Don't have one obviously. Just thought it sounded good, though it sounds less
good now, but still a change from a Grice-based thread title and also allowed
me to bring back the old "[was:..]" formula. I've missed that. Finally,
apologies for wasting your time - if you want one. Mike's the master of this
kind of post, by which I don't mean he's time-wasting - just that Mike thing
Mike does, you know. No one talks to me anymore. Don't look surprised. Anyway
we always need a new paradigm.
D
On Thursday, 25 February 2016, 23:17, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In a message dated 2/25/2016 6:36:09 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes on a different thread: "O to be in a court of
law."
Hey, perhaps we could discuss Scalianism, which is SOME sort of
Griceianism, only different.
For the record, some paraphrases of the obit (Scalia's, not Grice) in The
Telegraph.
The Telegraph writes: "American Supreme Court justice who countered the
rise of liberalism with acerbic showmanship"
Implicature:
i. Scalia countered the rise of liberalism with acerbic showmanship.
-- 'who' clauses are a trick in terms of logical form!
"Antonin Scalia ... the key figure in making the Supreme Court of the
United States a conservative – in the American sense – institution."
Loved the Telegraph talking 'senses' here (recall, "Do not multiply senses
beyond necessity"). Surely Cicero was a conservative, as was Scalia, as is
the Telegraph!
Telegraph goes on (I don't like anonymous obit but it's better than none.
Grice never had his obit in the Telegraph, only THE TIMES):
"Appointed by Ronald Reagan, Scalia used his formidable intellect and
large personality to influence decisions that gave George W Bush the White
House
in the contested 2000 election and push back against the liberal measures
of the 1960s."
The implicature, or rather entailment is
ii. Scalia's intellect was formidable.
This is different from (or 'than' as Anderson Cooper prefers)
iii. Scalia was formidable, intellectually.
Telegraph goes on:
"Along the way he became a darling of the Right and a hate-figure for the
Left."
"Darling" is a Telegraphism. According to G. Mikes ("How to become a Brit")
it is overused by the darling Brits.
The Telegraph: "Antonin Gregory Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey. His
parents were Sicilian immigrants who became teachers."
In fact, his mother was American. His father was 'immigrant'. But what
would the Telegraph care? (And granted, Scalia's maternal grandfather did
emigrate -- and from Sicily!)
Telegraph:
"Scalia was an only child and an academic high achiever. He earned his
undergraduate degree at Georgetown and his law degree at Harvard graduating
with honours from both."
The implicature is that his first 'honours' were from Georgetown and his
second 'honours' were from Harvard. Telegraph abbreviates, almost
telegraphically, by the use of 'both'.
Telegraph:
"While at Harvard he met Maureen McCarthy, an undergraduate at Radcliffe,
on a blind date."
Strictly, this is a figurative use of 'blind'. Eyes are blind. Dates are
not, unless figuratively.
Telegraph:
"The couple wed."
-- implicature: and people attended. Recall that Radcliff is strategically
situated for these situations to happen. I treasure my copy of "The Harvard
Book", that has lots of anecdotes about this and that -- especially one
letter to the President of Harvard BEFORE Radcliffe had been instituted, and
the embarrassing response it retrieved from the Presidnt.
At Oxford, Radcliff may compare to Somerville, or not.
Telegraph:
"On graduating from Harvard, Scalia practised law in Cleveland."
This reminds me of Hart, who on graduating from Oxford, practised law in
London. On the other hand it reminds me of Q. Crisp, "I didn't know you had
to practice to be one."
Telegraph:
"Scalia found himself drawn to academia, however, and in 1967"
just when Grice was heading to Harvard to give the William James lectures
"left Cleveland to teach at Virgina’s Law School. In 1971 he followed a
well-worn path for bright conservative lawyers and made the move to
Washington."
-- which is NOT that LONG of a way. It's not like he was moving from
Madagascar to Tokyo, say.
Telegraph:
"There"
i.e. at Washington,
"he took a job in the Nixon administration and continued working for the
White House during the Ford presidency. When Democrat Jimmy Carter was
elected Scalia returned to teaching."
This looks like Wason's selection task:
iv. If Jimmy Carter is president, Scalia is in academia.
For both Wason and Grice, the horseshoe ('if' above) does not involve
'inferrability' -- for the rest of the world, almost -- you can count me out --
it does!
