The Bandaged-Leg Squash-Player

---- by JLS
------ for the GC

--- 'DISPLAYING a bandaged leg (in response to a squash invitation' was the label for my previous (post) (I'm using exact collocations because that's Grice WoW:109, in case someone wants to check with other discussions of the example onlines -- and beat our brightest ones if she can).

First

(a) Kramer

-- then

(b) Grice:


Kramer (in "Implicatures of Na'vi", after introducing label "CB" for 'communicative behaviour' which I have elsewhere compared to Grice's use of 'utterance' as 'any candidate for meaningNN'):

"Implicature seems to me independent of the [communicative behaviour] mode. Rather, I see implicature as the (unspoken) parts of the syllogism entailed in most (all?) [communicative behaviour]s: If I have a bandaged leg, I cannot play squash tonight.
I have a bandaged leg. Therefore, I cannot play squash tonight."

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Good point. It's odd that most enthymemes are modus ponendo ponens. It would be interresting to ask Roger Bishop Jones (seeing that Zermelo and Frank are dead) about the idea of some things being more minor than others (premisses): the idea does not seem to make sense to Sallie: "Logic is grand").

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GRICEAN INTERLUDE then:

Grice writes, on p. 109 of WoW (The passage is short enough so I won't infringe (c)): "The fellows of Harvard College" -- rich enough fellows if you axe (sic) me.

"Displaying a badnaged leg (in response to a squas invitation)."

"the displayer could mean (1) that he cannot play squash, or, dubiously, (2) that he has a bad leg"

-- exactly Kramer's point -- cfr. the curate: "parts of his legs were actually not that bad".

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Grice adds: "(the bandages might be fake)", you see. The one to blame here is who I call "the greatest living philosopher": James Opie Urmson. HE started it all. He started to find counterexamples to Grice (the 'torture' waterboard example in WoW, p.93). Naturally, while this amused Grice publicly, he acquired as a reaction the habit of qualifying almost every other clause he uttered. Urmson was candid enough to write the obituary for Grice for the Independent, which is almost all true -- except he got the date of Grice's holy communion wrong).

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Grice adds: 'but not', i.e. the 'displayer' could NOT mean '(3) that his leg is bandaged.'

Why?

Well, it's the cooperative principle. Quantitas:

"Be as informative as is required", i.e. drop all stuff that you expect your clever co-conversationalist may find out for him- or her- (or 'it-', if you are onto that sort of thing) self. Including verbalisations. For this is all 'silent' (moves) as Kramer notes.

A: We are playing squash tonight. Are you joining? (Does THIS count as an 'invitation'?)

B displays one (Grice writes 'a') bandaged leg.

The implicature, or to use Levinson's formalism (formulism), "+>" "No."

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Kramer writes:

"I don't make a fuss" (or words) -- but Grice does. Why? Well, for Grice is, in the context, looking for necessary and sufficient conditions of 'utter' (already a technicism) and 'mean' (about to become one): (And this allowing Grice to having defined 'utter' in TERMS of 'mean' i.e. and thus engaging in a vice):

Grice is considering what (not by him, necessarily) has been called the "Grice way" or mechanism (Bennett -- Lingustic Behaviour, my PhD dissertation, etc. -- in my Thesis it is element (2) of the 3 ones 'constituing' a 'conversational move', on a good day).

Grice is considering to drop. To drop

"the requirement (for utterer's meaning) that U shoud intend A's production of response to be based on A's recognition of U's intention that A should produce the response". "But this will not do". And he proposes the 'displayer of bandaged leg' example.

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The condition (which Grice labels 'third' but I have as 'second' in my thing) "seems to be required in order to protect us" not from Urmson necessarily but "from counterintuitive results" -- for in the 'displayer of a bandaged leg' example we do NOT want to say that

"by displaying 'a' bandaged leg (in response to a squash invitation) the displayer meant that his leg was bandaged."

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(Grice, who was of St. John's -- and I was and could garner evidence of this -- is referring to that tacky canvass in the common room:

The painting, a pre-Raphaelite one, which should, if you ask me, be given to the Salvation Army, is entitled,

------ "St John"

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It depicts, boringly, "St John" as he (or his head, literally) is displayed to that "Lolita" (Salome of her days) on account of something very wicked that fascinated Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss (the opera).

The painting, by an obscure Pre-rapahelite painter (S. Solomon) shows then, in Grice's ecphrasis, "Herod, showing Salome the head of St. John the Baptist".

Grice surmises:

"Herod, showing Salome the head of St. John the Baptist" -- this was his famous William James lecture No. 5 -- to be published, following Strawson's 'affront' (sic), in the "Philosophical Review" -- vol. 68 --, and now on WoW: 109 --.

"cannot, I think be said [cfr. Aristotle 'ta legomena' -- what we need here is a reference to 'the wise' rather, not the many who WILL say such clumsy, false things] to have 'meant' that St. John the Baptist was dead."

Why?

Well, "Surely if you are showing (only) the head of 'x', the implication, or entailment, if you must, is that x is (no longer) alive. This much we can figure Salome can figure out."

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Yet, do they compare?

Can a silly invitation to play squash to a man who is totally disabled compare to a saint who gave his life for who he thought brought us the good news?