[lit-ideas] Re: Hartiana
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 12:32:59 +0100
Well, if implicatures may even be expected to override logical
implications, it is difficult to see how they can be rationally discussed
or analyzed. Pretty much it seems that statements can be interpreted to
mean whatever Grice / JL want them them to mean, depending on how they are
feeling at the moment. It is easy to see that the 'cooperative maxims' too
are arbitrary enough that they can be used to support almost any inference.
If I say for example that Bob is an automechanic, this can be construed as
overinformative (I didn't really want to know what he does) or
underinformative (I wanted to know much more about him) as suits Grice/JL
and here some kind of implicature apparently arises even though neither
intended nor foreseen.
O.K.
On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 11:45 AM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx for
DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> McEvoy is engaged in some discussion with R. Henning about what Hart would
> have 'approximative equality' (McEvoy's recent example concerns the
> comparative size of breasts in females and males and male employer's
> contracts
> with secretaries).
>
> BREAST is not a keyword in Hart's legal philosophy, but then it shouldn't.
>
> "A structure of reciprocal and obligations" has an effect: "its effect is
> to create among individuals a moral and, IN A SENSE EQUALITY to offset the
> inequalities of nature."
>
> He later develops this into a concept of 'approximative equality'.
>
> Meanwhile, Omar K. is right in stressing that there may be something that
> we may label 'illogical' about implicature. It's not deduction, and an
> implicature is cancellable. Some logicians would label 'meta-linguistic'
> negation ("King Henry VIII did not marry five times; he married six times")
> illogical.
>
> This all has to do with Hart -- whom Grice compares with Mr. Puddle ("our
> man in legal philosophy"). Grice is NOT saying
>
> Hart = Mr. Puddle.
>
> For one, Grice LOVED Hart. He is just using Puddle (not Hart) as an
> example. In what ways can 'legal philosophy' be a maligning qualifier?
>
> We are considering interactions of the sort:
>
> I)
>
> A: This is Mr. Puddle, our man in legal philosophy (+> he's not good at
> legal philosophy)
> B: Aren't you maligning him?
> PUDDLE: No, it's that's he's just MEAN!
>
> Note that in (I) the word "philosopher" is NOT used in either the original
> expression:
>
> i. Mr Puddle is our man in legal philosophy.
>
> nor in the inference:
>
> ii. Mr Puddle is not good at legal philosophy.
>
> So we have to be careful.
>
> I think part of the problem is in "our man" (cfr. "our woman"). Graham
> Greene noted this in "Our man in Havanna".
>
> To be "our man in legal philosophy" may NOT entail that "our man" is a
> philosopher. He may be just good at TEACHING legal philosophy.
>
> Similarly, ""their alleged man in legal philosophy" is not good at legal
> philosophy" does not entail that "their man" is a philosopher.
>
> Surely when Warnock told Grice about a tuttee
>
> "He has beautiful handwriting" (+> He's hopeless at philosophy)
>
> Warnock was not even IMPLICATING that the tutee was a philosopher. So here
> we may have a similar case.
>
> The issue seems to be with the noun, 'philosophy'.
>
> If Puddle is "our man in legal philosophy" he should know 'legal
> philosophy' and many other things too, so a description of him as "our
> man in legal
> philosophy" sort of on occasion maligns him.
>
> If the inference is that IF Puddle is "our man in legal philosophy",
> Puddle is no good at legal philosophy, the issue is not whether Puddle is
> a good
> or bad philosopher but whether Puddle REALISES that philosophy, like
> virtue, is entire.
>
> Perhaps he doesn't -- or worse -- cares!
>
> I think Grice is against this trend he saw in USA: expertise and
> specialisation that he had NOT had to suffer while at Oxford. When
> compiling the
> catalogue to "sell" philosophy at UC/Berkeley, he was asked for what to
> write
> under the line: "Specialty". As it came out, it appeared as: "Specialty:
> Philosophy of Language".
>
> But he had nightmares after that! And his own description in the catalogue
> is more inclusive, listing that he was in charge of graduate courses in
> "Philosophical Problems" and stuff.
>
> It may be different with surgeons.
>
> Or opera singers.
