Köpcke's Implicature

Speranza

A woman filled in the blanks in a piece by Köpcke based on a crossword puzzle. Let me explain.

Under German privacy room, the woman has not been named, but I shall here refer to her as "Ms Grice".

Ms Grice was questioned under caution, after she filled in Köpcke's object d'art at the Nuernberg "New Museum".
Köpcke's object d'art is valued at €80,000.
Ms Grice filled Köpcke's object d'art with a biro she had in her purse.

"Reading-work-piece" (if we must translate the piece to English) a is a Griceian collaborative object d'art by renowned Griceian conceptual artist Arthur Köpcke, of the "Fluxus" movement (if you heard of it -- even if you haven't -- this is a biscuit conditional, as Austin called them: "If you are hungry, there are biscuits in the cupboard").
Köpcke's object d'art essentially looks LIKE an empty crossword puzzle, but it isn't:
1. Regular crossword puzzles are attached to list of 'definitions'. You cannot just insert ANY WORD you please, but the definiens of the definiendum.
2. Therefore, it's not THAT easy.

Next to the Köpcke's object d'art (or part of it, strictly) is a sign Köpcke Griceanly added -- a caption, as it were -- with the order “Insert words!".
In "The Language of Morals", R. M. Hare analyses
i. Insert words!

as
ii. Words are inserted, please.
This, an imperative, Hare distinguishes, at the neustic level, from the corresponding indicative -- same phrastic, different, neustic:
iii. Words are inserted, yes.

The female, our Ms Grice, explained to the German police that she was simply following the instructions, "in the most Griceian, cooperative way."

Ms Grice "told us she had taken the Köpcke's Griceian instruction as an also cooperative invitation to complete the crossword," a police spokesman said -- "so we cannot assume criminal intent on Ms Grice's part".

Ms Grice was indeed visiting the art gallery not by herself but as part of a more amusing group visit to indeed Nuremberg’s Neues Museum (it means new museum in German, to contrast it with the old which is across the street) and where Köpcke's genial work, on the second floor -- (now with added value as someone may cleverly implicate) is displayed.

Ms Grice is clear about this.
"If the museum didn’t want people to follow Köpcke's instructions, they should put up a sign to make that clear "or perspicuous," Ms Grice told the German police.
Let us consider that conditional more formally:
iv. If the exhibitor of Köpcke's object d'art did not want any potential addressee to follow the utterer's intention (reflected by the imperative, the utterance "Insert words!"), the exhibitor should put up a sign to make this perspicuous.
v. Otherwise, the idea is that the order NEED be followed.
------ And that's what I did. Therefore: I was acting, as the Germans say, 'righly' -- richtlig.
But who called the German police? The museum director.
The museum director explains, alla Grice:
"We do realize that [Ms Grice] did not mean any harm." The museum director is using "mean" as per Grice's analysis of natural meaning ("mean to" as mean-NN, mean to harm -- vide Grice, "Meaning" in "Studies in the Way of Words: "For convenience, I will classify uses of 'mean' in phrases like 'mean to' as a "natural" usage of the verb").
The museum director also added added: "A state museum, such as the Nuernberg new museum is, could not avoid making a criminal complaint, though  -- even if this goes against the Griceian spirit. But we Germans are not anarchic."

The museum director does not sound too Griceian when the museum director said the "damage" (as Grice, Ms Grice, or Köpcke would NOT call it) is not permanent and would probably be relatively easy to repair -- erasing the alleged 'added value,' as it were -- unless Ms Grice's inserted words were recorded before being erased. Did she use, e.g. the word, 'pig'. The caption was in English.

"Also for insurance reasons we HAD to report the incident to the German police", the museum director added. (Germans love to 'add' and use 'also')

As it happens, the German eccentric collector who presented Köpcke's masterpiece to the new Nuernberg art gallery (who lives in Oxford -- where Grice taught -- and who has therefore read Grice, -- talk of  'reading-work-piece'!) took the incident in good humour,  the museum director said -- "even Griceian humour, if you mustn't."

Restoring the work is expected to cost a few hundred euros, and the Nuernberg new art gallery will bear the expense, not Ms Grice, the museum director promised.

“We did let the Ms Grice know that the collector took the alleged "damage" to the work in good Griceian humour," the museum director added.
"Although I still cannot Griceianly think what kind of a crossword puzzle could be filled by 'inserting' any word. Granted, the piece was  what Grice in "Retrospective Epilogue" to Way of Words calls an iconic representation of a real crossword puzzle (such as as gets published in The Telegraph), but not in itself real -- hey, it was an object d'art."
"So there was an openness in Köpcke's implicature that Ms Grice merely cleverly flouted." By posing her conditional (iv) to the police, it poses a problem first presented by Catherine Lord in her Griceian aesthetic theory in The British Journal of Aesthetics (But what do Germans know about the proceedings of the British Journal of Aesthetics?)

The museum said that, in compliance with Ms. Grice's conditional -- which now becomes no less than a Kantian imperative, in future Köpcke's object d'art will have an attachment that makes it clear that m-intended addressees (to use Grice's jargon) ARE NOT permitted to ;insert words' by filling in the blanks, in spite of the blatant order to the contrary.

As Popper would put it, "Irrefudiable!"
Popper would say 'irrefudiable' because we have a case of

v. !p & ~!p
v. Insert words! Don't insert words!

In any case Ms Grice's case is reivindicated, as it should. She interpreted Köpcke's imperative
i. Insert words!
at face-value.
She could be criticised for not cathing Köpcke's implicature that (i) means "Don't". But Ms Grice is right:
Köpcke wasn't there when we needed him!

Cheers




"fill: with own imagination and …&C (and continue)”
These two basic principles run through all works of the artist Arthur Köpcke, which still today challenge the beholder to face everyday life in an inventive fashion. With both humorous as well as serious intentions, they present us with a challenge: “Use your own imagination in an infinite process.”

The life of Arthur Köpcke, born in 1928, was marked by the questioning of his very existence and surroundings, as conditioned by his biography. Traumatic experiences at the end of World War II left Köpcke with the sensation of living in a permanent state of emergency. A self-taught artist, his work included literature, painting, object art, conceptual art, and action art. When he failed to make a living from his art in the 1950s, he decided to make the best of his situation in Denmark: Köpcke discovered like-minded individuals in the international Fluxus movement, which had the fusion of art and life as its goal. An issue was no longer creating works to be sold, but making art that fed on everyday life. The focus was on the customary, not the exotic, the event and not the pose, the process and not the artwork.

Köpcke seemed to direct his entire attention towards the media image and the consumer articles of his time, in so doing developing a new respect for things otherwise only perceived in passing. Köpcke ironically and humorously reflected upon mass-produced items, affordable, quickly used up, and then often carelessly discarded, in his collages and montages, developing them into something else by integrating written elements into his images, later having his texts read, and then releasing recordings of readings, he emphasized the importance of the relationship of text to image: characteristic for his visual language was the alternating use of empty spaces and textual or visual signs. With textual and visual questions and instructions (‚Fill: With Your Own Imagination’) he tried to remove the beholder from a passive attitude.

In late 1957, together with his wife, Köpcke opened Galerie Køpcke in Copenhagen, originally to secure his Danish visa. With his roots in futurism, Dadaism, and surrealism, the focus of the gallery lied in Fluxus and Nouveau réalisme, and for the following five years of its existence the gallery became a center of avant-garde art in Denmark. Köpcke thus became a key figure in bringing Fluxus to Denmark and ultimately to all of Scandinavia. Not only did he move among the media with ease, but among roles as well—as an artist, gallerist, and art educator. As an organizer and participant of many Fluxus events, Köpcke developed to an independent figure of the scene. In his spectacles with actionistic character, artists such as Piero Manzoni, who exhibited his Merda d’artista in his galleries, Niki de Saint Phalle, Daniel Spoerri, and many others took part.

Köpcke’s Piece No. 1, Music While You Work, performed during the first Fluxus concert at Nikolaj Church (Köpcke’s new gallery location as of 1962) is a very complex fusion of music, poetry, and visual art. This piece represents what is very characteristic for the two legendary Fluxus events Fluxus Fluxorum (1963) and Festival of Misfits (1962): the destruction of barriers between music, poetry, and visual arts—or any other discipline. Between 1963 and 1965, the key work reading/work-pieces-manuscript emerged, a simple collection of 127 (resp. 129) pieces that marked a turning point in Köpcke’s oeuvre. While up until this point the artist had taken up impulses from outside, from now on he began creating his own unforgettable style that transported the thematic core of Fluxus (but without adopting its typical layout).

