[lit-ideas] Re: Very Like A Whale Disimplicature
- From: "Donal McEvoy" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "donalmcevoyuk" for DMARC)
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 07:10:56 +0000 (UTC)
Whales mean. Signaling falls within the conceptual analysis of the way English
speakers, including Grice and Melville, if not Popper, use this verb.>
This skates over the problem of "levels" of meaning. Bees signal and they may
"mean": but what is the level of their communicative content? A virus may
signal to the body that it is safe to be allowed entry - does the virus "mean"?
It does not help disentangle the important different meanings of meaning, and
the levels of "meaning" that need to be distinguished, to bury the problem of
"levels" under the vacuously wide and unexplanatory claim that these levels all
fall "within the conceptual analysis" of the term "mean".
It's yet another example where philosophers inculcated as to the value of CA
produce something obscurantist and lacking explanatory value but parade it as
if they saying something important. So what if whales "mean" within the concept
as used by "English speakers"? So what if bees "mean" within that concept etc.
when they do their dance? Does this put the language of humans and whales and
bees on the same level?
If they are not on the same level, then we may begin to doubt the argument that
it follows from the fact that humans use disimplicature and synecdoche that
whales do and it follows that bees do.
DL
On Thursday, 28 April 2016, 16:36, Luigi Speranza
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
McEvoy was wondering if a click of a sperm whale can be subject of a Griceist
analysis:
i. By clicking, the whale is meaning that Jonah should not be afraid that the
whale will eat him.
or
ii. By clicking Moby Dick means that he is love with Melville and that he looks
forward to an adaptation of his (Melville's) masterpiece.
Whales mean. Signaling falls within the conceptual analysis of the way English
speakers, including Grice and Melville, if not Popper, use this verb.
In German, "mean"'s cognate, "meinen," means 'opine,' and I would be ungriceist
enough to opine that whether sperm whales opine is, er, a matter of Popperan
unfalsifiable opinion.
Cheers,
Speranza
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