We are considering the implicatures of "Brexit," recently referred to by McEvoy
("it may need further research" -- implicature: what if the referendum involves
fraud?)
Geary takes up the example of Grice -- born in England when England was not
part of the European Union, that would be what counts: Grice is not a European
philosopher. Similarly, since Russell was born in a part that was THEN Wales,
makes Russell a Welsh philosopher (but not European, of course).
Geary ponders on the implicatures of "Brexit":
"I don't give a tinker's damn whether Grice was a European philosopher or a
Japanese philosopher or any kind of philosopher at all."
The damn of a tinker should not indeed be given freely; so I agree with the
sentiment of Geary's enigma: he don't [sic] give a damn. Grice would say that
he DO give a tinker's damn, with the attending implicature that the damn of a
tinker is valuable -- and that giving it "as a gift" should always be welcome.
Note that in the above Geary is playing with the Davidsonian inference on
'adjectives':
i. I like red apples.
---- Therefore, I like apples.
ii. Grice is a European philosopher
--- Therefore, Grice is a philosopher.
(The implicature behind: "I don't give a tinker's damn whether Grice is a
European philosopher or any kind of philosopher _at all_.").
The interpolation of Grice being a Japanese philosopher may, under a
circumstances, be dubbed, metaphorically, a red herring (Japan's flag is red +>
implicature: all red -- "Surely cancellable: if I say that the Japanese flag is
red, I surely don't mean my addressee to take it as an ENTAILMENT, but merely a
cancellable implicature, that the flag is all red).
Geary goes on:
"Right now all I care about is TRUMP. Dear old Donald, that is. But what is
he? An enigma? A satyr? A pig boy? A philosophical miscarriage? A sleazy,
greasy Caesar? Only in America."
The implicature of the nominal phrase:
iii. Only in America.
was first used by Washington -- but some say by Columbus ("I will name this
continent "America" in honour of you, Amerigo!").
The implicature seems to be:
iv. Only in America these things happen.
This possibly invites a different implicature from:
v. These things happen only in America.
"Only" is one of the most prolific implicture-inviters of words (vide: J. D.
Atlas, "The importance of being 'only'"). iv and v still differ from:
v. These things happen in America only.
The idiom is considered an idiom since there are few things that happen only in
America. And I have never heard the phrase meant LITERALLY (but only
implicaturally). It would be used literally in scenarios like:
vi. Only in America the capital is Washington, DC.
But since every schoolboy knows that (vi) becomes "otiose" as Grice would have
it, and hardly cooperative ("for the purposes of the conversation in which you
are engaged.")
Geary goes on:
"Of course over there in England which swings like a pendulum do, you boys got
your Brexit going. Have fun with that."
Apparently, the Scots ain't. They take "Brexit" as evidence that Scotland
should NOT be part of the Union. Grice's father thought that he was a Scot. He
once told Grice: "Your surname, son, means 'pig' in Scots. Bear with it."
Geary goes on:
"Meanwhiles we's gots the guns going full blast. We knows how to do the deed,
and do it right whether in the day or in the night, in the church, or in the
school or in the pub or place of work or movie show. We know, baby, we know
how to mow them down like a scythe in the hay. Hey, hey! All hail then, to them
that prosper so: Yes! "Cheers, cheers for the NRA," once again they saved the
day. Let us sing a song in celebration of the NRA in anticipation of the next
AR 15 foray: Let's sing: America! America! God shed His lead on thee, And
drown in blood thy brotherhood From sea to bleeding sea. We're talking about
the Second Amendment here, folks, what are you, some kind of pussy Communist?
Don't you know that NRA stands for Nihilism Run Amok."
In Kierkegaard's interpretation (vide his "My New York Diary"). Oddly, the NRA
once had only two members ("We'll call it association, right."). The
association ("Nihilism Run Amok") was founded on Nov. 16, 1871 by William
Conant Church (no connection with the C. of E. to which Grice belongs) and
George Wood Wingate (the surname "Wingate" refers to horse racing: the win gate
is the gate from which the winning horse left the race).
"Nihilism Run Amok" is, for the record, the oldest continuously operating civil
rights organization in America. the second oldest is the Grice Association -- a
club for the defense of a Scottish variety of pig.
Geary goes on:
"God save the NRA. Annie get your gun, let's go have a little fun. Ripped
apart bodies -- woooweee! by God, that there is the fucking unmitigated truth,
and them flies buzzing about them ripped apart intestines -- I'm telling you
the truth -- they ain't no implicature, by Grice."
Well, if "Grice" does mean, as Grice's father thought, a Scottish sort of pig,
surely you can shoot a pig. It's not sensible, because there are more ways of
killing a pig than shooting him (or her). In some parts of the world, the pig
is a sacred animal, and cannot be shot (under any circumstances). The grice,
alas, was never domesticated, and is now extinct (It was shot to extinction).
But if "Grice" means, as Grice preferred, "grey" ('gris') in Anglo-Norman (he
spelled his name Paul de Grice), the implicature may be that Grice's ancestor
had grey hair. By the same token, Grice is a sort of Whitehead, another surname
(born by another philosopher, incidentally) that means that your ancestors had
a head full of white hair. It's all different from yet another philosopher,
Grosseteste, which implicates merely that his ancestor had a big ('gross') head
('testa') and that he was Italian.
The implicatures of
vii. Grice is a European philosopher.
seems to involve a deictic element, and as such to be read as being attached to
a time index. Thus,
viii. 'Grice is a European philosopher' is true as long as England remains in
the European Union; false otherwise.
When Julius Caesar crossed the Channel to get to Britain, the idea (his idea)
was that England was a Roman colony (as it was). Adriano, the emperor, thought
similarly, and he built a wall to prove it ("Hadrian's wall"). In England,
Adriano gets aspirated as "Hadrian", unless you are a Cockney and drop the 'h'.
The usual distinction used by English philosophers (such as Grice was) is:
ix. The continental-analytic distinction.
The idea is that by "Europe" we implicate "the European continent" and not its
attending isles (such as Great and Minor Britain -- i.e. the Republic of
Ireland). This distinction (ix) is said to be spurious in that surely
"analysis" was created by Aristotle, and developed by Leibniz, who were
'continental'. It is also spurious is that since England was part of the
European Union, a lot of scholars started to turn continental philosophy
popular in, of all places, Cambridge (Oxford always remained insular -- "an
island totally surrounded by land," to echo Gilbert and Sullivan in
"Barataria").
Cheers,
Speranza