The exhibition at Georg Kargl BOX shows a selection of twelve works by the Fluxus artist. The collage from 1973/1974 Time (&) [plus] yours. combines many of the elements mentioned: on the Köpcke advertising board are bits of paper plates, paper, porcelain tiles, and ribbon, in part painted. The elements form in their light and playful character a contrast to the rough material aesthetic of the beer keg cover. The hourglass placed on the lower part of the picture, together with the text, implies a reflection on the general and subjective cycle of time and fugacity. The work Treatment of a Canvas, + You: Play Chess with Money: Each Team Its Side of the Coins from 1965 with framed by two wooden rods on both sides, reminiscent of a map, challenges the beholder to a game of chess; coins replaced the various chess figures, depending on their nominal value.

Köpcke inspired Danish art with his own actions and by promoting new currents. In his famous quotation (“I think every night about Addi Køpcke, Joseph“) Joseph Beuys expressed his respect for Arthur Köpcke as a person and an artist, underscoring the importance of the artist, who died in 1977 at the of 49.

Köpcke's Implicature

Speranza


A woman filled in the blanks in a piece by Köpcke based on a crossword puzzle. Let me explain.

The woman has not been named, under German privacy law, but I shall here refer to her as "Ms Grice".

Ms Grice was questioned under caution after she filled in the work valued at €80,000 with a biro she had in her purse. "Reading-work-piece", a is a Griceian collaborative object d'art by Griceian conceptual artist Arthur Köpcke, of the Fluxus movement. The object d'art essentially looks like an empty crossword puzzle.

Next to the work is a sign Köpcke Griceanly added a caption which reads: “Insert words”.

The female, our Ms Grice, explained to the German police that she was simply following the instructions, "in the most Griceian, cooperative way."

Ms Grice told us she had taken the Köpcke's Griceian instruction as an also cooperative invitation to complete the crossword, a police spokesman said.

The German cop went on: "We do realize that [Ms Grice] didn’t mean any harm," using "mean" as per Grice's analysis of natural meaning ("mean to" as mean-NN, mean to harm). The museum director added: "A state museum couldn’t avoid making a criminal complaint, though  -- even if this goes against the Griceian spirit. But we Germans are not anarchic."

Ms Grice was part of a group visit to Nuremberg’s Neues Museum (it means new museum in German)  where Köpcke's genial work (now with added value as McEvoy cleverly implicates) is displayed.

If the museum didn’t want people to follow Köpcke's instructions, they should put up a sign to make that clear "or perspicuous," as Ms Grice told the German police.

The museum director said the "damage" (as Grice, Ms Grice, or Köpcke would NOT call it) is not permanent and would probably be relatively easy to repair.

“Also for insurance reasons we had to report the incident to the German police.”

The German collector who presented Köpcke's masterpiece to the museum took the incident in good humour,  the museum director said -- "even Griceian humour, if you mustn't."

Restoring the work is expected to cost a few hundred euros and the museum will bear the expense, not Ms Grice, the museum director said.

“We did let the Ms Grice know that the collector took the damage to the work in good Griceian humour," the museum director added ("Although I still cannot Griceianly think what kind of a crossword puzzle could be filled by 'inserting' any word; but the piece was an iconic representation, as Grice would have it, of a real crossword puzzle as gets published in The Telegraph. So there was an openness in Köpcke's implicature that Ms Grice merely cleverly flouted."

The museum said that in future it should alter the label for the Köpcke's masterpiece to make it clear visitors were NOT permitted to fill in the blanks, in spite of the blatant order to the contrary.

As Popper would put it, "Irrefudiable!"

Newton Knight's Implicature

Speranza

"The State of Jones" is a film Geary (or Gahry) might prefer (cfr. "Gentlemen prefer blondes, but marry brunettes"). It is set in what Americans call "The South," more specifically, as the title entails (but surely does not implicate), it is set in the State of Jones.

The protagonist is Matthew McConaughey. In one scene, they are eating dogs, and the implicatures go:

KNIGHT: Do you know what dog tastes like?
INTERLOCUTOR: No.
KNIGHT: Dog.

This may be a intertextual reference to "One million dollar baby" where we have

i. A: Puajj. That smells like bleach.
   B: It is bleach: bleach smells like bleach.

It may be argued that Knight's interlocutor, by responding "No", implicates:

ii. I do not know that dog tastes like dog.

But surely this analytic, as per Grice & Strawson (In Defense Of The Dogma of Analyticity -- alla Kant). Surely it cannot be synthetic a posteriori that dog tastes like dog. Therefore, In his first conversational move, "Do you know what dog tastes like?", Knight, not having anything better to do (this is Reconstruction), is TEASING, via implicature, his interlocutor. It might be argued that should INTERLOCUTOR uttered:

iii. Sure I do: dog tastes like dog.

INTERLOCUTOR would be flouting one of Grice's conversational maxims ("do not be more informative than is required"), since INTERLOCUTOR is meant to realise that Newton Knight already knows that

iv. Dog tastes like dog.

is analytic a priori -- even if perhaps neither of them ever read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

What is the problematicity of (iv) or for that matter (i) Bleach smells like bleach: "like" of course. As Geary prefers,

v. A = A

Suppose A = A. Would we say that A is LIKE A? Sure. If A = A, A is like A. People tend to think that the use of 'like' involves a comparison ("Dog tastes like venison," "Bleach smells like Chanel 5"). But this is a cancellable implicature, not an entailment from the sense of "like".

Grice found that Witters never understood this. For Witters, a fork may look LIKE a flower, but a fork may NOT look like a fork. On the other hand, Grice's example

vi. A horse looks like a horse.

is perfectly true, if trivial or otiose by conversational standards. So Newton Knight was among other things, a pre-Griceian.

Speranza

Grice

Is Grice A European Philosopher?

Speranza

News of the American presidential campaign (Grice was American) has to share space in British newspapers with the recent referendum on whether the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Grice was British) should leave the European Union.

This rapidly became a Griceian lexicographical hotspot.

We've commented before on

i. Brexit

portmanteau for

ii. British exit.

But February saw several appearances in more upmarket papers of the rather strained neologism

iii. Bremain

for the opposing idea

iv. British remain.

Journalists have created Brexiter for a supporter of withdrawal (and Brexiteer, also; you will note the subtle negative associations of that extra e).

But not so far its equivalent Bremainer.

But we've started to see Bremaineer and Bremainster as well as the more conventional remainer.

Suggestions of a partial return after a Brexit has been termed Bre-entry.

There’s plenty of time for more inventions, in retrospect.

Some have recently discovered that some are Brexpats.

They are uniting under the Twitter umbrella @brexpats — Brits who live in Europe.

And another new compound met my eye recently:

Brexitism, the concept or Griceist philosophy behind Brexit -- if there is one.

The Scots borrowed the idea to make

v. Scexit

at the time of their referendum on independence from the UK.

Grice

Is Grice A European Philosopher?

Speranza

News of the American presidential campaign (Grice was American) has to share space in British newspapers with the recent referendum on whether the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Grice was British) should leave the European Union.

This rapidly became a Griceian lexicographical hotspot.

We've commented before on

i. Brexit

portmanteau for

ii. British exit.

But February saw several appearances in more upmarket papers of the rather strained neologism

iii. Bremain

for the opposing idea

iv. British remain.

Journalists have created Brexiter for a supporter of withdrawal (and Brexiteer, also; you will note the subtle negative associations of that extra e).

But not so far its equivalent Bremainer.

But we've started to see Bremaineer and Bremainster as well as the more conventional remainer.

Suggestions of a partial return after a Brexit has been termed Bre-entry.

There’s plenty of time for more inventions, in retrospect.

Some have recently discovered that some are Brexpats.

They are uniting under the Twitter umbrella @brexpats — Brits who live in Europe.

And another new compound met my eye recently:

Brexitism, the concept or Griceist philosophy behind Brexit -- if there is one.

The Scots borrowed the idea to make

v. Scexit

at the time of their referendum on independence from the UK.

Grice on self-interest and benevolence

I was discussing bits of Searle's philosophy with Danny Frederick -- which motivated me to create this little album.

Frederick's focus is on the controversial point of 'collective intentionality,' as it were, as it pertains (or for Frederick, fails to pertains) to things like institutions. It reminded me of Grice!

One passage by Searle cited by Frederick mentions 'cooperation', which brought me back to Grice! In his 1965 Oxford lectures on implicature, Grice distinguishes between cooperation and helpfulness. In fact, he prefers helpfulness -- this may relate to Searle's example of 'going on a walk with another person'. Only that one has not to be too cooperative for that! (Only keeping your co-walker's pace! It's VERY RUDE otherwise!).

In those lectures, Grice speaks of a sort of equilibrium between principles of self-interest and benevolence, which may apply to Frederick's discussion.

The examples provided by Frederick are genial -- take Graeco-Roman slavery, for example. Surely a slave does not want to be a slave. A Greek slave holder may well become a slave back in Rome. How does the Graeco-Roman institution of 'slavery', if institution it was, can be accounted for in terms of collective acceptance and collective authority? Surely Frederick is right that Searle is being a tad _too_ Griceian!

