out of place in what Grice found to be his most frivolous stuff, as indicated by the choice of the sobriquet: "way of words", a pun on Locke (vs. "way of ideas", and 'way of things', which Locke found deeper). It is best to understand "Intention and uncertainty" as a criticism, on the part of Grice, to his earlier self, as expressed in a mimeo now in the Bancroft collection, which I like to date as 1949 (he cites Ryle, Concept of Mind): "Intention and disposition". In this paper, Grice held the stronger view that if you intend to climb Mount Everest on your hands and knees you KNOW you will do it. He was citing, what was his name, Stout, on this! (I discussed this at length with R. O. Doyle, in Information-Philosopher site).
"Method in philosophical psychology" is also too deep for _ways of words_. It connects though, via "Meaning revisited". But in "Method" he quotes from Ramsey, Lewis, Aristotle, Hume, Locke, Myro, and the essay is intended to the American Philosophical Association audience. A different animal, as it were?
"Vacuous Names" is too technical, but still a lovely gem. It connects indeed with "Presupposition and conversational implicature". I never knew why Grice was so obsessed with Quine on _NAMES_. But I actually think I know. Grice and Strawson were indeed the hosts of Quine back in Oxford in 1955. This is a later thing, 1969, but Grice was always fascinated to find himself being fascinated by Quine's 'puritan' ontologies.
"In view of the relative difficulty in obtaining the volumes in which the last three appear, it is hoped that each will be republished in subsequent volumes of Grice’s work. (“Method in Philosophical Psychology” has recently been reprinted in Grice (1991)).""
Ineed. I would suggest then,
"Philosophical Papers"
---- Personal identity.
---- Actions and events (Pacific philosophical quarterly)
---- Aristotle on the multiplicity of being (idem)
---- Vacuous names
---- Intention and uncertainty.
The problem with "Intention and uncertainty" is that it is dated by Grice, "Intending", perhaps a better essay. You see, Davidson, oddly, was quoting and quoting from Grice. Davidson thought he was complimenting Grice. He wasn't. Grice got pretty furious by seeing Davidson use the idea of 'implicature' for things like:
"I intend to rob the bank; I know I will".
Grice said, cited by Pears, "Motivated irrationality" that the implicature is "too social a theory to be true". He found that the issue with the cognitive apparatus on the part of the intender ("I know", "I believe") was more of a matter of entailment.
In the end he concluded that it's a matter of disimplicature. As Yablo notes, "Implicatures happen." One is FREE to use
"I intend" thereby
implicating, "I believe, with probability > 0.5, that p"
or not. In those cases when one uses "I intend" more freely, one is DISIMPLICATING what a more cautious utterer would be implicating. And so on.
----- J. Baker says she is going to publish the loads of Stuff by Grice. "Reflections on morals", etc. She reprinted "Method in philosophical psychology" along with a SECTION of "Reply to Richards", in Grice 1991. What Clarendon needs is a more mechanical editor who can just type the things and publish them in Clarendon. But they seem to be too busy, at Clarendon, with CONTINTENTAL authors, to care much for the genius of the insular Oxonian that Grice was! (The irony, too, that Grandy/Warner were disallowed to use "GRICE" in the subtitle of their book, which had to hide the man in an acronym:
P aul philosophical
G rice rounds
R ice of ratinality
I ce intentions
C e categories
E ends.
Cheers!
---- Not yet a volume, but who knows?
R. B. Jones was referring to Neale, Ling & Phil, vol. 15 -- where Neale writes:
"Four previously published papers are _not_ [Speranza's emphasis] to be found in Studies: Grice’s first publication “Personal Identity” (1941); his contribution to a collection for W. V. Quine, “Vacuous Names” (1969); his British Academy lecture “Intention and Uncertainty” (1971); and his APA Presidential Address “Method in Philosophical Psychology: From the Banal to the Bizarre” (1975). Each of these papers is a minor classic and hooks up in interesting ways with the work on display in Studies. In view of the relative difficulty in obtaining the volumes in which the last three appear, it is hoped that each will be republished in subsequent volumes of Grice’s work. (“Method in Philosophical Psychology” has recently been reprinted in Grice (1991))."
