Re: RT list: the 'forthright negotiator' principle

In a message dated 1/14/2010 9:29:46 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
nicholas.allott@gmail.com writes:
"under the forthright negotiator
principle, the subjective understanding of one party to a contract may
bind the other party when the other party knows or has reason to know
of that understanding."

Liberman comments: '[this] "forthright negotiator principle" ... is
certainly something that normal humans presuppose in their
communicative exchanges. It's part of why "theory of mind" reasoning
is hard."
 
---- Thanks for the link which I have not yet consulted.

I would nitpick with talk of 'principle'. "Do not multiply principles
beyond necessity". Is it just a Gricean maxim? Apparently, merely the two maxims
 he has under the Category of Quality (Qualitas), apres Kant.
 
The 'right' confuses me, not to say the 'forth'. And I'm writing this in a
hurry. Recall that Grice is fond of NEGATIVE expressions for things
relating to the Maxim of Quality.
 
   Do not say what you believe to be false.
 
Hardly 'forthright'. It's more like 'Avoid being forthwrong' ("forthwrong"
-- a computer model apres Grice, to prove that computers ain't humans. This
 computer is designed to teach students the wrong answers to questions).
 
   Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence for.
 
"Adequate evidence" is not yet 'key to its truth-value'. Grice is here
playing with Gettier's analysis of 'know'
 
   -- A knows that p
        p is true --
        A has adequate evidence for p.
 
Instead, he has the first clause turned into "at least avoid ceasing your
lips being sealed if you think p is FALSE", or "if it is not the case that
you have adequate evidence".
 
One of my earliest unpublications on this, which I still keep, is a
brilliant analysis of Bar-Hillel in an exegesis of Sextus Empiricus in the Loeb
Classical Library. Sextus is considering all the evidentials people need to
utter a claim, "Possibly", "Most likely", "Probably", etc. It turns out that
he would rather people keep their mouths shut. Bar-Hillel comments that a
language where such guardedness -- in lieu of actual forthrightness -- in
philosophical parlance, a mere "phenomenalist" language -- is a
contradiction in terms.
 
"under the forthright negotiator principle, the subjective understanding
of one party to a contract may
bind the other party when the other party knows or has reason to know of
that understanding."
 
This HAS to be lawyer's language, for as Dickens says in Oliver Twist -- I
have the film with Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger -- "The Law's an Ass, Mr.
 Bumble!". Uses of 'know' or 'has reason to know' give me the creeps, if
that's the word.
 
"Subjective understanding" is the most otiose, anti-Gricean collocation
I've seen in years. It contrasts, of course, with Objective understanding,
which belongs to God. I once proved the non-existence of God to my cousin:
"Surely there are moments in our lives when we don't want a God to have
objective understanding of what we are doing in the privacy of our rooms". "Well,
but Onan was killed by God, right?" I guess he just overread my mind.
 
The role of 'contract' cannot apply to Grice. Grice uses
'quasi-contractual' on two occasions in WoW only to dismiss it. Conversation is NOT a
contract for Grice, not even a quasi-contract. I'm presently discussing this with
S. R. Bayne who has a book coming out next year on contractualism.
 
The 'bind' is Legalese for 'is liable'. Surely if one party say, "Smoking
non-allowed" and the other party starts smoking, the uttering of "Smoking
non-allowed" binds the smoker, and he is thus liable. He cannot claim that
he didn't know that smoking was not allowed. But few of our interactions are
binding in this respect. And fewer SHOULD be.
 
Grice has a funny one regarding 'subjective understanding'. He says,
 
    "Regarde le chien, c'est tres beau"
 
meaning thereby,
 
    "Help yourself with a piece of cake"
 
(WoW, v). Grice notes that if U thinks that A thinks that 'x' means 'y' --
even if it does not for U himself, then U may still count as having meaning
that p (which is the expression meaning of y, rather than x).
 
"Matter of fact, last Thursday I was
listening, at St. John's, a French
lesson being given to Sue, the small
daughter of my friend, George
Richardson [who would eventually
write his obit. in St. John's]. I noticed
that she thought that
 
     Regard le chien. C'est tres beau
 
means
 
      Help yourself to a piece of cake
      (in French).
 
though in fact it means something quite
different, to wit
 
       Look at the dog. Cute, no?
 

----
 
Now, we strolled along the gardens of St. John's, 
and on the way back to the hall, I saw that there
was some cake in the central table. I addressed
Sue this French sentence
 
       Regarde le chien. C'est  tres beau.
 
and, exactly as I intended -- and had reason to
to believe my intention would be fulfilled, that is --
Sue helped herself to a piece of the cake. So,
 
I intended her to think
(and to think that I intended her to think)
that the sentence uttered by me,
 
    "Regarde le chien. C'est tres beau"
 
meant
 
    "Help yourself to a piece of cake"
 
and I would say that the FACT that the sentence
meant and was known to my (by my subjective understanding,
as it were) to mean something quite different, to wit, that
the addressee should look at the dog, as it was so cute, 
is
 
   no obstacle
 
for to 
 
    MY
 
having meant something by my utterance,
to wit, that she was to have a piece of cake, or some
cake." (or words to that perlocutionary effect).
 
Grice goes on to provide a general schema for that, which may  motivate
further thoughts, but which I'll skip right now as I _am_ in a hurry.
 
Allott:
 
"Liberman comments: '[this] "forthright negotiator principle" ...   is  
certainly something that normal humans"
 
--- but cfr. poets, child's center for developmental psychiatry. Lawyers,  
who deal with criminals, are the least ones entitled to speak us 'normal'.  
"abnormal" at most. And humans? That's humanism-ism. What about computers. 
Are  you saying that a bibliometric gadget cannot abide by this 
grandiose-sounding  trick?
 
"presuppose in their  
communicative exchanges. It's part of why  "theory of mind" reasoning  
is hard.""
 
For him. For _me_ what is hard is to study the silly legal codes of this  
and that country. Plus, it's boring, while 'theory of mind', or as I prefer, 
to  quote the excellent essay cited by N. Allott in his PhD, "Method in  
philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre", is _fun_.
 
Bennett, who reviewed Wilson/Sperber in "The tradition of Kantotle" in TLS  
(actually his review of PGRICE) writes of that "Method" that it should be  
"learned by heart by any philosopher of mind worth her name". Thus sort of  
joking with Grice's avoidance of the word 'mind', or 'theory of mind' for 
the  more grandiose sounding, "philosophical psychology" -- and while we're at 
it,  recall psychiatry is part of the psychology, but not of the healthy 
thing, but  the need of 'atrios'.
 
I tend to think of these 'tricks' as: "Addressee Knows Best". In a minimal  
conversation.
 
   A:  move1
   B:  move 2
   A:  move3
 
As Collingwood says, 'understanding' proves itself _in conversando_. If A,  
in the third move, does not contradict the implicit understanding -- uptake 
as I  prefer -- i.e. does not under-understand or hyper-understand, there's 
no  under-interpretation or over-interpretation, i.e. misunderstanding, to 
quote Eco  --
that's all we may want to 'know'. But more on how Grice wanted models of  
conversation to be kept very abstract for a longer day.
 
J. L. Speranza
   for the Grice Circle