[lit-ideas] A Fine Distinction

"How  clever [the Romany] language is!"
 
"THE FIRST WORD"
 
         In the  beginning was [J. L. Austin's] Word.
                     after "A plea for excuses
 
I would like to run some comments over R. Paul's  interesting remarks re: 
Grice, "How clever language is!", as quoted by Warnock.  In particular:
 
    (1) I'm interested in the general  claim being considered
        regarding so-called  'a fine distinction' (I use the
        construction in the  singular on purpose)
 
    (2) I'd like to examine R.  Paul's interesting examples.
 
------
 
Below, I quote from the OED only occurrences of the  phrase "a fine 
distinction".
 
Surely, the idea of a fine distinction is just half of  the Grice/Warnock 
thesis. The other half should be relabelled, "a fine  non-distinction"; for 
they 
saw that _some_ distinctions are 'fine' and others  not so 'fine' (e.g. 
between 'visum' and 'cow', say). But till I get hold of that  Warnock specific 
quote, I'll go with the fine distinction side of the thesis (It  also relates 
to 
what R. Grandy, in connection with Grice's attitude, called his  UNDERDOG-matic 
attitude. 
 
Recall that Grice came to fame with his "Defense of a  dogma", which is 
nothing but a defense of the 'fine' distinction that W. V. O.  (Wiener Krieser) 
Quine thought was _not_ so fine, betweeen 'analytic' and  'synthetic'!
 
------
 
R. Paul writes:
 
>I don't understand what it is for a distinction 
>to have a logic to it. We sometimes use the 
>expression,'well, that's logical,' to convey 
>that it 'makes sense,' or simply that we agree  with 
>it. I suspect that Grice and Warnock  only meant 
>that there was a reason for the distinction, 
>which is sometimes the case and sometimes not. 
 
 
Good start. Because as I kept reconstructing the thesis  here vis a vis 
McCreery's challenges, I was starting to think that _all_  distinctions are 
'fine', 
in this restricted but standard sense of 'fine' I'm  using (as oppopsed to 
'nice' which has an etymological derogatory ring to it  (ne-scio). 
 
R. Paul goes on, after examining the fine distinction between 'true' and  
'valid'. Back to Grice/Warnock, he writes:
 
 
>I'm not sure if Grice and Warnock believe that the 
>distinction is important and should be  maintained 
>always and everywhere. If so, they would seem to 
>be strict constructionists à la Antonin Scalia, 
>and John, a more permissive Justice. 
 
Right. The 'always and everywhere' sounds somewhat  anti-Oxonian. Perhaps we 
should restrict it to 'intramural' versus 'extramural'! 
 
----
 
R. Paul comments on what a 'fine distinction' should  be, and whether this 
involves diachronic aspects of language. Exploring that  idea, he writes:
 

>Here's a [fine? I'd like to know! JLS] distinction: 'rear' vs.  'raise.' 
>When I was growing up, we were cautioned that cattle and 
>turkeys were raised, while human children were reared. 
>Only the Lower Classes said that they had raised their children. 
>That distinction is, I think, almost entirely gone. Good  riddance. 
>It never seemed to do any work. Even so, I try to go round  it 
>by saying that I was brought up (by logicians). Would G  & W 
>insist that this distinction was important and should have 
>been preserved. I hope not. The linguistic distinction  doesn't 
>seem to be anything more than a manner of speaking. If  someone 
>says that he raised his son to be a Marine, it would be  silly to 
>say to him that he should have reared him instead, because 
>that way he'd have had better results. 

 
That was a good one. Indeed, Grice, ... sorry, I mean Geary, uses  'rear', 
and 'raise'. I think Geary's use is:
 
         "child-rearing is  about inconditional love".
 
As a non-native speaker, I never knew what 'rear' a child meant until,  hey, 
I looked it up in the OED! (and recently shared the results with the  list).
 
I found out that rear and raise are indeed etymologically cognate, and  I 
don't think I recall which one was said to had a better pedigree. In any case,  
what I found interesting was this idea (by Johnson and Lakoff) of the metaphor  
we live by (arguments or not, pretty maiden!): 
 
        UP is good
       DOWN is bad
 
The sun rises, and we raise turkey and we rear children.
The main idea is UP, UP and UP. So I also hope that Warnock and Grice  did 
not think much of _that_ distinction.
 
Grice sometimes was not too clear (to me) as to what sort of  distinctions he 
had in mind.
 
