LOGICAL FORMS AND
LANGUAGE
STRAWSON AND GRICE
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Russell aims to understand the word/world
relationship in terms of truth, reference, and
satisfaction.
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This idea has served as the backbone of much
linguistic theorizing in the 20th century.
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By aiming to understand language in terms of these
notions, we can clarify and precisify our
characterizations of the world and we can uncover
the logical structure of our language and thought.
THE PARADIGM UNDER THREAT
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Pressure emerged from Strawson and other
‘natural language’ philosophers.
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Strawson's critiques of Russell serve as a good
example of this movement.
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But the attack, as we will see, was meant to be
more general than a worry about descriptions.
SHOWING THE DIFFERENCE
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We might want to debate definite descriptions for
their own sake, but the real importance of this debate
lies in the background theories the participants
exemplify.
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Strawson has an opportunity to show how a theory of
language understood in terms of use is explanatory
and captures our linguistic intuitions whereas a
theory relying on features of expressions is
misguided.
THE KING OF FRANCE AGAIN
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Russell’s theory has it that ‘The King of France is bald’ is false since
there is no King of France.
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Strawson thinks this is the wrong result. When someone utters the
sentence, we wouldn’t say ‘That’s false’ or ‘I disagree’.
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The utterance is simply defective and a hearer is more likely to say
something like ‘Wait a minute… France doesn’t have a King’.
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Strawson is trying to highlight the importance of how we use
language and what we do with it.
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The fact that we don’t say ‘that’s false’ should clue us into facts
about the meaning.
UNIQUENESS
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Strawson shows that two sentences can be used to express the
same truth-conditions:
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‘The table is covered in books’ vs. ‘There is some unique thing
that is a table and it is covered in books’
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But crucially these differ on their use-conditions (we use the
former even when we know full well there are lots of tables).
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He thus shows, by detailed consideration of a particular case,
that giving the truth-conditions of an occurrence of a sentence,
or giving the proposition it expresses, is to miss something
about the meaning of that expression.
MEANING IS USE
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“To give the meaning of an expression (in the
sense in which I am using the word) is to give
general directions for its use to refer to or mention
particular objects or persons; to give the meaning
of a sentence is to give general directions for its
use in making true or false assertions....The
meaning of an expression cannot be identified
with the object it is used, on a particular occasion,
to refer to.”
MUCH BROADER APPLICATION
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Strawson's concluding remarks:
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“Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact
logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary
language has no exact logic.”
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This is bold claim, especially for contemporary theorists.
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We use natural language to make arguments, to aid in our
reasoning and thinking, and we might hold out hope that we
can uncover formal properties of our languages and perhaps
even map them onto the formal tools given to us by logic.
LOGIC AND LANGUAGE
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But if Strawson is right, when we are trying to
utilize logic to shed light on ordinary reasoning,
we are completely off base.
THE EXAMPLE OF ‘AND’
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“It might be conceded that ‘and’ has functions that ‘&’ has
not..., and yet claimed that the rules that hold for ‘and’,
where it is used to couple clauses, are the same as the
rules that hold for ‘&’. Even this is not true. [By the truthtable for ‘&’], ‘p & q’ is logically equivalent to ‘q & p’; but
‘They got married and had a child’ or ‘He set out to work
and found a job’ are by no means logically equivalent to
‘They had a child and got married’ or ‘He found a job and
set out to work’.”
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Similar problems for ‘or’ and ‘if…then’.
GRICE
LOGIC AND CONVERSATION
THREE IMPORTANT UPSHOTS
1. The creation of a semantics/pragmatics divide.
2. A systematic way of testing for and computing
implicatures.
3. Accounting for Strawson-esque problems while
saving the connection to logic.
SAYING AND IMPLICATING
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What is Said: limited to what is meant
conventionally by the sentence.
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What is encoded in the meanings of the words
and the way they are put together.
What is Implicated: that information conveyed that
goes beyond what’s said.
SOME IMPLICATURES
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You can have the soup or the salad.
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Implied: you can’t have both.
John has two children.
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Implied: John has exactly two children.
WHAT’S IMPLICATED IS DIFFERENT
FROM WHAT’S LOGICALLY ENTAILED
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John ate two cookies. (entails he ate some
cookies)
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Test: #John ate two cookies. In fact, he didn’t eat
any.
John ate two cookies. (implied he ate exactly two)
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Test: John ate two cookies. In fact, he had eight.
A COUPLE MORE EXAMPLES
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John got married then he had a baby, but not in
that order.
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You can have soup or salad, in fact, you can have
both if you want.
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We can cancel what we are tempted to infer.
This shows that they are implied rather than
entailed.
UPSHOT FOR STRAWSON
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Strawson brings to bear conversational facts to call
into question the idea that language can be
treated in terms of logic.
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Grice argues that there are ways of screening off
the semantic (which can be treated in logical
terms) from the pragmatic, which needs a different
treatment.
SO WHAT DO WE DO WITH
PRAGMATICS
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Grice effectively sees it as part of psychology.
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Cooperative Principle
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“Make your conversational contribution such as
is required ... by the accepted purpose or
direction of the talk exchange in which you are
engaged”
USING THE PRINCIPLE
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Grice views pragmatic interpretation as heavily
relying on inferencing processes: the hearer is able to
hypothesize about the Speaker’s meaning, based on
the meaning of the sentence uttered, on background
or contextual assumptions and, last but not least, on
general communicative principles which speakers are
expected to observe.
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We expect CP to be followed. When it isn’t, we can
use that fact as data.
WE FLOUT THE CP AND WHEN WE DO,
INTERLOCUTORS CAN DRAW CONCLUSIONS
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The speaker presumably means to observe the CP,
and yet she is blatantly not observing a maxim;
she’s not inept, so she must mean something
additional to what she is saying.
MAXIM 1: QUALITY
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Do not say what you believe to be false.
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Do not say that for which you lack adequate
evidence.
FLOUTING QUALITY
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‘Great, that’s really great! That’s made my week!’
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1. The paramedic expressed pleasure at having somebody vomit over
him.
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2. There is no example in recorded history of people being delighted at
having somebody vomit over them.
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3. I have no reason to believe that the paramedic is trying to deceive us.
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4. Unless the paramedic’s utterance is entirely pointless, he must be
trying to convey some other proposition.
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5. The most obviously related proposition is the exact opposite of the
one he has expressed.
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6. The paramedic is extremely annoyed at having the drunkard vomit
over him.
MAXIM 2: QUANTITY
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Make your contribution as informative as is
required.
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Do not make your contribution more informative
than is required.
MAXIM 3: RELATION
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Be relevant.
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Ex: Letter of reference example.
MAXIM 4: MANNER
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Avoid obscurity of expression.
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Avoid ambiguity.
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Be brief.
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Be orderly.
FLOUTING MANNER
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Flouts exploiting the Manner Maxim: In most
cases, such flouts involve absence of clarity, brevity
and transparency of communicative intentions.
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Interviewer: Did the Government promise
teachers a raise and then not start any legal
procedures about it?
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Spokesperson: I would not try to steer you away
from that conclusion.