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On 17 Feb 2011, at 18:29, jlsperanza@aol.com wrote:

> When K. M. Jaszczolt refers to the “later Wittgenstein”, and
> Noel B-R's
> points reminds me of Strawsonian attempts to see things, I wonder
> if it’s
> not time for a little Gricean interlude. First, the
> ‘crosslinguistic’
> example provided by Gutt. In his message of 2/16/2011 he retreats
> to his
> 'native' language (as Chomsky would have it) and writes:
>
> A: Wem hast du von diesem Brief erzählt?
> B: Meinen Eltern.
>
> Gutt is dubious what role "logical form" (never mind
> "explicature") may
> have to do with _that_: "[T]he fact that [B] chose a case marked
> phrase
> (hence the choice of German for this example [But cfr. below my
> case with
> "Her" versus "She" in 'native' English. JLS]), and furthermore
> assuming that
> case is assigned here by grammatical structure, this would be a
> strong
> incentive to the audience to build up a well-formed grammatical
> structure of
> which this phrase would be a constituent, and so the specific
> assumption
> [U] _told his parents about the letter_ would be quite strongly
> communicated. In fact, if the response had not been appropriately
> case marked, e.g.
> 'Meine Eltern', it would have been felt unfelicitous. Whether this
> process
> necessitates the theoretical recognition of concepts like 'logical
> form'
> and/or
> 'explicature' seems unclear at this time."
>
> In a way, Gutt's example relates to the two examples provided by
> A. Hall
> (the second apres Merchant) at
> www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/alison/Fragments_Oct08.pdf. (work referred
> to by N. Allott)
>
> (a) One example in the body of her essay. "[I]n German, to order a
> coffee,
> you can utter the apparent subsentence ..."
>
> [A: Can I help you?]
> B: Einen Kaffee.
>
> Hall writes:
>
> “Einen Kaffee” (a-ACC coffee). Accusative case on the object is
> obligatory, as it would be if the fragment were embedded in a full
> overt sentence: “
> Ein ...". (When in doubt, I make a _point_ when in Germany of
> _allways_
> [sic] just explicate "Coffee", since, for one, I would be
> displeased if they
> do not refill my cup. It simplifies things so). (b) The other
> example is
> in a footnote she deals with similar example (involving the dative
> rather
> than the accusative case, though – and relying on Jason
> Merchant’s
> cross-linguistic evidence from “The syntax of silence”): Her
> other example
> concerns case, and I have provided below a case with "She" and
> "Her" which
> seems to do the job just as well -- without a need for
> 'native'-language-switch.
>
> A: Wem sieht er ähnlich?
> B: Seinem Vater.
>
> and writes, counterfactually (?): "If B's reply were not a case of
> syntactic ellipsis, it would be a mystery why dative case is
> mandatory [for a
> 'felicitous' move, as it were -- cfr. Gutt above] while nominative
> case,
> *which would be expected if the fragment were subsentential*, is
> judged
> ungrammatical". I'm not sure about the asterisked bit, "which
> would be expected
> if the fragment were subsentential", though, butperhaps A.-E. Gutt
> is!
>
> Now for some neo-Gricean some variants, and a palaeo-Gricean one:
>
> A: I’m no hungry!
> B: On the top shelf [+> that’s where the jar of marmalade is, if
> you are
> looking for it -- cfr. Austin's own cupboard conditional]
> Versus: ---- The top shelf.
> --- Top shelf.
> --- Top.
>
> A: Where does C live?
> B: C lives somewhere in the South of France.
> ----- He lives somewhere in the South of France. (Or ""She" lives
> somewhere in the South of France" as the case might be).
> --- Somewhere in the South of France (Grice, WoW: 32)
> ----- The South of France
> ---- South of France.
>
> Bringing Merchant home?
>
> A: Who does he resemble? (after Hall, but sticking with English)
> B: Her.
> ----- She.
>
> A Latin transliteration of Grice’s example should provide some
> evidence
> why Sidonius was the first to have used "implicatura", if only in
> Latin --
> vide Short/Lewis, "A Latin Dictionary", 'implicatura: entanglement").
>
> ---- Pars Provinciae (“The part of Province” – as answer to the
> question, “Where does C live?”). Or: "Una pars
> Provinciae" ('one part of
> Province). Ungrammatical. It should be, in the appropriate case:
> --- Parte Provinciae.
