by J. L. Speranza
-- for the Grice Club.
WHAT I PERHAPS FAILED TO DISTINGUISH IN MY "JABBERWOCKY" ESSAY, which I presented to the Luton, Beds-based Lewis Carroll Society (only I never knew if they read it -- they did publish it, though!) is between
'anarchic Humpty-Dumptyism', as used by Grice's disciple at Christ Church, A. G. N. Flew.
and
'liberal Humpty-Dumptyism'.
Let's consider the Carrollian passages:
----
`And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
`I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.'
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything
----
In my "Jabberwocky" essay, I simplified the claim to read:
(T) By uttering 'There's glory for you!', Humpty Dumpty means that there is a nice knock-down argument for Alice.
(I failed to distinguish if this was via implicature or what).
----
I gave Griceian arguments PRO and finally AGAINST it (The 'against' it being based on D. F. Pears, also of Christ Church).
---
I entitled my piece, "Impenetrability", since I also considered the immediate continuation to that exchange:
---
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. `They've a temper, some of them -- particularly verbs, they're the proudest -- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs -- however, I can manage the whole of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'
`Would you tell me, please,' said Alice `what that means?`
`Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. `I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'
`That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
`When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, `I always pay it extra.'
`Oh!' said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.
----
----
Note that the issue is not as simple as Flew thinks it is (to utter 'pod' to mean pod.
"Linguistic conventions," Flew writes (p. 30 of the reprint in Shosky), "here means those by which we use 'pod' rather than 'pid' or 'nup' to mean pod; and so forth." VERY clarifying. (Irony there).
----
glory, noun. feminine in Latin, 'gloria'.
"a nice knockdown argument" -- still a noun phrase.
"There's glory for you"
"There's A NICE KNOCK-DOWN ARGUMENT for you"
---
But
"impenetrability", noun, feminine in Latin, 'impenetrabilitas'.
"
`I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'
Note that in this second instance, Humpty engages in a 'that'-clause of the type that R. Hall and I adore.
---- By 'impenetrability' [rather than by the stricter, "By UTTERING 'Impenetrability'], Humpty Dumpty MEANT that: "Humpty Dumpty and Alice have had enough of some subject AND that it would be just as well if Alice would mention what Alice means to do next, as Humpty Dumpty doesn't suppose Alice means to stop THERE all the rest of Alice's life.
Surely that is silly.
----
Note that in the previous, better known case [I'm scared of using 'better-known' and 'well-known' after Kramer's reprimand -- but I'll survive], that Kramer now trades on, "glory" ('a nice knock-down argument'),
HUMPTY DUMPTY: There's glory for you!
ALICE: I don't know what you mean by "glory".
HUMPTY DUMPTY [smiling] Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"
---- In this case, it is not utterer's meaning, which (as Grice WoW:v -- second section has it, -- 'Varieties of nonnatural meaning', p. 91), but utterance-type occasion-meaning at most. For the record, let's revise Grice considers, the basic, prior:
i. utterer's meaning
from ii-iii-iv specifications of EXPRESSION meaning:
ii. utterance-type occasion-meaning ("By X U meant '...'"]
iii. utterance-type APPLIED timeless meaning ("X means here '...'")
and
iv. utterance-type TIMELESS meaning ("X means '...'").
----
I cannot go into the detail, right here, as to how the belief-based view of intention held by Grice ends endorsing a 'liberal' rather than an 'anarchic' Humpty Dumptyism but you get the picture.
In any case, it is sad that not only J. L. Austin and Wittgenstein ignored ('frequently' in the case of Austin, Grice has it) the 'importance of distinguishing what our words mean and what we mean by them' ("Prejudices and predilections, which become the life and opinions of Paul Grice", by Paul Grice), but that Alice did too!
---
ALICE: But "glory" does not mean "a nice knock-down argument".
HUMPTY DUMPTY (all too famous retort) [in rather a scornful tone]: When I use a word, it means just what I choose it [i.e. the word, rather than myself -- which would be a strict case of utterer's meaning. JLS] to mean -- neither more nor less.
ALICE. The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.
HUMPTY DUMPTY. The question is which is to be master - - that's all.
