Defense of the Causal Theory of Perception - Essay Example

Philosophy of Language: Grice’s Notion of Implicature in Defence of the Causal Theory of Perception (CTP) Introduction The Causal Theory of Perception (CTP) is an attempt to analyze material objects in causal terms or more precisely, seeing something red in causal terms; in other words, something red is deemed causally responsible for an individual’s perception of there being something red before him/her. The CTP has not received much attention over the years and has been contested on many fronts among them the popular argument in the 1950s that if an individual perceives something red, they simply say “that’s red” but hardly ever do they say “that appears/looks/seems red” (Grice & Alan, 1961:121). Traditionally, opponents of the CTP have held that the statement “that appears/seems red” is reserved for situations in which there is reasonable doubt in an individual’s mind regarding whether something is truly red or otherwise. In that sense, part of the meaning inherent in “that appears/seems red” is attributable to the doubt in the speaker’s mind concerning whether something is red. Consequently, it would be inappropriate, and quite rightly so, to suggest that there is any ounce of doubt regarding whether something is red and it is false that anything “appears/looks/seems red” when one sees something red. For that reason, critics of the CTP have argued that seeing red cannot be analysed in causal terms, that is, in terms of it being caused to be in a manner in which an entity “looks/appears/seems” red. In 1961, Herbert Paul Grice, notable for his pioneering work in the philosophy of language, came to the defense of CTP; this paper explains the manner in which Grice employed his notion of implicature in defense of the Causal Theory of Perception. Grice’s notion of implicature Grice published an article in which he distinguished between what is meant (what is said) and what is implied (implicated) (Bardzokas 2010, p.114); basically, Grice argues that in saying “that appears/seems/looks red”, one may implicate that something is not really red but does not out rightly refute that something is red or mean it is not really red. According to Grice, it is actually possible that one who says “that looks/seems/appears red” sees something red and it could also be that they see something that seems red to them (even if otherwise). If to say “that appears red” implicates that something may not necessarily be red, it is contradictory to say “that appears red, and it is red”; Grice posits that the implication that a thing is not really red can be explicitly cancelled out. Consequently, if the implicatum of what a speaker says can be cancelled, it follows that the implicatum in question is not part of the meaning or part of what is said by the speaker, that is, it is implicated but not said. Implicatures in Grice’s defence of CTP The notion of implicature as postulated by Grice in his defense of the Causal Theory of Perception (CTP) denotes a close relationship between what is said and what is meant (Wilson & Sperber 2012, p.5). In this sense, implicature emanates from the things that a speaker means, but does not say. In defending CTP, Grice attempts to differentiate elements related to language use that results from meaning and those resulting from other aspects (Chapman 2007, p.2). For example, a sentence such as “He has not been charged for the crime yet” literally means that the person in question has not been charged for the crime. However, in other context, the speaker would be perceived to imply that this person played a role in the crime and was likely to be charged in the near future. In this light, implicatures can also be referred to as the consequence of a specific sentence conveyed by a speaker. Further, implicatures as advanced by Grice relies on the audience’s ability to grasp the intended purpose of an utterance, and this context, its meaning. As supported by Grice, the technique that a speaker relies on to convey an intended meaning is often triggered by a failure to adhere to the conventional communicative expectations, which can be summarize into four maxims or integrated into one super-maxim. Grice observes that some implicatures are as a result of the conventional meaning of words used and do not rely on any special features of a conversation. For instance, if one was to say “She is Irish, so she is alcoholic”, it is implicated, but not uttered, that her alcoholism is a as a result of her being Irish. Moreover, is someone says, “He is poor, but he is kind”, it is also implicated, but not said, that his poverty is incongruent with his kindness. Contrariwise, Grice notes that other implicatures depend on features of the conversational situation or context rather than merely on the conventional meanings of uttered words (Neale 1992, p.1). In that respect, Grice distinguishes between conventional and conversational implicatures, the latter