RT list: Re: Grice's Sticky Wicket

In a message dated 1/13/2010 6:21:19 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
whitehd@drexel.edu writes:
What they usually have in mind is ARTIFICIAL relevance:
the algorithmic responses of a system in delivering appropriate writings
to its users. But
information scientists have done not nearly as good a job of analyzing
"relevance"

----

Oh, I'm relieved! And thanks for the useful links. In any case, I add the
complete quote by Grice on computers, since it's good to reconsider this
dialectics, as it were, between
 
      artificial relevance vs. (I assume) natural relevance
 
The quote below. Apparently, for Chapman, who quotes her in her bio
of Grice, the longest sentence ever written by a philosopher, and
grammatical too.
 
It's good to have the clarification re: 'tests'. It's indeed the inverse
sense.
I thought you and your authors were trying to provide support for "RT"
from "IS". Rather, it's the other way round. Good luck!
 

----
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
 
 
Grice: 
 
"Indeed it seems to me that not merely is such
argument required, but it is specially required
in the current 
 
           AGE OF  TECHNOLOGY,
 
when intuition and ordinary forms of speech
 
        [such as Grice's or Deirdre  Wilson's --
     an online essay by R. Carston reads, 
     if I understood her aright, of the
     SIMILARITIES of approaches between
     D. S. M. Wilson's reliance on
     intuitions and Grice's. But let's recall
     that circa 1967, the methodology of
     so-called generative semantics was
     just identical with ordinary-language
     philosophy. As Kaplan responded to
     a linguist who had said they were
     like a 'vacuum cleaner' with philosophy.
     Kaplan replying, "But a vacuum 
     cleaner absorbs _dust_!" JLS]
 
and thought are ALL TOO OFTEN forgotten
or despised, when the appearance of the
vernacular serves only too often merely as a
gap-sign to be replaced as soon as possible
by 
 
           JARGON,
 
and when many researchers not only believe
that 
 
       WE ARE COMPUTERS,
 
but would be gravely disappointed should it
turn out that we are, after all, 
 
                 NOT COMPUTERS;
 
is not a purely mechanical existence not only all
we do have, but also all we should want to have?"
 
      Preliminary Valediction, 
      H. P. Grice Papers,
      BANC MSS 90/135c,
      The Bancroft Library, 
      University of California, Berkeley.