--- Gardner simplifies the issue here, but rather inspirational. He notes that in Wonderland, just to prove Mill right -- cfr. our Grice to our Mill -- general words like 'brilling', 'toves', etc. -- don't mean anything but what people (and eggs, etc.) whimsically mean by them, while proper names (like "Alice", "Humpty Dumpty") MEAN things --:
HUMPTY DUMPTY: Tell me your name and your business.
ALICE. My name is Alice, but--
HUMPTY DUMPTY [interrupting] It's a stupid name enough! What does it mean?
ALICE [doubtfully]. Must a name mean something?
HUMPTY DUMPTY [with a sort laugh]. Of course it must. My name means the shape I am -- and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like your, you might be any shape, almost.
--- In any case, I like to think that, Griceian varieties of nonnatural meaning aside, and since Humpty Dumpty works basically with TWO scenarios ('glory' and 'impenetrability') which are specific, and one which is general -- as per the rhyme which encapsulates his moral, it is utterer's meaning he is centrally having in mind -- if an egg can be said to have one ('mind', I mean, not 'central meaning'):
In spring, when woods are getting green,
I'll try and tell you what I mean.
("`Thank you very much,' said Alice.")
And we should welcome her.
Showing posts with label repr. Philosophical Essays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label repr. Philosophical Essays. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Grice contra the Anarchists!
by J. L. Speranza
for the Grice Club.
THE CONFRONTATIONAL TONE is ironic! It is meant to embrace Jones's willingness to explore how anarchic one can be!
It is the concern of Flew's tutee at St. John's, back in Oxford in 1946:
Can Humpty Dumpty MEAN that 'glory' means 'a nice knock-down argument', and that 'impenetrability' means 'let's change the subject'?
---
In "Philosophy and Language", which he published in the Philosophical Quarterly for 1956 and later reprinted as his 'Introduction' in his "Essays in conceptual analysis" (London, Macmillan, 1956, pp. 1-20), Flew writes:
"The sounds we use as words are all, intrinsically and prior to the emergence of any linguistic conventions about them, almost equally suitably to do any linguistic job whatever. Whereas a knife, say, could not be used, or even misused, as a tent,
"glory"
might [but then might have not. JLS] have been given the use we have in fact given to
"a nice knockdown argument"".
----
(p. 28 of the reprint in Shosky available online).
He goes on:
"The uses of words depend subtly on
the correct usages of words. Humpty Dumpty
can be accused of misusing 'glory', because
the accepted, standard, correct usage of
Lewis Carroll's language group"
-- Alice Hargreaves and her ilk!
---
"was radically different from
Humpty Dumpty's private usage."
--- Recall that Flew knew what he was talking about! After his sojourn at Grice's college, St. John's, he had moved up to Christ Church!
---
Flew goes on:
"It [i.e. Humpty Dumpty's usage]
was perverse, ill-mannered,
misleading, and endangered the
possibility of
linguistic communication,
thus wantonly and without explanation
to flout the linguistic conventions."
--- the received opinions of the Establishment, as I would prefer to say echoing Helm.
Flew goes on in a bracket -- Oxford shines in the Oxford brackets:
"(No doubt, like contemporary "prophets of
a new linguistic dispensation" [the ref. here is to PQ of 1953, p. 12], he regarded
such linguistic conventions as
"preposterous restrictions upon free speech" [ibid., p. 2])."
Isn't that bracket genial!? I can imagine the amusement in Flew's face, as he wrote it!
---
Where does he introduce "anarchic Humpty-Dumptyism"? Not further away. On that same page, Flew goes on:
"Furthermore, as academic philologists [Sir Alan Herbert] and people
maintaining and increasing the
efficiency"
--- this will please Kramer! This is his favourite word! --
"of the English language [] (and others) have
often urged, what is correct usage of any
language group depends ultimately on
actual usage".
Anarchists take note! (What is 'incorrect' usage idem!)
----
Flew goes on:
"It is because use depends
on correct usage while this in turn
depends on actual usage that
changes in actual usage
can enrich or impoverish
the conceptual equipment
provided by a language."
---
We are getting close to "anarchic Humpty-Dumptyism" -- and it has a Vienna connotation!
