[lit-ideas] Re: Grice's Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 20:36:57 -0230
"Meaning" a pseudo issue? ....... What do you mean?
Walter O
MUN
Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:
> One thing we might need to grant to Popper is that he kept aloof of the
> then-fashionable debates about meaning and stuff. In fact, he said that he
> considered 'meaning' to be a pseudo-issue. Perhaps JL was joking though..
>
> O.K.
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 10:09 PM, Donal McEvoy
> <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
> >
> > >I would agree with Chomsky and Popper that, at some level, 'Colourless
> > green ideas sleep furiously', _IS_ piece of 'nonsense',>
> >
> > JLS, having first indicated that Chom must mean something by the phrase
> > (without making clear whether Chom intends to claim that the phrase has
> > meaning), and then throwing in that Chom means syntax is independent of
> > semantics (i.e. that the phrase is intended to illustrate this [which,
> btw,
> > is not the 'meaning of the phrase' in its usual sense]), finally agrees
> > that the phrase is a piece of nonsense for Chomsky (which was one of my
> > contentions [that the phrase is syntactically correct is irrelevant to
> > this]). Why all the off-point detours only to arrive at agreeing this?
> >
> > Moreover, JLS throws in that the phrase is a piece of nonsense for Popper
> > also - though my post indicated why this is far from necessarily the case
> > (it would depend on what doctrine of sense we stipulate); and JLS throws
> in
> > Davidson's truth-conditional approach to meaning - though my post
> indicated
> > that Popper wants to sharply separate the search for truth from the search
> > for meaning (not offer some truth-conditional theory of meaning).
> >
> > Unfortunately this seems one of those posts where JLS takes what another
> > has posted merely as a jumping-off point for some riffing on points that
> > are presented as if they arise from the original post but which are both
> > largely irrelevant to, and a misinterpretation of, that post. Shame.
> >
> > It might be interesting for JLS (or anyone) to point to any philosophical
> > doctrine of "sense and nonsense" that addresses my point that no such
> > doctrine (afaik) offers anything like an adequate account of the "sense"
> of
> > poetry (as opposed to an account that merely dismisses poetry as nonsense
> > or hides behind an unenlightening claim such as the claim that its sense
> is
> > metaphorical etc).
> >
> > Dnl
> > Ldn
> > On Monday, 28 April 2014, 19:52, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <
> > dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > We are discussing Chomsky vs. Reeve:
> >
> > Notably the claims:
> >
> > i. Chomsky means that colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
> >
> > ii. Reeve means that colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
> >
> > Note incidentally that Reeve's quatrain displays an eye-rhyme: 'mull' and
> > 'full'
> >
> > I have fresh, green ideas, that I am wont to mull,
> > But alas! When life is drab and dull, then curiously,
> > Of grey ideas my troubled sleep is full,
> > No rest then! Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
> >
> > In a message dated 4/28/2014 12:36:42 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> > donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> > >Reeve provides[s] a context where what Chomsky offers as "nonsense" has
> > a
> > sense of sorts: and that this is yet another example where stipulations
> > as
> > to what is "sense" and "nonsense" can be met by constructing apparent
> > counter-examples, and even if those counter-examples will then be
> > stipulated as
> > "nonsense" this only reveals the dogmatic character of the stipulation
> > and
> > how the stipulation flies in the face of the way we may ascribe some
> > "meaning" to many things that are stipulated by philosophers to be
> > "nonsense"
> > [...]."
> >
> > We have to grant that Chomsky did mean something.
> >
> > By uttering "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" Chomksy means that
> > syntax is independent of semantics.
> >
> > Similarly, Carnap (whom Popper knew), by uttering "Caesar is a prime
> > number" meant that syntax is independent of semantics.
> >
> > McEvoy goes on in the post extracted above to note that the issue is
> > _truth_. Indeed, as I would say with Davidson, truth-conditional
> > semantics.
> >
> > Now, while Syntax IS a component in a calculus, and
> >
> > "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously"
> >
> > may be taken as what logicians call a wff (well formed formula) --
> > pronounced 'wuff' -- it should not yield the value '1' (where '1'
> > represents
> > 'true') in the Semantic Component of the same calculus.
> >
> > It would yield possibly '0': i.e. it would be false to say that
> > colourless
> > green ideas sleep furiously.
> >
> > Or rather:
> >
> > It is false that colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
> >
> > McEvoy wonders about the sense of poetry and the 'sense' of poetry. I
> > think
> > this falls within 'metaphor' qua implicature. I.e. We may think that if
> > Grice gives "You're the cream in my coffee" as the example of a metaphor
> > (and
> > Davidson, "The moon is made of cheese"), Reeve gives his own: "Colourless
> > green ideas sleep furiously". He could have added _figuratively_. But
> > oftentimes, such adverbials _kill_ the point of the utterance.
> >
> > Thus as Grice notes, "Ironically, it is a fine day" does NOT work to
> > _implicate_ (via irony) that it is a _dreadful_ day.
> >
> > I would agree with Chomsky and Popper that, at some level, 'Colourless
> > green ideas sleep furiously', _IS_ piece of 'nonsense', but then I don't
> > use
> > 'nonsense' (or 'sense' for that matter -- To echo Grice, "Too Fregeian to
> > my
> > taste").
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Speranza
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
>
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