Frederick also touches on the important point of collective intentionality versus the aggregation of individual intentionalities. Take Grice's cooperative (or cooperation, as I prefer) principle -- a joke on Kant's categorical imperative. It is formulated in the second person imperative: "Thou shalt not...". It is NOT formulated, to emphasise a point by Frederick in another context, in terms of "We": "We should cooperate". Does the grammatical distinction matter? Perhaps not.

It is useful to see cooperation as involving the idea of a non-zero-sum game. Let G be the goal of Abe (to use Frederick's example) and G' be the goal of Betsy (again to use Frederick's example). Some concept of joint or collective intentionality, when Abe and Betsy can use "we" ("We shall walk together") may be the result of this idea that the intersection between G and G' is not vacuous. I.e. there's something that A and B share: some, why not, desired-dependent intention on A's and B's part -- to take a walk together.

It's different when it comes to the poor Greek oligarch that once the country becomes a Roman republic, he becomes a mere 'paidagogos' (Roman slang for 'slave') in Rome. And so on!

Herbert Paul Grice And Morton Gabriel Weisberger: The Implicatures

Speranza

Tarski once said, trying to be intelligent,

i. Snow is white.

-- He said it in Polish, but Popper soon translated to his (i.e. Popper's) vernacular, "weiss". "It sounds more idiotic in Polish," Tarski admitted.

Now, how would you call a white-mountaineer: Morton Gabriel White, for short.

Geary once referred to the triad of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as "a triad if dead white men."

I would add, alas, Morton White.

Morton Gabriel Weisberger (better known, perhaps, as Morton White) is a philosopher and historian of ideas, whose innovative theory of "holistic pragmatism,"as her rather pretentiously, but with good will, called it, showed the way toward a more socially engaged, interdisciplinary role for philosophy, well, he died in Skillman, N.J.

White's death was announced by The Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, not far from Skillman, and where White taught (Princeton, not Skillman -- the toponymy of "Skillman" is very interesting, as is "Princetown"'s).

OTOH Grice's death was announced by a nurse -- as was, incidentally, his birth, back in affluent Halborne, Warwickshire.

White (or Weisberger, if you mustn't) was best known to generations of philosophers as the editor of two standard compilations.

The first is, or should be, a favourite with R. B. Jones, of Carnap's Corner. It is "The Age of Analysis" (implicature: "does analysis age?") a tirade against Popper and an anthology of writings from key 20th-century philosophers, including Grice, for which Weisberger (or White, if you must) supplied an introduction and witty commentary.

The second, co-edited with his wife Lucia, is “The Intellectual Versus the City: From Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright" -- the architect (Wright, not Jefferson).

To emphasise the contrasts, Grice was more familiar with exurbia tan "city" or 'town' as he preferred. His favourite exurbia being Darien on Long Island Sound, even if he was straight from an affluent exurbia of "Brum" (He would never refer to "Birmingham" as Brum, but _I_ would, just to disimplicate).

White and White survey the conflicted attitudes about the merits of rural and urban life.

Is this philosophical?

It is for Morton; it ain't for Lucia, who saw herself (as she was -- such is the implicature of 'saw') as a 'sociologist'.

As a philosopher, M. White (not to be confused with M. Black, a Russian philosopher) was identified with "holistic pragmatism", then, an effort, as it were, to rescue philosophy from what he (White, not Black) "saw as" the narrow preoccupations of the dominant analytic movement (he meant Grice, who was the propagandist of "linguistic botany", "Oxford philosophy at its worst!" -- "Futilitarian!" -- with its parsings of statements and the constituent parts of complex notions (such as Grice's rewrite of Peirce's sign, symbol, and index into "mean" and m-intentions.

Weisberger writes:

"There are many signs that the sleeping giant of philosophy is arousing itself out of its mathematical slumbers."

What does he mean?

Oddly, not far from Darien there is a national landmark locally known as the valley of the Sleeping Giant (his name is Wilfrid), seat of a prestigious polo club.

Building on the work of Willard Van Orman Quine (one of Grice's two intellectual mentors, the other was Chomskyh) and Nelson Goodman, White (or Weisberger) conceives of "pragmatic analysis" (NOT the type Grice or Carnap are concerned with -- vide "The city of eternal truth") as an all-embracing venture incorporating ethics, politics and the social sciences.

"In my view," Weisberger wrote, "holistic pragmatism is a theory that may be applied to all disciplines that seek truth".

The serious thing is that he meant ("Must we mean what we say?" "Well, at least I say what I mean -- same thing" -- "Not the same thing a bit!").

White (or Weisberger) explored his ideas in strictly philosophical works like:

-- “Toward Reunion in Philosophy” and in sweeping intellectual histories, including

-- "Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism," a study of John Dewey (Grice was a Dewey lecturer), Oliver Wendell Holmes (not to be confused with Sherlock, "who possibly never existed" annotates Geary), and Thorstein Veblen ("if you heard of him," Geary annotates, and disimplicates, "and even if you haven't"), and

-- "Science and Sentiment in America: Philosophical Thought From Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey."

Stanley Katz, of Princeton, metaphorically dubbed White "philosophy’s ambassador."

Katz did not implicate to what. But for that matter, he did not disimplicate it either. For Boethius, in "The consolation of philosophy," philosophy is the hand maid of theology. So should Philosophy NEED an ambassador?

Grice would wonder if philosophy (viewed as a lady) can be her own ambassador. But Katz would perhaps not.

White was born Morton Gabriel Weisberger "somewhere in Manhattan," as Grice would put it (cfr. his discussion of "We'll be staying somewhere in the South of France") to Robert Weisberger and the Esther Levine (relation to the former Met conductor) and grew up on the Lower (as opposed to posh Upper) East Side, where his family owned a shoe store, "that sold good shoes," Geary adds.

Morton excelled in school, first at P.S. 114 -- in Manhattan, schools are numbered -- when they are public. -- Grice attended a public school, but in England, public means private and private means public. Grice attended Clifton, and fresh from Oxford he taught for one term only at a public, I mean private, school, in (of all places) Lancashire -- Rossall -- and later at Seward Park (Weisberger graduated at fifteen years old -- them was the days), but felt little in the way of intellectual stirrings.

"I was a child of the streets and the shoe store,” Weisberger wrote in his memoir, "A Philosopher’s Story".

By story he means what Rowlings means by 'story' when she calls the adventures of Harry Potter a 'story' or 'two'.

Weisberger expands:

"I was a lonely, unreligious child who knew little about what is sometimes called the spiritual life," to echo Socrates, "little about philosophical essays, and much about films, sports, restaurants, prize-fighters, baseball players and politics."

By which Weisberger means Lower East Side politics -- the dangerous one! ("The Bowery!")

The shoe store went bankrupt during the Depression, alas -- not Weisberger's fault, really -- then Grice said that his father was a "disaster as a businessman, but a fine violin player"), and he enrolled in City College, which was tuition-free.

Grice starts the conceptual analysis of "freedom" with expressions like 'sugar-free' and 'tuition-free' (unknown, both, in his time at Oxford: "We never said we had our tea sugar-free.")

White (or Weisberger) absorbed RADICAL politics and initially set his sights on becoming a lawyer, or attorney, alla H. L. A. Hart and others.

White (not Hart) however drifted gradually toward philosophy (of all things) after taking an introductory survey course and plunging into the study of logic, alla Grice. These were the years when Strawson would publish his "Introduction to Logical Theory" crediting his best tutor ever, "Mr. H. P. Grice".

Logic was in.

In both worlds, the old (Grice's -- Oxford) and the new (Weisberger's, City College).

Weisberger wrote:

"I thought I could solve all the philosophical problems of the world, while I had fun and learned how to earn a living."

FUN is a central concept in Weisberg and Grice. For Grice, philosophy must be primarily concerted 'fun' -- "as when I joined my father Herbert and my brother Derek to play music" (Herbert played the violin, H. P. the piano, and Derek the cello).

After graduating with a BA in social science, White (or Weisberger) abandoned (unlike Hart) the idea of studying law.

Can one study law? Cfr. Crisp, "I'm a practicing homosexual". "Are you?" his mother retorted. "I never knew you had to practice to be one, darling! It comes to you so naturally". I love Crisp's mum!

Columbia lent White (or Weisberger) the money (read: dollars) to enroll in its graduate school, where he wrote a thesis on the pragmatist and logician C. S. Peirce and earned an MA.

At this time Grice was lecturing on Peirce at Oxford.

For his doctorate, which Grice never earned (it's deemed "too clever," with the attending disimplicature, to earn one), but White or Weisberger did, wrote about Dewey’s early thought, specifically his theory that ideas are not a mirror of reality but a plan of action.

