McEvoy brings to our attention a memorable quote by Grice -- in one of his
(Grice's, not McEvoy's) 'unpublications':
McEvoy writes:
"Grice had it best when he wrote "Anyone who thinks 'implicature' has much
significance, or marks a major advance, is the kind of idiot who mostly attends
my lectures - God help us"".
This begs the question as to whether an unpublication can be written. It can.
Grice did not use 'unpublication' freely. Strictly,
i. The sun is one of Grice's unpublications.
is true. But Grice stuck with the IMPLICATURES of 'unpublication':
ii. An unpublication by Grice is a hand-written document which is now deposited
in the Bancroft Library, UC/Berkeley.
The handwritten note (on a cigarette packet, actually) reads, as McEvoy quotes
it:
iii. Anyone who thinks _implicature_ [Grice loved to underline things] has much
significance, or marks a major advance _in quantum physics_, is the natural
kind of an idiot (in Aristotle's use of 'idiot' to mean, 'a private individual
with the rank of a citizen') who mostly [i.e. in a 75%] attends my university
lectures."
iii correlates with (iv). When asked, at Wellesey, to define his "Play Group"
he wrote a little handwritten note that reads:
iv. I should be happy to say that the Play Group, as I call it, is composed of
the class of all those Oxford philosophers, like myself, who have no other
class."
His implicature was a play on Mengenlehre, which is the way the Huns used to
call set theory. Grice is also trading on the implicature of the idiom, "a
touch of class" -- as when we say that Grice was 'classy', i.e. into the
classics. (Vide Sainsbury: "Paradoxes" -- the 'barber paradox', Russell's take
on Mengenlehre).
McEvoy's emphasis on
v. "who mostly attends my lectures"
requires some knowledge (which McEvoy, as a good Oxonian, takes for granted)
but which may invite the wrong implicature in, say, Cambridge. As a Fellow of
St. John's, Grice was mandated to TUTOR. Is a tutorial a lecture? No. A lecture
is given in Oxford by LECTURERS. Grice, as it happens, was of course not a
professor at Oxford (the three philosophy chairs, Wykeham, Waynflete and White,
were all occupied during his time there -- thus his transfer to Berkeley where
he became Full Professor on the spot), but he WAS a "University Lecturer".
vi. A university lecturer, in Oxford, is supposed to lecture.
This is not tautological. The tautology is:
vii. An Oxford university lecturer lectures.
This is defeasible:
viii. Except when she is sleeping, etc.
It may be argued that McEvoy may also be implicating that Grice was a FBA
("fellow of the British Academy" for the ignoramus). As such, Grice had to
lecture, but only once. The implicature then is whether McEvoy can use "mostly"
in this scenario, as if were to rephrase Grice's unpublication to read:
ix. Anyone who thinks _implicature_ [Grice loved to underline things] has much
significance, or marks a major advance _in quantum physics_ (rather than
'pragmatics') is the natural kind of an idiot (in Aristotle's use of 'idiot' to
mean, 'a private individual with the rank of a citizen') who mostly [i.e. in a
75%] attended my Henriette Hertz annual philosophical lecture on "Intention and
Uncertainty" at Cumberland House.
(ix) possibly also conveys the wrong implicature that only idiots go to
Cumberland House.
"Implicature" was first used by Grice in the twentieth century. "Inplicatura"
(sic) was used by Sidonius ('implicaturis') to mean "entanglement" a couple of
centuries earlier, but we can dismiss that.
The first time Grice used 'implicature' was indeed in Oxford during one of his
university lectures. He was lecturing on "Logic and Conversation" (a lecturer,
incidentally, has to be distinguished from what Oxonians call "a reader" who
also lectures (the implicature: "he can read", would be otiose). This was in
1965.
In 1967, Grice was invited to Oxford (by Albritton, Chair of Philosophy at
Harvard) to deliver, surprise-surprise -- the bi-annual philosophical LECTURES
named "William James" after William James. In those lectures, Grice repeated
what he had idiosyncratically called an 'implicature', and adds that he will
use the term as "a term of art". The idea was to distinguish himself from, say,
C. K. Grant ("Pragmatic implication", in "Philosophy", the journal of the Royal
Institute of Philosophy). Grice felt that 'implication' may have been thought
by some of his lecturees as "being aequi-vocal", i.e. as having more than one
sense.
"But surely a word cannot have more than one sense!"
He thus (Grice, not Grant) was forced to change the ending of "implicat-" into
"implicat-URE" to distinguish it from "implication" which philosophers were
overusing for things as different as 'Moore's entailment':
x. Snow is white
--- Therefore, snow is white or black.
or Moore's paradox;
xi. If I say "It is raining," I imply that I believe that it is raining; thus,
"It is raining but I don't believe it" becomes a ridiculous thing to say.
Grice found that (xi) was an inconvenient use of 'imply' -- or 'implicate'. "I
would not like to see my 'implicature' as covering cases of both logical
implication or entailment or Moore-type paradoxes." In the case of 'logical
implication', his stock example was the King of France:
xii. The king of France is wise.
ENTAILS there is a king of France.
xiii. The king of France is NOT wise.
merely implicates it. Re: the Moore-type paradox, it is for Grice part of the
definition of 'indicative' -- as in 'indicative mode' -- that when you say
"It's raining" you EXPRESS, rather than 'imply' or 'implicate' your belief that
it is raining.
So there!
But on the whole, the quote by McEvoy is true (as "Snow is white" is true).
Cheers,
Speranza
