-- and back?
Circularity, unfalsifiability, vacuity -- & oher animals.
"Only connect".
E M Forster.
Grice institutes the maxim 'be relevant' under the category of Relation --
a nod to Kant. Is there more than an alliterative reference in this?
Is there a conceptual link between 'relation' and 'relevance'? Grandy seems
to suggest so when he writes that Grice was indeed "[...] concerned with
making the maxims isomorphic to the Kantian categories" (Grandy in Hall, p.
407 -- and cfr. R. Eckhardt).
S. Nicolle writes in "RT and other theories":
>I have seen
[somewhere. :) JLS]
>a few neat analyses where the interplay
>of the Q-, I-, and M-principles seems to make specific
>predictions which a RT analysis would not be able to make
>(as far as I can see). This is the kind of level of
>falsifiability that critics of RT have been looking for.
In a later note, Nicolle refers to references in a post of mine -- where I
allude inter alia to Kiefer et al on charges of 'vacuity' and 'circularity'
-- but not 'lack of specificity' or ad-hocness? -- made to Gricean (good
old, neo-, & post-) explanation.
Nicolle does mentions 'falsifiability' (pet topic for a Popperian --
recently discussed on the LINGUIST list) and I'm sure we can distinguish
between a charge of 'unfalsifiability' from a charge of 'not specific enough'.
What I expand below is on the glory of being Kantianly unspecific as it
_may_ relate on some charge of 'circularity' which may it turn relate to
some charge of 'unfalsifiability'.
The idea would be: is an appeal to 'relevance' (co-ordinate as in the
standard Gricean approach -- WOW, p. 371 (note * below) or _ultimate_ as
per RT) in any way similar to an appeal to 'relation'?
Recall Davidson's take on metaphor. For Davidson, a metaphor contrasts
notably with a simile in that the former tends to be standardly
categorially _false_ while a simile, poor thing, cannot help from being
_true_ (since "everything is like everything else"). Similarly, everything
is _related_ to everything else, or is it?
When Grice places 'be relevant' under Relation he is suggesting that (for
an utterer) "to be relevant" is a way of the utterer _relating_ things --
in something like Forster's "only-connect".
But what was Kant's take on this? Consider his remarks on what he calls the
pure schematism:
http://www.malaspina.com/etext/pure07.htm
"The schema of relation contains and represents
the relation of perceptions to each other
in _all_ time (that is, according to a rule of
the determination of time).
For Kant, 'Relation' incorporates some basic ideas of human understanding:
notably three: substance/accident; cause/effect, and agent/patient.
As in
http://www.wesleyan.edu/phil/courses/202/s00/pdfs/Kant:
RELATION
1. Categorical
Inherence and Substistence
("substance & accident")
Eg:
"The wicked are punished"
2. Hypothetical
Causality and Dependence
("cause & effect")
Eg: "If there is divine justice,
the wicked are punished"
3. Disjunctive
Community
(reciprocity between "agent" and "patient")
Eg.: "The world exists either through blind chance,
or through inner necessity orthrough an external cause."
('Relation' combines in the famous Kantian quartette with:
Quantity: 1. Universal: Unity
Eg. "All A's are B's"
2. Particular: Plurality
Eg: "Some A's are B's"
3. Singular: Totality
Eg: "X is a B"
Quality: 1. Affirmative: Reality.
Eg: "A is a B"
2. Negative: Negation
Eg: "It is not the case that A is a B"
3. Infinite: Limitation.
Eg: "A is a non-B"
Manner: 1. Problematic: Possibility/Impossibility
Eg: "It is possible that A is a B"
2. Assertoric: Existence/Non-existence.
Eg: "It is the case that A is a B"
3. Apodeictic: Necessity/Contingency.
Eg: "It must be the case that A is a B")
The idea would be that the items that fall under 'relation' (inherence,
causality, reciprocity) are _all_-pervasive. And how do you go and refute
such a "trascendentalism"?
(How unashamed can a Kantian be?)
JL
Refs:
Eckhard R. Grice's four conversational categories.
_Manuscrito_, ed. M. Dascal.
Grandy R. On the foundations of conversational implicature. In K. Hall
Grice HP. 1967. Logic and Conversation.
Studies in the Way of Words.
1977. Immanuel Kant Memorial Lectures
Stanford University.
Hall K et al, _The legacy of Grice_. BLS 16
Kant I. Critique of Pure Reason: Book II.
Trascendental doctrine of the faculty of
judgement or, analytic of principles.
Chapter I: Of the schematism of the pure
conceptions of the understanding.
at: http://www.malaspina.com/etext/pure07.htm
Note *. Grice writes:
"To judge whether I have undersupplied or oversupplied with information
seems to require that I should be aware of the identity of the topic to
which the information in question is supposed to relate; only after the
identification of a focus of relevance can such an assessment be made; the
force of this consideration seems to be blunted by writers like Wilson and
Sperber who seem to be disposed to sever the notion of relevance from the
specification of some particular direction of relevance". (Studies in the
way of words, p. 371). (Ref. cited by Grandy p. 407).
==
J L Speranza, Esq
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