Yes, a plan of Dewey's action.

The implicature is different from Dewey's plan of Dewey's action.

The dissertation was published as “The Origins of Dewey’s Instrumentalism.

"The end of it I must leave for a longer day."

Geary annotates: aren't all days 24 hours long?

White married Lucia Perry.

Not to be confused with Perry (editor of Personal identity, which reprints Grice's Classic).

White's second wife is Helen Starobin.

White is survived by his sons, Nicholas and Stephen; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

While teaching at Pennsylvania, White became friends with Goodman, whose theories on hypotheses and inductive reasoning influenced him decisively.

A second, even more powerful influence was Quine, whom he met after joining Harvard’s philosophy department, where Grice gave the bi-annual William James Philosophical Lectures.

Quine proposed a holistic approach to understanding how human beings test beliefs against experience — not one by one, but as an interconnected system of beliefs.

Quine had applied this insight to natural sciences and logic, but White extended it to religion, history, art and morality.

Whether he succeeded (+> or not) is for MvEvoy to say (or implicate or show and tell as he'd prefer)

White addressed these problems in a seminal essay published in “The Analytic and the Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism,” citing Grice, and at greater length in “Toward Reunion in Philosophy,” which he dedicated to Goodman and Quine.

White later refined his theories in “Religion, Politics and the Higher Learning”, “Foundations of Historical Knowledge”, “What Is and What Ought to Be Done: An Essay on Ethics and Epistemology” and “A Philosophy of Culture: The Scope of Holistic Pragmatism”.

He also edited “Paths of American Thought” with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and “Documents in the History of American Philosophy”.

Grice is cited even if he's English. Foucault is not.

Herbert Paul Grice and Morton Gabriel Weisberger: The Implicatures

Speranza

Tarski once said, trying to be intelligent,

i. Snow is white.

-- He said it in Polish, but Popper soon translated to his (i.e. Popper's) vernacular, "weiss". "It sounds more idiotic in Polish," Tarski admitted.

Now, how would you call a white-mountaineer: Morton Gabriel White, for short.

Geary once referred to the triad of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as "a triad if dead white men."

I would add, alas, Morton White.

Morton White, a philosopher and historian of ideas whose innovative theory of “holistic pragmatism” showed the way toward a more socially engaged, interdisciplinary role for philosophy, died in Skillman, N.J.

His death was announced by the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, not far from Skillman, and where White taught.

OTOH Grice's death was announced by a nurse.

White was best known to generations of philosophers as the editor of two standard compilations.

The first was “The Age of Analysis," a tirade against Popper and an anthology of writings from key 20th-century philosophers, for which he supplied an introduction and commentary.

The second, co-edited with his wife Lucia, is “The Intellectual Versus the City: From Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright"

Grice was more familiar with exurbia tan "city" or 'town' as he preferred. His favourite exurbia being Darien on Long Island Sound.

White & White survey the conflicted attitudes about the merits of rural and urban life.

As a philosopher, White (not to be confused with Black, a Russian philosopher) was identified with holistic pragmatism, an effort to rescue philosophy from what he (White, not Black) saw as the narrow preoccupations of the dominant analytic movement, with its parsings of statements and the constituent parts of complex notions.

"There are many signs that the sleeping giant of philosophy is arousing itself out of its mathematical slumbers,” he wrote.

Oddly, not far from Darien there is a national landmark locally known as the valley of the Sleeping Giant (his name is Wilfrid), seat of a prestigious polo club.

Building on the work of Willard Van Orman Quine (one of Grice's two intellectual mentors, the other was Chomskyh) and Nelson Goodman, White conceives of pragmatic analysis as an all-embracing venture incorporating ethics, politics and the social sciences.

"In my view, holistic pragmatism is a theory that may be applied to all disciplines that seek truth,” he states.

White explored his ideas in strictly philosophical works like “Toward Reunion in Philosophy” and in sweeping intellectual histories, including "Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism,"study of John Dewey (Grice was a Dewey lecturer), Oliver Wendell Holmes (not to be confused with Sherlock, "who possibly never existed" annotates Geary), and Thorstein Veblen ("if you heard of him," Geary annotates, and disimplicates, "and even if you haven't"), and "Science and Sentiment in America: Philosophical Thought From Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey."

Stanley Katz, of Princeton, metaphorically dubbed White "philosophy’s ambassador."

Katz did not implicate to what.

White born Morton Gabriel Weisberger in Manhattan to Robert Weisberger and the former Esther Levine and grew up on the Lower East Side, where his family owned a shoe store, "that sold good shoes," Geary adds.

Morton excelled in school, first at P.S. 114 and later at Seward Park (he graduated at 15), but felt little in the way of intellectual stirrings.

"I was a child of the streets and the shoe store,” he wrote in his memoir, "A Philosopher’s Story,."

“I was a lonely, unreligious child who knew little about what is sometimes called the spiritual life, little about philosophical essays, and much about films, sports, restaurants, prizefighters, baseball players and politics.”

The shoe store went bankrupt during the Depression, and he enrolled in City College, which was tuition-free.

Grice starts the conceptual analysis of "freedom" with expressions like 'sugar-free' and 'tuition-free' (unknown, both, in his time at Oxford: "We never said we had our tea sugar-free.")

White absorbed radical politics and initially set his sights on becoming a lawyer, or attorney, alla H. L. A. Hart and others.

White (not Hart) drifted gradually toward philosophy after taking an introductory survey course and plunging into the study of logic, alla Grice.

"I could solve the problems of the world while I had fun and learned how to earn a living."

After graduating with a BA in social science, White abandoned (unlike Hart) the idea of studying law.

Columbia lent White the money to enroll in its graduate school, where he wrote a thesis on the pragmatist and logician C. S. Peirce and earned MA.

At this time Grice was lecturing on Peirce at Oxford.

For his doctorate, whuch Grice never earned (it's deemed "too clever," with the attending disimplicature, to earn one), but White did, wrote about Dewey’s early thought, specifically his theory that ideas are not a mirror of reality but a plan of action.

Yes, a plan of Dewey's action.

The dissertation was published as “The Origins of Dewey’s Instrumentalism.

"The end of it I must leave for a longer day."

Geary annotates: aren't all days 24 hours long?

White married Lucia Perry.

Not to be confused with Perry (editor of Personal identity, which reprints Grice's Classic).

White's second wife is Helen Starobin.

White is survived by his sons, Nicholas and Stephen; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

While teaching at Pennsylvania, White became friends with Goodman, whose theories on hypotheses and inductive reasoning influenced him decisively.

A second, even more powerful influence was Quine, whom he met after joining Harvard’s philosophy department, where Grice gave the bi-annual William James Philosophical Lectures.

Quine proposed a holistic approach to understanding how human beings test beliefs against experience — not one by one, but as an interconnected system of beliefs.

Quine had applied this insight to natural sciences and logic, but White extended it to religion, history, art and morality.

Whether he succeeded (+> or not) is for MvEvoy to say (or implicate or show and tell as he'd prefer)

White addressed these problems in a seminal essay published in “The Analytic and the Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism,” citing Grice, and at greater length in “Toward Reunion in Philosophy,” which he dedicated to Goodman and Quine.

White later refined his theories in “Religion, Politics and the Higher Learning”, “Foundations of Historical Knowledge”, “What Is and What Ought to Be Done: An Essay on Ethics and Epistemology” and “A Philosophy of Culture: The Scope of Holistic Pragmatism”.

He also edited “Paths of American Thought” with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and “Documents in the History of American Philosophy”.

Grice is cited even if he's English. Foucault is not.

Harry Potter's Implicature

Speranza

J.K. Rowling Just Can’t Let Harry Potter Go by SARAH LYALL

By SARAH LYALL
Her juggernaut plows on, with a two-part “Potter” stage sequel and coming film spinoff. Some fans like it. Others don’t.

Let's examine this in more detail. I would call it Sarah Lyall's implicature, or is it a disimplicature?

Grice would call it a flout to the 'suggestio_falsi'.

i. Rowling's juggernaut plows on. Some fans like this. Others don't.

According to Grice (and Horn -- Horn is cautious because he presented this in his second chapter to his PhD dissertation at the Performadillo Conference, and while Grice uses and cites 'some' and 'all' he does not quite submit to the 'scalar implicature' view, explicitly) surely

ii. Some fans like this.

IMPLICATES

iii. Some don't.

So what is Lyall saying? Or doing, as J. L. Austin would prefer? Has she never read Grice (or Austin)?

Don't think so. It is a disimplicature?

No. It's like ASSERTING or EXPLICATING what is already being IMPLICATED. Of course the implicature, a standard conversational implicature here, is cancellable, as some (if not all) 19th century British logicians (according to Bartley, Grice is a 20th century British logician) have noted:

iv. Some, if not all, fans like this.