denoting the general rules or principles of conversation that are applied in a specific context and the former being derived from the meanings of words uttered (Chapman 2007, p.2). In the examples of conventional implicatures denoted above, the conventional meaning of words such as “but” and “so”, among others, convey the implicatum. The implication here is that conventional implicatures, unlike conversational implicatures of an expression, are part of its semantics. However, Grice notes that assertions of “X” and “Y” and “X” but “Y” say the same thing, but the latter conventionally imply that there is a difference between X and Y. After publishing the paper on meaning, Grice developed a theory of pragmatic implication, which is different from semantic implication; this theory acted as a tool for resolving various linguistic issues related to the theory of perception (Grice 1951). For instance, in an utterance such as “That box looks red to me” he objected to the phrase “looks to me” imply acknowledging some kind of doubt or denial of the box’s color, but such an implication is a result of a general rule of the use of language. In this regard, Grice insists that a speaker should never make a weaker statement (as opposed to a stronger one) unless he or she has a very logical reason for doing so (Carston 1998, p.180). It is the audience’s tacit knowledge that controls how the speaker uses language and not the peculiarity of semantic features (Atlas 2005, p.244); it is also the audience’s tacit knowledge to discard weak statements rather than concur with any pragmatic features of the words. Where there is general practical association, this implicature is effectively “cancellable in that, the speaker can go ahead to make a statement that annuls the obvious implication. This is impossible with semantic implication because, if the speaker say that X has “stopped” working implies through the semantics of the verb that X once worked; and this implication cannot be cancelled. In the case of previous examples of conventional implicatures, when one says, “He is poor, but he is kind”, they implicate that there is incongruence between (his) poverty and (his) honesty. However, this implicature cannot be cancelled because they cannot coherently say, “He is poor, but he is kind, and I don’t mean to imply (his) poverty is incongruent to (his) kindness”. It is impossible to cancel the conventional implicature because it is carried by the exact words used by the speaker; contrariwise, the conversational implicature is easily cancellable because it is carried by the way a speaker says words, and not by the words themselves. The notions of cancelability and detachability are very significant in distinguishing between conventional and conversational implicatures as propounded by Grice. Cancelability is the notion that “p” is cancelable if it is acceptable adjoin “but not p” or “I do not mean to imply that p” to the sentence that supposedly implicates that “p”. The cancelability notion can be well demonstrated by a speaker saying “a or b is correct” then going ahead to say “I do not mean to imply I don’t know which is correct”. In that case, by saying “a or b is correct”, a speaker implicates a considerable level of doubt regarding which of the two is correct; however, by adding “I do not mean to imply I don’t know which is correct”, the speaker effectively cancels that implication. Detachability, on the other hand, is a notion that “p” is detachable if an alternative way of saying the same thing without carrying the implicature exists; for instance, saying “last night I read a novel and went to bed” implicates that the actions of reading and going to bed followed each other sequentially. However, the implicature in this case is detachable because one can say, “Last night I read a novel; also, I went to bed last night; that implicature is also cancellable because one can easily say, “last night I read a novel and went to bed, but not in that order.” There are also exceptions in terms of detachability of implicatures as in the case of “I tried to contest in the Presidential race last year”, which might implicate that there might have been other failed attempts at the presidency. In this case, it is impossible to detach the implicature because there seems to be no other way of saying that sentence without carrying the implicature. Nevertheless, it is actually possible to cancel the implicature because one can easily say, “I tried to contest the in the presidential race last year, and of course there was hardly any doubt that I would lose. Grice further worked on the general pragmatic implication when dealing with “Logic and Conversation”; evidently, conversational implication is a pragmatic notion, and it is defined in terms of the Cooperative Principle, which involves four maxims namely, quantity, quality, relation and manner. The maxim of quantity entails making contribution in an informative manner as is required; as