RT list: Grice to the Mill

Truth-conditions
 
Many essays in the opening issue of International Review of Pragmatics
(2009) deal with truth-conditions. Do we know the 'history' of this 'idea', as
the Germans would put it ('ideengeschichte')?
 
The OED lists 5 such collocations:
 
under 'cut and paste' (ignore the headig -- go to the quote -- my advice to
 OED weekend readers):
 
1976 Jrnl. Philos. 73 148
 
   "The notions of truth and of truth conditions
    are theoretical auxiliaries, to be cut and pasted
    in whatever ways give us the nicest account of the
    assertability conditions."
 
-- only that 'nice' is in the eye of the beholder. This reminds me of M.
Dummett -- I have nothing against his personal appearance. In fact find him
sexy. When S. Pyke photographed him, he said, "I thought it was offensive".
 
 
magic formula
 
 
1991 Nous 25 632
 
"It is usually thought that the magic formula, the ‘logical form’,
captures two birds with one stone -- it articulates both the
syntax and truth conditions of the original English."
 
   -- or 'vernacular' as Grice preferred. For Grice, people spoke in
Russell, or in the vernacular (of Strawson). Talk of _English_ minimises things.
What irritated Grice is that Russell had the cheek to say with a straight
face: "grammar is a 'pretty good' guide to logical form" -- a dictum that
will have Quirk turning in his _bed_.
 
 
non-conjunction
 
1985 Mind 94 614
 
"If we have truth conditions..for n non-conjunctions, then a single rule
lets us generate truth-conditions for the 2n simple conjunctions that can be
formed out of them."
 
--- and as Gazdar notes, in the realm of a dyadic operator, the
truth-conditions are indeed finite. For monadic operators, there are only FOUR
options available:
 
    Np, Tp, Pp, Rp
 

----
tautological
 
----
 
This is perhaps the important quote:
 
1922 tr. Wittgenstein's Tractatus 97 
 
"In the one case the proposition is true for all the truth-possibilities of 
 the elementary propositions. We say that the truth-conditions are  
tautological."
 
We see the caustic use of the 'hyphen' due to Ogden's translation, and  
possibly the first occurrence.
cf. E. Borg, forthcoming, book on Witters.
 
----
 
 
truth, 
 
Indeed, here the actual FIRST quote is provided: 95, rather than the later  
97:
 
1922 tr. Wittgenstein's Tractatus 95 
 
"The proposition is the expression of its truth-conditions."
 
But the OED directs our attention to the 1937 cite:
 
1937 Mind XLVI. 191 
 
"Propositional complexes which are definable by reference to truth  
conditions i.e., to propositions whose truth-values are logically determined by  
the truth-values of their arguments."
 
I love the term 'complex'. Grice uses exactly 'propositional complex' in  
"Reply To Richards", and personally, I used 'content complex' to bring in  
Peacocke's account of sensory input and avoid a commitment not even to  
'propositional'!
 
The third and last quote in OED2 for truth condition is:
 
1978 P. PETTIT in Hookway & Pettit Action & Interpretation 48 
 
Incompatible sentences have truth conditions which we cannot conceive of as 
 being simultaneously fulfilled.
 
-----
 
As per today, the OED still claims Grice is "linguist"
 
 "Introduced by the linguist H. P. Grice (1913-88) in 1967, in a  lecture 
given as one of the 1967-8 William James lectures at Harvard University  and 
first published in 1975.] "
 
which might just as well be true, but not informative enough when he was  
also a philosopher? 
Personally, I would rewrite that as:
 
   "Introduced by the philosopher ..."
 
(Unless 'linguist', vaguely, is used as 'lover of languages', 'person into  
the way of words'?)
 
In any case, it's under 'implicature' (after I discovered the gap in the  
OED reported in the ADS-L) -- in pc with J. S., the editor of the OED -- that 
we  now have the collocation, 'truth-conditionAL'.
 
1977 J. LYONS Semantics II. xiv. 593 
 
"Grice distinguishes two kinds of implicature... Whereas a conventional  
implicature depends upon something additional to what is truth-conditional in  
the normal (i.e. conventional) meaning of words, a conversational 
implicature  derives from a set of more general conditions which determine the proper 
conduct  of conversation."
 
--- I'm glad that I provided the second quote for that:
 
1973 D. F. PEARS in I. Berlin et al. Ess. on J. L. Austin 112 Grice's  
theory of conversational implicature. 
 
--- which I actually shared with J. S. as being first published in the J.  
Canadian Philosophy. I love Pears.
 
R. Carston has an interesting footnote in her essay in I. R. P. re:  
'truth-condition' and Grice. An anonymous referee (which will remain anonymous)  
told her that it's hard to find Grice _saying_ that 'the phrastic' (as I 
propose  to call what is said -- or the radix -- if you must) equates with  
truth-conditions.
 
It is also interesting to check Grice's problem with 'truth' itself, and  
his idea that in fact, 'factual satisfactoriness' should be preferred. (WoW,  
iii).
 
In "Aspects of Reason" he plays with Anscombe's two possible directions of  
fit, and speaks rather of something like the boulomaic direction of fit and 
the  doxastic direction of fit. What he had as 'factual satisfactoriness' 
(where  'satisfactoriness' is strictly defined alla Tarski) is thus qualified 
as the  type of satisfactoriness that our beliefs ('alethic' in our better 
moments)  display -- hence the 'doxastic'. 
 
Pretty jargonistic, but then he loved Grice to the Mill (Chapman  confides).
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
    Grice Club.
 
 
 
 
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