[lit-ideas] Re: Presumptive Meanings: Geary vs. Davidson
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 17:53:29 -0500
My last post today!
On top of what Geary says, when Levinson finished his big book on
conversational implicature, he was looking for a title. He came up with one of
Geary's favourite words: 'presumptive':
http://www.amazon.com/Presumptive-Meanings-Generalized-Conversational-Implic
ature/dp/0262621304/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423607880&sr=8-1&keywords=Presum
ptive+Meanings
Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature
When we speak, we mean more than we say. In this book Stephen C. Levinson
explains some general processes that underlie presumptions in communication.
This is the first extended discussion of preferred interpretation in
language understanding, integrating much of the best research in linguistic
pragmatics from the last two decades. Levinson outlines a theory of
presumptive
meanings, or preferred interpretations, governing the use of language,
building on the idea of implicature developed by the philosopher H.P. Grice.
Some of the indirect information carried by speech is presumed by default
because it is carried by general principles, rather than inferred from
specific assumptions about intention and context. Levinson examines this class
of
general pragmatic inferences in detail, showing how they apply to a wide
range of linguistic constructions. This approach has radical consequences
for how we think about language and communication.
In a message dated 2/10/2015 3:21:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx asks in a post he provocatively calls, "Truth,
Justice, and the American Way: "Am I wrong to presume that all knowledge is at
best presumption?"
Tertulian would say "at worst". ("Have you noticed that in ordinary
conversation, 'at best' and 'at worst' are almost interchangeable?" -- Wooster
to
Jeeves).
Geary goes on:
"So all of this is just "let's assume that..."? It doesn't matter, of
course, but I'd kind of like to know because, well, you know, my emotional
life, it sort of matters to me and I don't want to get all bent out of shape
over a mispresumption."
This is a double-prefixed one. Double prefixed ones are lexemes that, as
the name implies, bear two prefixes:
'pre-' and 'mis-'.
There are many of them, but the order of prefixes is not allways
interchangeable. Cfr. premissumption.
---
Geary goes on:
"I realize that my presumptions [are] nothing more than the product of my
world -- the old "Always already immersed in a world" thing, you know? I
am my culture and I don't know if it's possible for me to ever be not my
culture, even when I reject parts of my culture, that too comes out of my
culture."
Strictly, culture applies to agricultural peoples only. Nomads don't have
one, nor do they presume to have one.
culture:
mid-15c., "the tilling of land," from Middle French culture and directly
from Latin cultura "a cultivating, agriculture".
Geary goes on:
"But I would sure hate to get all worked up only to realize that what I was
all worked up over was just mis-presumption on my part, stemming from my
unique culture."
The paradox here is that the presumption that your presumption is only a
mispresumption is also a presumption. It could be an orthopresumption.
("Mis-" sometimes applies to 'wrong' -- "mis-use"; the antonym should be
"ortho-", right, as in 'orthodoxy'.
"ortho-", prefix, meaning: straight, upright, rectangular, regular; true,
correct, proper," now mostly in scientific and technical compounds" in in
variants of Geary's terminology, as in orthopresumption.)
Geary goes on:
"That, in fact, I could be completely wrong about my understanding of
everything. EVEN what I'm writing right now. But you've got to admit that
that's highly unlikely -- I mean, come on, a man of my intelligence --
wrong??
Get real. So I presume I [am] right in all this."
Davidson once said that there is transcendental justification, as he
called it, to the effect that AT LEAST one of my beliefs (he meant 'his') has
to
be TRUE.
So we may call Geary Davidsonian or Davidson Gearian.
Cheers,
Speranza
"Since knowledge of the world is inseparable from other forms of knowledge,
so global epistemological scepticism — the view that all or most of our
beliefs about the world could be false — turns out to be committed to much
more than is usually supposed. Should it indeed turn out that our beliefs
about the world were all, or for the most part, false, then this would not
only imply the falsity of most of our beliefs about others, but it would also
have the peculiar consequence of making false most of our beliefs about
ourselves — including the supposition that we do indeed hold those particular
false beliefs. Although this may fall short of demonstrating the falsity of
such scepticism, it surely demonstrates it to be deeply problematic." --
Davidson entry in Stanford.
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