such, Grice reiterates that a speaker should not make his or her contribution more informative than is needed. With regard to the maxim of quality, a speaker should make contribution that is true by not conveying what he or she believes is false. On the other hand, the maxim of relation requires relevance, while, maxims of manner entails placing all the maxims into one super maxim. Since conversation is considered both a cooperative and social activity, children are able to learn these imperatives in their socialization and language acquisition processes as they mature into adult members of their respective linguistic communities. In addition, Grice notes that adhering to cooperative principle and maxims is rational behavior, since it may benefit the interest of the speaker. In essence, the realization of these imperatives plays a role in improving a speaker’s communicative competence; in case a speaker violates a maxim, a competent hearer can draw one among several conclusions depending on the type of case. In his defense, Grice has also identified a group of “conventional implicature” that he considers being independent of the cooperative principle and the four maxims. He has also distinguished conversational implicature considered to rely heavily on context as opposed to those regarded as general conversational implicatures. In his defense of the CTP, Grice has also outlined the common line of reasoning that can enable an audience to recover the “implicatum” in any given situation or case of conversational implicature. The conversational implicatum can be determined by the speaker’s intention in any given case; however, Grice notes that there are cases where the hearer may not be able to rule out certain interruptions, and in this sense, a specific implicatum may be indeterminate. Conversational implicatures as highlighted by Grice refers to those things that a hearer can understand or work out depending on how the speaker conveyed his or her message rather than what the speaker actually said. Individuals tend to process conversational implicatures, but are mostly unaware; for instance, if someone asks, “Could you close the window?” the person asked does not usually respond “Yes”, but perform the act of closing which is non-linguistic. In that context, while the speaker used a form of word that is conventional (question), the hearer concluded that the speaker made a request and therefore went ahead to perform the act requested. In his work, Grice noted this ubiquitous feature associated with language use and presented a philosophical analysis of the same; he argued that to some extent, conversations are cooperative initiatives. With regard to meaning, Grice contend that what the speaker means can be used to analyze word and sentence meaning. In addition, speaker’s meaning, in turn, does not require semantic remainder, where speakers have certain intentions (Davis 2007, p.44). In an illustration, a driver is stopped at an intersection probably at night, and the oncoming car flashes its lights. This driver may reason as follows: “Why is the driver in the oncoming car doing that? Oh, he or she intends to make me believe my lights are off. If that is the intention, then, it could be that my lights are off.” In this illustration, the driver in the oncoming car has flashed his or car’s lights with the intention that the other driver believes his or her lights are not turned on and to have him/her recognize that intention. As such, this recognition has formed part of the other driver’s reasoning that his or her car’s lights are off and the intention in this context is what is referred to as A-intention. The idea in this case as suggested by Grice is that a Speaker B means that “r” by speaking “x” if and only if B A-intends that “r” by uttering “x” (Davis 2007, p.44; Thompson 2007, p.78). For example, utterances may include marks, sounds, groans or grunts (anything that can signal an A-intention); this example describes an indicative A-intention; such intentions may also be important. In this case, the speaker’s intention could be to get the hearer to perform an action. In relation to sentence meaning, Grice’s idea involves explication in terms of A-intentions; he explains that the idea that a sentence x denote that r “might as a first shot be compared with some statements about what ‘individuals’ intend to effect by x” (Searle 2007, p.11) Here, the underlying idea is similar to the oncoming car flashing lights. Grice also has refined the analyses related to speaker’s meaning and sentence meaning and addressed the idea that speakers and hearers rarely reason as has been suggested. In addition, Grice has also captured the role played by moods when it comes to specifying meaning. On another note, communication is seen as a rational activity where the speaker intends to produce certain outcome. Conversely, the hearers reason their way to those outcome through recognizing the speaker’s intention to produce a particular