RT list: Running Away From A Bull

Or; Grice on tauromachy.
 
Austin's Kindergarten Discusses "Be Relevant"
 
I'm pleased D. M. Donovan ran the child's center for developmental
psychiatry. Consider variations on a relevant theme: development's center for
child psychiatry, etc.
 
Anyway, back to Grice, "be relevant". The key notes I would love a
relevance lister to deal with are these by Grice, dated 1967, still handwritten:
 
As cited by Chapman,
 
"The desideratum of clarity [cfr. his later, Kantian, Category of Modus.
JLS]
concerns the manner of expression for any conversational
contribution. It INCLUDES the IMPORTANCE of
EXPECTATIONS of
 
     RELEVANCE
 
To Understanding [sic -- rather than topical relevance per se]".
(Chapman, 99).
 
One wonders if Grice uses the noun, relevance, as he does not, originally,
in his formulation of the principle of cooperation (or cooperative
principle
in WoW) or just the adjective, as he does in WoW, at his first
shot, 'be RELEVANT'.
 
In any case, further to Austin's kindergarten. And I forgot to mention
that the quote about us not being computers comes from Grice's
Method, which Allott cites as 1976 in his PhD whereas it should be
perhaps actually 1975a -- for 1975, Logic and Conversation (second
William James lecture) is best cited as (1967) as Grice hisself
does in WoW.
 
In reference to Nowell Smith (I should NOT use the hyphen since the
Nowell is spurious; it just happened that Patrick Horace's papa
was christened Nowell and the son took a liking to that):
 
cited by Chapman
 
   "What a speaker says MAY be ASSUMED
    to be RELEVANT
 
       *TO THE INTERESTS of HIS*
 
    -- artless sexism, in the words of Grice,
    Conception of Value --
 
    audience". (Nowell-Smith).
 
Chapman's editorial: "For Nowell-Smith the contextual RULES [sic] are
primary and do not operate with reference to logical meaning; in effect there is
 no 'what is said'. In fact, he specifies that logical meaning is a
subclass of contextual implication."
 
Then there's Strawson and his lovely, if vacuous, Presumption or Platitude
of Relevance, in his _Theoria_ essay.
 
This is, alas, not cited by Chapman, although she refers to his
Logico-Linguistic Papers where the thing was reprinted.

Noel Burton-Roberts (where the hyphen is NOT apocryphal) should know about
this, since I always quote him as one of the last of the neo-Strawsonians
(unless he has crops of doctoral students he can be influential to).
 
Strawson was one. He sent Grice's "Meaning" (which he typed, the old 1948
handwritten Gricean thing) to Philosophical Review and had it published on
Grice's behalf! With that, and the circulation of "Logic and Conversation"
unpublished, one notes:
 
--- how ALL of Grice's works originated as "lectures", most of them
private, some semi-public (as his William James). The 'Meaning' was a paper to
the Oxford Philosophical Society in 1948.
 
--- how citation is so important. Griceanism galore just because people
typed his things or/and sent them to journals.
 
There should be more mentions of relevance in other kindergarteners. I
corresponded with Hampshire, and he in a way says in Thought and Action that
'rationality' is just 'relatedness', which seems like 'be relevant' vis a vis
 "Relation".
 
But again, consider the idiom,
 
   "As it happens".
 
If Wilson and Smith are right that "It happens", or better, "Something
happens" is the LF (Logical form) presupposed by Any Utterance You Can Dream
Of. Then, reconsider:
 
    A: As it happens, Mrs. Smith is an old bag.
    B: And as it also happens, the weather has been quite
             delightful for this summer, hasn't it?
    A: Hasn't it? Are you putting forward a
              claim or looking for confirmation?
 
I believe Wilson and Sperber give further historical remarks about the use
of 'relevant' in the paleo-Gricean, or pre-Gricean, and Gricean literature.
 E.g. the use of 'relevant' in so-called 'relevant logic', and in other
authors.
 
And recall that 'relevant' is also used by Grice way back in 1948, as
discussed by Chapman:
 
In his discussion of 'utterance' -- his term of art for any vehicle of
meaning, vide Wharton, Pragmatics and nonverbal communication, CUP, 2009 --,
 
"The hearer", in Chapman's editorial, "may sometimes
look to specific contenxt to determine the precise
intention behind an utterance; he may consider,
for instance, which of two possible interpretations
would be
 
       THE MOST RELEVANT"
 
-- in something like a six-scale relevant-ranking alla H. D. White --
 
     "... to what has gone before"
 
This is what I call 'ex post facto relevant'. "Be relevant to your
partner's previous conversational move". Things have to 'dovetail' as Grice puts
it.
 
"Grice notes", Chapman notes, "that such criteria
are NOT confined to linguistic examples"
 
-- vide then the relevance of Wharton's book --.
 
Grice now: "RELEVANCE to an obvious end
     is a criterion in settling why a man"
 
-- even a Spaniard, I add, in the works -- i.e. bullfight --
 
     "is running away from a bull"
 
which is actually the strategy, so-called, I took in my PhD. Whatever the
levels of 'be relevant'. If an 'end' -- cfr. Grice's festschrift,
Intentions, Categories, ENDS -- is not mentioned, it's never relevant, or he is never
 relevant or she is never or one is never relevant enough.
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
   for the Grice Club
 
etc.
 
Thanks,
 
J. L. Speranza
    for the Grice Club
Received on Wed Jan 13 17:08:32 2010