RT list: "No man is an island"

In a message dated 7/9/2009 4:49:25 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
georgkj@gmail.com writes:
http://csmn.uio.no/podcast

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Thanks for the link. Wish if other list members check this and let me know
if the talk abruptly ends? I will try later today and report.

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I started with R. Carston's lecture.

A little note about those Grice tapes -- at the UC/Berkeley. S. R. Chapman
notes that there are quite a few of these in the "H. P. Grice Collection"
at UC/Berkeley -- among the items in the 13 big cardboard boxes. Grice
hoped that he'd get money from the Philosophy Depart. and UC/Berkeley at large
to fund the 'transcription' of these! So let's hope for the future.

-----

As I say, I have not been able to finish the hearing, but I enjoyed the
references to the 'simile': Carston's talk is indeed entitled, "Metaphor,
simile, and metarepresentation", and she mentions the (corresponding) similes
for each metaphoric specimen.

--- I have explored metaphor at large in other places, but as (I think
first J.R. Searle) has pointed out, "No man is an island" poses an interesting
one. To me, call me orthodox Gricean, it's one of the silliest truisms
I've ever heard -- but then it was J. Donne, right? A little _protestant_ man.
My friend L. J. Kramer has suggested, "No man is an archipelago" as a
variation on the same theme.

---- Elsewhere I have mainly devoted myself to the ONLY metaphor Grice
includes as (what it is in classical rhetoric), something of the nature of a
'figure of speech' (skhema lexeos versus skhema gnoseos). (I started
listening to D. Sperber's talk too where he mentions the origin of 'meta-language'
-- indeed, coined by Russell vs. the object-language.

What it could be of interest here is to re-imburse the view of the
orthodox Gricean with his (Grice's) anti-Wittgensteinian outbursts. In
'Prolegomena' Grice mentions:

i. A fork cannot look like a fork.

-- as a falsism, as I say -- i.e. the opposite of the truisms he loved --
'odd but true', 'otiose but true'. For surely from (i) we can derive

ii. A fork is not like a fork

a similarly otiose, odd, _falsism_. ("Some like Witters, but Moore's my
man" was the ultimate Oxonian relentless literalism credo).

--- Now, if one does "identity" in the OED one notes that it was indeed a
philosophical jargon of vintage times. If we say

a fork = a fork

This would have Saul Kripke criticise us.

But suppose we interpret them _rigidly_. So that indeed, we do want to say
that

this fork = this fork

Now, is 'identity' _not_ a case of 'simile'? I'm expressing vaguely (or
loosely -- as Sperber/Wilson would say) but I hope not unitelligibly.

Surely, to adhere to the orthodox Gricean view we would have to say that

x = x

then

x is _like_ x.

Now, to apply to

iii. You are the cream in my coffee.

(oddly, this should spell

iiib. You're the cream in my coffee -- since he (Grice) should be quoting
from the 1929 song and 'You _are_' doesn't scan).

The 'corresponding simile' in Carston's parlance would be

iv. You are _like_ the cream in my coffee.

which would be a truism. I once presented this in conversations with L. M.
Tapper and R. Vanegas, and I recall their challenge: try to mention TWO
THINGS which have NOTHING alike. I failed!

---
So, if metaphor is an ellipsed (?)  simile -- that's all we are doing at 
the 'meta-representational' level, in terms  of beliefs and intentions:
U has uttered 'You're the cream in my  coffee'
U wants me, A (addressee) to believe that U intends  that...
etc.
-----
In a conference organised by M. Dascal on  reasoning, I put forward indeed 
the view of 'continuity' that R. Caston refers  to. 
I have to rush now. But I see that both R. Carston and D. Sperber  keep 
referring to the 'eighties' -- I first thought that Sperber was talking  about 
the seventeenth eighties (alla Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics), but no, it  
is the 1980s! -- so -- why not give it a more vintage and say the nineteen  
seventies? After all, the seminal Sperber/Wilson (or was it Wilson/Sperber) 
was  _Pragmatics Microfiche_ as cited in Levinson, Pragmatics, and that was 
1977, if  repr. in Werth a 'decade' later. Of course Wilson had been 
publishing since the  1960s as we indeed owe much of what Horn calls the WJ-40 to  
_her_!
Students of classical rhetoric will be pleased that when 'skhema'  was tr. 
as 'figura' by Quntilian, the _literal_ (shall we say) 'uses' where  
considered just as 'figurative' as the _properly_ (meta- or trans-figurative)  ones.
"Metaphor", 'meta-representation, have a good 'family resemblance'  to it, 
and 'meta' was indeed Latin, 'trans-'. Metaphor being 'transpositio'.  Now, 
what would be a non-hybrid for 'meta-representation'. Now that's a  
mouthful: pre-sentation, re-present-ation, meta-re-pre-sentation. Surely the  Greeks 
would call it 'meta-phantasma'? 
Later,
Cheers,
J.  L. Speranza
The Grice Club, etc.
The  Swimming-Pool Library
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