>
> In an inflected language like Latin, “Somewhere in the South of
> France”
> should not be understood as being in the nominative case. (I'm
> simplifying
> things and taking Provence as the epitome, as it should, of the
> South of
> France _that counts_)(But yet, in my reading of Hall above, about
> the
> 'nominative' case, it seems like we are forgetting that the
> nominative case is
> just an inflected case as any of the others. No primacy should be
> given to it?
> -- but cfr. Grice for 'ontological correlates' below).
>
> ----- THE PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND. Why Grice is Not Wittgenstein.
>
> In a message dated 2/14 indeed N. Allott had provided the full
> context
> from R. Carston, in Mind & Language, vol. 17, p. 130:
>
> “Consider the following very ordinary situation: it’s breakfast
> time and,
> coming into the kitchen, I see my companion searching around in
> the lower
> reaches of a cupboard; knowing his breakfast habits, I guess that
> he’s
> looking for a jar of marmalade and I utter: … On the top shelf.
> … Although
> the proposition I have expressed here is something like The
> marmalade is on
> the top shelf, the linguistic semantic input to the pragmatic
> processor is,
> arguably, just whatever meaning the language confers on that
> prepositional
> phrase, that is, a far from fully propositional logical form, one
> which
> consists of just a location constituent (which denotes a
> property).”
>
> Now, I don’t know about the later Wittgenstein, but since Carston
> has
> expanded on this in her (as Noel Burton-Roberts has it, aptly
> named "Thoughts
> and Utterances"), and, interestingly quoting from S/W 1986/1995 on
> 'subpropositional logical form', etc., AND noting that, in her
> view, Grice's
> interests in this area (of subsententials) were at best
> 'peripheral' (No "a
> red-pillar box", bur rather the full proposition, "That pillar-
> box seems
> _red_ to me", etc. -- vide below Grice on 'sense data'), I would
> like to
> bring, explicitly, some material on what Grice regarded as
> involving some
> 'metaphysical complications' of any account of 'subpropositional'
> constituents worth their philosophical price. First, metaphysical,
> as it should
> (rather than epistemic or linguistic):
>
> ONTOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF SUBPROPOSITIONAL CONSTITUENTS:
>
> Consider, for example, this rather convoluted (in the best
> Griceian way)
> analysis of quantifers -- an element in the _first_ constituent of a
> 'propositional complex', according to Grice, "Reply to Richards”.
> This is a
> rather longish reply to Richard Grandy and Richard Warner. In the
> particular
> bit I’m quoting from, Grice is addressing the alleged primacy
> (undefined,
> though) of the ‘proposition’. Grice provides a reply which aims
> at
> analyzing what we mean by a proposition (or ‘propositional
> complex’ as he
> prefers) in terms of its (sub)constituents, and spends some time in
> their ‘
> ontological correlates’ (and keep in mind Carston above, 'going
> ontological': “a
> location constituent (which denotes a property”)).
>
> In particular Grice explores a second-order set theory to account for
> various quantificational phrases. And he is NOT having in view
> things like:
>
> "The King of France!"
>
> (cfr. A. Hall, "The baby!" (+> "What have I done with it?" --
> uttered by
> worried mother))
>
> Grice is exploring neo-traditionalist tendencies in logic as
> associated
> with his joint work with Peter Strawson, and is fascinated by the
> fact that
> in this view even singular phrases tend to bear a 'universalist'
> analysis.
> Note, too, that while this is just a reposte to Grandy/Warner,
> Grice takes
> his time to provide sub-divisions for different subpropositional
> quantificational phrases, which should be evidence of the primacy
> he regarded the
> topic showed.
>
> As with WoW:VI, cited below, Grice provides extensionalist (in
> set-theoretic terms) while leaving room for an alternative
> intensionalist account (in
> terms of 'properties').
>
> "[1] [W]e associate with the subject-expression of a canonically
> formulated sentence [expressing a proposition, bearer of truth] a
> set of at least
> second order. If the subject-expression is a singular name, its
> ontological
> correlate will be the singleton of the singleton of the entity
> which bears
> that name. ... [2] If the subject-expression is an indefinite
> quantificational phrase ..., its ontological correlate will be the
> set of all singletons
> whose sole element if an item belonging to the extension of the
> predicate
> to which the indefinite modifier is attached. ... [3] If the
> subject-expression is a universal quantificational [all-together,
> rather than
> one-at-a-time] phrase, ... its ontological correlate will be the
> singleton whose
> sole element is the set which forms the extension of the predicate
> to which
> the universal quantifier is attached." (Reply to Richards, p. 77ff).
>
> It would not be much of a stretch to apply that 'constructivist'
> account
> to 'propositions' (qua families of 'propositional complexes' in
> Grice's
> jargon) to "On the top shelf"--- or as I prefer, "On the mat".