Comment:
"Four previously published papers are _not_ [Speranza's emphasis] to be found in Studies."
Indeed. Here the focus is on 'published' or 'previously published'. When Horn was discussing un- formations, I mentioned "unpublication", which got us into seeing if Grice ever used the thing, "This is one of my unpublications" -- other than in scare quotes. He does, in "Reply to Richards": "the number of my unpublications by far exceed the number of my publications". We disagreed with Horn on this: Horn takes the un- to have minimal scope: an unpublication is something that could have been published, but wasn't. My view, oddly, is more Wittgensteinian on this ("I never published this, but I 'published' it".
Neale continues:
"[to wit:] Grice’s first publication “Personal Identity” (1941)"
Indeed, _Mind_, and cleverly reprinted by Perry, in his book that should be in the NY Best-selling list, because it is, for once, a "University of California Press" publication! Based in Berkeley. It is called, perhaps unimaginatively, but I love Perry, "Personal identity". It has some lovely intro by Perry (a man I love): discussing LOCKE, as he should, and Grice, and interestingly enough, Quinton, the late Lord.
"; his contribution to a collection for W. V. Quine, “Vacuous Names” (1969)"
As I was mentioning, Ostertag somewhat oddly reprinted this IN PART: only the slightly boring last section on "Definite descriptions" -- sans "Marmaduke Bloggs". MIT, "Definite descriptions: a reader". This was later than Neale's piece, beware.
"; his British Academy lecture “Intention and Uncertainty” (1971)"
This IS a gem. OUP indeed did publish it as an offprint, but, the snob that I am, I prefer to quote from the Proceedings of the British Academy, with a higher page reference. It is a lovely piece, and a much-awaited one, seeing that Grice was member of the BA (FBA 1966) and only delivered his stuff in 1971. A nice occasion to revisit the London of his Admiralty days.
"; and his APA Presidential Address “Method in Philosophical Psychology: From the Banal to the Bizarre” (1975)."
As Neale notes in a footnote, this is repr. by Baker in "Conception of Value" by Grice (1991).
Neale:
"Each of these papers is a minor classic and hooks up in interesting ways with the work on display in Studies."
We may venture ways:
"Intention and uncertainty": the idea that if you intend something, you will it, and you think you will it. But "Intention and uncertainty" indeed is such a DEEP essay that it would look out of place in what Grice found to be his most frivolous stuff, as indicated by the choice of the sobriquet: "way of words", a pun on Locke (vs. "way of ideas", and 'way of things', which Locke found deeper). It is best to understand "Intention and uncertainty" as a criticism, on the part of Grice, to his earlier self, as expressed in a mimeo now in the Bancroft collection, which I like to date as 1949 (he cites Ryle, Concept of Mind): "Intention and disposition". In this paper, Grice held the stronger view that if you intend to climb Mount Everest on your hands and knees you KNOW you will do it. He was citing, what was his name, Stout, on this! (I discussed this at length with R. O. Doyle, in Information-Philosopher site).
"Method in philosophical psychology" is also too deep for _ways of words_. It connects though, via "Meaning revisited". But in "Method" he quotes from Ramsey, Lewis, Aristotle, Hume, Locke, Myro, and the essay is intended to the American Philosophical Association audience. A different animal, as it were?
"Vacuous Names" is too technical, but still a lovely gem. It connects indeed with "Presupposition and conversational implicature". I never knew why Grice was so obsessed with Quine on _NAMES_. But I actually think I know. Grice and Strawson were indeed the hosts of Quine back in Oxford in 1955. This is a later thing, 1969, but Grice was always fascinated to find himself being fascinated by Quine's 'puritan' ontologies.
"In view of the relative difficulty in obtaining the volumes in which the last three appear, it is hoped that each will be republished in subsequent volumes of Grice’s work. (“Method in Philosophical Psychology” has recently been reprinted in Grice (1991)).""
