It might be argued that 'know' is not an utterance and only utterances carry
implicatures. But recall the motto, "Know thyself" - one of the rare forms of
'know' in the imperative which Popper does NOT discuss on p. 98 of his
"Objective Knowledge'. McEvoy has provided a delightful post on his
conversational exchanges with Rudy, and he (McEvoy, not Rudy) has entitled his
post, as a tribute to “Rudy’s favourite Beatle,” John Lemon. Some commentary,
as it pertains how Popper ignores the implicatures of ‘know’. “Know” is a VERY
English (and Greek) verb. Most Germanic languages, like English is, use a root
cognate with ‘wise’. Not the English! Not the Greeks! The Romans are a class
apart. McEvoy writes then that “this post is named in honour of Rudy's current
favourite Beatle.” The use of ‘current’ IMPLICATES that Rudy’s ‘knowledge’ may
change – the fact that it is only an implicature and not a logical entailment
(to use G. E. Moore’s jargon) is shown by the fact that Rudy’s current Beatle
may be Lemon and *remain* Lemon. The use of ‘current’ hardly entails (but
merely implicates) that Rudy may favour or may have favoured a different
Beatle. McEvoy: “This post concerns Rudy's theory of knowledge.” McEvoy goes on
to predict: “This will probably mature in time into some form of JTB theory, by
the age of 10, but his first theory of knowledge is largely omniscience-based.”
I suppose this is an inductivist bias: i.e. to presume that Rudy’s theory of
‘knowledge’ will ‘mature’ (“probably,” admittedly) into some form of the
anti-Gettier “JTB” theory. “JTB” is philosophicalese jargon for Plato’s view of
‘episteme’ as ‘_J_ustified _T_rue _B_elief’. Why not predict that Rudy may
turn a neo-Kantian? Admittedly, McEvoy’s rhetoric (I love to overuse this word)
is to contrast what Rudy’s theory of knowledge may be with what it is now –
“his first theory of knowledge is largely omniscience-based” – i.e. concerns
the universal quantifier, “all”. McEvoy goes on: “Rudy had a good relationship
with omniscience to start with. At four he would declare, usually at the end of
an exchange, “I know everything”. Things dipped - and sometimes Rudy would
later say “I didn’t know that”.” The implicatures of
i. I know everything. --- are difficult to fathom. In symbols:
ii. K(Ap)p --- i.e. for every proposition “p”, the utterer knows
it. A. J. P. Kenny considers this in his “The god of the philosophers”, since,
well, omniscience is one of His attributes (God’s, that is, not Kenny’s).
McEvoy goes on to contrast (i) with
iii. I didn’t know that. -- i.e.
iv. I did not know that.
Grice calls this – after Kiparsky and Kiparsky – a ‘factive’. It may be assumed
that it is an ENTAILMENT (not an implicature) of (iv) that what “that” stands
for is true. But is it? Suppose Queen Elizabeth – the Spanish one, who sent
Columbus to sail away – is confronted by Columbus on Columbus return.
v. The earth, your majesty, is not flat – but round. -- And now
we have the Queen uttering Rudy’s (iv)
iv. I did not know that. -- The entailment seems to be that the Queen
BELIEVES (and in fact KNOWS, now that Columbus has ‘informed’ her) that the
earth is not flat, but round. In his “Objective Knowleddge,” Popper does not
discuss the implicatures of “I did not know that” on p. 89. McEvoy goes on:
“But [Rudy] kept the flame going in other ways e.g. “Donal knows everything”.”
This may be rendered, by Grice, ambiguous. It does not include a ‘that’-clause,
as J. L. Austin. Is it equivalent to
vi. For any p, Donal McEvoy knows that p. -- I don’t think so.So
what is ‘everything’. In the recent film, “The theory of everything,” we are
NOT told. The difficulties of formalism were known to Grice – who knew ALMOST
everything (as opposed to ‘anything’). McEvoy goes on:
“This led to the following exchange, beginning Donal to Rudy:
D: Remember we mentioned Albert Einstein before: he was the first person to
explain why the sky is blue./ R: You know everything./ D: No one knows
everything, not even Albert Einstein. I certainly don’t know everything./ R:
You do. I know you do. And I know a lot. Don't I?”
