In a message dated 3/1/2016 2:35:04 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx finds Savonarola having confessed his [Savonarola's]
having
invented his [again Savonarola's, not McEvoy's] prophecies is
"understandable"
and adds the reason:
"Almost anyone would confess to murdering their mother at birth under a
relentless drawing out of their implicatures."
I _think_ one of Savonarola's "prophecies" (he [Savonarola] used the word
loosely] was that Adam (of "Adam and Eve" fame) had no mother, but I don't
*think* the Pope was invited therefore to infer that Adam had murdered her
at birth.
In any case, back to McEvoy's embedded question:
McEvoy:
"What is the implicature, if any, triggered [invited -- Speranza] by
[(i)]?"
i. Could we have an explanation of things that does not trigger any
implicature and an explanation of why they don't while other things do?
Grice would think McEvoy (hereafter, "the utterer", U) expects his [i.e.
McEvoy's, not Grice's] addresse (hereafter, "A", the addressee) to think
that McEvoy thinks that the answer to (i) is "No".
The reasoning goes along the lines of
ii. A: Is the Pope Catholic?
(which incidentally, was one of Savonarola's 'implicatures', as read by the
Pope -- which was then re-read as _sarcasm_ worthy of punishment).
There may be a further implicature to the effect that U (McEvoy, that is)
wants to *know*, _simpliciter_ the answer to the question.
But this is not an implicature (as "Is the Pope Catholic?" testifies), in
Grice's strict use of 'implicature', since it is obviously a mere
entailment of McEvoy's ending his utterance with an "?" (or a raising
intonation
pattern, where this oral). And in Grice's parlance:
"?" EXPRESSES, but does not implicate, that the U wants to know.
In general, most things invite implicatures. But an implicature is not
like a baby. Thus, an unwanted baby is still a baby, but an "unwanted
implicature" is an oxymoron. Grice spent a full seminar registering the invited
implicatures, and in Polish, too, of Tarski's
iii. Snow is white.
He found none -- but then he (Grice) didn't speak Polish. Tarski opposes
(iii) to
iv. Grass is green.
on which however Grice found an implicature, since, in some American
dialects, Grice found, 'grass' can mean, via implicature, marijuana, which is
not _all_ green: just the leaves and the stem, but not the root.
Grice's distinctions, between 'implicature' and 'entailment', and between
'implicature' and 'expression', come handy when dealing with Moore's
paradox:
v. It is raining, but I don't believe.
since, before Grice, people (that is, Oxonian philosophers) were referring
to that as a 'pragmatic' implication (C. K. Grant, I. Hungerland, P. H.
Nowell-Smith in "Ethics", Strawson in "On referring") when Grice set them all
right: that you believe that p is NOT an implicature invited by "p" (so "It
is raining" does not implicate "I believe it is raining"). "The natural
thing to say," Grice lectures, "is that by uttering "It is raining" [or 'Snow
is white' as the case might be] U EXPRESSES HIS BELIEF that it is raining.
This comes just out of a clear conceptual analysis of what the indicative
mode is -- versus the imperative and the interrogative."
Cheers,
Speranza
REFERENCES
Tarski, Pojęcie prawdy w językach nauk dedukcyjnych, Warsaw: Nakładem
Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego.
Grice, I can't speak Polish +> nor read it.
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
