Gloria Laura Vanderbilt Morgan (as the Italians call her). What a woman!
So yesterday HBO released the 'documentary': "Nothing left unsaid".
The book that accompanies sets a problem for the Griceian: "A mother and
son", the subtitle includes: the logical form
i. (Ex)Mx & (Ey)Sy
-- i.e. a mother and _a_ son.
(Grice notes that "a" sometimes invites the wrong implicature: "It would be
odd to say, "I came to a house to be greeted by a dog". It would be
otiose, but surely not false, to utter this to describe the scenario where I
came
to my own house to be greeted by my own dog.").
The title of the documentary is anti-Griceian:
"Nothing left unsaid".
It turns out it is Gloria Vanderbilt's son idea. In his speech he said
something to the effect that the whole point of the documentary is that
"nothing be left unsaid". This reminds me of Tarski. His favourite sentence
was:
ii. Snow is white.
But _THAT_ wasn't said. So Gloria Vanderbilt's son IMPLICATES that,
'within the topical relevance of what you're about to see', "snow is white" is
not one of those somethings that should be implicated but not said.
In fact, it may be argued that since Gloria Vanderbilt communicates so well
with images (so magically well, as Lionpainter will agree) and with
gestures -- the most emotional bits of the documentary -- a LOT was
IMPLICATED,
i.e. left unsaid.
At points, her conversational moves would get interrupted, and leaving just
the implicature, with a causal Old-World charming pronunciation of 'you
know' (of course, for Gettier, you do NOT know -- but 'you know' is used by
the Vanderbilts to invite the implicate, 'I don't need to tell you' --
discussed by Grice in "Ways of Words".
At one point, there is a narrator, and the point is made, very awful, that
Gloria Vanderbilt was not a real Vanderbilt. The point being that Gloria
Morgan was involved. But I suppose it may trigger the wrong implicature that
the real Vanderbilt ("real" is the word that wears the trousers, as Grice
says, "if I may use Austin's awful sexist turn of phrase") is one begat by
one Vanderbilt and another Vanderbilt -- it's a great family -- I mean a big
family -- I mean a large family -- I mean a numerous Vanderbilt -- I mean
a prolific family.
Gloria Vanderbilt does say, she felt like 'an outsider'. But the fact that
when married to that composer she lived in Greenwich made up for it!
LOVE HER
Cheers,
Speranza
