RT list: Speranza Sorge Eterna

In a message dated 1/13/2010 3:35:56 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
alessandro.capone@istruzione.it writes:

>hopeless Speranza

to which, I like to think, our dear list-administrator, N. E. Allott, now
in Norway, replied:
 
>It is my duty as administrator to urge contributors to the discussion
>(and to the list more generally) to avoid
>
> personal attacks
>
>on other list members. If necessary I will step in to enforce this rule.
>Meta-discussions are quite difficult enough without personal remarks.
 

----
 
Point taken, and Mr. Capone has not yet apologised for his Italian, shall  
we say, 
attempt at an Anglo pun. For I feel
 
   "speranza disperata"
 
sounds so much better. In any case, I have dwelt with this before, and  came
to get so tired that I felt urged to translate that piece of Latin  wisdom,
 
   "hope springs eternal"
 
onto the vernacular, as per header.
Note too that "ancora della speranza" is in my family motto.
 
Anyway, to keep the discussion,
 
Capone:
 
>hopeless.
 
This reminded me, oddly, of Grice. In the 1961, "Causal Theory" -- bit  
Grice found uncleverly enough not appropriate to include in his WoW, he  writes:
 
Warnock (meets Grice at Collections)
 
   W:  And how about Smith?
   G:  He has _beautiful_ handwriting.
 
I never liked Grice's shot at a gloss of what he implicated, but who am I  
or who can I be to contradict him. He said he meant:
 
    Smith is hopeless.
 
(at philosophy, we assume).
 
In my first published paper, since Mr. Capone was asking for a reference, I 
 consider things like logical implication, material implication, material  
equivalence, and implicature. Consider
 
   "He is hopeless" = "he has beautiful handwriting".
 
Silly.
 
But consider
 
   He is hopeless <----> He has beautiful handwriting
 
Still silly. What we may at most have is, to use Levinson's clever  symbol:
 
   He is hopeless +> He has beautiful handwriting.
 
Now 
 
 
    "p --> q" indeed "=", at the level of what is  said (in Grice's 
favoured sense, not D. S. M. Wilson's or D. Sperber's, or R.  Carston's) 
    "-p v q"  (with " -->" as horseshoe)
 
So the idea of material equivalence is NOT inappropriate in some talk of  
'equity' of meaning, as it were.
 
The problem with Mr. Capone is that I _don't_ *think* he knows what a  
beautiful handwriting I have.
So how can he just apply Aristotle's 'sylligistic' and yield that I'm  
therefore hopeless?
 
More later, 
 
I hope.
 
J. L. Speranza
   for the Grice Circle
 
 
 
From: alessandro.capone@istruzione.it
Reply-to:  alessandro.capone@unipa.it
To: jlsperanza@aol.com
CC:  relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
Sent: 1/13/2010 3:35:56 P.M. Eastern Standard  Time
Subj: RT list: on hopeless Speranza
Speranza,
we  would love to read some paper of yours - do send us one or a  reference,
instead of sending us scattered remarks.