[lit-ideas] Re: Beyond signalling lies nothing
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:36:37 EDT
Definitely my last post today.
I have retrieved the post by McEvoy from the online lit-ideas files, so
I'll comment, before I disconnect for the weekend.
McEvoy writes:
"This claim", as per header, "surely needs some defending. Popper adopts
Karl Buehler's
_Sprachtheorie_ which distinguishes the expressive, signalling and
descriptive
functions [there are others, like the 'performative', but these may be set
aside here;"
--- That was interesting to know. I like Buehler. I like other taxonomies,
too. I think Grice follows Hermes, by Harris. The functions being two,
then: expression of desires (imperative, subjunctive mood) and beliefs
(indicative mood). Cited by Chomsky, "Cartesian Linguistics".
---
McEvoy continues:
"and to Buehler's hierarchy of functions, Popper proposes that above
the descriptive level there is the argumentative function]. A key
assumption is
that the higher functions presuppose the lower: not merely in the sense
that
they emerge later and subsequent to the lower but they cannot be present
without all the lower functions also simultaneously being present. In
other
words, it is impossible to describe without at the same time signalling
(or
involving the signalling function), and likewise any such signalling must
also
involve the expressive function.
This means that to show there is no higher function than signalling, it is
not
enough to point out how a description can be interpreted as a form of
signalling - for this is accepted even on a _Sprachtheorie_ like
Buehler's. It
is necessary to show that whatever in a description that might seem to
involve
something beyond mere signalling - for example, the question of the truth
or
falsity of the description - can be reduced, without distortion, to a mere
act
of signalling. To take an example, if I were to say to my neighbour that
their
house is on fire, there is no issue of whether this is true or false but
merely
an issue as to whether my signalling causes in them the intended reaction
[say,
of panic].
Is it the case that Grice denies there is any such issue of truth over and
above the efficacy of the signal? How is this to be defended?"
---- I'll have to meditate onto this. When it comes to the TWO functions,
doxastic and bouletic, alla Harris, I do think that one can be reduced to
the other: the doxastic to the bouletic, as when we say, "desire is the
father of thought", or "we soon believe what we desire" (both listed in the
Oxford Dict. of Proverbs). But I realise Popper's point is subtler.
McEvoy then refers to 'sign' and 'mean',
"This is also flawed because, unlike the dance of a bee or the warning
sounds of
birds, the spot is not engaged in a programme of action that involves
signalling and where its effectiveness in signalling can be judged: to say
a
'spot' is a sign of measles is not to say the spot 'signals' or can be seen
as
engaged in 'signalling' that there are measles."
----- I see. Yes, Grice's example can be played around with.
He said,
Those spots mean measles TO THE DOCTOR, but not _to me_. I actually
thought there was nothing wrong with Tommy.
-- and stuff. He was into getting away with the complexities he had found
in Peirce, with his multifarious taxonomies of signs, and thought that
'mean' would do. He does quote from Stevenson who ALWAYS has 'mean' in scare
quotes for these cases:
"His burp 'meant' that he was just an uneducated person', versus "he
signalled rudeness" -- and so on.
As Palma notes, '-al-' is usually otiose, as in 'signAL', when 'sign'
should do. I am Grecian at heart, and think that 'seme' should ONLY be applied
for 'natural' phenomena. The Greeks distinguished between
'by nature' (phusei)
and
'by convention' or position, 'thesei'.
A burp does SIGNIFY something (semein, is the verb). "Signare" in Latin
and "segnare" in Italian CAN BE used to mean 'mean', but in the case of
Italian as Palma notes, this is archaic -- as it should be.
I'm not sure the Romans used 'signal', i.e. anything adding the suffix,
-al to the root, 'sign'. But I could check.
---- The point about the functions in Buehler, etc, are valid. But I'll
think about that. It seems to me that Grice is into
HW
hand wave.
This he has as paradigm of signalling, which is IDIOSYNCRATIC in the
beginning. One utterer makes a signal like a handwave to communicate this or
that. Only at a later stage this may become a 'procedure'. So he is into
one-off signalling scenarios. I'm not sure this primitive signalling function
presupposes more richer ones involving description. Again the root square
symbol used by Grice may help here as it relates to Hare and his phrastic and
neustic and tropic and clistic.
For Hare, the descriptum is the dictum, the phrastic. But there's the
phrastic, which is like the imperative function or declarative function, and
then there's the tropic, which is the grammatical manifestation (a rhetoric
question, 'who needs a drive in?' may have the force of a declaration), and
the clistic which is the sign of closure -- as in ".".
.
Cheers,
Speranza
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