Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Grice [Samuel Hinderaker]

1. I agree with Grice's use of "natural" and "nonnatural" senses of meaning - in his examples, it seems clear that there's a distinction between the examples, where 1) has a very different sort of equal correlation between the two ideas, and 2) is sort of an incomplete correlation, and doesn't quite have the meaning of Smith being unable to get on without trouble etc. if one only says "Smith found his wife indispensable."

2. I think that some of his examples he uses towards the beginning are problematic. He has sentences like "those spots meant measles but he hadn't got measles" and "the recent budget means that we shall have a hard year but we shan't have." I think these sentences are not really complete - he is leaving off a sort of implied "I thought those spots meant measles." or "I thought the recent budget meant..." because in both cases the speaker is forming an educated opinion based on what's in front of them. I think these constructions are necessary to the examples he has given, and refute a good part of 1-5 he lists on page 377.

3. I would be curious what Grice means when he says: "I do not want to maintain that all our uses of "mean" fall easily, obviously, and tidily into one of the two groups I have distinguished" because I'm not sure what would fall outside of the categories he's created.

No comments:

Post a Comment