Ineed. I would suggest then,
"Philosophical Papers"
---- Personal identity.
---- Actions and events (Pacific philosophical quarterly)
---- Aristotle on the multiplicity of being (idem)
---- Vacuous names
---- Intention and uncertainty.
The problem with "Intention and uncertainty" is that it is dated by Grice, "Intending", perhaps a better essay. You see, Davidson, oddly, was quoting and quoting from Grice. Davidson thought he was complimenting Grice. He wasn't. Grice got pretty furious by seeing Davidson use the idea of 'implicature' for things like:
"I intend to rob the bank; I know I will".
Grice said, cited by Pears, "Motivated irrationality" that the implicature is "too social a theory to be true". He found that the issue with the cognitive apparatus on the part of the intender ("I know", "I believe") was more of a matter of entailment.
In the end he concluded that it's a matter of disimplicature. As Yablo notes, "Implicatures happen." One is FREE to use
"I intend" thereby
implicating, "I believe, with probability > 0.5, that p"
or not. In those cases when one uses "I intend" more freely, one is DISIMPLICATING what a more cautious utterer would be implicating. And so on.
----- J. Baker says she is going to publish the loads of Stuff by Grice. "Reflections on morals", etc. She reprinted "Method in philosophical psychology" along with a SECTION of "Reply to Richards", in Grice 1991. What Clarendon needs is a more mechanical editor who can just type the things and publish them in Clarendon. But they seem to be too busy, at Clarendon, with CONTINTENTAL authors, to care much for the genius of the insular Oxonian that Grice was! (The irony, too, that Grandy/Warner were disallowed to use "GRICE" in the subtitle of their book, which had to hide the man in an acronym:
P aul philosophical
G rice rounds
R ice of ratinality
I ce intentions
C e categories
E ends.
Cheers!
He played cricket
Speranza
I meant this to the thread initiated by Jones, the recent one, on WoW, to which I provided one commentary already.
Comment on Abstract to Neale in Ling. & Phil.:
"The work of the late Paul Grice (1913–1988) exerts a powerful influence on the way philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists think about meaning and communication."
And literary critics! Just teasing. I once listed ALL professions that have cited Grice. Mediums even! There are anthropologists like Gumperz ("Legacy of Grice"); sociologists like Schegloff and Harvey Sachs ("He had copies of Grice, but he would hardly quote from him," Schegloff told me about Sachs; psychologists like Argyle and D. D. Clarke, logicians like Strawson (just teasing -- a logician not a philosopher?), computer scientists (like Levesque, and Thomason), people like Deborah Tannen, and, journalists at large, not to mention Madonna fans, perhaps.
"With respect to a particular sentence φ and an “utterer” U, Grice stressed the philosophical importance of separating (i) what φ means, (ii) what U said on a given occasion by uttering φ, and (iii) what U meant by uttering φ on that occasion."
Too true. Note that also Grice cared little, I hope, about sentences as such. He would use 'x' and "X" for any vehicle by which an utterer may mean. It IS true that _sentence_ was a topic of his focus. But his analysis allows for, say, a movement of the head as 'SAYING' or signalling things. If I utter the sentence, "It is raining", using the same intonation and timbre by which my interlocutor has just pronounced it, but signal with the movement of my head sideways, the implicature may be, "it is NOT raining".
One good example I like is (from Grice, WoW, 5):
A: Are you playing squash?
B shows his bandaged leg.
Here the 'sentence' may mean:
"No, I'm not; you silly".
It has been argued, by Kramer, et al, THIS CLUB, that there is a distinction here in terms of exploitation. It seems that while,
"I have a bad leg" can be used ironically, the gesture of displaying a bandaged leg cannot.
Grice is particular about this. He notes that
"I have a bandaged leg" is NOT what is communicated, or meant. ONLY: "I cannot play squash" OR "I have a BAD leg".
This has to do with effects of communication. The belief, "Utterer has a bandaged leg" will be evident to the recipient REGARDLESS of what he has utterered.