result. In this sense, Grice also explains that the procedures connected with sentences are viewed as resultant procedures emanating recursively from basic procedures connected to words (Grice 1968). In introducing a standard form of explaining resultant procedures, Grice has generalized the special notation that he has already utilized in terms of specifying meaning. Discussion Grice’s notion of implicature in “The Causal Theory of Perception” describes the relationship between what speakers say and what they mean in instances when the conventional meaning usually associated with the sentence is not concomitant to the speakers’ communicative intention (Macagno & Walton 2014, p.1). In Grice’s perspective, implicatures are a consequence of a speaker’s saying a specific sentence; in that respect, what is uttered by a speaker must be analyzed in the context of the expectations and suppositions of the community of speakers from which one comes from. Generally, speakers must ensure that their utterances superficially conform to the presuppositions that they are cooperative and are adhering to the four maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner. If otherwise, listeners tend to explain the speakers’ inadequacies in conformation to the four maxims by reconstructing new unconventional meanings for the uttered sentences. Grice makes numerous crucial points in his defence of the CTP; firstly, Grice hints that all conversational implicatures are cancellable. Grice further observes that a generalized conversational implicature that is inherent in the order of words rather than how they are uttered is not easily detachable, which makes it impossible to distinguish conversational and conversational implicatures. Most importantly, Grice notes that conversational implicate are not associated with the meaning of expressions to which they are a part of at the onset, but may eventually become conventionalized. Grice argues that in any given case, what a speaker says may be true while what is implicated from that same utterance may be false; the implication of this is that the implicature is carried by the manner in which a sentence is uttered rather than by what is said. Furthermore, Grice highlights that there will always be multiple alternative explanations that will preserve the supposition that the cooperation principle is being adhered to, in which case the conversational implicatum will be the incoherence of those explanations. Consequently, it is often difficult to determine what a speaker is implicating simply by what they say. Overall, this paper has endeavored to explain the manner in which Grice employed his notion of implicature in defense of the Causal Theory of Perception. As indicated above, Grice coherently defends “The Causal Theory of Perception” (CTP) by describing the relationship between what speakers say and what they mean, in instances when the conventional meaning usually associated with the sentence is not matched to the speakers’ communicative intention. Grice posits that if the implication that a thing is not red can be explicitly cancelled out, then it follows that the implicatum in question is not part of the meaning or part of what is said by the speaker, thus, it is merely implicated but not said. In that respect, implicature emanates from the things that a speaker means, but does not say; consequently, Grice differentiates aspects related to language use that result from meaning and those resulting from other aspects such as the manner in which words are uttered. References Atlas, J. D., 2005, Logic, Logic, Meaning and Conversation: Semantical Underdeterminancy, Implicature, and their Interface, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bardzokas, V., 2010, Causality and Connectives: from Grice to Relevance, Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing Co. Carston, R., 1998, Informativeness, relevance and scalar implicature. In: Carston, R and Uchida, S, (eds.) Relevance Threory: Applications and Implications. (179 - 236). John Benjamins: Amsterdam. Chapman, S., 2007. Paul Grice, Philosopher and Linguist, London: Palgrave Macmillian. Davis, W., 2007. “Grices Meaning Project”, Journal of Pragmatics, 26: 41–58. Grice, H. P. & Alan R., 1961. Symposium: The Causal Theory of Perception. White Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 35, pp. 121-168.  Macagno, F. & Walton, D., 2014. Implicatures as Forms of Argument. In A. Capone et al. (eds.), Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy (pp. 203-224). Berlin/New York: Springer. Neale, S., 1992. “Paul Grice and the philosophy of language”, Linguistics and Philosophy, 15: 509–559. Searle, J., 2007. “Grice on meaning: 50 years later”, Teorema, 26, 9–18. Thompson, R., 2007, “Still relevant: H. P. Grices legacy” in “Psycholinguists and the philosophy of language”, Teorema, 26: 77–109. Wilson, D., and Sperber, D., 2012, Meaning and Relevance, New York: Cambridge University Press Read More