RT list: Ode on a Gricean Urn

In a message dated 12/1/2009 8:41:22 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
stavros.assimakopoulos@googlemail.com writes:

I suppose the basic shortcoming I have in interpreting them is my own
non-native background.
 

----
 
I have been meaning to compile this reply, since ... yesterday. You see,  
it's good E-A Gutt found 'all helpful responses' worth a thank you. 
 
Eco. Sperber mentions him as having suggested, in his typical Eco-ian  
manner, that S/W should have included Peirce, the 'pioneer' in their  
_Relevance_. Knowing Eco, I am surprised he did not suggest that they included a  
treatment of _Opera aperta_ into the bargain! Just joking!
 
Anyway, I am assuming that Stravos Assimakopoulos (beautiful name) has a  
_Greek_ native background. And there he is, asking for _me_ to 'excuse his  
ignorance'. How can I? I, whose all-time mentor is Socrates ("I only know I  
know nought"). I'd rather excuse your knowledge!
 
In revising my reading Grice reading Peirce we see the root of it all.  As 
I myself suffered it (in connection with my attempt at providing a  Gricean 
key to Plato's 'ideational' theory of meaning) Grice is suggesting we  
replace the Peircean -- which Grice finds 'crypto-technical' (lovely word)  --
 
     -- is a sign/indication of --
 
for the Anglo-Saxon, expletive, almost (cfr. Heinz meanz beanz):
 
     -- ... means ... --
 
But as Eco's disciple has pointed out, it's all Grecian to me. (Have you  
noted that some spell-checkers are paleo-Gricean? They replace all  
occurrences of 'Gricean' by 'Grecian'). Cfr. Horn, "Greek Grice" -- a pun,  in this 
case, on Chicago's renowned 'Greek RICE'.
 
Eco has this disciple from Bologna who has written an extensive history of  
_semiotics_ in antiquity. Naturally, Eco has reviewed it in all major fora 
as  "the only thing ever written on the topic", and he _might_ be right! In 
that  book, this Eco-scholar surveys the history of semiotics in Antiquity.
 
And it's here that I would ask Stavros Assimakopoulos for input. You see,  
Grice, '... means ...' is a dyadic predicate. I would assume that in Ancient 
 Greek, the equivalent would be
 
   ... semei ...
 
(of 'semeio' -- Classicist I find childish in having to provide the verb in 
 present-tense first person, as if "I signify" were the most natural thing 
in the  world. Indeed for Grice it's never even 'present-tense' THIRD 
person, but  PRETERITE third person, "Utterer U meant that ..." -- for surely we 
cannot know  what he _Means_ but only, abductively, and ex post facto, what 
he might have  _meant_).
 
Or 'semein' if you wish.
 
The passage to what Grice finds 'crypto-technical' -- a harmless latinate  
from Peirce, 'is a sign of', 'is an indication of' -- cfr. index, deictic,  
cognate with 'dic-', to say) is direct enough.
 
"Words are _not_ signs" Grice protests in "Meaning"! and he is possibly  
right. For he is discussing his own Lit.Hum. background with ordinary English. 
 Locke cared less (or did not) about ordinary English, and had no problem 
in  saying, and repeatedly, too, that 
 
     words are signs of ideas
 
--- Here the signum -- cfr. significare -- is supposed to translate, as per 
 say, Apuleius's commentary on Aristotle, Peri hermeneias, the following  
scheme
 
                   logos, rhema  --   semeion    -- phantasma
                  phantasma           semeion       pragma
 
I.e. for Aristotle, there is mediate and immediate signification. The word  
is a sign of the idea (rhema, semeion, phantasma); the idea is sign of the 
thing  (pragma); therefore, mediately, the word is a sign of the thing.
 
Now, anyone familiar with Peircean semiotics (my friend Seth Sharpless is  
and it took me years to accept his point about the inadequacy of easily  
misunderstanding Grice here) will recall the emphasis on 'interpretant'. For,  
while
 
     ... means ...      (Gk.  semein)
 
does look like dyadic, it is really tryadic. In "Meaning Revisited" (WoW)  
Grice goes abstract and replaces 'means' by "is a consequence of'
 
   xMy  (x means y)  iff     xCy    (x is a consequence of y)
 
-- and cfr. his more elaborate reduction of 'non-natural' meaning to  
'natural' "meaning" (sic in square quotes):
 
     U means that p
              iff U intends that p
 
i.e. if U means to ... instill in A (Addressee) the belief that ... 
 
with 'mean to' as a type of 'natural' "meaning" ('Meaning' in WoW). Gloss:  
that tear "means" inner sorrow (apres Ockham), but since good actors can  
_manipulate_ or simulate tears, by 'uttering' that tear, U means that he is  
sorry. Where 'means' is now the full-fledged (or fully-fledged, as Brits 
prefer)  'means-NN', non-natural.
 
(Grice, and I love him, finds Peirce, "is an indication of",  
crypto-technical, but perhaps "Causes of Death of Famous Philosophers" is right  when 
they list the cause of Grice's death as being 'non-natural'. For surely it  is 
a bit of a joke to avoid 'conventional' like that -- and I follow him there  
-- and speak of 'non-natural' instead.
 