The phenomenon is so complex that one should leave it to Geary!

Grice's Meme

Speranza

Grice's Meme.

A Griceian Meme.

Hardy's Paradox

Speranza

Or shall we say, Grice on Hardy's Paradox, or "Bertie and Harold," or "Hardy's Paradox, and how Popper deals with a phenomenon identified by Grice."

The new film, "The man who knew infinity" has a lot of Griceian implicatures.

The first one is that the film is not set in Oxford. Grice went to Oxford. The implicature is: "The other uni exists."

Once Gilbert Ryle was asked if he worked at Oxford University. "There's no such thing -- that would be an anti-Ockham universal. There are colleges and there's the sub-faculty of philosophy, etc. But there's no such thing as Oxford uni."

The second implicature is that part of the screenplay reads, "Principia Mathematica." While the words are uttered, the ms of Newton's treatise is shown, not Whitehead's and Russell's masterpiece that Grice revered. The implicature: "The other Principia Mathematica exist" ("Principia" is neutral plural, hence the 'exist').

The third implicature is Popperian, and reflected in the title of the film, itself based on a bio.

i.The man who knew infinity.

Grice talked about infinity when he said that the implicature invited by (ii) is "stever," a portmanteau word of 'stupid' + 'clever':

ii. I know that there are infinitely many stars.

I.e., as Grice notes, "to combine 'know' with 'infinite' is stever: one cannot _know_ infinite". The title is possible sexist, too, in that "The person who knew infnity" perhaps scans better. According to Popper, infinity belongs in W3. His example of an interrelation between W3 and W2 relates precisely to mathematics, where infinity figures. Popper's example is of a Griceian mathematician, not a Cambridge mathematician, but let that go.

The fourth implicature is Griceian of the first rate. In his second John Locke lecture on 'aspects of reason and reasoning,' Grice quotes Hardy directly -- not the Dorset pessimist novelist, but but the Cambridge mathematician, Harold Hardy (played in the film by Jeremy Irons). Grice quotes Hardy as an example of 'reasoner'. And there is much about this in the film, with Hardy (convincingly played by Irons) focusing on 'proofs' as in "Proofs" used by Lakatos in his Popperian philosophy of mathematical revolutions. Hardy is into 'proofs' of 'theorems,' and rejects 'intuitionism'. I felt that Hardy's references to intuitionism were 'avant-la-lettre', in that they were directed towards Dummett! But Grice's point is that we have

A. Explicit reasoning

where we cannot skip ONE set from premise to conclusion. And then there's

B. INCOMPLETE reasoning.

Grice's point may be called "Hardy's Paradox": while Hardy praised for the need of step-by-step proof, he would often skip one step or two in his pieces of reasoning. The film does not show Hardy displaying much of mathematical proofs, but one can get the idea.

The fifth implicature is about Grice's heterodoxy -- As an Oxonian he should have had antipathetic feelings towards Russell (as J. L. Austin should have had antipathetic feelings towards Moore -- but Austin said, "Some like Witters but Moore's MY man"). Russell was GRICE's man, and he dedicates one of his unpublications to him, "Definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular."

The film shows Russell being dismissed from Cambridge:

HARDY: Where are you going now?

I was expecting Russell (played by Jeremy Northam -- you can call "The man who knew infinity" "Jeremy and Jeremy") to say, "London." To surpise all he says, "Oxford, until Cambridge BEGS me to come back." Grice was enamoured with Russell's and Whitehead's (or Whitehead's and Russell's "Principia Mathematica") since he thought that Strawson should not have gotten offended by Russell ("Mr. Strawson on referring", Mind). You see, Russell thought ordinary language of the type Grice and Strawson spoke involved 'a few silly things silly people say', as when we say:

iii. He went to bed and took off his trousers.

Surely (iii) is equivalent to:

iv. He took off his trousers and went to bed.

since 'p. q' is equivalent to 'q. p'. If we _feel_ that (iii) reports an event, where the implicature is 'p, and then q', that's because there is a pragmatic desideratum to the effect that our conversational contributions should provide "ORDERLY" reports. Russell knew this, Whitehead knew this, and Grice knew this. Strawson didn't. As L. J. Cohen later, Strawson would argue that 'and' carries a different SENSE from Russell's and Whitehead's ".". But he is wrong. "And" has only SENSE and is commutative. The 'then' implicature is cancellable:

v. He took off his trousers and went to bed; but of course I don't want to implicate the events happened in the order I describe them as happening.

Jeremy Northam plays 'Bertie' (as Hardold Hardy calls him) sympathetically, much more than the one who plays him as a really hateful character in "Tom and Viv" (on the life of T. S. Eliot). But them Northam has a lot of class, and it shows!

Irons plays a wonderful Hardy. And the film will help to make his theories better known in Oxford, even among non-mathematical philosophers!

Welcome to the Grice Club!

Anna Wintour's Implicature

Speranza

There are few people (never mind philosophers) who are good at aphorisms. One was Sir Karl Popper ("Falsify that!"). Another was H. P. Grice ("Disimplicate that!"). Another is Anna Wintour. When leaving college (she would not use 'leave', but I will) she uttered (to her father, the famous Mr. Wintour -- pronounced like one of the four seasons, the cold one):

i. Either you know fashion or you don't.

Her implicature was obvious: a refudiation of Popper. Popper was against Ryle, and Ryle held that there were two types of 'know': 'know that' and 'know how'. Wintour is using

ii. know fashion

in a neutral fashion to implicate both:

iii. Either you know that fashion is something, or you don't.

Witters would claim that Wintour is _not_ making a statement about the world. Yet Mr. Wintour would disagree, and found Ms. Wintour's utterance (carrying the lovely Griceian implicature) very convincing.

Grice would wonder if Wintour's utterance can be DISIMPLICATED.

Recall: you implicate when you mean more than you say; you disimplicate when you mean less.

Could it be that Anna Wintour is meaning less than she says? Don't think so. In a way, Wintour's implicature-laden utterance ("All utterances are implicature-laden to the point that the jargon 'utterance-laden' becomes very Griceianly otiose" -- McEvoy) compares to what Grice learned from Cook Wilson.

Cook Wilson was a pretentious Oxonian don. His surname was plain Wilson, but since his mother was a Cook, he kept her maiden name as his own middle name. Note that "Wilson" etymologically means, "a son of the will", in this case, the cook's son of the will". Wilson said to Grice:

iv. What we know we know.

Grice was the soccer captain at Corpus Christi when he heard Professor Wilson utter that, and was impressed. In the locker room he said to his mates:

v. GRICE: Today, I learned from Professor Wilson one stoic truth.
    GRICE'S CLASSMATE: And what was that?
   GRICE: He said, "What we know we know."
   GRICE'S CLASSMATE: And what was his implicature?
   GRICE: His _what_?

At this point, Grice had not yet coined the noun.

Grice on floutings versus violations (Was: Conversational implicature

[lit-ideas] Grice on floutings versus violations (Was: Conversational implicature - lit-ideas - FreeLists: [lit-ideas] Grice on floutings versus violations (Was: Conversational implicature, lit-ideas at FreeLists

The Peacock's Implicature

[lit-ideas] The Peacock's Implicature - lit-ideas - FreeLists: [lit-ideas] The Peacock's Implicature, lit-ideas at FreeLists

Implicatures At Anna's Party

[lit-ideas] Implicatures At Anna's Party - lit-ideas - FreeLists: [lit-ideas] Implicatures At Anna's Party, lit-ideas at FreeLists

[lit-ideas] Implicatures At Anna's Party - lit-ideas - FreeLists

[lit-ideas] Implicatures At Anna's Party - lit-ideas - FreeLists: [lit-ideas] Implicatures At Anna's Party, lit-ideas at FreeLists

[lit-ideas] Very Much Like A Whale Disimplicature - lit-ideas - FreeLists

[lit-ideas] Very Much Like A Whale Disimplicature - lit-ideas - FreeLists: [lit-ideas] Very Much Like A Whale Disimplicature, lit-ideas at FreeLists

Griceian Interrogation

Speranza

How to Interrogate Someone Griceianly?

Strike up a Griceian conversation first. 

Start with a neutral topic, like the weather, says H. P. Griceian, an English Oxford-educated and trained emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Disarm your interlocutor by being friendly, even . 

"Toby Keith wrote that country song, ‘I Wanna Talk About Me,’ " Grice says. "

"Keep that in mind: people like to talk about themselves."

Offer drink or food.

Once, while working a case with the Berkeley Police Department, the interviewee asked for a Filet-O-Fish. 

Grice bought him one, and he (the interviewee) relaxed, slipping into chattiness as he ate.

"That sandwich changed everything," Grice says.