>
> Suppose the manager of La Scala describes a tenor:
>
> "He is our tenor at belcanto melodramma"
>
> That seems to malign the tenor, in that he possibly can sing Verdi, and
> well, too!
>
> Now to Omar's actual wording:
>
> In a message dated 3/22/2015 10:34:14 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:[O]n Grice's own stated premise that
> philosophy is
> entire, his inference that a man is maligned by saying that he is good at
> [legal] philosophy is completely illogical. So either Grice was being
> illogical
> here or he did not really believe that philosophy is an entire virtue."
>
> Well, provided it is an implicature, they (implicatures) ARE often judged
> to be 'illogical'. For example so-called meta-linguistic negation (a sort
> of implicature) has been called 'illogical' negation:
>
> "King Henry VIII did not marry five times; he marry six times."
>
> ----- I would distinguish between:
>
> i. He is our man in legal philosophy.
>
> ii. He is a good legal philosopher.
>
> Indeed, for Grice (i) and (ii) are connected, in some sort of illogical
> (or if you want, defeasible) way, in that (i) yields the NEGATION of (ii),
> i.e.
>
> iii. He is not a good legal philosopher.
>
> That may be because, again, illogically, we tend to read (i) as
>
> iv. He is our man in legal philosophy BECAUSE he would be hopeless at
> teaching anything else!
>
> or
>
> v. ALL HE IS is our man in legal philosophy; we don't think qualified as
> teaching other, more crucial, branches of philosophy.
>
> With Hart, it's all different, since he provided conceptual analyses for
> non-legal notions like
>
> 'intention'
>
> 'decision'
>
> 'certainty'
>
> and
>
> 'responsibility' ("Ascription of responsibility and rights").
>
> and Grice once heard Hart provide a conceptual analysis of
>
> 'carefully' as in
>
> vi. He made the calculation carefully.
>
> and
>
> vii. He cooked the meal carefully.
>
> Grice thought that Hart's conditions for the use of 'carefully' were too
> strong, and Grice also thought that Hart disagreed with Grice on the use
> of
> 'carefully' in examples like
>
> viii. He parked the car carefully.
>
> where
>
> ix. He parked the car.
>
> usually IMPLICATES that he did it 'carefully'. In other words, 'carefully'
> works like 'remember', for Grice:
>
> x. I went to check in at the hotel, and they asked my name, and
> fortunately, I remembered it.
>
> There is nothing wrong with that in terms of truth-conditions or
> truth-value. The thing is TRUE. But there is an IMPLICATURE to the effect
> that
>
> xi. On checking in the hotel, Grice remembered his name.
>
> has a misleading ring to it.
>
> But surely the adage for Oxford's man at implicature was: "Misleading, but
> true".
>
> If a person were enrolled in a course labelled "Legal philosophy" he is
> expected the instructor to answer metaphysical questions about Leibniz.
> That
> seems to be Grice's (and mine!) expectations. Mine are perhaps lower in
> that
> I take, "Dunno" as an answer. More importantly, the instructor should
> PROMOTE the raising of PHILOSOPHICAL questions from those who enrolled in
> the
> course (such as "So, that's Leibniz's law, but with a differAnce, no?").
>
> O. K. was wondering that by focusing too much on Hart's private life we are
> losing track of Hart's contribution to legal philosophy, a point made by a
> few authors who have criticised this professor of criminal law in London
> who (on advice from Mrs. Hart, who survived Professor Hart) unburied
> Hart's
> diaries ('which he should have burnt, anyway', Thomas Nagel says in the
> New
> York Review of Books -- 'his private life was his affair', and Mrs. Hart
> was _notoriously_ indiscreet. One point O. K. makes is that lives of
> professors are 'tedious', a point also made by reviewers of this book by
> this
> criminal law professor --. One was pointing how they must spend most of
> their
> times dealing with 'ungrateful students' -- (Imagine: "The instructor
> didn't
> really answer my question about the co-relation between Leibniz's Law and
> the meta-adjudication law"; or "The instructor didn't really answer my
> question when I asked him if I could go to the bathroom") so there's A
> LOT to
> being 'our man in legal philosophy' and perhaps ANOTHER lot in being the
> greatest legal philosopher ever, as perhaps Hart was!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
>
>
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