Showing posts with label "Vacuous Names". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Vacuous Names". Show all posts
Saturday, March 21, 2020
Friday, March 12, 2010
A Slate Model of Conversation (Was: Turns and Moves
--- by JLS
------ for the Grice Circle
--- ON ONE OCCASION, to flirt with my thesis advisor, E. A. Rabossi, who was going to be my 'voice, no vote' in my defense of my PhD (for which I got a full grade, I'm happy to report!) I presented him with a lengthy thing, which I must kept elsewhere, on 'uptake' which was basically on 'non-uptake', i.e. conversational purposeful misunderstandings. I recall lots of correspondence with my Moseley-based friend, Nigel Tomlins, on this, when we would discourse, he by citing from Monty Python, on 'harmless misunderstandings' of conversation or communication, which I'm now rehearsing with Jason Kennedy.
The idea seems to be somewhat controversial on ONE front. "From Axiom to Discourse" by Barth, focuses on this. The move-based model aims at reconstructing a 'slate' of the doxastic and boulomaic states of A and B as the conversation proceeds. But implicata are 'defeasible' and non-monotonic:
A: Have you missed Agatha and Terry?
B: I missed Terry.
---- As the conversation proceeds, A may be justified in having added to the slate, "B did not miss Agatha", but of course, this is nonmonotonic and perhaps A should NOT have added that assumption at all -- suggestio falsi WAS a fallacy and an ill-meant trope and topos for the Greeks and Romans. A CAN ADD, "B does not miss Agatha" and be pretty safe in bad-mouthing Agatha as the conversation proceeds, but he better not, because B can always counterattack.
Turns and moves, then, are not subtle enough when we speak Gricese, because an implicatum is not really a move made. It may be something 'meant' -- it IS something 'meant' but surely not something B has ATC committed to. Only 'ceteris paeribus' and he can always retreat back with, "I never asserted/claimed that I did miss Agatha".
This feature, sadly -- or the virtue of it, for Grice, really -- is one that applies to ALL conversational implicature. We do not want to say that Russell is committed to 'then' when he said, "I was born in Wales and moved to England" -- although, honest, it will be quite an exegetical task to commute _that_! ("I moved to England and then was born in Wales"). Ah well, logicians!
------ for the Grice Circle
--- ON ONE OCCASION, to flirt with my thesis advisor, E. A. Rabossi, who was going to be my 'voice, no vote' in my defense of my PhD (for which I got a full grade, I'm happy to report!) I presented him with a lengthy thing, which I must kept elsewhere, on 'uptake' which was basically on 'non-uptake', i.e. conversational purposeful misunderstandings. I recall lots of correspondence with my Moseley-based friend, Nigel Tomlins, on this, when we would discourse, he by citing from Monty Python, on 'harmless misunderstandings' of conversation or communication, which I'm now rehearsing with Jason Kennedy.
The idea seems to be somewhat controversial on ONE front. "From Axiom to Discourse" by Barth, focuses on this. The move-based model aims at reconstructing a 'slate' of the doxastic and boulomaic states of A and B as the conversation proceeds. But implicata are 'defeasible' and non-monotonic:
A: Have you missed Agatha and Terry?
B: I missed Terry.
---- As the conversation proceeds, A may be justified in having added to the slate, "B did not miss Agatha", but of course, this is nonmonotonic and perhaps A should NOT have added that assumption at all -- suggestio falsi WAS a fallacy and an ill-meant trope and topos for the Greeks and Romans. A CAN ADD, "B does not miss Agatha" and be pretty safe in bad-mouthing Agatha as the conversation proceeds, but he better not, because B can always counterattack.
Turns and moves, then, are not subtle enough when we speak Gricese, because an implicatum is not really a move made. It may be something 'meant' -- it IS something 'meant' but surely not something B has ATC committed to. Only 'ceteris paeribus' and he can always retreat back with, "I never asserted/claimed that I did miss Agatha".
This feature, sadly -- or the virtue of it, for Grice, really -- is one that applies to ALL conversational implicature. We do not want to say that Russell is committed to 'then' when he said, "I was born in Wales and moved to England" -- although, honest, it will be quite an exegetical task to commute _that_! ("I moved to England and then was born in Wales"). Ah well, logicians!
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