Actually it seems that JL was commenting on a post by Donal that was
apparently written in humorous spirit, but since he changed the subject
line the context was not at hand.
On Sun, Dec 31, 2017 at 7:41 PM, adriano paolo shaul gershom palma <
palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
while this speranza insists on his sister grunebaum, unknown to many,
inclusive of myself, and his wife matilda who has immense pressure to
relieve, there was in fact a grunbaum adolph who wrote on poper and freud,
to my knowledge not involve din this cult of idiots groce and pipper etc...
then what fools....
as people who read ought to recall.......
does tis implicate something about speranza?
this is a curious question since the rules of implicature according to
speranza, not to grice, entail that
1 anything happens in oxford
2 crap invented in Oxford is tasty
3 the huge ones..
palma, apgs
On Sun, Dec 31, 2017 at 7:23 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
The idea that x1 and x2 (“Oh uh” and “Oh dear,” in McEvoy’s examples
extracted from the expressions by K) are utterered to mean the _same_
proposition “p” should be given due thought.
*I think that it is pretty safe to say that neither of the above examples
expresses a proposition at all, thus it is mute whether they express 'the
same proposition'. These are more like groans do not represent (or
designate) a specific state of affairs, including a mental state. They
might be suggestive of some mental states, but it is too vague to say which
ones - pleasure, fear, sexual excitement ? At most it might be assumed that
the utterer has some feelings about some situation.
This seems to be as much thought as is 'due' here, if not more.
O.K.
On Sun, Dec 31, 2017 at 3:12 PM, Redacted sender jlsperanza for DMARC <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
McEvoy’s point concerns the interaction of an infant with adults. This
is a specific type of conversation that Grunebaum calls ‘infant-adult.’ It
has to be distinguished from ‘adult-infant.’ What’s the difference? If the
*first* conversational move is by the infant, it’s ‘infant-adult.’ If it
isn’t (entailment: but it’s by the adult) it’s an adult-infant
conversation. Such are the refinements of Oxonian analysis.
McEvoy’s theorem and hypothesis I tried to reformulate in terms of
Grunebaum’s idea of an utterer having a repertoire of procedures to utter x
when the utterer m-intends (or ‘means,’ for short, since this is what ‘m’
stands for) this or that. It’s _basic_ procedures we are talking about
here, which Grunebaum contrasts with _resultant_ procedures (as in “More
toast and less butter” – which can be seen as a ‘molecular’ utterance
composed of the atomic ‘More toast’ and ‘less butter’ – the utterer would
have basic procedures for each of these two atomic utterances, and a
resultant procedure for the molecular utterance.
At one point McEvoy refers to ‘pitch,’ and my reference was meant to be
to Grunebaum’s section on ‘STRESS and implicature’ in the Harvard lectures.
Pitch and stress differ, but they also compare.
The idea that x1 and x2 (“Oh uh” and “Oh dear,” in McEvoy’s examples
extracted from the expressions by K) are utterered to mean the _same_
proposition “p” should be given due thought. It does not seem a logical
impossibility, for one. My emphasis on phonetic transcripts is Oxonian in
nature. It may be argued that the “oh,” may be given a different
transliteration from ‘oh,’ in which case we may indeed have four components
for the two expressions. The ‘oh’ in “oh dear” is perhaps trickier. Virgil,
who spoke Ancient Roman, preferred, “o” _simpliciter_, as in _o dea_. _O_
accompanies a vocative. In this respect, it’s a bit like the ‘o,’ in ‘O, we
ain’t got a barrel of money.’ In ‘O, we ain’t got a barrel of money,’ ‘o’
is noticeable Unstressed – unless it is. “Dear” certainly IS stressed. A
phonetic, phonemic, and suprasegmental transcription of the expressions
should help (or perhaps should not – obscurus per obscurius).
McEvoy attempts to refute the orthodoxy in developmental studies (he
distinguishes between ‘language’ or ‘verbal behaviour’ as Skinner would
prefer) and ‘behavioural development’ more generally. But in any case, one
interesting distinction seems to be between ‘expressive’ and
‘communicative.’ Chomsky and others have argued that this distinction is
perhaps otiose, but perhaps it isn’t. K (or M, where M stands for
Grunebaum’s Matilda) may be willing to express (to themselves, as it were –
as when we say, “I thought to myself”) rather than ‘communicate.’ If the
latter, a form of recognition of the utterer’s intention seems to be the
focus of McEvoy’s theorem and attending hypothesis (McEvoy’s ‘why bother’
and the implicated ‘why worry’) – or not.
A good set of references would be good, especially when the hypothesis
and the theorem involve a couple (hyperbolically) of different authors and
stuff.
If we grant that K or M _implicates_ we must grant that K or M _means_
(as they do) since ‘what is implicated’ is part (if not parcel) of ‘what is
meant.’ McEvoy may be getting at this when he refers to Wittgenstein’s idea
of ‘shades of meaning’ in “Philosophical Investigations.”
McEvoy’s keywords ‘command’ and ‘control’ are interesting in that
‘command’ relates conceptually to ‘desire’. K’s desire and K commands, as
it were. The picture that emerges is an ‘instrumentalist’ one, where K’s or
M’s utterances are used as ‘moves’ in a game meant to realise K’s _goals_
(which are conceptually tied to K’s desires). K’s or M’s
co-conversationalists are mere ancillary agents of this manoeuvre – but
surely the picture can get more complicated. Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
REFERENCES
Biro, J. I. Reply to Suppes.
Chomsky, The John Locke Lectures, Oxford.
Grunebaum, in J. R. Searle, “The Philosophy of Language,” Oxford
Readings in Philosophy.
Suppes, P. The primacy of utterer’s meaning, in Grandy & Warner,
Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends.