The Telegraph:
"From 1977 to 1982 he taught at Chicago. In 1982, Ronald Reagan appointed
him to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit."
The 'circuit' is an Americanism. But The Telegraph knows it. "Coumbia" was
so-called after the Italian sailor -- almost like Scalia, but from the
North!
The Telegraph:
"It was here"
Now by "here" The Telegraph means this circuit.
"that Scalia built his reputation."
Strictly, 'built' is like 'bear' that we were discussing ('give birth').
It's usually OTHERS that build one's reputation. So The Telegraph is engaging
in what Grice calls a 'conversational implicature' (For being strict, "It
was here that others built Scalia's reputation" sounds clumsy).
The Telegraph:
"Scalia became famous for his occasionally witty, frequently acerbic,
questioning of lawyers arguing before him."
-- i.e. for his, in brief, Griceianisms.
The Telegraph:
"Some very high-priced advocates were made to feel like students in a law
school seminar by his pointed questioning."
i.e. he was like Grice. (Grice's graduate seminars -- "I rather be dead
than teach an undergraduate" -- at UC/Berkeley were attended by Davidson,
Searle, Myro, Peacocke, and zillions more, well after all these had ceased to
be 'students' -- but a philosopher is not a lawyer, granted, so The
Telegraph's implicature may be other).
The Telegraph:
"Indeed, many Washington lawyers would turn up in his court just to watch
the show."
Which reminds me of McEvoy's exclamative,
"O to be in a court of law."
although I think McEvoy's implicature was perhaps different.
The Telegraph:
"For Scalia the Court of Appeals proved to be a successful stepping stone
to the Supreme Court"
"Stepping stone" is figurative. For
v. This stone is successful.
is difficult to refudiate. The Telegraph again IMPLICATES: the longer, more
informative, 'stepping stone successful to Scalia' sounds clumsy.
The Telegraph:
"and in 1986 Reagan appointed him an Associate Justice."
-- not to be confused with an Associate Professor, as Grice never was.
Fresh in Harvard he was appointed Full Professor from a start!
The Telegraph:
"At the time Scalia’s conservatism was well-known."
-- by The Telegraph. Again, I get this via implicature: "Scalia's
conservative was already well known to us" sounds imprudent.
The Telegraph:
"Scalia was an advocate"
pun on lawyer. The Telegraph loves these!
"of a legal theory called “originalism”,"
-- which is a variant of Griceianism, only different.
"which seeks to interpret legal questions through the original intent of
the authors of the Constitution."
where intent is Geary's favourite concept, Grice's M-intention, intention
to communicate or rather, to 'mean'. In Sicilian, 'm-intentions' are
represented in Sicilian.
The Telegraph:
"For Scalia, originalism provides a way of pushing back against the
liberal decisions that characterised the Court’s rulings of the 1960s and
1970s,
especially the landmark ruling Roe v Wade in 1973, the decision that
effectively legalised abortion."
It may do to explore how the original intent on the authors of the
Constitution about 'abortion' (since we were discussing 'bear', 'give birth',
prenatal and postpartum) comes into the picture.
The Telegraph:
"Scalia’s view, simply summarised, was that the authors of the
Constitution did not discuss abortion, therefore it was not their "original
intent" to
make abortion a constitutional right."
The Telegraph has a gift for simplifying things. "Original intent" is
Griceian M-intention. There is some appeal to 'suggestio falsi' and 'suppressio
veri' there. Talk of 'right' here would fascinate H. L. A. Hart -- although
in British Circles, it is Dame Warnock that is mostly identified with
these issues of bio-ethics that touch on 'legal philosophy'.
The Telegraph:
"While Scalia sought to overturn Roe v Wade it still stands in law,
although the Supreme Court has allowed some restrictions on abortion to be put
in
place by individual states."
The Telegraph has a gift with words: a state is individual, but not AN
INDIVIDUAL (except for Strawson). Listing these 'individual states' would be
too informative?
The Telegraph:
"On all the cases involving social issues that came before the court,
Scalia was firmly in the conservative camp."
-- where 'camp' is figurative. But we may grasp that he had a 'field day',
though.
The Telegraph:
"On racial preferences in the awarding of federal contracts he wrote: "To
pursue the concept of racial entitlement – even for the most admirable and
benign of purposes – is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the
way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred.
