[lit-ideas] Re: Grice Now
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:08:45 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 1/21/2013 12:57:17 A.M. UTC-02, rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes
about Tarski.
As Palma's post showed, what prompted me to write that note on "snow is
white" was Pullum's note on the alleged 'hoax' of the many words for 'snow'.
R. Paul is right about Tarski's 'snow is white'. I was wondering that a
simple sentence like that could get quite complicated if translated to the
languages referred to by Pullum and by the link provided by Palma in the
Tarski lead.
---
Re:
"My favourite philosophers are Hobbes and Locke."
R. Paul below, quite apt. My recent thinking on this is along Griceian
lines.
I would think that indeed the following allows for a Griceian
interpretation:
I)
The best players are Tom and Jerry.
---- Therefore, Tom is the best player.
II)
My favourite philosophers are Hobbes and Locke
----- Therefore, my favourite philosophers is Locke.
It would seem that uttering "My favourite philosopher is Locke", in
Scenario II, i.e. when it is the case that both Hobbes and Locke are the
utterer's favourite philosophers, is not so much a breach of
truth-conditionality
(if you must, or truthfulness, if you may), but informativeness -- i.e. that
dimension that according to Grice, along with others, that triggers and
implicature.
Surely it is possible to have more than one favourite anything. Since
"my favourite x"
does not ENTAIL "x is the ONLY favourite thing I have", perhaps we can
apply the same line to the piece of prose, without recourse to the temporal
indexes as favoured by McEvoy:
Speranza favours Hobbes and Speranza favours Locke.
---- Therefore Speranza favours Locke.
If we replace "ever", emphatic (as in "My favourite philosopher ever is
Hobbes and my favourite philosopher ever is Locke") by "always", the
re-writing could go:
Speranza always favours Hobbes and Speranza always favours Locke.
Again, the implicature that 'favourite' is 'favouritest' (sic) is a
Griceian one, as all are. Or not. (In my previous I elaborated on the logic of
"and" and how conjunctive clauses, as in "She loves Gilbert and Sullivan" can
be, via implicature, even if with a breach of informativeness, simplified:
"She loves Gilbert".
Note that the negation: "It is not the case that she loves Gilbert"
(uttered in a scenario where what is the case is that "She loves Gilbert and
Sullivan") is a sort of 'meta-linguistic' negation allowed by Grice, not meant
to contradict the claim as false, but merely criticise it as
Under-Informative, or Inappropriate in Ways Others than Dealing with
Truth-Values and
Truth-Conditions). Or something).
Cheers, and thanks for the commentary.
Speranza
R. Paul:
"What's apparently at stake is Donal's pointing
out that of course P and -P need not contradict each other if they're
sufficiently far apart in time. Hobbes may have been JL's favourite
philosopher at one time, but later, Locke becomes his favourite. I'm
taking the part of common sense though and assuming that since JL
presented his commentary in one go, one would expect that it was meant
to be read as a whole, viz. that it would be unfair to JL for others to
ascribe temporal markers to his list. The Gricean rule is that
assertions do not change their meaning as things the person asserting
them asserted, until, an act of Parliament rules what had been asserted
false.
This would take us further out in the seas of language than I'm prepared
to go."
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