[lit-ideas] Re: Counter-Suggestion
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 19:51:42 EDT
In a message dated 6/8/2009 6:54:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
guimbarde9@xxxxxxxxx writes:
This is not how I learned it. (I am weirded out by the smoked salmon
example./ 5n 'Meaning,' there are (Grice claims) two sorts of meaning, natural
('Dark clouds mean rain,' 'These spots mean measles,' and non-natural, which
is mostly talk, with a few gestures thrown in. But I could be wrong.
Maybe that's not what he meant.
---
I know there is _another_ post by you in my mailbox!
When I get a reply to one of my posts (in that case, "The worst opera
ever") I re-read my post, before opening the mail, to ask myself,
"What could I possibly be meaning by that?"
Having re-read my post, and not yet having opened R. Paul's _I_ guess and
hope it will be some nice comment on Philippa Foot, hoping he was able to
find that great site by one S. Pike.
Anyway, this one I first read because I thought, "An outsider", -- when i
opened and it read, "Guille" -- I thought: Another Jorge Sexer, an
Argentine. It was R. Paul.
So this merits a philosophical reply:
>This is not how I learned it.
Never mind how you learned it, as long as you never taught it! (Just
joking! Friendly) but _some_ people. I recall meeting McFarlance, of
UC/Berkeley
-- he was giving a talk on something or other. I approached him during the
coffee break and I said, "I see from your website you have also taught
Grice" -- and since I was with people, I said, "McFarlane is our expert in
Grice".
He got so offended! "I only taught _one_ seminar on Grice -- hardly an
expert" etc.
Anyway, I find that philosophy of education is all about learning, never
teaching. So following the Toad's "We have to learn them", I use 'learn' to
mean 'teach' now, i.e. make learn.
----
>(I am weirded out by the smoked salmon example./ 5n 'Meaning,'
I fail to understand the "/5n"
But I guess it was a joke, I heard somewhere.
Smoke means fire.
Smoke means smoked salmon.
If there's smoke, there's fire.
The joke went, "Where there's smoke, there's smoked salmon", or something.
But consider Grice's use of 'utterance' (artificial, in part)
By that utterance ("BOOOOM") -- the noise the stone made upon falling from
the mountain -- the mountain meant that it was not safe to climb it (her).
Surely Grice means _anything_ by utterance (any 'vehicle of meaning-nn' --
as I wrote in my PhD dissertation -- putting the onus on my Evaluating
Committee to judge the circularity).
--- A burp, a fart, etc. can _all_ mean things.
Whether naturally or non-naturally seems sometimes immaterial to Grice. I
was once browsing a Chinese online link on Grice. Since I don't read
Chinese, most of the ideographs escaped me, but at one point the scholar went,
"'meaning' _naturally_ is an oxymoron in most languages,
including Chinese and French -- if not Gricean."
-- The whole enterprise of _semiotics_ is about _non-natural_ meaning...
etc.
>there are (Grice claims) two sorts of meaning, natural
Oddly, the one to blame here is Strawson who _typed_ the thing.
Colloquially, Grice says there are two 'senses' (puaj!!!) of 'mean'!
>('Dark clouds mean rain,' 'These spots mean measles,' and non-natural,
which is mostly talk, with a few gestures thrown in. But I could be wrong.
Maybe that's not what he meant.
Well, in "Meaning Revisited" -- I wrote about this in my PhD, I claim it's
Hobbes's Computatio Sive Logica.
Grice (1948) wanted to avoid talk of 'artificial' and 'sign' -- but the
discussion is in Hobbes between 'artificial' and 'natural' signs. Grice's
objections are very good:
--- I wouldn't say "English" is _artificial_ or "that" artificial.
"non-natural" sounds, he thought better (but this struck back with a vengeance
with Dennett had his Causes of Philosopher's Deaths -- as "of non-natural
causes" for Grice).
--- I wouldn't say a word is a _sign_ ("Stop" is a sign -- a 'traffic'
sign)
---
Hobbes says it's all "consequence" by which he possibly meant something
like 'empiricist-construed' effect as in
cause effect
Hobbes prefers to speak of 'consequence' instead of 'effect'.