Flew goes on:
"If a NEW usage is established
by which a new USE is given
to a word,"
-- such as, God forbid it, 'glory' --
"a use not previously provided for,
then to that extent the language
concerned is enriched."
And here we reach the footnote which is key:
"The point is developed by F. Waismann"
--- the England-settled Vienna circler --
"in his 'Analytic-Synthetic'"
--- an essay that we may want to explore as we reach Carnap/Grice commonground. It is Analysis, 1950, vol. X, --
"and stressed
to a POINT at which
some"
-- NOT Grice! cfr. WoW: "I can say "I want a paper" meaning not a newspaper, or a term paper, but 'that it is raining', WoW:167 -- in his genial "Philosopher's Paradoxes" 1953, with which I TRUST Flew was familiar with! --
"might complain it
encouraged [why the past? JLS]
anarchic Humpty-Dumptyism".
What can be more genial than that!?
In my "Liberalism" paper I defend the liberals against the anarcho-Humpty-Dumptyists. For using arguments by yet another Christ Churchian (like Locke, Carroll, and Flew): D. F. Pears.
In "Belief and intention", Pears argues that if meaning involves 'intention' than mere 'willingness', surely there must be a probability p > .5 that it will be fulfilled. And Humpty Dumpty however denies that.
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'", Alice objects.
As Davidson notes, Humpty puts his foot in it when he concedes:
"Of course you DON'T, until I tell you".
He may have been ill-mannered with 'glory' but he surely softens with 'impenetrability' ("That's a good girl!", he nods to Alice when she politely reacts to his use of "Impenetrability", "And what, sir, do you mean by that, if I may?".
The epigraph in my Jabberwocky essay was perhaps not altogehter inappropriately taken from that commentary on the little ditty by Humpty Dumpty as provided runningly by Alice:
"In springtime when the grass is green,
I'll try to tell you what I mean."
"Thank you very much," said Alice.
[--- The ref. is to Speranza, in Jabberwocky, vol. 21].
Flew further goes on to use a favourite with Carnap, Grice, Jones and me, 'calculus'. The good of a calculus, complete with its axioms and theorems, is that it has 'principles':
Thus Flew speaks of -- available in the Shosky reprint, online --
"Oxford philosophers who incline to all
[these] policies together
may be thought of as trying to preserve
a balance: between this 'formulizer's dream' that
non-formulized language really is, or ought to be replaced by,
a calculus;
and the Humpty Dumpty nightmare that
there is, at least in those parts of it which
most concern philosophers, no logic
or order at all."
He means language! He means "semantics"! Note that he uses the phrase that is too easily (and wrongly I agree with Jones) identified (wrongly misidentified makes it right) with 'anarchy'!
---
for the Grice Club.
THE CONFRONTATIONAL TONE is ironic! It is meant to embrace Jones's willingness to explore how anarchic one can be!
It is the concern of Flew's tutee at St. John's, back in Oxford in 1946:
Can Humpty Dumpty MEAN that 'glory' means 'a nice knock-down argument', and that 'impenetrability' means 'let's change the subject'?
---
In "Philosophy and Language", which he published in the Philosophical Quarterly for 1956 and later reprinted as his 'Introduction' in his "Essays in conceptual analysis" (London, Macmillan, 1956, pp. 1-20), Flew writes:
"The sounds we use as words are all, intrinsically and prior to the emergence of any linguistic conventions about them, almost equally suitably to do any linguistic job whatever. Whereas a knife, say, could not be used, or even misused, as a tent,
"glory"
might [but then might have not. JLS] have been given the use we have in fact given to
"a nice knockdown argument"".
----
(p. 28 of the reprint in Shosky available online).
He goes on:
"The uses of words depend subtly on
the correct usages of words. Humpty Dumpty
can be accused of misusing 'glory', because
the accepted, standard, correct usage of
Lewis Carroll's language group"
-- Alice Hargreaves and her ilk!
---
"was radically different from
Humpty Dumpty's private usage."
--- Recall that Flew knew what he was talking about! After his sojourn at Grice's college, St. John's, he had moved up to Christ Church!