Grice is a chief architect of the “cognitive interview,” an interrogation protocol used by the police internationally, "but originally at Oxford -- you know Oxonian tutees."

The aim is to get interviewees to divulge a full narrative. 

By asking them to recount fine-grain particulars, you maximize the amount of psychological energy they are expending on their story, thereby ratcheting up what Grice call their “psychological load.” 

As they try to reconstruct the circumstances leading up to the event in question, you can employ so-called extenders: “Really?” “Tell me more about that.” 

The police department at Oxford used to employ a more confession-oriented method with a distinctly parental tone (“I know you did it; now tell me why”). 

But Grice began asking if that approach leads to  confessions -- an anathema for a Kantian like Grice is.

The Griceian interviewer takes a different, more journalistic, more "implicaturallishly" approach, gathering as much information as possible.

Do this by posing open-ended, or what Grice calls “expansion,” queries. 

A truthful person usually answers a follow-up question with additional details. 

A liar tends to stick with the same, bare-bones answers. 

But don’t give too much credence to body language. 

Grice, who lectured on "Peirce's indexes" during an infamous Hilary term, has repeatedly shown that nonverbal behavior (averted eyes, folded arms, lip biting, fidgeting) does not reliably indicate deception. 

Instead, request the unexpected. 

Grice recommends asking someone to illustrate events with a pencil and paper or to retell the story starting at the end. 

A liar’s account will begin to break down. 

Spending the psychological processing power needed to keep a story straight, Grice says, "essentially puts them at the edge of their ability to function psychologically."

[lit-ideas] Griceian Interrogation - lit-ideas - FreeLists

[lit-ideas] Griceian Interrogation - lit-ideas - FreeLists: [lit-ideas] Griceian Interrogation, lit-ideas at FreeLists

Implicature: Cancellability and Falsifiability

Speranza

We are considering the variants between 'falsified' and 'falsifiable'.  Of
course, for Popper the demarcation criterion is falsifiability, a modal 
concept.  Yet, 'falsifiable' is a derivative of 'falsify', and it may do to 
consider the  CORE (and only) 'sense' of this, to see if Popper is not 
inviting some  implicature by sticking with this verb.

The English  verb, as 45% of  England's culture, derives from France ("Honi
soit qui mal  y pense"), French  "falsifier", ultimately from Latin
"falsificare", itself  from Latin  "falsificus", making false, from, of course, "<
"falsus",  "falsum" + -ficare,  cfr. -fy, suffix.

The original (and only) sense  is to make false or  incorrect, i.e. to
alter fraudulently.

The expression can also be used to mean to introduce false matter into  or
give an  incorrect version of (a document, etc.).

The first  citation in English is dated 1449. Later in 1502, it is used
again:

It is  from the "Ordynarye of Crysten Men (de Worde)":

To falsefy the letters of  the Pope."

Quite a trick, eh?

A few years later, we have a second  Popperian:

1527   R. Thorne, "Divers Voyages"

"Those  they have falsified of late purposely."

This above is more like Popper  combined with Grice. To falsify you really
need to INTEND to falsify, hence  the 'purposely'. It is not a falsification
if it "just happens", the fake  Tiziano, to look like the real one.

In 1651, Hobbes waxes Popperian in  his "Leviathan" when he  writes:

"They did not therefore falsify the  Scriptures."

But of course, they didn't verify them either, is Hobbes's  invited
implicature.

In the next century it was used  aristocratically:

1741 Marquis d'Argens, "Chinese Letters" 

"Funeral orations had contributed very much to falsify  history."

The marquis implicature seems to be that, since to falsify  history is a
bad thing, funeral orations should be avoided.

In the next  century, in 1832, Mackintosh in his "Rise & Fall of
Struensee," becomes  Popperian:

"Accused of having falsified the public   accounts."

-- the invited implicature being of course that this is much  graver than
falsify a PRIVATE account, if you've seen one.

A few  years later, in  1855, D. Brewster in his "Memorable Life of Isaac
Newton"  GOES _really_  Popperian:

"He falsified the document by the  substitution of a paragraph."

NOT the one dealing with the formula for  gravity, we hope:

m1m2/d2

The substituted paragraph is now missing  so one wonders what authority
Brewster is relying on to even SAY (never  mind implicate) that falsification
took place here.

"Falsify" can  also be used, via implicature, to  mean to give a false
account of; to  misrepresent.

Thus in 1630, W. Prynne  in his popular  "Anti-Arminianism", speaks of

"Which falsifies the eternal  truth."

-- providing there is one. For Quine criticised the view that 2  +2=4 was
an eternal truth.

In 1641, R. Montagu in his "Acts &  Monuments", writes:

"Aemylius Probus mistook, or falsifies  Thucydides."

which entails that Montague READ _both_ Aemylius Probus"  _and_ Thucydides.

Montagu does not consider that Aemylius Probus was  _translating_ and
recall the Italian motto: "translator, traitor!"

In  1711,  R. Steele writing for "The Spectator" has:

"Good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart."

This may do with what Grice calls a non-conversational implicature, due to 
the maxim, 'be polite'. If you are being polite, it's natural that the
tongue  might falsify the heart:

A: What does this dress look on me?
B: Lovely.

In 1847, R. W.  Emerson in his famous essay on "Napoleon", writes:

"He sat in his lonely island, coldly falsifying facts and   dates."

-- which sounds as the ideal scientist for Popper! (Just teasing)

In  an 'absolute' use, it can also be employed, as when in 1791, Boswell in
his  indiscreet "Life  Johnson" reports Johnson having said:

"Lord Bathurst did not intentionally falsify."

-- which for J. L. Austin ("A plea for excuses") and Grice means Lord 
Bathurst did not falsify _simpliciter_.

In 1824, also in this absolute use, we find in T. F. Dibdin, "The 
Librarian's Companion":

"Not that Johnson designedly falsified."

So we can say that both Lord Bathurst and Johnson were innocent. This is 
confusing. Since, if Johnson said that Bathurst did not falsify, but Didbin
adds  that Johnson did not falsify, either. We may have a meta-falsify, which
may be  like a 'verify', only different.

In 1868, again in this absolute use, we  find in R. Browning's "Ring":

"I falsified and  fabricated."

This is interesting: To falsify is to say, say, "Snow is black", to 
fabricate is to say "Snow is found in the Moon." Browning did both -- or his 
poetic persona, rather.

"To falsify" can be used to mean to assert  falsely. 

Thus, in 1606 in a translation of Justinus's "History", we  find:

"How they might take away his life, by treason to be falsified against 
him."

It is treason that is falsified AGAINST. This is a very complex use of 
'falsify'.

To 'falsify' may be used simply to mean to adulterate. Also of  disease: to
corrupt,  vitiate.

Thus, in 1562, in Act 5 Elizabeth, we  find:

"Diverse persons diminish, impair and falsify the monies and coins  current
within this realm."

The implicature the quean invites, typically, is that they were not 
amused.

In 1634, in a translation of one letter by Balzac, we  read:

"Those who falsify merchandizes."

The implicature: "are wicked."

In 1656, Manasseh ben Israel in his  "Vindiciæ Judæorum" writes:

"Verdigrease all falsified with  earth."

-- a complex occurrence.

In 1658 in a translation of F. Würtz, "Surgeons Guide", we  find: 

"By diseases, the joint water or radical humour is falsified."

i.e. not true.

"To falsify" can be used also to make (a balance or  standard) untrue.

Thus in the 1611 King James Bible, we find  in Amos viii. 5   

"Falsifying the balances by deceit."

Still, Lakatos thinks that falsification can work as the method  for
mathematical revolutions so perhaps Amos was being a Lakatosian avant la  lettre.

In 1848, R. W. Hamilton, in his "Rewards  & Punishmments"  notes:

"We are not compelled to falsify our standards."

His use of 'not' is confusing, since there never was an implicature  that
we should (unless we want punishment)

"To falsify" can also be used  to mean to alter or pervert from correct
rule.

Thus, in 1589, G.  Puttenham in his popular "Arte of English Poesie",
writes:

"There can not be a fouler fault than to falsify his accent to serve  his
cadence."

-- which however is what Bob Dylan always does? Is he Popperian?

In 1841, D'Israeli in his "Amenities" notes:

"Spenser falsified accentuation, to adapt it to his metre."

At least he did not falsify the 's' as the SpenCers did!

"To  falsify" can be used also to make unsound.

Thus, in 1868, M. Pattison, in his "Suggestions for an Academic 
Organisation" notes:

"An unhappy spirit falsified the relation between  the parties."

Between the garden party and the drawing-room party -- very Popperian, even
if Popper disbelieved in spirits -- unhappy or not.

"To  falsify" was used by Dryden in an avowed imitation of Italian  
"falsare":

Thus in 1697, in his translation of "Eneide" he writes:

"His ample shield is falsified, and round with  javelins filled."