Ditto Grice.
Grice arrives at the formula
y means x
and analyses it in a way that is _common_ to both 'natural' (mainly
'factive', he realises -- cfr. "The present budget means that we're gonna have
a
hard year, but I don't mean to suggest we will" -- discussed and criticised
by Martinich -- if we could only hear Obama!) and non-natural meaning:
"'cat' means _felis domesticus_".
-----
The analysans is, simply,
y is a consequence of x
-- Not very illuminating, but 'mean' _is_ an anglicism. As C. Bruce should
testify, 'meinen', in German, either means opinion or goobledegook. It is
cognate with _mind_, but in Spanish, 'mentare' (in Latin) gives 'mentir',
to lie. The opposite of Gricean 'mean'!
"And I mean it".
-----
But there is of course a lot of truth in Grice's claim.
I had the big discovery when reading S. R. Chapman's bio of Grice
(Palgrave -- now paperback).
Chapman quotes from Stevenson at length -- that Grice used. I did consult
Stevenson once, but had not noticed this important use:
Stevenson (1944) is using 'mean' in _scare quotes_:
The barometer 'means' that the humidity in the room is high.
Surely a barometer cannot _mean_ -- neither can a computer (vide
Haugeland/Grice).
Stevenson, a latter-day pragmaticist, like G. H. Mead, that Habermas uses
extensively -- are important only with reference to Morris, but ultimately,
PEIRCE.
The other day I was reading a call of papers for the Peirce society, but
they make so many requirements, that I thought, what the fuck! Let them
investigate the thing.
Grice used the very same article by Peirce that I was fascinated with.
Theory of Signs. Grice read extensively on this in the early 1940s in Oxford.
Hence his "meaning". Indeed, the UC/Berkeley at Bancroft Library holds
unpublished lectures by Grice on Peirce.
Grice is interested in Peirce's 'index' -- on account of possible
factiveness.
One day I was browsing the Philosopher's Index and found a lot of
references to Grice by one Facione -- it particularly intrigued me that
Facione was
claiming that Grice's theory is a pre-sequel of H. L. A. Hart -- and some
other obscure philosopher Facione mentions.
I found the Hart paper: Philosophical Quarterly, 1952 -- before "Meaning"
(1948) by Grice was published in 1957.
But the thing, though of historic interest -- this was before Hart became
a lawyer -- is minor: it's a 'critical review' of Holloway, Language and
Intelligence. And to my pleasure, there was a footnote crediting Grice:
"I owe this to discussion with H. P. Grice".
Owe what? Well, the 'smoke means fire' example.
---- So it's been a long Gricean story.
I would think that Grice's big philosophical contribution is 'factiveness'
and notably, 'non-factiveness' as a feature of human intentionality. To
the last of his days, he opposed crude versions of empiricism.
So while black clouds may mean rain, that's factive and of lesser
importance. If a man farts, he has some issue with normal evacuation, but
that's
factive and unimportant.
But when a man starts to burp INTENTIONALLY, it no longer can mean, "he
has some issue with normal digestion". He is _meaning_ something, non
factively.
Grice notes that first systems of signs are _iconic_: a fake burp sounds
exactly like a natural burp. But that would limit languages enormously. We
need freedom from iconicity. So that's when "god" started to mean _god_ in
English, but not in, er, Spanish.
I once wrote a long letter to Martinich with a derivation. He wrote back,
"Interesting. I'll give it some thought". What I derived was, using Grice's
example of NATURAL meaning ("to mean to" e.g. I mean to go to London) as
a basis for further elaboration of intentions so that my displaying the
raincoat may mean that I mean to go to London.
The raincoat episode is due to Stevenson. But again, he is working
behaviouristically. If a man puts on his raincoat, it means he is about to
leave,
and if he further grabs his umbrella -- I think is Stevenson's example),
that may further mean that he thinks it might rain.
But if he _does_ say, "I'll take the umbrella in case it rains", he
_means_ that he will take the umbrella in case it rains.
My mother says, "Philosophers!"
Cheers,
JL Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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