[lit-ideas] Join the Grice Club

From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2014 15:30:16 -0400 (EDT)
The Grice Club Barred From Holding Meetings
 
R. Paul reports of an 

"union [which] barred a self-described  “Nietzsche Club” from holding 
meetings on campus because of concerns that the  group, which advertised 
discussions of the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche,  Martin Heidegger and 
Julius 
Evola and which printed the phrase “Equality is a  false God” on its 
posters, was formed to promote fascism or might have ties to  fascist 
organizations."

By the same token, O. Kusturica notes the union  might just as well bar The 
Grice Club's meetings 

Mainly  

>because of examples such as: "She is poor but honest" (implicature:  the 
poor are usually not honest) and >"Have you stopped beating your wife ?"  
(implicature: wife-beating is normal and may be assumed in most >cases,  absent 
concrete evidence of stopping).

Matter of fact, 

"She was  poor, but she was honest"

has the logical form

"p & q"  

and the idea that honesty is incompatible with poverty is what Grice  calls 
a 'social' implicature. He recollected the song from his father's service  
during the Great War:

She was poor but she was honest,
Victim of a rich man's  whim,
First he loved her, then he left her,
And she lost her honest  name. 

Then she ran away to London,
For to hide her grief and  shame;
There she met another squire,
And she lost her name  again.
 
Grice Junior (as he heard Grice Senior sang this) was confused as to line  
8:
 
"How can she lose her name _twice_?"
 
As for:
 
>"Have you stopped beating your wife ?" 
 
I have found that this was used as a sophisma during Mediaeval Times (don't 
 ask the exact date). The Latin adage went:
 
Tu non cessas edere ferrum.
 
I.e. You don't cease to eat iron.
 
Aquinas writes that 
 
"You don't cease to eat iron"
 
ENTAILS
 
that you have been eating iron.
 
Duns Scotus disagreed: it wouldn't be a matter of entailment but what he  
called 'implicatura' (a new formation then, form 'implicare', and the usual  
Latin suffix, '-ura'). 
 
Grice considers:
 
i.
 
Smith has left off beating his wife.
 
In "Causal Theory of Perception"
 
and contrasts it with
 
ii. 
 
Smith has NOT left off beating his wife.
 
The first ENTAILS Smith is indeed a criminal  -- i.e. 
 
iii. 
 
Smith has been beating his wife.
 
The other merely IMPLICATES it and in fact does NOT implicate Smith in any  
crime. Grice tests this with 'cancellability':
 
iv. 
 
Smith has NOT left off beating his wife; in fact he never started; nor he  
has any intention of doing so --.
 
Or:
 
iv. Smith has not left off beating his wife; he is a bachelor.
 
This is slightly different from, to quote R. Paul, "discussions of the  
philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Julius Evola and which  
printed the phrase “Equality is a false God” on its posters, was formed to  
promote fascism or might have ties to fascist organizations."
 
The implicatures of 
 
Equality is a false God.
 
may be worth analysing, and contrasted with those of the utterance:
 
Equality is a true God.
 
("Strictly," Aristotle says in "Analytica Posteriora" iii.567b, 'the true  
and false apply to what is said [ta legomena]' -- and not to 'a God').
 
It is interesting worth noticing that the club members thought of calling  
their thing "The Julius Evola Club", but found it too pretentious -- "and  
exclusive" -- whereas "everyone has more or less heard of Nietzsche"  
(implicature: 'even if they may fail to spell his surname').
 
 
Cheers,
 
Speranza
 
 
 
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[lit-ideas] Join the Grice Club

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