[lit-ideas] Re: Conversation Without Implicature
- From: John Wager <jwager@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 08:22:21 -0500
Lawrence Helm wrote:
. . . .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.
Ambiguity in language is just as much a useful tool as precision. There
are times when each is to be preferred, but surely we use language to
increase ambiguity as well as reduce it, even in non-poetic contexts.
Language serves us well when it allows us to deal with the world we find
ourselves in, and MY world seems more ambiguous than most of the
statements I hear made about it. As a philosophy teacher, I often
thought of my job as one of INCREASING ambiguity precisely because
students seem to be so preoccupied with reducing ambiguity to the point
of making everything so simple and clear and distinct that they "know"
exactly what they are talking about. The tension between ambiguity and
clarity is perpetual, and neither pole is more important than the other.
. . . .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.
As your recent posts indicate, the medieval discussion of realism,
idealism, and nominalism is relevant here. Ockham may be an example of
someone preoccupied with reducing ambiguity, but that reflects his
"nominalist" tendencies. I've always had a lot of sympathy for someone
who is trying to say language may be inherently ambiguous, but that this
does not prevent us from saying things that are "somewhat" true in an
"analogous" ("ambiguous") sense, even if they are not "literally"
("non-ambiguously") true--People like Aquinas, who argued that God
cannot be approached at all by a literal, non-ambiguous use of language.
I just wish a lot more of Aquinas' later readers would have held on to
the ambiguity more than the clarity in Aquinas.
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