Another good example that may show boundaries is U wants to communicate to A that "Mrs. X is being unfaithful to Mr. X". He can say it:
"Mrs. X is being unfaithful to Mr. X."
He can also _draw_ it. This for Grice seems a better strategy.
He can also, Grice notes, show A a _photograph_(of Mrs. X being unfaithful to Mr. X, if that can be photographed -- this is vintage 1948 Grice). In this case, Grice refuses to say that by showing a photograph of p, U means that p. Odd! (But true!)
"Second, he provided systematic attempts to say precisely what meaning is by (...) providing a series of more refined analyses of utterer’s meaning, sentence meaning, and what is said. Third, Grice produced an account of how it is possible for what U says and what U means to diverge. Fourth, by characterizing a philosophically important distinction between the “genuinely semantic” and “merely pragmatic” implications of a statement, Grice clarified the relationship between classical logic and the semantics of natural language. Fifth, he provided some much needed philosophical ventilation by deploying his notion of “implicature” to devastating effect against certain overzealous strains of “Ordinary Language Philosophy,” without himself abandoning the view that philosophy must pay attention to the nuances of ordinary talk. Sixth, Grice undercut some of the most influential arguments for a philosophically significant notion of “presupposition.”"
I like the idea of numbering things. I'll keep adding:
seventh: he played cricket! (Just teasing -- but true: most philosophers -- e.g. Socrates, Diogenes -- seem to have been pretty clumsy in physical endeavours, unlike our Grice. He is an example of 'mens sana in corpore sano'. Too bad about the smoking habit, but I like to blame Grice's mother on that. Apparently it was HER to thought that Grice looked 'very sophsticated' with his cigarettes.
Eighth, he was from Oxford. I am interested in vintage top English philosophy. It is Grice being associated with OXFORD -- and thus with Schopenhauer, eventually -- that brings him to the forum in discussions. For Oxford compares to the great world universities, like Bologna, and Paris. Grice allows us to understand that movement called "Oxford school" of ordinary language, as a challenge to Witters. Grice allows us to understand Austin, Strawson, Warnock, Urmson, Pears, and all those of a generation which came to have primacy in post-war Oxford. So, it is the HISTORICAL importance of Grice: his activities in Oxford as they influenced students in Oxford -- that is pretty important too.
Ninth, he spoke good English! He was untechnical. I mean, have you ever heard Heidegger speak English? Grice allows you, for once, to read GOOD English Philosphy, in the vernacular! (Oddly, when he gets translated to, say, Italian, or French, it is no Grice no more! (sic).
----
Tenth, he liked Kantotle. He became so obsessed with being a reactionary conservative irreverent rationalist, that one cannot but sympathise with him!
Eleventh, he played bridge (and was Oxfordshire champion).
Twelfth, he played chess.
Thirteenth, he played the piano. (And composed; his compositions 'too avant garde to our ears', some say.
Fourteenth, his LIFE was philosophy. He couldn't HELP it!
Etc.
"Today, Grice’s work lies at the center of research on the semantics-pragmatics distinction and shapes much discussion of the relationship between language and mind. In a nutshell, Grice has forced philosophers and linguists to think very carefully about the sorts of facts a semantic theory is supposed to account for and to reflect upon the most central theoretical notions, notions that otherwise might be taken for granted or employed without due care and attention. To be sure, Grice’s own positive proposals have their weaknesses;"
Echoes of that infamous book by Davies, "The failure of Grice" come to mind! But then, on double or second thoughts, this was a book published by Cambridge University Press, so what can you expect?! They'll never have a Grice!
"but in the light of his work any theory of meaning that is to be taken at all seriously must now draw a sharp line between genuinely semantic facts and facts pertaining to the nature of human interaction."
Too true. Grice was of course a reductionist (he distinguished, otiosely, between reductive and reductionist analyses) so in the LONG run (made less long by Loar, say) facts pertaining to human interaction lie at the base of semantic 'facts', if you find one! Just teasing!
