I have no quarrel with people deciding to title their posthumous collections. I
do however take conceptual offense to people doing so posthumously (whether
deciding or actually tilting). My misattribution to Mike G was comedic in
intent (implicature?). An intent which obviously misfired with some. ("Oh, but
it's always the author's fault!")
Student (who missed a number of classes): "Walter, you keep talking about
reading philosophically. What does that mean? Do you have to read a lot of
philosophy to do that?"
Walter (who never missed a class): "No, I know many people who have spent quite
a bit of time reading and talking about philosophy but who have never quite
picked up the disposition of reading philosophically. I think that to read
philosophically is, first, to read very slowly so that your reading is
focussed, concentrated on what you're reading, rather than on the laundry in
the washing machine or on your boyfriend sitting next to you on the couch. And
then it means you're reading not simply the words in black & white before you
but you're reading for the concepts these words aim to express."
Walter O
MUN
Quoting dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx:
In a message dated 11/4/2015 11:27:44 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
wokshevs@xxxxxx asks: "Can one not understand the meaning of a word (or
series of
words) well enough but understand little of the concept being
represented/expressed by that word
(or series)? For example: [Lawyer Geary] seems to understand the meanings
of the words in the expression "titling one's posthumous collection" but he
may NOT understand in any comprehensive manner the network of conceptual
inferences and entailments in which that expression is embedded. So the
inference that the expression entails one must be dead in order to be able
to
be titling one's posthumous collection is a conceptual one. One that is
usually false, of course. Or am I titling at windmills here?"
Well, I'm sticking with lawyer Geary, because of the subject line, of
course.
I think we have to distinguish between
i. implicature
ii. entailment
and
iii. disimplicature
It is controversial that knowing (I never use that gerund) what a concept C
means (because it's utterers who mean) entails knowing what C entails
(less so, implicates, or disimplicates, because, again, it's utterers who
implicate or disimplicate).
So surely one can decide to title one's posthumous collection of papers.
In fact, Grice did just that, "Studies in the Way of Words", which came out
in 1989 and thus it's usually called 'posthumous', because Grice died in
1988.
Then there's the issue of keyword: COMPOSITIONALITY, e.g. the meaning of
iv. posthumous.
I never liked the general implicatures of the term.
Literally, 'posthumous' means "born after the death of the originator"
(author or father), from Late Latin posthumus, from Latin postumus "last,
last-born," superlative of posterus "coming after, subsequent" (see
posterior).
However, this was unfortunately altered in Late Latin (by those illiterate
monks) by association with Latin humare "to bury," suggesting death; the
one born after the father's death obviously being the last.
An Old English word for this was æfterboren, literally "after-born", which
was posthumously used by King Alfred -- as he wrote, "The one born after
the father's dead is OBVIOUSLY the last."
And right he was, too. He was the Last Anglo-Saxon King.
--- Not yet "The last of England" (a title of a nice pre-raphaelite
painting).
or Wagner's "Rienzi", the last of the Roman tribunes.
-- As a consequence, I never say "last" but "latest".
Cheers,
Speranza
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