Re: RT list: This Year of Grice

In a message dated 1/14/2010 8:52:07 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
nicholas.allott@gmail.com writes:
From the instructions for joining the list:
_http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/robyn/relevance/list_instruct.htm_
(http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/robyn/relevance/list_instruct.htm)
"Once you have subscribed, please send a message introducing yourself
to the other members of the list, telling them about your research
interests and the role of Relevance Theory in your work."

---
 
This is very good. Every time I have a party at the Swimming-Pool, as I  did
yesterday, I was asking almost everyone, "So what is it you're
currently doing". For I cannot think that people don't change,  improve,
evolve, get better. So it would be good if honorary members, as it
were, like D. Sperber, etc. would also feel free to update us on  things.
 
I will update myself on things:
 
"Once you have subscribed, please send a message"
 
--- and want to remain subscribed. I have received some
posts that makes me wonder if that's the case!
 
And why a blog won't do? I love volunteered unedited 
praise. A blog, if you read the commentaries dropping
there, tend to be overpostivistic in a fake sort of way.
I know that when I comment on a blog I tend to be
too polite. And then, the blogger thinks he can do 
whatever he pleases with it, such as ignore it. Some
conversational implicature there!
 
-----
 
I think I did send a message, which was good. D. Sperber
was pushing me to pull on the basis, amusingly, that
I send "one post after the other". So I will try to send this
message BEFORE the others, i.e. as, as they say,
pre-empting the previous ones.
 
"please send a message
introducing yourself  
to the other members of the list,"
 
who you really don't know. Talk of H. D. White's talk of
topical vs. nontopical relevance. It is like a chatroom
lounge. If you read lines in chatrooms exchange, opening
ones, they are pretty naive, and actually too polite
and vacuous. Because one doesn't know who the 
OTHER members of the room are. True, one has a list
with their screennames, but that hardly helps. Wasn't
a screenname of one of our subscribers something
like CheshireCat?
 
So we assume that
 
   D. S. M. W.   is a member
   D. Sperber     is a member
   R. Carston     is a member
   R. Kempson   is a member
   N. Burton-Roberts is a member
   B.  Clark          is a member
   T. Wharton      is a member
    N.  Allott         is a member
    Kroell               is a member
    I                       am a member
   D. Blakemore   is a member
   A. Capone        is a  member
   H. D. White      is a member
   D. M. Donovan  is a member
    Gutt                  is a member
   Saussure           is a member
    Attalardo           is a  member
   M. J. Murphy     is a member
   
and I would have to revise my posts and files to see who else.
---
 
So the practical side is that one
works on this as a "potential" or 'ideal' 
or stereotypical 'member' of the list
would look like.
 
It's _NOT_ easy!
 
---- I recall Sperber did cite me in 
an early exchange on evolutionary theory,
and how Grice, being a philosopher,
was not clear on a number of things.
 
So one not only knows what a 
stereotypical member of the list is
but what their "prejudices and 
predilections" as Grice wanted to
put it in the Gricean festschrift
to which Wilson and Sperber
contributed, are. 
 
So one has to be DOUBLY indirect
about things.
 
Surely one cannot say,
 
  "Hey, I'm a student of Jennifer
   Saul, and she wrote some
   brilliant counterexamples to RT;
   and she said, get in the list
   and see if they do provide
   counterattacks that we can
   fill pages in the Journal of
   Linguistics with"
 
Mind, I love Jennifer!
 
---But surely the further clauses of this 'rule of engagement' would block  
out that sneak. (I don't mean anyone in particular, but one who, say, 
dislikes  _everything_ about what this list stands for, or that indeed, gets the 
cringe,  if that's the word, when they hear 'relevance', simpliciter!
 
"telling them about your research  
interests"
 
Again, the 'them' is so 'vacuous' that
hurts. Research interests are flaky, and not
to be displayed like that. Many a candidate
to a PhD programme knows that they
should NOT disclose their research 
interests like that. I am not a paranoid,
and I have my research interests very 
clear -- note that I attained so-called
maximal degree, if that's what a PhD is,
recognised by W. E. S. -- I learned about
that when travelling --. 
 
Then there's Lakatos on 
degenerate research paradigms. Lakatos,
who is strongly associated with the University
of London, thinks that some
research interests are just
 
   reactionary
   degenerate
 
I would not be surprised if he would not
think that Gricean Studies is one. I was brought
up, "Stay away with Grice". Ordinary-language
philosophy was a no-no even in Oxford. I loved
Mundle's criticicism of Linguistic Philosophy
(Clarendon). It was the laughing stock of
life. So, you have to add that your research
interest is, as T. Wharton would say,
 
   exegetical
 
or plain
 
   historical
 
--- but everyone who has a research interest
and been to a cocktail party realises how boring
historical/exegetical researchers are. "He's into
the sexual life of Plato", or something. Instead,
if you say,
 
   "Researching into the communicative
   presumptions of Magalasyan explicatures"
 
they _will_ offer another dry martini.
 
"and the role of Relevance Theory in your work.""
 
I do like the idea of _work_. Grice, too. He coined
a "Ontological Marxism".
 
   If they don't work, they don't exist.
 