In vii. No one knows everything -- McEvoy is of course
providing a Popperian refutation to the ‘existential’, as it were, claim or
utterance by Rudy (“Donal knows everything”). The addition “not even Einstein”
may be deemed rhetoric. Rudy’s paradox arises with
viii. I know McEvoy knows everything. -- This, as Grice realises,
concerns Hintikka’s logic of ‘knowledge’ and belief’. In symbols:
ix. K(R(D(K(Ap)p))) -- i.e. if Rudy KNOWS that McEvoy knows
everything, Rudy is providing, via entailment, rather than cancellable
implicature, his support to the included clause, “McEvoy knows everything”. To
refute an unembedded clause is not as easy as it is to refute an embedded one
(“No one knows everything”). For how do you refute that Rudy does not KNOW, but
THINKS he knows, that McEvoy knows everything? Rudy’s
x. I know a lot. -- may be rendered ambiguous by Grice. In
Wittgensteinian parlance, this may be rendered as
xi. Rudy thinks that he knows a lot of _propositions_. -- As Geary
points out, ‘lot’ is usually ambiguous – “a lot of apples,” “a lot of
propositions”. “a lot of lots”. While Jason Stanley would argue that the
context should make it obvious a lot of WHAT the utterer is referring to, this
may not usually is the case with Griceian speakers and utterers and their
co-relative addressees. McEvoy goes on: “Soon Rudy was back on track, and one
of his favourite sayings, after anyone else said anything, was “I know that”.”
This in a way relates to “Queen Anne is dead”. As Grice notes, the implicature
of this utterance is
xii. Everybody knows that.
-- But of course we have to distinguish between ‘everybody’ and Rudy. The
implicatures however are similar. “I know _that_.” Is usually uttered with the
attending implicature that the utterer is trying to surprise his addressee and
challenge him by noting that something is the case when the addresee thought it
wasn’t (in this case, a piece of Rudy’s alleged knowledge). McEvoy goes on:
“For example, someone on television recently talked about playing chess.
-What’s chess? - It’s a game. I played it when I was a bit older than you. I’ll
teach you some time. - O yeh, I know it. - Yeh? - I played it at camp. - When?
- Last week. - Who with? - Rowan, Leif and Arlo. - It’s usually for two
players. - Yeh, I know. Me and Rowan played and they played. - How did it go? -
Good. - How good? - I won. - Yeh? - Yeh. Two-nil. - What about them? - Huh? -
Leif and Arlo. - They were like....two, no, eh, maybe...four-four. - And you
were? - Two-nil. - Are you sure about that? - Hmm, maybe….It was nil-nil. Yeh,
yeh - it was nil-nil. - Remember we were talking about Albert Einstein once:
the person who explained the sky is blue because of how light waves refract
across the spectrum at distance? - Yeh, I know that.”
In this reported exchange, McEvoy contrasts the use of ‘know’ with the use of
“to be sure of” – that Sir Alfred Ayer found cognate – for Ayer, knowledge is
certainty --. There is the proposition that Rudy “knows” chess.
xiii. Rudy knows chess. -- should be rendered ambiguous by Grice in
terms of Ryle’s know-that/know-how distinction. Rudy may know that chess
involves this and that rule, aor Rudy may plainly know HOW to play chess. Grice
thought that these two uses of ‘know’ were so “disparate” “that different words
should be used”. (“Of course one can know how to ride a bike without knowing
that this involves a finite number of propositions – and someone may be a
master of teaching others to ride a bike without himself riding one.”). McEvoy
also makes reference to
xiv. Rudy knows that chess is played between two players.
Which is an example of one of the many rules that chess involves.
(Incidentally, Grice played chess on the phone with George Myro, if you need to
know – “for hours,” Grice’s wife would complain. In the exchange:
xv. D: Einstein explained the sky is blue because how how light
waves refract.
R: I know that. -- Grice should be able to ambiguate that: R’s claim may be to
his knowledge that Einstein explained that, or to his knowledge that the way
light waves refract is the ‘explanans’ for the explanadum, ‘the sky is blue’.
Geary says that
xvi. The sky is blue. -- Literally means “the sky is anything BUT
blue.” – but this leads us to Grice’s philosophy of perception (and the
Molyneux problem) rather than the intricacies of ‘know’.
But you knew that.
Cheers,
Speranza
