RT list: Re: "writers like Wilson and Sperber"

ps. To the three proposals, may I add:
 
     Grice. [T]he force of this consideration SEEMS
 
to be _blunted_ by writers like Wilson and
       Sperber ...
     JLS. You don't mean, "such as"?
     Grice. Such as, No!
     JLS. But who _are_ "writers like Wilson and Sperber".
         You don't mean Robyn Carston, do you? Or Diane
         Blakemore?
     Grice. No. I mean Wilson and Sperber. Surely you are
         not idiotic enough to think that Witters is right when
         he says we can't see a knife and a fork as a
         knife and a fork.
 
                [reference to WoW:
 
 
"Wittgenstein observed that one does not see a knife
  and a fork as a knife and a fork. (In Philosophical
  Investigations). The idea behind this remark was not
  developed in the passage in which it occurred, but
  presumably the thought was that, if a pair of objects
  plainly _are_ a knife and a fork, then while it
  _might_ be correct to speak of someone as seeing
  them as something different (perhaps as a leaf and
  a flower), it would always (except possibly in vary
  special circumstances) be incorrect (false, out of
  order, devoid of sense) to speak of seeing an x as an
  x, or at least of seeing what is plainly an x as an x.
  'Seeing ... as,' then, is seemingly represented as
  involving at least some element of SOME KIND
  OF IMAGINATIVE construction or supplementation"

 
Speranza. I guess not. But then you are saying the
    tautologous that writers like Wilson and Sperber
    are like Wilson and Sperber.
 
Grice. Almost, yes.
 
Speranza. But I'd have to caveats.
 
Grice. Go on.
 
Speranza. One is metaphysical. Aren't we all like something
   else. What is the "relevant" range of "like". Surely
   Truman Capote is a writer like Wilson and Sperber.
   And if we delete the 'writers', we may continue adding
   many things which are like Wilson and Sperber. And I mean
   'things', not 'persons'. For mention me some _thing_ which
   is _not_ like Wilson and Sperber
 
Grice. Perhaps my point on the focus of relevance you have
    underestimated. And the second point?
 
Speranza. Well, Strawson retorted to you once [in Strawson's
     obit] to your slightly petulant, "If you can't put it in
     symbols, it's not worth saying" with the reciprocal, which of
     course I don't agree with, "If you can put it in symbols, it's
     not worth saying".
 
Grice. Your point?
 
Speranza. Well, how would _you_ put in symbols:
 
     "The force of this consideration SEEMS
 
to be _blunted_ by writers like Wilson and
       Sperber."
 
Grice ---- EXCURSUS.
 
Let us take "Wilson and Sperber" as the subject. And turn the phrase in the
 active. What they SEEM to do is _blunt_ the force of my consideration".
 
So it's a dyadic predicate,
 
     SEEM-To-BLUNT
 
holding between two arguments
 
    "writers like Wilson and Sperber"
 
and
 
    "the force of my consideration"
 
If we assume the scope of "WRITERS like WIlson and Sperber" to be =
{Wilson, Sperber}, and we assume 'the force' to be _the_ force (a definite
description over 'force') we get
 
    SEEM-To-Blunt ({Wilson, Sperber}, the f).
 
===========
 
  Speranza. I see [He don't]
     It seems that your symbol amounts to Wilson and Sperber seeming to
     blunt the force. Not writers like them. I mean, you possibly COULD
symbolise the idiom,
     but would _it_ be worth it?
 
   Grice. It you can put it in symbols, it's worth saying.
 
   Speranza. Incidentally, who said it?
 
   Grice. Who said what?
 
   Speranza, "Kant was a very ambitious metaphysician
        who sought to secure, at one stroke, the foundations
        of science and the foundations of morality."
 
   Grice. Where did you get that from?
 
   Speranza. From an old lecture by you, co-authored with Strawson
      and Pears, and repr. in p. 19 of "Metaphysics", in Pears, ed.
      The Nature of Metaphysics.
 
   Grice. I guess it was me [These were talks, and the essay is
         subdivided in sections indicating each speaker].
 
   Speranza. And what about, "There are many ways in which a
        distinction can be criticised, and more than one in which it can
        be rejected".
 
    Grice. That sounds like me and Strawson in "In defense of a dogma"
      (WoW 196).
 
    Speranza. And how would you put it in symbols, that you and Strawson
        said that there are manyy ways in which a distinction can be
        criticised?
 
    Grice. Sure enough as a dyadic predicate, SAY, holding between
       a complex term, "Grice and Strawson" and the dictum, the
'that'-clause
       following the verbum dicenda.
 
     Speranza. Complex term? So you assume R. Harnish is _wrong_ when
        he says that Whitehead wrote Principia Mathematica.
 
     Grice. Well, the problem is implicatural. In that case I would grant
        you [but this is Imaginary Conversation alla Landor, mind. JLS]
that
        _I_ did say that there are many ways in which a distinction can be
       criticised.
 
In his memoir for the British Academy Strawson reminisces how indeed joint
composition went 'sentence by sentence' with "me having to type the last
thing, as he was still cautious as to possible counterattacks" -- or words to
that perlocutionary effect.
 
The next lecture is a joint lecture by writers like Wilson and Sperber.
 
    Wilson and Sperber. We have decided to deliver this
         lecture in unison to avoid a clash, if not of
         maxims, of implicatures.
 
 
--- Speranza. Do you mean Wilson and Sperber are writers?
    Grice. Well, they write, don't they.
    Speranza. Not authors?
    Grice. Look. The Valedictory Essay was a flow -- a stream of
consciousness flow.
       I choose the words that please me.
    Speranza. And then when you say, "writers like Wilson
        and Sperber" you are NOT implicating a bunch of them,
        aren't you.
    Grice. Surely not: writers like Wilson, writers like Sperber --
        no more, no less.
 
Etc.
 
Historical note. While 'RT' (or something like its ancestor) was indeed
first apparently put forward by S/W, in the Pragmatics microfiche "On Grice's
theory of conversation", we should never underestimate the previous work
carried on independently by writers like Wilson and Sperber. In particular
Wilson had had close association with the issues and had developed some of
her pragmatic ideas in her PhD with MIT later published as the Academic Press
book).
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
Received on Fri Dec 25 19:24:19 2009