Note that here, unlike in Popper, 'falsify' does not apply to 
'propositions' but to Turno's shield.

Again Dryden notes:

"I use the word "falsify" in this place to mean that the shield of  Turnus
was not of proof against the spears and javelins of  the Trojans."

I.e. he is DEFINING 'falsify' differently, and explicitly stipulating  so.

"To falsify" can be used to mean to produce a counterfeit of;  to 
counterfeit.

Thus in 1601, P. Holland, translating  Plinio's "Storie" writes:

"After that crystal was once found out, they devised to sophisticate  and
falsify other gems therewith."

A bad thing -- even for Tiffany.

In 1699, M. Lister in his "Journey to Paris"  notes:

"They stamped and falsified the best ancient medals so well."

-- that you wouldn't think a Popperian process took place.

"To  falsify" can also be used to mean to get up in imitation of  something
else. 

Thus in 1589, again in G. Puttenham's "Arte of English Poesie" we  find:

"The Lapidarie counterfeits pearls and precious stones by glass and  other
substances falsified, and sophisticate by art."

The implicature being that this is not so bad, as they do look 
sophisticated, even if falsified.

In an Austinian (after J. L. Austin),  'to falsify' may be used also to
mean to declare or prove to be  false.

This is the earliest use, and thus displaying its original and  only sense:

In 1449, R. Pecock in his popular "Repressor" writes:

"Forto  falsify this present xiije. conclusion."

A pretty Popperian usage -- the earliest one, as it applies to the 
falsification of a conclusion.

In 1576, W. Lambarde, in his  "Perambulation of Kent", notes:

"He shall have cause, neither to falsify the one opinion lightly, nor to 
faith the other unadvisedly."

But that's for the Man of Kent (not Kentish men) only.

In 1805, T.  Jefferson, an American, in his "Writings", notes that

"No man can falsify any material fact here stated."

This is a performative, and has the force -- or illocutionary force -- of 
an imperative, more specifically a moral prohibition, if not a legal one.

In 1849, C. Stovel, in "Canne's Necessitie of Separation", notes:

"Relinquishing all claim to respect by falsifying  their own  affirmations."

This is interesting, since to falsify is contrasted with to affirm -- and 
thus related to 'to deny'. It reminds one of Epimenides, who also falsified
his  own affirmation ("I lie.").

In 1876, J. B. Mozley in his "Sermons," writes:

"The rights of conscience belong so much to the morality of  society  now,
that they must falsify any moral creed opposed to them."

-- implicating: affirm any moral creed agreeing with them.

Especially in Scots Law, we speak of "to falsify a doom", i.e. to  false a
doom.

Thus in 1528, in T. Littleton Tenures, we read:

"It shall not  lie in the mouth of the tenant to falsify or defeat the
recovery which was  against his lord."

The implicature is that the tenant did not do it.

In 1628, in E.  Coke's popular "Institutional Laws of England",  we find:

"To falsify in legal understanding is to prove false, that is, to avoid or 
to defeat."

Since H. L. A. Hart was wedded (figuratively) to 'defeasibility' 
('defeaters) he could be called a Popperian, as far as Scots law was originally 
concerned.

In 1642, in "Perkins's Profitable Book", we find:

"His wife shall falsify this recovery in a writ of dower."

And she did!

In 1817, W. Selwyn, in his "Abridgement of English Law",  writes:

"The sentence was conclusive evidence to falsify the warranty."

And so one wonders if Popper is being Toulminian (for whom all  reasoning
is legal in nature) or Toulmin is being Popperian.

In 1854, J. W. Smith, in his "Manual of Equity", notes:

"To give liberty to falsify the account"

-- i.e. to allow such a Popperian manoeuvre.

"To falsify" can also be used to mean to fail in fulfilling, or   prevent
the fulfilment of (a prediction, expectation,  etc.).

Thus  in 1598, Shakespeare, in his rather boring "Henry IV, Pt. 1", writes:

"By so much shall I falsify men's hopes."

Implicating "not THAT much."

In 1719, J. Addison, in his  "Evidence for Christian Religion", notes: 

"Jews and Pagans united all their endeavours to baffle and falsify the 
prediction."

The implicature seems to be they failed.

In 1851, W. Collins, in "Rambles beyond Railways," notes:

"The prognostications of our Cornish friends were  pleasantly falsified."

It did not rain. Had it rained, I would not still call them 'friends' if 
Cornish.

In 1884 in The Liverpool Daily Post for 10 July 5 we  read:

"To  consider whether we are contented to falsify his high regard  for  us."

Of course not! Nobody should falsify a high regard -- especially if it is 
for us.

"To falsify" can also be used to mean to make a false  representation or
statement; to deal in falsehoods.

Thus, in 1629,  in a translation of Herodian, we find:

"Julian was condemned by the  soldiery, for falsifying with them."

-- Never falsify with a soldier -- his implicature, unless you do like to 
be condemned.

In 1646, Sir T. Browne, in his overpopular "Pseudodoxia Epidemica",  notes:

"His wisdom will hardly permit him to falsify with  the Almighty."

implicating God. The implicature of 'hardly' is less clear -- cfr. The 
Devil.

In 1702, in the English Theophrastus, we find:

"The practice of falsifying with men will lead us on insensibly to a 
double-dealing with God himself."

The implicature being: "and we don't want that." Double-dealing is a good 
way to describe Popper's methodology.

In 1748, in S. Richardson's  romantic novel, "Clarissa," we read:

"Would you either falsify or  prevaricate?"

i.e. would you either be Popperian or Griceian ("Do not say what you 
believe to be false").

Clarissa did not answer (Implicating: neither).

In 1816, R. B.  Sheridan in his often represented, "School for Scandal"
notes: I

"To propagate a malicious truth wantonly is more despicable than to falsify
from revenge."

Which is anti-Popperian in spirit: he is seeing something as being better 
than falsifying: to propagate a truth, when this truth is malicious. Not the
type of truth that D. Miller ascribes to Popper, "Snow is white", which he
learned from Tarski in a park in Vienna.

To "falsify" may also be used to mean to prove false to, fail to keep;  to
break,  violate (one's faith, word, etc.).

Thus, in 1532, in T. More "Confutation of Tyndale" we find:

"I shall finde Tyndale himself so good a fellow as to falsify his own 
words here and bear a poor man company."

The implicature seems to be that Tyndale was not only a good fellow, but 
rich.

In 1590, R. Greene, in his popular "Never too Late",  notes: 

"Æneas falsified his faith to Dido."

-- but his fate was to found Rome, so shall we forgive him?

In 1670,  Milton, in his "History of Britain", notes:

"Falsifying that oath, by night with all the Hhorse they had stole to 
Exeter."

A very bad Miltonian thing -- if Popperian.

"To falsify" can also  be used to mean to prove faint; to fail, give way.

Thus, in 1668,  in S. Pepys's "Diary" for 27 Aug., we find:

"My heart beginning to  falsify in this business."

But my brain finishing.

In fencing, incidentally, if you are into that sort of thing, to  falsify
may be used to mean to feign (a blow); to make (a blow) under cover  of a
feint.

Thus, in 1595, in V.  Saviolo "Practice", we  read:

"If you perceive that he go about to falsifie upon you, put yourself  in
your ward."

unless you don't know the first thing about fencing.

In 1600, E.  Fairfax, transalting Tasso's "Godfrey of Bulloigne," writes:

"Now  strikes he out, and now he falsifies."

I.e. he is Popperian on occasion ONLY.

In 1619, in the well-known play by Beaumont & Fletcher< "King  &  No King,
we find:

"Tigranes falsified a blow at your leg, which you avoided."

So he tried to falsify, rather.

In 1625, K. Long, translating J. Barclay's "Argenis," writes:

"One of them making offer at his neck with a Halbert, and falsifying his 
blow, hit him under the short rib."

This use is perhaps not Popperian in that Popper never mentions the short 
rib "in modern natural science".

In 1680, S.  Butler in his brilliant "Genuine Remains",  writes:

"As th' are wont to falsify a blow."

Very poetical.

Then there's "falsified":

As in 1577, in a translation of Bullinger's Godly Sermons":

"They do defile and blemish the words of God, which deck them  with
straunge and falsified titles."

i.e. false titles, simpliciter.

In 1603, in R. Knolles, "General  History of the Turks":

"Your falsified faith."

Is it a faith? Implicature: No. Just as a decoy (a false duck) ain't a 
duck.

In 1649, in Milton's "Tenure of Kings," we read:

"With the falsified names of loyalty and obedience, to colour  over their
base compliances."

A bad Miltonian thing -- if Popperian in _letter_.

In 1886, in the  Pall Mall Gazette for 1 July  6/1 we read:

"The falsified  prediction is a good omen."

