JL, We haven't discussed this aspect of ambiguity up until now. To say it is impossible to avoid all ambiguity doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to reduce it as far as we are able. I agree with Grice if he meant "avoid ambiguity as much as you are able". But if he meant "eliminate ambiguity altogether," I disagree with him. It is possible (for many of us) to reduce ambiguity but it is not possible (for any of us) to eliminate it utterly. Donal McEvoy and Robert Paul, it seems, understood me in regard to what I wrote on "or not," but you brought Grice to the discussion (as one of your important presuppositions) and consequently misunderstood me. It is quite right that we should strive to avoid ambiguity in our prose, but it is good to realize that we shall regularly fail. Someone will, or at least can, misunderstand us, as you have misunderstood me in your note below. And recognizing that we shall be subject to such failures we can perhaps avoid outraged indignation at our reader's perverseness. I don't know whether I have studied and written as much poetry as Geary, but I have spent a lot of time (from time to time) with it. Ambiguity is a poetic tool. It isn't necessary or even desirable to strive to eliminate ambiguity in poetry. What the poet must strive to do instead is to take responsibility for all the ambiguity anyone might find in his poem. It is disastrous to write a serious poem and have a reader point out an ambiguity (that the poet overlooked) that turns his serious poem into a joke. Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930) was Dean and Warden of New College Chapel, Oxford. He was no doubt a serious fellow, but he had a mental problem that caused him to occasionally get his words mixed up. One famous case was when he intended to say something like "in every heart is a half formed wish," but what he actually said was, "in every heart is a half warmed fish." Another example was when he dismissed an undergraduate with these words: "Sir, you have tasted two whole worms; you have hissed all my mystery lectures and have been caught fighting a liar in the quad; you will leave Oxford by the town drain." And no doubt more disastrously at some Oxford gathering he proposed the following toast to Queen Victoria, "Let us glase our asses and toast the queer old dean." Could Grice have looked Spooner in the eye and said (with no ambiguity in his heart) "avoid ambiguity"? I agree that Ockham never had an ambiguous thought. I'm not sure I've had one either. I don't know what an ambiguous thought would think like. It is only when we write our thoughts out that we risk ambiguousness. Ockham was misunderstood by a number of people during his lifetime and afterward. Lawrence -----Original Message----- From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 7:40 AM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Conversation Without Implicature In a message dated 6/23/2011 4:21:03 A.M., lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: Did I say that? I hope not. What I said or meant to say is that all language is potentially ambiguous. No text can be written in such a way as to avoid the possibility of misunderstanding. ---- On the other hand, if I am right, a maxim such as: "Avoid ambiguity!" which Grice lists as comprising the 'cooperative principle' seems otiose when it comes to language as self-expression. As Occam (with his theory of 'sermo interioris') realised, it is impossible to think that when I _think_ "God", I am using the word "ambiguously". No such thing as an ambiguous thought. Grice realised this much when he noted, as late as 1987: "We need to take into account a distinction between solitary and concerted enterprises. It take it as being obvious that insofar as the presence of implicature rests on the character of one or another kind of conversational enterprise, it will rest on the character of concerted rather than solitary talk production. Genuine monologues are free from speaker's implication" (Way of Words, p. 369). ---- and mutatis mutandis, a fortiori, ambiguity and misunderstanding (_contra_ Helm). ("Contra Helm" sounds rude, but I don't mean it that way; "Pace Helm" sounds ambiguous). ----- And so on. Cheers, Speranza ---- Ref. Bouveresse/Parrett, "Meaning and understanding". ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html