RT list: Grice on analysis and theory

"Can you give feedback on this?" (post, ¨Where is the RT module
located?"

Should we call the module the ¨relevance THEORY" module, or plain
RELEVANCE module. (Recall that French author discussing whether a
chimaera can enjoy eating secondary intentions! Just joking)

The use of ´theory´ has been problematic, or at least problematized by,
of all people, Schiffer, who will problematise a fly (he says that we
have no right to use the word "mean"!).

A theory is a gap between certain percepts (observational terms) and a
black box comprising the assumed theoretical concepts. This is
something an agent can work with. We do work with theories. Grice´s
Method in Philosophical Psychology is all about the theory that a
squarrel (a type of squirrel) who knows that grabbing nuts will
decrease his hunger.

But a relevance theory? I haven´t checked but I think it´s a different
use of ´theory´. Grice warns us to distinguish theory from ´analysis´,
and Sperber-Wilson have pointed out that the Gricean analysis of
meaning provides descriptive or observational adequacy to a theory. But
the explanatory adequacy comes from the idea of rule, maxim, principle,
etc -- rationality at full speed, as it were.

For the Greeks, to theorise was to ¨look¨, and they thought that to
look was a factive (alla Kiparsky). You see the sun, you theorise the
sun. How this transparent notion became=2
0opaque (for it´s silly to look
at the sun directly) is one of the big issues of the Western
civilisation, as we know it!

Personally, I don´t interfere my hard disk with the relevance theory
module. I have it in a separate compartment, in a vat. And connect it
ad placitum, and only for extremely IRRELEVANT utterances I hapen to
come across!

NOTE. The clearest view by Grice on analysis vs. theory I found in the
retrospective epilogue (strand on meaning). He seems to be saying that
qua Oxonian philosopher he spent most of his life analysing things (no
more was required of a tutor). But then he went to America, where they
technologise things, and Quine was writing on theories, and the bug
COULD have gotten him. There is a sense in which the ´implicature´ of
THEORY in the Oxonian circles that Grice frequented, ´theory´ was too
grand of a word? Carston has noted that Grice did title his 1961, ¨The
theory of perception" -- the causal theory, at that. But is it a theory
or a sketch for a theory. Whenever I read that passage in that essay,
¨We shouldn´t be concerned as philosophers to fill the gap that would
make this a THEORY THEORY -- we are not scientists!¨. In later, more
conservative days, he conceived of THEORY THEORY as the brainchild of
Kantotle, too.

Cheers,

J. L. Speranza

-----Original Message-----
From: Alessandro Capone <alessandro.cap
one@istruzione.it>
To: relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
Cc: higgy@usc.edu
Sent: Sat, Sep 19, 2009 11:16 am
Subject: RT list: where is the RT module located? Right or left
hemisphere or both?

The question Where is the Relevance Theory module located (in the right
or
left hemisphere?) which nobody answer (nowe I understand why, since the
answer is not unproblematic) can be given a partial answer following the
literature based on Giora - pragmatics correlating with the right
hemisphere.

Then, after reading Kasher et al. Effects of right and left-hemisphere
damage... in Brain & Language 68, p. 566, I realize that the answer is
more complex.

If Kasher is right, then comprehension of inferences connected with
means-to-end analysis, which s urely also pertain to Televance Theory,
is
located in the left-hemisphere.

Notice that this ability is clearly connected with speech act
comprehension (what type of speech act is this?) and with linguistic
comprehension.

In other words, a more general means-to-end analysis ability is
duplicaed
in the right hemisphere.

So it looks as though a more specific module splits from a general
module
(but Kasher does not consider central intelligence and the mechanisms
responsible for implicature interpretation in the right hemisphere a
module or modules).

In short, asked where to locate the Relevance Theory module, one could
reply that both the right and the left hemisphere are involved.
0A

I did not see anything in the literature preventing us from positing a
module spread across two hemispheres.

Can you give feedback on this?
Received on Mon Sep 21 23:00:11 2009