> ('The cat is on
> the mat'). I am fascinated by the Longman Dictionary of English that
> lists, ‘on the mat’ to mean, ‘being punished’, with
> ‘cat’ meaning ‘nasty
> woman’. Some title for a wicked novel. Back to Grice’s very own
> subsentential "Provence" example cited above:
>
> “What he said”: “Somewhere in the South of France”.
> (ODD implicature: "He doesn't know WHERE _in the South of France_").
>
> Note, incidentally, that while this would be a simple case of
> syntactic
> ellipsis (rather than semantic or pragmatic ellipsis, in
> Merchant’s view --
> but "Do not multiply ellipses beyond necessity"), Grice, as we've
> seen, can
> go unashamedly subpropositional (subsentential), providing the
> ‘idiomatic’
> , "Somewhere in the South of France" rather than the clumsier
> [over-informative], "C lives somewhere in the South of France" –
> (Surely “_He_ [or
> 'she'] lives in the South of France” is still a different
> animal). He (Grice,
> rather than the South-of-France dweller) didn’t seem to have made
> much of
> the alleged complication this involves: “He said that C lived in
> the
> South of France.” “He did not! He said, “Somewhere in the
> South of France”. “
> Surely he explicated ‘he lived’”. “Surely not – not the
> type of
> explicature he was up to!” and so on, which I will lead to neo-
> Griceians vs.
> post-Griceians, while I stick with the palaeo.
>
> In a similar fashion (I was amused by S. Lucas’s reference to it
> being
> natural that ‘relevance theorists’ will disagree on this and
> that) A. Hall
> (in the work referred to by N. Allott, and elsewhere – A. Hall is
> currently
> researching the compositionality principle at the Nicod) has also
> explored
> this ‘subpropositional logical forms’ (Sperber’s and
> Wilson’s term) in
> terms of subpropositional constituents. Incidentally, I prefer, as
> I’m sure
> you should, too, to use 'sub', as in 'subsentential' -- "On the top
> shelf" -- rather than, as per subject of this thread, "non-
> sentential", which
> seems
> to be different in scope -- cf. Guijarro: a totally out-of-the-
> blue
> utterance of "Between if": nonsentential but NOT subpropositional).
>
> GRICE’S SHAGGY-DOG STORY
>
> For the record, one sees that Grice uses 'subsentential' in at
> least two
> places of WoW: V (p. 89 – “an “incomplete” utterance-type
> (which may be a
> nonsentential word or phrase…)” and VI (p. 119: “in case X is a
> nonsentential utterance-type, claims of the form “X means
> ‘…,’” where the
> locution is completed by a nonsentential expression”. In
> particular, it would be
> good to play around, philosophically, with what I have elsewhere
> called
> Grice's shaggy-dog story.
>
> This had some philosophical bearing for Grice. Note that in
>
> "Jones's dog (Fido) is shaggy, i.e. hairy-coated",
>
> Grice is obsessed with getting further _onto_ the subpropositional
> constituents of a simple act of meaning. NOT: "By uttering
> "Jones's dog is
> shaggy", Utterer meant that p or q", but rather
>
> (a) Vis-a-vis “alpha” type ‘subject-expressions’: (WoW: 131
> for Grice’s
> use of ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’)
>
> By uttering, "Jones's dog"
> U referred to Fido.
>
> -- expanded by Schiffer in early work on a Gricean theory of
> reference in
> the pages of Synthese.
>
> (b) Vis-à-vis “beta” type ‘predicate-expressions’:
>
> By uttering "Shaggy"
> U predicated hairy-coatedness (-- cfr. Carston, 'denotes a
> property') of
> Fido.
>
> At this point, a quote from Grice WoW with his typical
> complications, as
> per his footnote will just serve as an example of his ‘
> analytical-philosophical’ skills.