It won't rain, so the Cowes Regatta will be enjoyed by all!

And  there's also "falsifying":

As in 1565, in J. Jewel's "Defense and Apology of the Church of  England":

"Lies, Corruptions, and Falsifyings." -- NOT an essay on Popperianism,  but
almost! (1/3).

In 1603, in R.  Johnson, translating G. Botero's  "History and Description
of the World," we find:

"Cloth, which by reason  of exceeding falsifying and dearnesse of  ours,
grows every day into more and  more request."

The implicature is that he was a closet nudist.

In 1652, in T.  Urquhart's "Εκσκυβαλαυρον", we find:

"He showed such excellent dexterity,  in warding the other's blows,
slighting his falsifyings."

By verifying them.

In 1680, in R. Boyle's "Experiments & Notes Producibleness  of Chemicall
Principles", we get Popperian when we read:

"Purifying it from the falsifying alloy."

In 1699, in the "New  Dictionary for the Canting Crew", we find an entry
for "Feinting or Falsifying"  that should have pleased Popper.

Or not.

Implicatures as Falsifiable

Is There A Griceian Problem About Sense Data?

Speranza

Grice LOVED G. A. Paul, the author of "Is there a problem about sense data?" and fellow member of Austin's (second) Play Group that met on Saturday meetings (Austin's first play group met on Thursday evenings, but that was before the "phoney" war).

Grice should NOT have a problem about sense data, and the implicature invited by G. A. Paul's question ("Is there a problem about sense data?") is: "No. What makes you think there is. Or worse, who makes you think there is? Witters?"

After all, a sense datum is, simply, whatever is the immediate object of any of the senses, usually, but not always, with the implicature that it is NOT a material object.

Where did G. A. Paul take the expression from?

Although Oxonian to the core, G. A. Paul took it from Royce.

In 1882, Royce, in "Mind" (the journal of the association that sometimes meet jointly with the Aristotelian Society to which G. A. Paul delivered his essay) worte: "What relation does the external reality bear to the sense-datum?".

Royce was intelligently using 'sense datum' in the _singular_. Since surely what is the immediate object of any of the senses need NOT be pluralised in vain.

In 1890, it had become common parlance and James thought 'sense datum' needed no explanation when he uses the expression in his extremely influential "Principles of Psychology" (recall that the "Mind" where Royce introduced the expression was the "Mind" understood as a journal of "psychology and philosophy" (in that order).

James writes: 

"It is no wonder if some authors have gone so far as to think that the sense-data have no spatial worth at all."

This wonder James doubts though, i.e. that a sense-datum has no spatial worth "at all": merely temporal worth.

In the twentieth century, to which G. A. Paul and H. P. Grice belonged, it was in 1912 that B. A. W. Russell in his popular "Problems of Philosophy" writes:

"Let us give the name of ‘sense-data’ to the things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardnesses, roughnesses, and so on."

He is merely providing an partially ("and so on") enumerative definition of the expression first used by Royce back then. Russell also provides a bit of a conceptual analysis: SD is a sense-datum iff it is a thing that is immediately KNOWN in sensation.

By 1938 -- the jazz age -- the term had become fashionable.

Thus  W. S. Maugham, while vacationing in the South of France, wrote in Summing Up":

"The sense-datum, on which I thought all KNOWLEDGE was based, seemed to me something GIVEN,"

-- since after all 'datum' is 'given' -- Maugham, who was born in France, can be obvious sometimes --.

Maugham goes on:

"which had to be accepted whether it suited the convenience or not."

To sum up, that is.

In 1956, the once enfant terrible of Oxford philosophy, A. J. Ayer, wrote in Problems of Knowledge (that J. L. Austin will laugh at in his "Sense and Sensibilia", inspiring, if not G. A. Paul, H. P. Grice):

"What is immediately given in perception is an evanescent object called an idea, or an impression, or a presentation, or a sense-datum, which is not only private to a single observer but private to a single sense."

Ayer plays with linguistic botany: sense datum he equates more or less to a Lockeian idea, or a Humeian impression, or a pre-sentation (vs. re-pre-sentation). And he makes the Robinson Crusoe argument used by Witters: that it is _private_. If you think the bow tie is too incandescent, that is YOUR problem, since a sense datum is 'private'.

By 1980, we read in Dædalus: "From the point of view of strict empiricism, the attempt to go beyond sense data seems to fail."

where Dædalus's implicature does NOT seem to be that Empiricism, by holding this, fails.

Is There A Griceian Problem About Sense Data?

Speranza

sense-datum, n. Etymology:  < sense n. + datum n.
Whatever is the immediate object of any of the senses, usually, but not always, with the implication that it is not a material object.
1882   J. Royce in Mind VII. 44   What relation does the external reality bear to the sense-datum?
1890   W. James Princ. Psychol. II. xx. 146   It is no wonder if some authors have gone so far as to think that the sense-data have no spatial worth at all.
1912   B. Russell Probl. Philos. i. 12   Let us give the name of ‘sense-data’ to the things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardnesses, roughnesses, and so on.
1938   W. S. Maugham Summing Up 260   The sense-datum, on which I thought all knowledge was based, seemed to me something given, which had to be accepted whether it suited the convenience or not.
1956   A. J. Ayer Probl. Knowl. 85   What..is immediately given in perception is an evanescent object called an idea, or an impression, or a presentation, or a sense-datum, which is not only private to a single observer but private to a single sense.
1980   Dædalus Spring 11   From the point of view of strict empiricism, the attempt to go beyond sense data..seems to fail.

Is There A Griceian Problem About Sense Data?

Speranza

Grice LOVED G. A. Paul, the author of "Is there a problem about sense data?" and fellow member of Austin's (second) Play Group that met on Saturday meetings (Austin's first play group met on Thursday evenings, but that was before the "phoney" war).

Grice should NOT have a problem about sense data, and the implicature invited by G. A. Paul's question ("Is there a problem about sense data?") is: "No. What makes you think there is. Or worse, who makes you think there is? Witters?"

After all, a sense datum is, simply, whatever is the immediate object of any of the senses, usually, but not always, with the implicature that it is NOT a material object.

Where did G. A. Paul take the expression from?

Although Oxonian to the core, G. A. Paul took it from Royce.

In 1882, Royce, in "Mind" (the journal of the association that sometimes meet jointly with the Aristotelian Society to which G. A. Paul delivered his essay) worte: "What relation does the external reality bear to the sense-datum?".

Royce was intelligently using 'sense datum' in the _singular_. Since surely what is the immediate object of any of the senses need NOT be pluralised in vain.

In 1890, it had become common parlance and James thought 'sense datum' needed no explanation when he uses the expression in his extremely influential "Principles of Psychology" (recall that the "Mind" where Royce introduced the expression was the "Mind" understood as a journal of "psychology and philosophy" (in that order).

James writes: 

"It is no wonder if some authors have gone so far as to think that the sense-data have no spatial worth at all."

This wonder James doubts though, i.e. that a sense-datum has no spatial worth "at all": merely temporal worth.

In the twentieth century, to which G. A. Paul and H. P. Grice belonged, it was in 1912 that B. A. W. Russell in his popular "Problems of Philosophy" writes:

"Let us give the name of ‘sense-data’ to the things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardnesses, roughnesses, and so on."

He is merely providing an partially ("and so on") enumerative definition of the expression first used by Royce back then. Russell also provides a bit of a conceptual analysis: SD is a sense-datum iff it is a thing that is immediately KNOWN in sensation.

By 1938 -- the jazz age -- the term had become fashionable.

Thus  W. S. Maugham, while vacationing in the South of France, wrote in Summing Up":

"The sense-datum, on which I thought all KNOWLEDGE was based, seemed to me something GIVEN,"

-- since after all 'datum' is 'given' -- Maugham, who was born in France, can be obvious sometimes --.

Maugham goes on:

"which had to be accepted whether it suited the convenience or not."

To sum up, that is.

In 1956, the once enfant terrible of Oxford philosophy, A. J. Ayer, wrote in Problems of Knowledge (that J. L. Austin will laugh at in his "Sense and Sensibilia", inspiring, if not G. A. Paul, H. P. Grice):

"What is immediately given in perception is an evanescent object called an idea, or an impression, or a presentation, or a sense-datum, which is not only private to a single observer but private to a single sense."

Ayer plays with linguistic botany: sense datum he equates more or less to a Lockeian idea, or a Humeian impression, or a pre-sentation (vs. re-pre-sentation). And he makes the Robinson Crusoe argument used by Witters: that it is _private_. If you think the bow tie is too incandescent, that is YOUR problem, since a sense datum is 'private'.

By 1980, we read in Dædalus: "From the point of view of strict empiricism, the attempt to go beyond sense data seems to fail."

where Dædalus's implicature does NOT seem to be that Empiricism, by holding this, fails.