[lit-ideas] Re: Insults Which Are Humorous (Maybe)
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 08 May 2010 23:43:33 -0400
P. Enns: "One cannot say 'I found his jokes humorous but didn't get the
humour'"
Exactly, and thanks to the others for the other comments, too, online
and off, etc.
While Geary quotes from
Austin
Chomsky
Davidson
Dennett
Donnellan
Fillmore
Fodor
Geach
Grice
Harman
Katz
Putnam
Quine
Searle,
Strawson
Ziff
as supporting his analysis of what I conceive as "performative unhappy"
(or ´unfelicitous´):
"I am guessing he is insulting me in a fun way"
-----
Austin
---- In "How to do things with words", Austin notes that only present
tense noncontinuous is performative. "I guess" MAYBE, "I´m guessing"
NEVER. Cfr. "I´m enjoying the party"/I enjoy the party.
Chomsky
---- the deep surface of "I am guessing he is insulting me in a fun
way" features a co-referential anaphoric "FIRST PERSON" ("I" and "me")
but via alpha movement pro-drop. Only via Helm´s conceptualisation of
Geary (as a "Southerner") can we grasp the co-reference. Geary himself
cannot conceive himself as being conceived by Helm. If that were so, he
should have realised the humour and the insult, but did neither ("I
guess" implicating, as Geary notes, "but then I may be wrong in so
guessing").
Davidson
---- The truth-conditions of the that-clause are opaque. Geary CAN
guess that p. But that doesn´t yield "p". Therefore, the implicature
supervenes on the cancellability of the lack of a truth-value. Geary
knows that. But he sticks to an opaque context ("I am guessing")
instead of the transparent ("I know he is unsulting me in a fun way").
Dennett
---- In "The Intentional Stance", Dennett rebuffs Geary´s
anti-mentalism. By insulting Geary in a fun way, Helm must assume a
psychophysical dualism that yields an accessibility and "privilege
access", with "incorrigibility" into Geary´s state of mind. This
Dennett knows is absurd, as everybody else. So, "I guess" becomes
superfluous as being "understood".
Donnellan
---- The "me" in "I am guessing he is insulting ME in a fun way" is
descriptive but not really co-referential with the "I" of the main
clause.
Fillmore
---- The grammar of case supports the view that to be amused and to be
offended, while semantically disanalogous, bear the same logical form.
Fodor
---- The synthetic a posteriori nature of "I found the joke funny" is
made obvious by the attempt at the analytically true by Geary, "I am
guessing he is trying to insult me in a fun way".
Geach
--- The ´donkey´ pronoun, "me", in "I am guessing he is insulting me
jocularly" refers to Helm´s idea of Geary, and Geary´s statement fails
to make that explicit which could have been done by adding the clause
expliciting the "mode of presentation" of the concept "Geary".
Grice
---- The implicature of "I am guessing" and "I am not guessing" flouts
the conversational maxims. The insult, if it was humorous, was
displayed in a public forum. "I am guessing" is a "subjectivist" reply,
and fails to take into account the co-operative principle operating in
public fora. While Helm never used "humour" and "insult", by Geary
"explicating" the alleged implicature ("Here´s a humorous insult for
you") fails to address the nondetachability of the implicatum, which,
while conversational, is not ´conventional´ per se.
Harman
---- In "Principles of Reasoning", Harman argues that that-clauses in
psychological predicates may yield subdoxastic processes which, while
not irrational, are hardly rational. "A man married a cat". That is
symbolised by "p", and that was all that Helm uttered. That he was also
insulting Geary in a humorous way (by inferring that Germany is like
Tennessee and that a Tennesean would marry a cat, too, if he or she
could) is all Geary´s invention, which by minimising via the "I am
guessing" yet fails to provide a criterion of correct reasoning.
Katz
----- The analytically false utterance, "I am guessing" yields, in
context, the co-referentiality of "I" and "me" but fails to provide the
Montagovian indexes. "Amusing" to who? Insulting to who? A more
explicit account along those lines would be, "I am guessing that Helm
is trying to provide an example which, while he thinks is insulting and
humorous TO HIM, is not to me. And why he would have thought that is
anybody´s guess, or mine."
Putnam
---- In "Fact and Value", Putnam notes that "A man married a cat" can
be humorous or insulting -- if interpreted along the axiological axis
(value). As a report of a fact, it cannot be either. Geary fails to see
the wood for the trees. The fact that he adds, "All good American
authors come from the South", as a counterargument that a German
married a cat seems adding more value-fodder to the mainly assertive
scenario.
Quine
----- The failure of the substitutivity salva veritate of "I" and "me"
is obvious in Geary´s utterance. Instead of the plainer: "No, I´m not
insulted and that´s no fun", he utters a counterfactive unverifiable
statement with a probability index ("I am guessing IT IS PROBABLE
that...")
Searle
----- "I am guessing", while apparently bearing a word-to-world
direction of fit, yields an evaulational dimension (absent in the mere
report that a German married a cat) and brings issue of insult and
unintended humor.
Strawson
------ Could the that-clause following the "guess" be a truth-value
gap. Cfr. "The king of France is bald". Geary fails to specify the WAY
in which a reference to a matter of fact (a German married a cat)
yields a specific insult to Geary´s persona which is also meant as
humorous. Geary knows that, and he is replying in a post entitled, "Man
married to a cat", so his guessing is neither here nor there, unless
explicated via "expliciture".
Ziff
----- Ziff notes that "I am guessing", in the present continuous, is
incorrigible and of privilege access. Only Geary knows what he is
guessing. But he cannot guess that he is being insulted in a humorous
way. He, by virtue of this same incorrigibility and privileged access,
KNOWS that. He further KNOWS that we know that. His "implicature" ("I´m
neither insulted nor amused"), however, hardly refutes that a German
married a cat.
J. L. Speranza
---- for the Grice Club.
---------- Bordighera
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