>
> Grice writes:
>
> "To have explicited correlated X with each member of a set K, not
> only
> must I have intentionally effected that a particular relation R
> holds between
> X and all those (and only those) items which belong to K, but
> also my
> purpose or end in setting up this relationship must have been to
> perform an
> act as a result of which there will be some relation or other which
> holds
> between X and all those (and only those) things which belong to
> K. To
> the definiens, then, we should add, within the scope of the initial
> quantifier, the following clause: "& U's purpose in effect that
> ∀x (......) is
> that (Ǝ
> R') (∀z)(R' 'shaggy' z≡z ϵ y (y is hairy-coated))." (WoW:133n)
>
>
> Now, translate that to "On the top shelf" and the 'property' it is
> denoted, and imagine if we, alla Gibbs (I admire him!) we were to
> think of a lab
> protocol to _test_ just that! In general, Griceans, when relying
> on their
> intuitions, are thinking they are being _experimental_. On this
> point,
> Grice's excellent reliance on Hans Sluga [He came out as "Shuga",
> unfortunately, in the Academic-Press reprint, and Grice omitted
> the name of Sluga
> altogether in WoW:271 -- vis-a-vis:
>
> (a) "(ix.Fx)Gx" and
> (b) "G(ix.Fx)"
>
> as providing the subpropositional 'logical form' of 'The king of
> France
> is bald' -- "the iota-operator ... treated as being syntactically
> analogous
> to a quantifier" vs. it being treated as "a device for forming a
> term".
> Grice explicitly acknowledges Sluga's participation in the Berkeley
> seminars, and notes that it is Grice's "intuitions" regarding
> _negation_ which
> have him opting for (b)).
>
> “What Grice would have said” – but merely “implicated”
>
> In general, from what I browsed from the linguistics (rather than
> philosophy) literature on this, the attitude towards an exegesis
> of Grice
> remains patronising (most notably in this author who keeps
> referring to 'the
> purportedly Gricean interpretation' of this -- not caring to
> explore on
> Grice's many publications and unpublications on the subject!). In
> this respect,
> it is a GREAT thing that Grice cared to keep ALL the seminar
> material he
> shared with Sir Peter Strawson when giving courses on 'logical
> form' and
> 'categories' (substantials/non-substantials) at Oxford. (They are
> listed
> by Chapman in her book on _Grice_, Palgrave).
>
> HOW PROPOSITIONAL can children and animals be? Grice's Kantotelian
> reflections
>
> There is a related area of interest, which is explored by M. Green
> and
> collaborator Bar-On (and Bar-On below) It refers to something like an
> obsession with Grice: squarrels. They are like squirrels, but
> allow for closer
> ethological inspection. You possibly have noted that the first
> utterances
> babies (miscalled ‘babies’) utter are 'subpropositional' at
> best (or
> 'pre-propositional' in some cases). A. Hall makes a very good point
> about this. We
> should call them 'pre-propositional' because they cannot feature as
> 'premises' in explicit pieces of reasoning. They are'pre-rational'
> in this
> technical sense. They need an expansion before they can count as
> steps in a
> reasoning chain. Green and Bar-On (in their joint "Lionspeak",
> available online)
> consider this area of interest (also explored by T. Wharton in his
> book on
> the pragmatics of 'gestures'). Their example I adapt by using Lewis
> Carroll:
>
> DOVE (hutching eggs, as she perceives long-necked Alice): Serpent!
> ALICE: I'm not a serpent. I'm a little girl. ---- (as the
> conversation
> develops). It's true I do I eat eggs -- at breakfast.
> DOVE: SERPENT!
> (Discussed by Sutherland, "Language and Lewis Carroll", Mouton).
>
> Bar-On and Green focus on pre- (rather than sub-) propositional)
> 'utterances' like a bird's cry of alarm above (“Serpent!”). It
> would be pedantic
> to refer to the _content_ of this 'psychological' attitude on the
> part of
> the dove as involving a full proposition, complete with logical
> form.
> Doves do not need to be Aristotelian, in this sense. The point
> would be then
> to explore the role of pre-propositional 'content' in the,
> say, phylogenesis and ontogenesis of ... meaning. A topic which
> while
> peripheral in terms of Grice's central concerns was at the root
> of his
> long-time interest in providing "philosophical grounds of
> rationality:
> intentions, categories, ends" (P.G.R.I.C.E., for short).
>
> Relation was for Grice, notably, a category -- used by Kant, to
> supersede
> on Aristotle. If Grice stuck with 'relevance' ('be relevant') as a
> paraphrase of this rather abstract 'category of thought' (and turn
> it into a
> 'conversational category' as he was wont of saying) this should not
> preclude us from always keeping in mind the central role of the
> original
> category in our 'system of thought'.
>
> Children are of course different. When Morley-Bunker wanted to test,
> empirically, some claims about analytic/synthetic propositions
> (cited by
> Sampson, "Making sense"), "he explicitly excluded philosophers or
> philosophy
> students; they are corrupted already"). Similarly, Chapman recalls
> how Grice
> would _test_ some of his claims not with their children, but with
> their
> playmates ("Can a thing be red and green all over? No spots
> allowed"). When is
> the first level of _propositional_ reasoning shown in children?