In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American."
His "We are just one race here" is perhaps Griceian in nature, "Do not
multiply races beyond necessity".
Note that 'race' can have different senses. But in the case of a horse
race, the etymology is different. So, it's not like 'race' has two senses. They
are two words. Grice's example was:
vi. He was caught in the grip of a vice.
In American, however, 'vyse' is preferred, and while 'vyse' and 'vice' are
cognate, they were not for Grice. For (vi) can mean that he was caught in
the grip of the opposite of a virtue, or he was caught in the grip of a
carpenter's tool.
The Telegraph:
"Scalia did not just write for colleagues on the bench or for the legal
profession at large. He very consciously tried to speak to America at large."
-- and ultimately to The Telegraph who wrote a brilliant obituary.
The Telegraph:
"His punchy language could make him sound like a radio talk show host
rather than one of the nine most important judges in America."
In the United States of America, strictly. But The Telegraph considers
Canada a colony, most likely?
The Telegraph:
"When his colleagues, by a five to four vote, struck down a Texas sodomy
law that made homosexuality illegal he wrote in the dissenting opinion: “
Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as
partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers
in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this
as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they
believe to be immoral and destructive.”
Whereas for Queen Victoria, lesbians were invisible (Have you seen "The
Danish Girl"?). The 'sodomy' law reminds me of the father of Oscar Wilde's
lover.
On 18 February 1895, the Marquess left his calling card at Wilde's club,
the Albemarle, inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite". The 'm' is the
same as the 'm' in 'marquess'.
The Telegraph:
"The most controversial of his decisions came in the 2000 Presidential
election between George W Bush and Al Gore. Bush’s lawyers wanted the recount
of disputed votes in Florida ended. In an unsigned decision the Supreme
Court majority agreed. Scalia wrote a concurring opinion which referred to the
irreparable harm that would be done to Bush and the country by counting the
disputed votes."
-- where 'irreparable' is perhaps hyperbolic? (In any case, it is in
philosophical jargon a 'modal', as it ends in -able -- reminds one of the
complex logic of counterfactuals like the concept of 'fragility')
The Telegraph:
"Scalia did not have to write that opinion and in later years he felt that
it had hurt his chances of being named Chief Justice. He had become too
controversial."
Where the implicature of 'too' is what L. Horn calls (-)-val. i.e.
negatively evaluated, as in "Too much love will kill you." This is odd coming
from
The Telegraph, since in the Brit vernacular, 'too' need not be negative,
"You're too kind" -- cfr. "You're too much" -- "too good to be true".
The Telegraph:
"When he was chided by liberals for voting to stop the recount he always
retorted, “Get over it!”.
The implicature was obvious. He didn't order the liberals to get ABOVE it.
"Get over it" is an Americanism, although understood by The Telegraph. It
may have its source in Shakespeare.
The 'it' compares to Cole Porter's 'it' in "Let's do it" -- it's a
multi-use pronoun that stands for what you please.
The Telegraph:
"As ideological as many of his decisions were – particularly on social
issues – Scalia enjoyed friendships outside his political camp."
Again, 'camp' is metaphorical. Only soldiers live in camps. According to
Aristotle, you can only have ONE friend, your alter ego (Grice's disciple,
Judith Baker, discussed this), so The Telegraph is using 'friendships' in a
non-Aristotelian way.
The Telegraph:
"Scalia and his ultra-liberal Supreme Court colleague Ruth Bader Ginsburg
regularly went to the opera and celebrated New Year’s Eve together."
Sometimes on the same day! the implicature being. It has become fashionable
to spend New Year's Eve AT the opera!
The Telegraph:
"At his death Scalia was arguably the most important and effective
conservative in America."
"Important" is not important (Speranza's axiom). "Effective" is effective
(Speranza's second axiom).
The Telegraph:
"Praise came from many quarters but a statement of Vice-President Joe
Biden from 1993 was in the tone that Scalia himself might have appreciated: “
The vote that I most regret of all 15,000 votes I have cast as a senator …
was to confirm Judge Scalia.” The reason? “Because he was so effective.”"
The Telegraph is implicating that for Biden to say, "Because he was so
important" would be a clumsy thing to say -- and that's why he didn't say it!
(And why would The Telegraph quote something Biden never said?)
Cheers,
Speranza
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