It would be good to qualify the strands 1-6, as listed by Neale here and there. Cheers! Later perhaps!
I meant this to the thread initiated by Jones, the recent one, on WoW, to which I provided one commentary already.
Comment on Abstract to Neale in Ling. & Phil.:
"The work of the late Paul Grice (1913–1988) exerts a powerful influence on the way philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists think about meaning and communication."
And literary critics! Just teasing. I once listed ALL professions that have cited Grice. Mediums even! There are anthropologists like Gumperz ("Legacy of Grice"); sociologists like Schegloff and Harvey Sachs ("He had copies of Grice, but he would hardly quote from him," Schegloff told me about Sachs; psychologists like Argyle and D. D. Clarke, logicians like Strawson (just teasing -- a logician not a philosopher?), computer scientists (like Levesque, and Thomason), people like Deborah Tannen, and, journalists at large, not to mention Madonna fans, perhaps.
"With respect to a particular sentence φ and an “utterer” U, Grice stressed the philosophical importance of separating (i) what φ means, (ii) what U said on a given occasion by uttering φ, and (iii) what U meant by uttering φ on that occasion."
Too true. Note that also Grice cared little, I hope, about sentences as such. He would use 'x' and "X" for any vehicle by which an utterer may mean. It IS true that _sentence_ was a topic of his focus. But his analysis allows for, say, a movement of the head as 'SAYING' or signalling things. If I utter the sentence, "It is raining", using the same intonation and timbre by which my interlocutor has just pronounced it, but signal with the movement of my head sideways, the implicature may be, "it is NOT raining".
One good example I like is (from Grice, WoW, 5):
A: Are you playing squash?
B shows his bandaged leg.
Here the 'sentence' may mean:
"No, I'm not; you silly".
It has been argued, by Kramer, et al, THIS CLUB, that there is a distinction here in terms of exploitation. It seems that while,
"I have a bad leg" can be used ironically, the gesture of displaying a bandaged leg cannot.
Grice is particular about this. He notes that
"I have a bandaged leg" is NOT what is communicated, or meant. ONLY: "I cannot play squash" OR "I have a BAD leg".
This has to do with effects of communication. The belief, "Utterer has a bandaged leg" will be evident to the recipient REGARDLESS of what he has utterered.
Another good example that may show boundaries is U wants to communicate to A that "Mrs. X is being unfaithful to Mr. X". He can say it:
"Mrs. X is being unfaithful to Mr. X."
He can also _draw_ it. This for Grice seems a better strategy.
He can also, Grice notes, show A a _photograph_(of Mrs. X being unfaithful to Mr. X, if that can be photographed -- this is vintage 1948 Grice). In this case, Grice refuses to say that by showing a photograph of p, U means that p. Odd! (But true!)
"Second, he provided systematic attempts to say precisely what meaning is by (...) providing a series of more refined analyses of utterer’s meaning, sentence meaning, and what is said. Third, Grice produced an account of how it is possible for what U says and what U means to diverge. Fourth, by characterizing a philosophically important distinction between the “genuinely semantic” and “merely pragmatic” implications of a statement, Grice clarified the relationship between classical logic and the semantics of natural language. Fifth, he provided some much needed philosophical ventilation by deploying his notion of “implicature” to devastating effect against certain overzealous strains of “Ordinary Language Philosophy,” without himself abandoning the view that philosophy must pay attention to the nuances of ordinary talk. Sixth, Grice undercut some of the most influential arguments for a philosophically significant notion of “presupposition.”"
I like the idea of numbering things. I'll keep adding:
seventh: he played cricket! (Just teasing -- but true: most philosophers -- e.g. Socrates, Diogenes -- seem to have been pretty clumsy in physical endeavours, unlike our Grice. He is an example of 'mens sana in corpore sano'. Too bad about the smoking habit, but I like to blame Grice's mother on that. Apparently it was HER to thought that Grice looked 'very sophsticated' with his cigarettes.
