Carnap, Popper, and Grice on the pervasiveness of misunderstanding

Speranza

We are considering a quote by Sir Karl Raimund Popper in "Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography" (1976). On p. 29, he writes:

"Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you."
In "Re: To err Griceian?", R. B. Jones comments:

"I am inclined to agree with Popper."

-- i.e. It is impossible to speak in such
a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there
will always be some who misunderstand you.

Jones notes:

"The complaint of double negatives is mitigated by the modalities involved which make simplifying cancellations unsound."

Good point.

"As to whether it is strictly impossible or just extremely difficult or "practically impossible" I'm not sure."

Neither am I. Seeing the further context, I'm slightly irritated that Popper prefaces it with "always remember".

This seems like a gratuituous preface if what is to follow is a philosophical tautology.

"Always remember that either it is raining or it isn't."

"Always remember" seems to implicate "... since you may well forget".

---- The paraphrase that follows the dictum:

"there will always be some who misunderstand you"

seems to me too personal to be true.

Jones goes on:

"If one is allowed much liberty then the "double negatives" might be thought to have been unravelled in the following paraphrase, "It's impossibly difficult to be perfectly unambiguous"".

Which is good.

We should be reminded that indeed one of Grice's maxims (as he loved to call them JUST to 'echo' Kant) is:

-- avoid ambiguity.

And while this became ultra-famous in the 1967 William James lectures, the Oxford 1965 provide similar counterparts -- desiderata of candour and clarity, etc. -- The Oxford "Logic and Conversation" lectures now deposited in the "Grice Notes" at the UC/Berkeley library, the Bancroft.

The maxim, 'avoid ambiguity' seems to clash, somehow with the

"It's impossibly difficult to be perfectly unambiguous."

I was reminded elsewhere of Biblical hermeneutics and the thought occurred to me that alleged tautologies, like "I will what I will be" seem a good area of analysis.

The 'ambiguity' seems to lie at the level of the implicature.

This led me to reconsider Grice's account of tautology vis–à–vis implicature.

Grice's examples of tautology are two:

i. War is war.
ii. Women are women.

Grice uses a very 'narrow' (or is it 'broad'? I think it's broad) account of 'say' (I prefer 'explicate'). So that we have to allow that an utterer who utters either (i) or (ii) is literally NOT SAYING anything -- only implicating.

Yet it seems counterintuitive. It seems that an utterer of (i) or (ii) _is_ saying something, viz. that war is war or that women are women.

How this relates to 'ambiguity' is yet a different animal.

Grice's multiple examples of 'ambiguity' exploitation remain brilliant, such as the lines from the poem by William Blake -- is the 'ambiguity' designed as such. Cf. Empson, "Seven types of ambiguity".

And so on.

Thanks to R. B. Jones for his remarks.

I have just added Carnap for the record. It would seem that in an ideal language (such as the ones Carnap in some writings considers) ambiguity should NOT occur, and neither should misunderstanding. This relates to Chomsky and Grice.

Chomsky has been rightly criticised for having focuses on the 'ideal' communicators. Yet in those very Oxonian early Griceian lectures on "Logic and Conversation", Grice notes that it's best, from a philosophical point of view, to deal with 'idealised' cases -- cfr. the ideal theory of gases, say.

Or something.