The main idea to be questioned is whether chianti will go well with fava beans
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Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2017 12:55 AM
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Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Witters & Sons
In "Wittgenstein sends us shopping," McEvoy had written:
"The TLP begins "The world is all that is the case" - which seems simple and
straighforward at one level, but what would it mean to deny it? What picture is
given by saying "It is false that the world is all that is the case". What else
could be the case?"
For the record, the passage where Grice subtly contrasts
i. It is not the case that [the world is all that is the case]
and
ii. It is false that the world is all that is the case.
comes from his “Presupposition and Conversational Implicature," one of his
favourite unpublications.
Grice writes: “Furthermore, the implicature seems to have a very high degree of
nondetachability.”
If McEvoy calls “The Causal Theory of Perception” that he read at Oxford, he’ll
recall that ‘nondetachability’ is a feature of the type of implication Grice is
concerned with in that essay – in the excursus to be more precise –
Grice goes on: “Many of what SEEM to be other ways of SAYING, APPROXIMATELY,
what is asserted by “[The world is not all that is the case]” ALSO CARRY the
[…] implicature, for example, “It is not the case that [the world is all that
is the case],” “It is false that [the world is all that is the case],” “It is
not true that [the world is all that is the case.” Of course is the truth-value
gap theory is WRONG, there will be a way of ASSERTING just what is asserted by
“[The world is not all that is the case]” that LACKS this implicature, namely,
a Russellian expansion of it, e.g. “It is not the case that [there is one and
only one item which is the world.”
Grice grants: “But all that this BREAKDOWN OF NONDETACHABILITY would show would
be that the presence of the implicature depends on the manner of expression.”
Since, well, nondetachability is not as essential as it seems!
Grice used to complain that, unlike Austin, he always kept implicatures clear,
and he was irritated that the meaning/implicature distinction was "often
ignored" by Austin so blatantly, and "apparently never even recognised" by
Witters himself (Paul Grice, "Prejudices and predilections, which become the
life and opinions of Paul Grice" -- another of Grice's favourite
unpublications).
Cheers,
Speranza