[lit-ideas] Re: Grice on "worth" and "not worth"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2012 19:39:51 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 6/24/2012 5:56:03 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
"If you can't put it in
symbols, it's not worth saying,"
---
As a matter of fact, I think that dictum by Grice is slightly apocryphal.
I think Grice objected to the use of 'symbol', which he found too
technical a word. "meant" did for Grice ("what U meant", "what the expression
meant" or "means", etc.).
And I think the dictum is apocryphal. It merely serves to have the tollens
by Strawson:
Grice (apocryphal): if you can't put x in symbols, x is not worth saying.
Strawson's retort: "if you CAN put x in symbols, x is not worth saying."
Seeing that Strawson's dictum comes out as rather silly, too, I am
expecting it is apocryphal, too.
McEvoy is right when he metaphorises about 'special effects' ("The phrase
'special effect' is the wrong one, seeing that it suggests that some
effects are NOT special, which is otiose" -- Remarks on Griffith's
"Intolerance").
----
Say it with flowers, the dictum goes.
"It" here means "I love you".
It may be argued that a floral display is not something that belongs to
"what-is-said". Therefore, "say it with flowers" is a BAD metaphor.
-----
"Show" it with flowers -- works perhaps better.
---
And so on.
I was only retrieving the apocryphal commentary by Grice in that it
contains the intelligent phrasing,
"not worth saying"
---
And I was playing with "but worth showing".
It would seem that it's here where Grice and Witters diverge. Grice holds
the primacy of saying and implicating. Things which can't be said are
perhaps not worth saying. This I actually hold is tautologous.
If McEvoy is so convinced that a sense cannot be 'said' by an expression,
then I also hold that this is held as a tautology for McEvoy: similarly an
_elephant_ cannot be shown by an utterance (or said, for that matter).
I'll return to the show/say dichotomy which J. Wager was wondering about
in a separate post.
Horses run swiftly
---- Therefore horses run
Every boy loves some girl.
Re: the former, since the English language IS a set of symbols, "Horses
run swiftly" is already _symbolic_. Re: the latter, I agree with R. Paul that
there is a scope ambiguity, etc. -- and that it can be easily
demonstrated in logical notational terms.
Grice objected to the use of 'symbol' by Peirce. In his "Notes on Peirce",
Grice wants to get away with all the technical terminology by Peirce and
stick with 'mean' instead -- a good old Anglo-Saxon short term ('verb' if
you must).
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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