One citation (of Sperber's & Wilson's _Relevance_) in G. Cosenza's _Grice's
Heritage_ that I failed to mention in my previous note ("Grice's Heritage")
was to p. 149 of S. Neale's essay. 'Implicature and colouring'. Immediately
after quoting from Frege's 'On sense and reference' 1892:75 (tr. in Geach &
Black), Neale goes on to comment:
"There is much here that seems to presage
important work by Grice [...] on implicature and
Sperber & Wilson [...] on explicature."
Neale is concerned with, as it were, combining Grice's implicature with
Frege's _Färbung_ (_Faerbung_) -- "colouring" (In Murasugi & Stainton, Neale
uses the American spelling 'coloring'). (cf. Frege's remarks on "tone"
[Beleuchtung], "overtone", "side-thought", etc.). Neale warns the reader:
"Unfortunately, Frege does not say much
about _colouring_. What Frege _does_
say suggests that it is a general property:
every word has it.
Neale goes on to provide a definition (in terms of necessary and sufficient
conditions) vis a vis the expression of a _multiple_ thought, as it were:
[For Frege] two expressions [would] differ in
colouring [iff] they conjure up different
representations (_Vorstellungen_).
There is another warning here, though:
"[Unfortunately] Dummett has
shown (and decisively, too) that this particular
position (by Frege) on colouring is [in a nutshell]
untenable.
which leaves as an open problem
[To what extent the phenomenon of] colouring
poses a problem for [a] Gricean [like you and
me]."
When it comes to Grice himself, Neale notes yet another inconvenience:
"Grice's work contains scattered discussions of
colouring ([and] no reference whatsoever to the brief
remarks made by Frege himself)". (p. 153).
Much of what Neale tries to say in combining implicature with colouring
(especially with regard to one of Neale's pet topics, viz. 'definite
descriptions') is, as G. Powell writes online at
http://www.georgepowell.co.uk/compositionality_and_innocence.htm --
-- like trying to
"[stick] square pegs into
round holes."
In 'Implicature & colouring', Neale is particularly concerned with the
contrast between:
(1) [the x: s is indicating x & Fx] Gx
(2) Ga.
If you're not colour blind, Neale is saying, you will like to (as he puts it)
'junk senses'. It all has to do with what F. Recanati, K. Bach, and M. Green
(inter alii) have referred to as 'direct reference'. Neale writes:
"It would be wrong to say that a phrase of
the form "the F" is directly referential: the singular
proposition in (2) is a proposition that _contains_
a (Fregean) object but no properties used to identity
this object. This is because the symbol _a_ in
(2) _is_ directly referential. This [seems] the best way to proceed.
[In other words] the work Fregeans want done by (alleged)
_senses_ [becomes] _best_ done by (1). To this extent, a
directly referential understanding of (2) is all that [we need].
In other words: Frege's remarks about colouring
-- when examined and developed in a larger context --
lead very naturally to a theory that allows us to _junk_ (alleged)
senses (altogether)" (p. 171).
which (however an attempt to stick square pets into round holes, as Powell
sees it) is very much in harmony with Grice's generalised "monoguism", one
thinks.
Neale is aware that this is controversial stuff, and hopes that his ideas
"will not engender too many groans from an untidy
section of the Elysium."
-- He is referring (indirectly?) to Grice.
I append below some further relevant references.
Cheers,
JL
J L Speranza
References
Beaney, M. Frege: Making Sense. London: Duckworth
Beaney, M. The Frege Reader. Oxford: Blackwell
Beaney, M. 'Frege realised the importance of distinguishing the 'conceptual
content' of a proposition [-- senses are indeed noumenal and belonging to a
'third' realm] from all those other features -- which he called 'tone'
(Beleuchtung') or 'colouring' ('Färbung') [...] a distinction that has now
been crystallised into the semantics/pragmatics distinction' -- at
www.leeds.ac.uk/gender-studies/epapers/beaney.htm
Carston, R. Implicature, explicature, & truth-theoretic semantics. In R.
Kempson. Now repr. in A. Kasher, _Implicature_.
Carston, R. _Thoughts & utterances: the pragmatics of explicit communication.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Frege, G. On sense & reference. In P T Geach & M Black, eds. _Translations
from the philosophical writings of Gottlob Frege_. Oxford: Blackwell
Frege, G. The Frege Reader, ed. M. Beaney. Oxford: Blackwell
Forbes, G. The indispensability of sinn. _Philosophical Review_, vol. 99.
Garrett J. "For Frege, poetic overtones, or colour, are irrelevant to the
thought expressed" -- at
arts.anu.edu.au/philosophy/academic/garrett/phil2016/languagelecture3.html
Green, M. Implicature & direct reference. _Philosophical Studies_, vol. 41
Grice, H. P. Utterer's meaning, sentence meaning, & word meaning. In _Studies
in the Way of Words_, WOW.
Grice, H. P. Logic & conversation. In WOW
Harnish, R. M. Implicature, sense, & coloring -- at
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~harnish/books/frege-book-contents.html
Neale, S. R. Coloring & composition. In K. Murasugi & R. Stainton, eds.
_Philosophy & linguistics_. Boulder: Westview.
Neale, S. R. Implicature & colouring. In G. Cosenza, _Grice's Heritage_.
Bruxelles: Brepols Publishers. Semiotic and Cognitive Studies, vol. 9.
Pelczar, M. The indispensability of farbung. _Synthese_ -- available online
at
http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:n-o0p5HNblQC:www.fas.nus.edu.sg/philo/pel
czar/iof.pdf+Frege+farbung&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Powell G. Compositionality & innocence -- at
http://www.georgepowell.co.uk/compositionality_and_innocence.htm
Recanati, F. Direct reference. Oxford: Blackwell.
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