RT list: In the Tradition of Kantotle

RELATIO
 
While 'quantitas' (as used by Kant) and 'qualitas' -- directly refer to
coinages by Aristotle, on 'quantum' [poson] and 'quale' [poion], it's trickier
 to find Greek particles for Kant's "modus" and "relatio" -- but -- not
impossible?
 
    Grice wrote: "echoing Kant"
    Kant wrote: "Following Aristotle" (cited by Chapman)
 
Bennett wrote, "In the tradition of Kantotle", Times Literary Supplement.
Grice said, "Give me Ariskant anyday!"
 
Relation -- as a Conversational Category.
 
Grice on RT
 
For the record and from Chapman, _Grice_, p. 207:

"There is some evidence that Grice was
reluctant to be drawn on

[loose? JLS]

his views on RT. His only published comment
is very brief and rather damning."

"In the retrospective overview of his own work
in Studies in the Way of Words, he comments on
the POSSIBLE problem of the
interdependence of his maxims,
especially Quantity and Relation"

[recall that Grice is presenting this
as a "Table of Categories" of cognition
alla Kant -- I see Grice did use 'cognition'
-- seeing it's the subtitle of S/W book
on p. 162 (of Chapman) where he is listing
'mandatory functions' of his pirots

[REFERENCE:
'Reflections on morals', H. P. Grice Papers,
BANC MSS 90/135c, The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley]

which should include (in no particular order?)

1. Breathe ("why?" -- he adds)
Plants breathe -- he was into pirot
as the biology of the fantasy world
2. repair
3. ingestion
4. digestion
5. excretion
[oddly, Chapman cites "eschatology" as 'escatology']
6. reproduction
(7. perception -- I add. JLS)
8. cognition

----Chapman continues:

"However, he argues that Sperber ['s? -- JLS] and Wilson's
account, far from clarifying [for him] this matter, in fact
loses the significance of the link between relevance
without specification of direction."

"The amount of information APPROPRIATE in any given
CONTEXT is determined by the particular aim of the
conversation, or what is deemed RELEVANT to that aim.
So success in conversation"

-- and I was revising and he is using the evolution-metaphor in "Logic and
 Conversation": 'the aims of the "talk (and thus talk exchange) is
*adapted* to serve" --

"is not simply a matter of accumulating the highest
possible number of contextual effects"

via entailments. Purists [like Grice and Austin -- and JL?] into minutiæ
will implicate [if not pick up an entailment]
loose speakers we can charitably assume to _disimplicate_ - we'll be
generous to drop on their behalf an entailment or two --

"Further," Chapman goes on,

"Grice argues that as well as direction of RELEVANCE,"

--- but Blakemore has been very emphatic that indeed Grice has recognised
that RELATION was possibly a keyword for Grice anyway

"information is necessary concerning the degree of a
concern for a topic,"

-- if you are among purists on a Saturday morning meeting in the middle of
a
hot session of 'linguistic botany' --.

"and the extent of opportunity for remedial action."

-- or 'repair' as I prefer, quoting from Grice above --.

"In sm, the principle of relevance may well be an
important one in conversation, but when it comes to
implicature it might be said

'to be dubiously independent
of the Maxim of Quantity'
['Retrospective Epilogue', WoW, 372]

Chapman concludes the paragraph before she plunges onto neo-Griceanism:

"This last suggestion seems to align Grice
more with another branch of pragmatics, again
one attempting to REFINE the notion of
implicature and reduce the number of conversational
maxims: the work of the so-called [by themselves, :)]
'neo-Griceans'

"One day I'll have neo-Kantians following me"
Kant -- apocryphal

Oddly, in her webpage Chapman gives publicity (?) to _Teorema_ which has
recently celebrated the 50 years of "Meaning" -- one essay by J. R. Thompson
(affilation?) -- it's not the Habermasian Thompson I know, I don't think
-- relevantly entitled

"Still relevant" (after all these years):

which again alla Ogden/Richards (the meaning of meaning) and Kjoll (the
content of content) we may label, 'the relation of relation': a
meta-relation, and back!

Cheers,

J. L. Speranza
        The Grice Club, etc.
The Swimming-Pool Library
Bordighera
 
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Received on Wed Jul 15 17:07:30 2009