Well, the reason I did not invoke Gracists here is that you can probably
make it sensible by arbitrarily positing an implicature, whereas I am
interested in the literal meaning. I doubt that an implicature is intended
here,
On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 7:20 PM, Redacted sender jlsperanza for DMARC <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
O. K. writes: "the above announcement is surely false. If I have dialed a
number, I must have imagined it first. If I can imagine it, then it is NOT
non-existent. A number which can be conceptualized but does not 'really'
exist seems to be an impossibility. In other words, once a number is
conceptualized, it exists necessarily. Or no? Perhaps the resident Fregeans
will have some comment on this."
Or the resident Griceists, or the resident Popperians. I would think
Popper would take
i. You have reached a non-existent number.
as paradox in a Goedelian way. Grice would take a different stance.
Although Grice was a friend of J. L. Austin, who translated Frege's
"Number" into English, he (Grice -- I'm less sure about Austin) never read
that essay ("Boring").
It seems that we have a cross-linguistic issue at hand, figuratively. If
that is the exact wording, then indeed, Popper would be right and (i) would
be paradoxical, since 'you' HAVE reached (by dialing) a number that is
connected to someone (or "someone") who has the ability to inform you that
you have dialed a non-existent number.
Grice would say that there is a respect for informativeness here. The
implicature being:
ii. You have dialed a non-existent number; to wit, a customer number which
I expect is what you were trying to dial. For I doubt that your m-intention
in dialing this number, for which a connection to a customer does not
exist, was to hear me informing you that you have dialed a number, for
which a connection to a customer does not exist. Or not.
Oddly, Grice would spend hours on the telephone, with George Myro, playing
what they called 'phone chess'. They lived a bit far away: Grice had moved
to the Berkeley hills, and Myro lived in Oakland.
Austin's and Frege's point about the existence (or lack thereof) of
numbers, while EXPLICATED, since barely the issue under IMPLICATURE.
Cheers,
Speranza