He once said,
 
"I would like to say that the distinction between natural meaning and  
non-natural meaning is not a fine one. I.e. that it's just one word with one  
core 
common meaning."
 
In this respect, he contrasted, "mean" with ___... vice  (British  or 
American spelling) I never know!
 
He writes:
 
"Is this double use of the word 'mean' just like the double use of the  word 
'vice' to refer sometimes to something approximating to a sin and sometimes  
to a certain sort of instrument used by carpenters? One is pretty much inclined 
 in the latter case to say that there are two words which are pronounced and  
written the same." (WOW, p. 291).
 
Precisely, it's homophony, or as I prefer, using the Latinate,  
_aequi-vocality_. And the proof is that they are etymologically unrelated. (But 
 how would 
a native speaker _know_ that, I sometimes wonder. Perhaps, alla Julie  Krueger 
(:-)) one could play with the idea that the vyse and the vice are  mentally 
amalgamated in some sort of way. 
 
R. Paul brings in another example:
 
>Here's another: 'imply,' vs. 'infer.' This 
>[fine, I suppose. JLS] distinction seems to 
>be disappearing. It should be saved. If I 
>imply that someone is nuts, I'm saying, 
>indirectly, that she is. If I infer that someone 
>is nuts, I'm drawing a conclusion about him 
>based on what he says and does. A psychiatrist might 
>imply that one of his clients was nuts, after having 
>inferred it from the evidence. There are two different 
>notions being distinguished here. Grice and Warnock, 
>thou should'st be living at this hour. 
 
Right, and also, I'd say, 'ye should be living' (come all all ye  faithful)! 
 

Once I was so irritated by people _not_ making that fine distinction  that R. 
Paul refers to, "imply" vs. "infer" -- and always abiding what Grice  
sometimes called the Charity Principle (before Davidson) of assuming candour 
and  
truthfulness and sense in one's co-conversationalists, that there _is_ a  
connection between 'imply' and 'infer'.
 
"To imply" is indeed to _mean_ and that usually involves the intention  on 
the part of an 'utterer' that the 'addressee' will _draw_ some inferences,  
i.e. 
that the addressee will _infer_. So, in the sense that 'to imply'  
'implicates' (in the sense of 'implicated in the crime') 'to infer' there is a  
connection to be made, even if the distinction should be kept.

I also tried to extend the meaning of 'to infer' to mean "to reason"  (from a 
premise to a conclusion). To 'imply' would involve 'inferring' in that  the 
utterer must 'infer' that from the fact that utterance x is uttered,  the 
conclusion can be drawn that x will be interpreted thus and so. 
 
----- Fowler discusses that distinction in his  masterpiece, "Modern 
English", and wonder if he has discussed 'convince' and  'persuade'. This 
incidentally 
reminds me of two people:
 
          (a)  The author of _Plain English_
          (b)  a former president of Argentina.
 
When the speeches of (b) were discussed in Buenos  Aires by a group of 
linguists at the University of Buenos Aires -- actually they  were involved in 
the 
process of _writing_ them, they noted that this president  would often (almost 
to the point of tiring) use the  parenthetical

"Estoy persuadido de que ..."
 
                           ("I am persuaded that...")
 
to the point that if you tell to an Argentina, "The  president who'd say, 
"Estoy persuadido!"" they'll know who you're talking  about (His granddaughter 
died tragically when a post fell on her at  a public school, can you imagine).
 
So a lot of distinctions are especially made by  'politicians' and Fowler and 
Gowers had the 'officialese' target in mind when  judging whether a 
distinction was fine or not.
 
R. Paul goes on:

>Then there's 'uninterested' vs. 'disinterested.' 
>There's a real [as opposed to 'nominal' -- and that's
>another fine Lockean way to put it] distinction 
>here for those who'd see it. Yet the use of the  former 
>to mean the latter goes far back. However, I'd 
>like the judge who tries my case to be both interested and 
>disinterested. 
 
Good. Negative prefixes overwhelm me in English, and I'm never sure.  Grandy 
was compiling Grice's stuff in front of the master. There was "Meaning",  "In 
defense [defence] of a dogma", "Some remarks about the senses", etc. and a  
few others. Then there were _piles_ of things with titles like, "Can you have a 
 
pain on your tail?", "Hume on the vagaries of personal identity", 
"Probability,  desirability, and mode-operators", etc. "a pile whch "by far 
outnumbers my 
 publications", Grice would say.
 