---
Flew goes on:
"It [i.e. Humpty Dumpty's usage]
was perverse, ill-mannered,
misleading, and endangered the
possibility of
linguistic communication,
thus wantonly and without explanation
to flout the linguistic conventions."
--- the received opinions of the Establishment, as I would prefer to say echoing Helm.
Flew goes on in a bracket -- Oxford shines in the Oxford brackets:
"(No doubt, like contemporary "prophets of
a new linguistic dispensation" [the ref. here is to PQ of 1953, p. 12], he regarded
such linguistic conventions as
"preposterous restrictions upon free speech" [ibid., p. 2])."
Isn't that bracket genial!? I can imagine the amusement in Flew's face, as he wrote it!
---
Where does he introduce "anarchic Humpty-Dumptyism"? Not further away. On that same page, Flew goes on:
"Furthermore, as academic philologists [Sir Alan Herbert] and people
maintaining and increasing the
efficiency"
--- this will please Kramer! This is his favourite word! --
"of the English language [] (and others) have
often urged, what is correct usage of any
language group depends ultimately on
actual usage".
Anarchists take note! (What is 'incorrect' usage idem!)
----
Flew goes on:
"It is because use depends
on correct usage while this in turn
depends on actual usage that
changes in actual usage
can enrich or impoverish
the conceptual equipment
provided by a language."
---
We are getting close to "anarchic Humpty-Dumptyism" -- and it has a Vienna connotation!
Flew goes on:
"If a NEW usage is established
by which a new USE is given
to a word,"
-- such as, God forbid it, 'glory' --
"a use not previously provided for,
then to that extent the language
concerned is enriched."
And here we reach the footnote which is key:
"The point is developed by F. Waismann"
--- the England-settled Vienna circler --
"in his 'Analytic-Synthetic'"
--- an essay that we may want to explore as we reach Carnap/Grice commonground. It is Analysis, 1950, vol. X, --
"and stressed
to a POINT at which
some"
-- NOT Grice! cfr. WoW: "I can say "I want a paper" meaning not a newspaper, or a term paper, but 'that it is raining', WoW:167 -- in his genial "Philosopher's Paradoxes" 1953, with which I TRUST Flew was familiar with! --
"might complain it
encouraged [why the past? JLS]
anarchic Humpty-Dumptyism".
What can be more genial than that!?
In my "Liberalism" paper I defend the liberals against the anarcho-Humpty-Dumptyists. For using arguments by yet another Christ Churchian (like Locke, Carroll, and Flew): D. F. Pears.
In "Belief and intention", Pears argues that if meaning involves 'intention' than mere 'willingness', surely there must be a probability p > .5 that it will be fulfilled. And Humpty Dumpty however denies that.
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'", Alice objects.
As Davidson notes, Humpty puts his foot in it when he concedes:
"Of course you DON'T, until I tell you".
He may have been ill-mannered with 'glory' but he surely softens with 'impenetrability' ("That's a good girl!", he nods to Alice when she politely reacts to his use of "Impenetrability", "And what, sir, do you mean by that, if I may?".
The epigraph in my Jabberwocky essay was perhaps not altogehter inappropriately taken from that commentary on the little ditty by Humpty Dumpty as provided runningly by Alice:
"In springtime when the grass is green,
I'll try to tell you what I mean."
"Thank you very much," said Alice.
[--- The ref. is to Speranza, in Jabberwocky, vol. 21].
Flew further goes on to use a favourite with Carnap, Grice, Jones and me, 'calculus'. The good of a calculus, complete with its axioms and theorems, is that it has 'principles':
Thus Flew speaks of -- available in the Shosky reprint, online --
"Oxford philosophers who incline to all
[these] policies together
may be thought of as trying to preserve
a balance: between this 'formulizer's dream' that
non-formulized language really is, or ought to be replaced by,
a calculus;
and the Humpty Dumpty nightmare that
there is, at least in those parts of it which
most concern philosophers, no logic
or order at all."
He means language! He means "semantics"! Note that he uses the phrase that is too easily (and wrongly I agree with Jones) identified (wrongly misidentified makes it right) with 'anarchy'!
---
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