Recall that Grice prefers 'non-natural' on the grounds that not all  
'meaning-nn' IS conventional).
 
But, and here is a tribute to Stavros and the classical background of  
Peirce's semeiotic, which Grice could have taken more seriously when  providing 
those exegeses on Peirce -- but then Oxford Lit.Hum, and a first  as Grice 
was on that -- make it a question of principle to avoid providing  'critical 
apparatus' that would 'show off' that they _know_).
 
The Greeks, this disciple of Eco makes it clear to us -- by quoting  
extensively from my best library series ever -- the Loeb Classical Library --  
green volumes -- seemed to have held, almost always, since the time of  
Herodotus, that '...means...' (or 'semeio') is a
 
    tryadic
 
relationship rather
 
  Mxyz
 
x means y TO Z.
 
Who is Z? The Greeks! While there is some evidence that it was all  
Babylonian in principle ("We are all Babylonians", cf. Mikes, "We are all  
Hungarian") -- via astrology, and other rituals -- the Greeks' first  elaborations 
onto semiotics were of the 'theological' kind:
 
   by sending us that lighting 
   Zeus means that
   we shouldn't be terminating the Persians
   _today_.
 
  by having that eagle fly in 
  his skies, Zeus means to us that
  the Persians are lurking behind
  the Hellespont.
 
  by allowing us to interpret the
  carcass of this bird like this,
  Zeus means that we will win
 
  by sending us a dream to the
  effect that a lion was devoured
  by a lamb, Zeus means to us
  that Persians are intrinsically
  evil (people)
 
i.e. it's always to some _interpretant_ (the term is Morris's but backed on 
 Peirce) that, to use Grice's Anglo-Saxonism, things _mean_ (or are  
'indices', 'signs' and 'symbols' in Peircean 'classier', i.e. more akin to  the 
classics, terminology).
 
I would agree with Downes -- his forthcoming book on Peirce -- that the  
special is a species of the genus of the general. Here, I found Grice's  
criticism of Stevenson _very_ appropriate. Pragmatists -- and Stevenson was a  
pragmatist, _and_ pragmaticist -- find it all too easy to bring in  
'communication' and forgetting:
 
1. That diary-entries _are_ meaningful. Grice disliked the 'language for  
expression'/language for communication polemic brought in by Chomsky. See his 
 atenuated cases of 'meaning' in WoW, lecture 6 -- 'a possible audience', 
'the  utterer at a later stage' -- and his reflections on the 'language of 
thought' in  the seldom quoted lecture 7 --.
 
2. There's some 'unhelpful' manoeuver in bringing in _communication_ at  
_some_ early stages. When criticising Stevenson's wordy paraphrase, 
 
   "an elaborate process of 
   conditioning attending the
   use of the sign in 
   communication"
 
-- for Chomsky is right in seeing Grice and his ilk as 'behaviourist' in  
that it's all about 'stimulus' and 'response' although not necessarily  
conditioned ones --.
 
as, as Grice notes, "This CLEARLY will not do" (WoW, 215). I find the  
'clearly' charming seeing that surely it was not clear to Stevenson and some  
Stevensonites I meet on a regular basis. Why won't that do? Well, because 
it's,  and this is anathema to someone into strict philosophical analysis of the 
 reductive type Grice is attempting -- see 'Retrospective Epilogue' and his 
reply  to Mrs Jack -- _CIRCULAR_.
 
Grice writes:
 
"If we HAVE to take SERIOUSLY [and don't! JLS]
th[at] part of the qualifying phrase ("attending the 
use of the sign in communication") then the 
account of meaning-nn is OBVIOUSLY CIRCULAR"
(WoW, 216).
 
And while the Greeks loved a circle, an urn is _not_.
"We might just as [circularly] say, 'x has meaning-nn
if it is used in communication', which, though true, is
not helpful" (WoW, idem)
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
 
---
 
W. Downes writes:
 
"Yes, I think this is so but there are
differences; its about how signs  are interpreted in general, but
intentional communication could be viewed as  a special case. 
... I'm returning to
Peirce in a forthcoming book. 
 
E.-A. Guttman writes:
> [Stecconi] "Peirce showed that all  interpretation is inferential, and 
the kind of
> interpretation involved  in translation is no exception ... Drawing on
> semiotics to make a case  for the inferential nature of translation can
> also
> provide sound  arguments to support other theories of translation which
> either  implicitly | presuppose or explicitly discuss inferential 
processes
> ..."  (p. 261-262)
> My own, provisional view, based on a very cursory acquaintance with  P's
> work, is as follows: Peirce and 'interpretative semiotics': P  
acknowledged
> importance of inferential processes in acquisition of  knowledge in 
general
> (deduction, induction, abduction), and hence  applied inference to
> communication as well; however, did not recognize  the special challenge 
of
> intentional human communication, esp. the  challenge of coordinating the
> inferential processing of the audience  with the intentions of the
> communicator. In that sense, while  interpretative semiotics recognised 
the
> insufficiency of coding alone  and brought out the importance of inference
> (as part of general  epistemics), it did not really come up with an
> inferential theory that  would explain intentional human communication in
>  particular.