Eighth, he was from Oxford. I am interested in vintage top English philosophy. It is Grice being associated with OXFORD -- and thus with Schopenhauer, eventually -- that brings him to the forum in discussions. For Oxford compares to the great world universities, like Bologna, and Paris. Grice allows us to understand that movement called "Oxford school" of ordinary language, as a challenge to Witters. Grice allows us to understand Austin, Strawson, Warnock, Urmson, Pears, and all those of a generation which came to have primacy in post-war Oxford. So, it is the HISTORICAL importance of Grice: his activities in Oxford as they influenced students in Oxford -- that is pretty important too.
Ninth, he spoke good English! He was untechnical. I mean, have you ever heard Heidegger speak English? Grice allows you, for once, to read GOOD English Philosphy, in the vernacular! (Oddly, when he gets translated to, say, Italian, or French, it is no Grice no more! (sic).
----
Tenth, he liked Kantotle. He became so obsessed with being a reactionary conservative irreverent rationalist, that one cannot but sympathise with him!
Eleventh, he played bridge (and was Oxfordshire champion).
Twelfth, he played chess.
Thirteenth, he played the piano. (And composed; his compositions 'too avant garde to our ears', some say.
Fourteenth, his LIFE was philosophy. He couldn't HELP it!
Etc.
"Today, Grice’s work lies at the center of research on the semantics-pragmatics distinction and shapes much discussion of the relationship between language and mind. In a nutshell, Grice has forced philosophers and linguists to think very carefully about the sorts of facts a semantic theory is supposed to account for and to reflect upon the most central theoretical notions, notions that otherwise might be taken for granted or employed without due care and attention. To be sure, Grice’s own positive proposals have their weaknesses;"
Echoes of that infamous book by Davies, "The failure of Grice" come to mind! But then, on double or second thoughts, this was a book published by Cambridge University Press, so what can you expect?! They'll never have a Grice!
"but in the light of his work any theory of meaning that is to be taken at all seriously must now draw a sharp line between genuinely semantic facts and facts pertaining to the nature of human interaction."
Too true. Grice was of course a reductionist (he distinguished, otiosely, between reductive and reductionist analyses) so in the LONG run (made less long by Loar, say) facts pertaining to human interaction lie at the base of semantic 'facts', if you find one! Just teasing!
It would be good to qualify the strands 1-6, as listed by Neale here and there. Cheers! Later perhaps!
Grice on Presupposition
Speranza provocatively talks about "the world" having truth value gaps.
Of course it is language rather than "the world" which might possibly have these gaps.
I wonder whether Grice was as obdurate in his opposition to this idea as Speranza?
It seems to me that Grice takes up the challenge of interpreting natural languages in a way which minimises (ideally eliminates) the differences between "the logic" of ordinary discourse and that of "classical" logic.
At least in some places (Presupposition and Implicature) he is careful not to "align" himself with rather than merely discuss his counter-thesis.
Does Grice ever really come down against presupposition rather than sympathetically exploring the alternatives?
Of course it is language rather than "the world" which might possibly have these gaps.
I wonder whether Grice was as obdurate in his opposition to this idea as Speranza?
It seems to me that Grice takes up the challenge of interpreting natural languages in a way which minimises (ideally eliminates) the differences between "the logic" of ordinary discourse and that of "classical" logic.
At least in some places (Presupposition and Implicature) he is careful not to "align" himself with rather than merely discuss his counter-thesis.
Does Grice ever really come down against presupposition rather than sympathetically exploring the alternatives?
Neale on WOW
Since Prof. Neale is now in our minds as co-author of an obituary of Grice, we might note that he also wrote a substantial review of Studies in the Ways of Words (Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Language).
Perhaps Speranza, who is doubtless well acquainted with it, can comment on the review.
I see he describes "Vacuous Names" (and three others) as a "minor classic" absent from the collection and encourages its publication in a future collection.
Roger Jones
Perhaps Speranza, who is doubtless well acquainted with it, can comment on the review.
I see he describes "Vacuous Names" (and three others) as a "minor classic" absent from the collection and encourages its publication in a future collection.
Roger Jones
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