Helm quotes Essay 106 from Kenko’s “Idleness,”:
Kenko writes:
“One priest was on his way up to Kyoto when he met on a narrow path by a woman
riding on a horse, whose groom, through clumsy leading, caused the priest’s
horse to fall into the ditch (along with the priest). The priest scolded the
groom most angrily, saying “What extraordinary rudeness is this? See here!
There are FOUR grades of “disciples”: a “nun” is lower than a “monk,” a “male
lay believer” is lower than a “nun,” and a “female lay believer” is lower than
a “male lay believer.” This is monstrous conduct, for a “female lay believer”
to drive a “monk” into the ditch!” The groom said ‘I cannot make out what you
are saying, sir’, and at this the monk, fuming still more, shouted: ‘what
sayest thou, fellow without doctrine or practice?’ And then looking as if he
felt he had used words beyond measure insulting turned his horse around and
fled! Surely a very noble dispute!”
I suppose Kenko’s implicature is that he disagrees with the fourfold gradation.
The groom’s utterance, as reported by Kenko:
i. I cannot make out what you are saying.
may implicate: “because you are saying nonsense.” Apparently, the monk does
realise this when he seems to have regretted having “used words beyond measure”
in his “insulting.”
The ‘nobility’ of the dispute may be a further implicature on Kenko’s part to
the effect that, by refusing to make sense of the monk’s fourfold rank
divisions, it was the groom who was being ‘noble’?
This may relate to Popper. Putnam famously introduced the idea of the ‘social’
and linguistic ‘division of labour’. Suppose someone wants to argue:
ii. A pumpkin is a fruit.
Suppose this one is Grice. Then Strawson, dressed for Hallowe’en, confronts him
and challenges him, with: “No”
iii. A pumpkin is a vegetable.
According to Putnam, and possibly Popper, it is up to scientists to decide.
This reminds me of Winnie-the-Pooh, actually. In “Goodbye Christopher Robin,”
Christopher Robin explains a few fact to his father about bees. “You’re a good
entomologist,” A. A. Milne says. “What’s that, dad?” “An insect student.”
And stuff.
Cheers,
Speranza
Linguistic division of labour: A hypothesis introduced by Putnam in his article
“The Meaning of ‘Meaning.’” Language is used in a community, and a community is
divided into many subsets. A word in a language may have different meanings and
extensions , depending on its different references and the occasions on which
it is used. The expert speakers may know all facets of the word and be aware of
its various distinctions, but this will not be the case for average speakers.
Not all of them can know all the distinctions or the exact extension. They use
the word in the way that is accepted by the subset of the community to which
they belong. By virtue of this principle, Putnam tries to indicate that not
every term is a description, and that the extension of each term is at least
partly determined socially rather than in the mind of the individual speaker.
“Every linguistic community exemplifies the sort of division of linguistic
labour just described, that is, possesses at least some terms whose associated
‘criteria’ are known only to a subset of the speakers who acquire the terms,
and whose use by the other speakers depends upon a structured cooperation
between them and the speakers in the relevant subsets.” Putnam, “The Meaning of
‘Meaning.’”