He was referring to 'maids', doing the 'housework'
-- he could be such a snob. (And, this, Nicholas,
in that brilliant essay you quote in your PhD,
"Method in philosophical psychology", 1975a).
 
On the other hand I run the Swimming Pool Library,
and it's all about 'otium,' not 'necotium' (=work). Work
is anathema down here. Why? Well, consider Grice's
ending words in "Reply to Richards"
 
   "Those who look for philosophy
    for their bread and butter..."
 
and he continues to provide an agenda for them.
 
I commented this with other philosophers, who replied
along the lines, "Bread, okay -- but I don't take butter";
or other stupidities. The idea is that one SHOULD not
look for philosophy for one's bread and butter", i.e.
the bread winner is not the philosopher.
 
Is the bread winner the teacher? Well, then Grice should
have made that clear. His life, while professionally 
engaged in teaching, was more for the _fun_ of it than
the actual office he held. 
 
Imagine Grice waking up and seeing a list
 
   _implicature@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk_ 
(mailto:implicature@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk) 
 
"and the role of Grice in your work"
 
"Role of myself in myself?", he would ask.
What about unemployed philosophers? What about
sub-employed philosophers? What about gentlemen?
 
Recall "A Room with A View"
 
Middle-Class Emerson (To Sir Cecil Vyse)
     What do you do?
 
Vyse. ??
 
Emerson:  What do you do for a living?
 
Vyse.  ??
 
Emerson.   What is your work?
 
Vyse. Enough! I don't have one. I am a GENTLEMAN.
 
[the actual wording refers to professions, though -- and wasn't I slighly  
offended when I read Grice's obit, by Strawson most likely written, in The  
Times, and entitled, "Grice: professional philosopher and amateur 
cricketer"?  For 'philosopher' is NOT a profession. Brits simplify things like that. 
Amateur  cricketers there are not, either, they are gentlemen versus pros. 
What you can  be professionally is a professor, at most. With all the 
euphemisms of the  profession: unless you are a full professor you are just an 
assistant one. If  you are a lecturer, people think you are more verbose than you 
possibly are, and  if you are emeritus means that you have less of a load 
for a day. So what  profession are we talking about? What work?
 
"Once you have subscribed, please send a message introducing yourself   
to the other members of the list, telling them about your research   
interests and the role of Relevance Theory in your work."
 
Sure. My update.
 
I am J. L. Speranza. My research interest is the predilections
and prejudices of H. P. Grice -- as a branch of the study of
the history of philosophy -- Oxonian authors only, please need
quoted -- "RT" was a 'development' from Gricean pragmatics. 
I have been following D. S. M. W.'s career, as an outsider,
since I'm a philosopher, and respect and admire and consider
a lot. She and the people she has associated with have 
maintained a lively living interest in Grice; and she has not
been obtrusive or intrusive -- you read the webpages of her
doctoral students like Carston, Wharton and Allott, and learn
that they still keep an pure interest in the philosophy of
Grice _as such_ and not just 'through the 'RT' lenses --
which is healthy to say the least.
 
To me, the Maxim of Relation is just one of the multiple
great ideas that Grice contributed to pragmatics. I love to say,
echoing Whitehead re: Plato, that pragmatics has been
but footnotes to Grice. And I say that provocatively, for others
to refute me -- alla, "No way. It's been all footnotes to 
J. L. Austin", or "to Strawson", or to, who knows.
 
And "RT" is not just into "Relation", and this is when
it gets more controversial. Possibly due to D. S. M. W's
influence from Chomsky -- who was, after all, her
PhD advisor -- it has embraced some mentalism
that most Griceans, in the philosophy department,
find heterogeneous and full of issues in need of
philosophical elucidation. Some of the terms -- won't
say 'jargon' -- in "RT" and standard Griceanism
need exegesis some times, or cross referencing.
 
Indeed, my interest in Grice is just anecdotal. I'm 
interested in the development of philosophy qua
discipline. It seems to me, and to most philosophers,
including Grice, that he was into the 'backbone' of
the discipline. "What is philosophy?" The tools he 
gave us, implicature, in particular, he meant to 
be applied to philosophical issues. Note that his
most interesting analyses are of words of long
philosophical pedigree, 'know', 'mean', 'imply', 
'all', 'some', 'if', 'the', 'intend'. Most of these
terms, as used by philosophers, are in hot need
of clarification, and a Gricean analysis helps
sort out things.
Recall that in his memoirs, Grice found himself
as superseding the work of Witters (as he called
Wittgenstein) and, more importantly, J. L. Austin,
who had never, Grice says -- words to the
perlocutionary effect -- taken enough trouble to
even go and distinguish between what words say
and imply from what we, as utterers, say or
imply ("A distinction apparently denied by
Wittgenstein and never fully applied by Austin",
Reply to Richards).
 
J. L. Speranza has a classical background in
European Continental philosophy. His playing with
Grice is basically a game for him. Grice is NOT
supposed to be a good author to quote in the
background he comes from. Yet, he has, and
has in the interim gotten a good laugh, not 
_at_ philosophy, but _with_ philosophy".
 
      J. L. Speranza
       for the Grice Club
 
              "Philosophy should be fun,
                  or not at all"  --- Grice