[lit-ideas] ] A signal or two
- From: "Adriano Palma" <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:53:24 +0200
** For Your Eyes Only **
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It is just the utmost disgrace that Speranza lost a few postings.
It is equally irritating the exhibit of falsehood, since in Italian
'segnare' means never to signal (there is word which is "segnalare")
why instead of farting around, one doesn't check a dictionary?
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ξε ν’, γγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ἀ ὅτι τ δε
κείμεθα, το ς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
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>>> <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> 8/11/2011 4:08 PM >>>
I may have missed a post or two on this thread of signalling, so feel
free
to repost so I can address the points.
In a message dated 8/11/2011 3:00:35 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
JLS bears on the 'Beyond Signalling Lies Nothing' thread, which arose
from
JLS's claim that for Grice there is nothing in language further than
signalling.
---- I would go as far as to say that the same holds for Graeco-
(Grecian)
-Roman culture, out of which Grice hails.
In Italian, there's 'segno' (sign) and 'segnare', to sign, to signal.
This
verb is deemed so important that university is based around it. To
teach,
in Italian, means to 'signal'. Indeed, so does in English, where
'teach' is
cognate with 'token' as in 'token of affection' (the apple, usually, a
token of affection from the student to the teacher). I'm less clear if
in old
Celtic there were interesting distinctions about 'sign', etc. The
Latin
'signum' is meant to translate the Greek 'semeion'. For Aristotle:
---- semeion
works at THREE levels: there's THINGS. And ideas, which _mean_ (or
stand
for) things, they 'semein' things (semein is the verb out of
'semeion'). And
WORDS stand for ideas. Transitively, words stand for (or signal)
things.
This is what Saint Thomas called "mediate" as opposed to 'immediate'
signification of words.
McEvoy:
"For the "clarification" sought here is surely more than signalling?
Also
Grice's reference to "Truth" in his "Maxim of Quality" is surely a
reference
to "Truth" in a sense beyond mere signalling (for the measure of
'signalling', its worth or value, lies in its effectiveness - and this
is only
contingently related to the truth of its content [indeed, in many
cases it is
the measure of the effectiveness of a signal that it misleads, and
thus that
its content as 'description' is false; this kind of misleading signal
violates Grices "Maxim of Quality: Truth" but it violates no 'Maxim of
Quality:
Effectiveness' as it pertains to the signalling function of
language]."
Grice gave TWO sets of lectures on logic and conversation ("Logic and
Conversation"). Only in the SECOND set (Harvard, 1967) did he
introduce, to
please the audience, the talk of QUANTITAS, as opposed to qualitas,
modus, and
relatio -- the four categories out of which Kant had reduced
Aristotle's
ten). Naturally, he had to find a content to this idea of a category
of
qualitas. He divided it into matters of satisfactoriness and
evidence/ground. He
was aware that
"Close the door!"
"Post the letter!"
"Post the letter or burn it!"
can HARDLY be said to be 'true' -- yet
"Post the letter or burn it!" follows from "Post the letter!" This was
noticed early enough by Hare in 1967 in Mind. So, 'qualitas' need not
be
regarded in connection with 'truth', but satisfactoriness. In the case
of
doxastic satisfactoriness -- "it seems to me as if it's going to rain
tomorrow"
-- one has still to account for the extra implicature of the idle
phrases he
heard from Strawson notably ("Truth", Analysis -- vide Warnock, "Truth,
or
Bristol revisited", being a review of the symposium held at Bristol,
England, between Strawson and Austin on Truth).
"It is true that it is raining".
Grice found this an otiose thing to say, but allowed that in some
cases, it
comes out as handy:
"What the policeman said was true".
In this case, we do use 'true', without mentioning WHAT was that the
policeman said. If it turns out that what the policeman said was,
"Monkeys can
talk", we are not committed to the truth of the content of the
judgement.
Only when we quote the sentence can we do so.
"Monkeys can talk" is false since monkeys cannot talk.
And so on.
So truth is in more than one way a red herring (metaphorically
speaking).
McEvoy:
"So perhaps we should, having waited patiently, now receive
"clarification"
from JLS as to whether Grice seriously contends that language is
limited
to signalling and how this is to be defended against the obvious
objections,
including Popper's?"
I'd love to have them listed again. Grice was very serious about this.
He
talked of
psi-attitudes
which come in two brands: beliefs and desires. In communicating, the
most
we can do is express our beliefs and our desires. In a cooperative
framework
we do better: we aim to PERSUADE -- when we desire that our partner
assumes our desires -- makes them his own -- "Close the door". Grice
considers
the countersuggestive conversationalist. Who by uttering "close the
door!"
MEANS that his conversational partner is to KEEP the door open. He
rejects
this as a case of meaning. The emphasis on persuasion is meant to
balance the
focus often given by philosophers to the expression of doxastic
attitudes
only. Grice was interested in "INFORMING", and the 'catalogue' of
maxims (a
decalogue, since they are ten) can be seen as formatting 'most
efficient
exchange of information', or mutual influencing of others by attitudes
other
than beliefs -- e.g. desires.
----
He noted that this is evolutionarily proved in that while animals don't
MEAN, strictly -- since Schiffer proved that meaning was too complex a
thing
for animals to have this sort of reflexive iteration of attitudes ("I
intend
that my addressee will come to desire that p on the basis of my
informing
him that I am being cooperative and that I msyelf desire that p")
basic
things like that are also operative. Also in children.
For Grice language started with manipulative control (honest
simulation). A
child will cry when it hurts -- he falls. There is a cartoon by Quino
on
that. A child can still WAIT FOR HIS MOTHER to come home to express
his
pain. When he can manipulate a natural signal of pain (tears) like
that we have
the rudiment of 'language'. Full language comes into existence where
the
iconic is waived, as it were, and there is no need for 'dog' to
resemble dog
at all. Davidson agreed on most of that.
The ideas by Grice have pedigree in English empiricist philosophy, but
are
also Graeco-Roman in spirit. Not in vain did he say he was following
Kantotle's footprints.
Cheers,
Speranza
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