> (Cfr. Why is
> it that _quantificational_ (or predicate logic) is deemed prior to
> _propositional_ or sentential logic, though?)
>
> MEANING AND BEYOND: Grice and Peacocke on the ‘sense’ of our
> ‘sense data’
>
> Incidentally, Carston's types of examples, "A red pillar-box" --
> cfr. her
> "On the top shelf"), versus the fully propositional “That pillar-
> box seems
> _red_ to me” is a rather complex one. (She compares it with G. E.
> Moore
> uttering "My hand!" rather than what he did utter at Harvard,
> "This is _my_
> hand"). For one, and taking into account H. Beck's point about
> 'making
> sense' in his latest (echoing, as it were, Geoffrey Sampson's book
> by that
> title, "Making sense", Oxford: Clarendon), it should *not* be
> much of a
> stretch to introduce a philosophical notion of 'sense' involved here.
>
> Note that the FIRST strand in Grice's retrospective epilogue to
> WoW is
> all about that philosophical term of art, if ever there was one,
> "sense-datum". For Russell, sense data were notably _not_
> propositional in nature --
> "This" was the paradigm of a sense-datum if I recall his stuff –
> cfr. ‘
> logical proper name’). This line of analysis is best explored
> within the
> Oxonian tradition by C. A. B. Peacocke (who, with Schiffer --
> "Things we
> mean" -- would expand on his views at seminars at Oxford and
> elsewhere),
> and for one, succeeded Sir Peter Strawson as professor of
> metaphysics at
> Oxford (his inaugural lecture was a 'transcendental'
> justification of
> 'content'!). This view would emphasise the non-propositional,
> subpropositional
> (or what have you) _content_ of our 'sense' experiences (and note
> that
> Grice was
> first and foremost, historically speaking, a 'philosopher of
> perception'
> -- vide his early "Some remarks about the senses", and that's how
> he was
> regarded at Oxford for a time). In a way, it's a bit like a full
> circle
> (Cfr. Paul, Is there a problem about sense data?).
>
> ---- As an application. Consider, "on the mat", or "the cat", as
> appropriate sub-sentential replies to appropriate questions. What is
> it involved in
> having a 'psychological' attitude (as Grice has it) towards that
> propositional complex, '<the cat, the mat>'. How many subdoxastic or
> sub-propositional constituents does it involve? How do we expand
> them, unless in
> terms of any 'behavioural' response on the part of alleged 'holder'
> of
> such a psychological attitude' -- cfr. Grice and Strawson, "In
> defense of a
> dogma").
>
> A. Hall dwells with a further complication: subsentential
> (subpropositional) items can _hardly_ be said to play a role in
> 'reasoning'. How are we
> to modify something like Grice's "Principle of Economy of Rational
> Effort"
> to allow that, on occasion, reasoners DO rely on subpropositional
> items
> for calculating what follows from a given set of premisses?
> (Allott's PhD
> work on rationality and pragmatics seems relevant to this).
>
> Grice did not want to regard 'propositions' as primitive items in his
> vocabulary, and his constructivist approach to them was in agreement
> with the
> pragmatist tenor of a remark by his once collaborator G. Myro (cited
> by
> Grice in "Reply to Richards"). In a pragmatist vein, 'propositions'
> rely on
> different justifications: not just as 'pegs' on which to hang our
> logical
> (or rational) laws, but, more humanistically, as contents of our,
> er,
> 'propositional' attitudes!
>
> (I won't burden the list with further Griceana _on this_, I hope, but
> listers know where to go for some quick references, then!)
>
> Cheers.
> Speranza
> --- The Grice Club, &c.
>
> References
>
> Bar-On, D. Grice and the naturalisation of semantics. Pacific
> Philosophical
> Quarterly, vol. 76.
> Carston, R. 'Linguistic meaning, communicated meaning and cognitive
> pragmatics' Mind & Language,17.
> Carston, Thoughts and utterances
> Chapman, Grice. Palgrave
> Grice – and Strawson. Seminar material on “Logical Form”.
> Oxford.
> Grice, ‘Reply to Richards’, in P.G.R.I.C.E. (Oxford, Clarendon)
> Grice, WoW
> Hall, A. Working Papers in Linguistics
> Kant, on "Relation" ("Table of Categories"), Critique of Pure Reason.
> Schiffer, On referring. Synthese.
> Sperber/Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition
> Paul, Is there a problem about sense data? Aristotelian Society
> Peacocke, Sense and content. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
> Wharton, Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
>
Received on Thu Feb 17 18:41:36 2011