"And how shall we call them?", Grandy asked. Grice reply, "Why,  
unpublications, of course" -- and thus they were catalogued in the festschrift, 
 "The 
unpublications of H. P. Grice".
 
Both 'dis-' and 'un-' are negatives, and, as a non-native speaker I  should 
be excused. Cfr. 'unsatisfied' versus 'dissatisfied'.
 
In unpublications, Grice refers to 'disimplicatures'. These are  implications 
that we _should_ make but we don't. E.g. 
 
      "That tie looks a bit green from this  side, but blue from this other 
side"
 
Since there is no question of a 'real change of color", Grice notes, we  
should take the utterance as loose speaking. Lose speaking is all about  
disimplicature. However, the negative aspect of the disimplicature confused  
Grice a 
bit. Implicatures, after all, were _intentions_ on the part of an  utterer to 
"mean more than you say". But now we have this other 'monster' or  'animal', 
the 
disimplicature, which is an intention to cancel a ceteris-paribus  intention, 
in an attempt to "mean less than you say!". Pretty odd, if you axes  me!
 
 
I can see that 'uninterested' and 'disinterested' _are_ different  animals 
though. Cf. the fine distinction between inflammable and flammable. Or  the 
'error' (under 'vincible' in the OED) between 'invincible' and  'vincible'!
 
R. Paul notes:
 
 
>Wittgenstein said, Ask yourself whether our 
>language is complete -- whether it was so 
>before the symbolism of chemistry and the 
>notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated  in 
>it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. 
>(And how many houses or streets does it take before a 
>town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen 
>as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, 
>of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from 
>various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new  b
>oroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses. 
>Do I agree with this? Maybe, maybe not. But I like the sound of it.
 
 
So do I. But I'm not sure whether Gothamites would!
 
Perhaps we should also consider seriously, "Some like Witters but Austin's my 
man" (I say) 
citing Austin ("Some like Witters, but Moore's my man")
 
 
_http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/bibliog/austin57.htm_ 
(http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/bibliog/austin57.htm) 
"Existing words embody all the distinctions and connections men have found 
worth making."
 
That's the claim by Austin in "A plea for excuses" but surely we should look 
for the locus classicus. 
It's a passage as beautiful to read as Wittgenstein's!
 
With that claim, R. B. Jones (a very fine philosopher) disagrees:
 
_http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/bibliog/austin57.htm_ 
(http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/bibliog/austin57.htm) 
 
"With the third I disagree. Language is not perfect even for time hallowed 
purposes (particularly for philosophical discussions) and, even if it were it 
would not suffice for the future. Advances in knowledge are usually closely 
coupled with refinement, extension, or revolution in language." But I'm not 
sure I 
don't want to _disagree_ (or is it _unagree_) with Jones! Surely, Geary 
should (and perhaps shall) come up with some further fine distinctions. This 
reminds me, in one of his publications (PBA lecture), Grice seems infuriated by 
the 
non-distinction people make between,       "shall" and "will" Practically his 
whole philosophy can be seen as an attempt to _keep_ that distinction!When he 
started on the crest of the wave of neo-positivism made Oxonianly 
respectableby Freddie Ayer, it was all about 'will': "It will rain""I will go 
to London" 
-- predictions which can be verified or not. Future indicative. As Grice calls 
it. But the sad thing of positivism, Grice noted, as early as 1938, is that 
sometimes we do want to say, "I shall go to London" -- his 'upbringing' was Low 
Anglican, and he surely had in mind Moses's versions of the commandments. One 
problem with this 'fine' distinction (which he felt was disappearing in the 
lips of 'hoi olligoi' even) was for him to findtruth-conditions for "I will but 
I shan't" or  "I shan't but it is not the case I won't"  Cheers, J. L. Speranza
   Buenos Aires, Argentina
 
 
 
 
-----
 
ps. 
 
'fine distinction':
 
1. under 'fine': "A subtile and fine distinction, distinctio tenuis & acuta"
2. under 'modal': school drew a fine distinction between model and absolute ac
3. under 'pointille': a suble or fine distinction; = punctilio, n. and adj. 
4. under 'scruple': A quibble, fine distinction.
5. under 'subtlety': or argument; a fine distinction; a nice point.
6. under 'syndicate': drew a fine distinction between organized crime and 
 
 
J. L. Speranza, Esq. 



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