H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: PELLEGRINI

 G.: Pellegrini again, then, and his I segni de la natura ne l’huomo. S.: With Canale’s orthography already asking for a footnote. G.: Yes. De la, ne l’huomo, all that editorial bravery pretending to be antiquity. S.: And your complaint from Meaning was that Pellegrini talks of signs where you talk of the non-natural. G.: Precisely. He gives me segni de la natura. I want, at the interesting point, not merely segni, but something done by an utterer to an addressee under a recognisable intention. S.: Still, let us begin with your three examples. G.: Good. First: “Those spots mean measles.” S.: Your natural meaning case. G.: Exactly. No utterer needed, no intention, no conversational stage-management. The spots mean measles in the sense that they are a sign of it. S.: Then English first, with sign. G.: “Those spots are a sign of measles.” S.: With the verb. G.: “Those spots sign measles” is ugly enough to teach caution, though one might tolerate “Those spots sign the presence of measles.” S.: And with signify. G.: “Those spots signify measles.” Better English, but already a little donnish. S.: Then Italian. G.: “Quelle macchie sono segno di morbillo.” S.: With segnare. G.: “Quelle macchie segnano il morbillo” is poor, though “segnano la presenza del morbillo” is survivable. S.: And significare. G.: “Quelle macchie significano il morbillo.” That is the idiomatic winner. S.: Then Latin. G.: “Illae maculae sunt signum morbilli.” S.: With signare. G.: “Illae maculae morbillos signant” is possible, but harsher and more material, as though one were branding disease. S.: And significare. G.: “Illae maculae morbillos significant.” The schoolroom would prefer that. S.: Yet you think the -ficare is otiose. G.: I do. Signare already gives the work if one lets it. Significare is signare after a career in rhetoric. S.: Then example two. G.: “Those spots didn’t mean anything to me, but to the doctor they meant measles.” S.: Which already introduces the addressee as epistemic difference. G.: Yes, but still not utterer’s meaning. The difference is in recognitional competence. S.: English with sign. G.: “Those spots were no sign to me, but to the doctor they were a sign of measles.” S.: With signify. G.: “Those spots signified nothing to me, but to the doctor they signified measles.” S.: Italian. G.: “Quelle macchie non erano per me alcun segno, ma per il medico erano segno di morbillo.” S.: With segnare. G.: “Quelle macchie non mi segnavano nulla, ma al medico segnavano il morbillo” is bad enough to deserve preservation as a warning. S.: And significare. G.: “Quelle macchie non significavano nulla per me, ma per il medico significavano il morbillo.” S.: Latin. G.: “Illae maculae mihi nullum signum erant, medico autem signum morbilli erant.” S.: That sounds Romanly clumsy. G.: Latin earns its clumsiness by honesty. S.: With signare. G.: “Illae maculae mihi nihil signabant, medico autem morbillos signabant.” S.: With significare. G.: “Illae maculae mihi nihil significabant, medico autem morbillos significabant.” S.: Then example three. G.: “The recent budget means that we shall have a hard year.” S.: Natural again, but looser. G.: Yes. Not a bodily sign now, but a state of affairs with inferential consequences. S.: English with sign. G.: “The recent budget is a sign that we shall have a hard year.” S.: With signify. G.: “The recent budget signifies that we shall have a hard year.” S.: Italian. G.: “Il bilancio recente è segno che avremo un anno difficile.” S.: With segnare. G.: “Il bilancio recente segna un anno difficile” is possible, but drifts toward marking out rather than meaning. S.: With significare. G.: “Il bilancio recente significa che avremo un anno difficile.” S.: Latin. G.: “Hoc novissimum vectigal signum est nos annum difficilem habituros esse.” S.: And signare. G.: “Hoc novissimum vectigal annum difficilem signat” is tolerable if one likes compressed Latin and mild violence. S.: Significare. G.: “Hoc novissimum vectigal significat nos annum difficilem habituros esse.” S.: So far Pellegrini is content. G.: Entirely. His signs of nature are all on this side, where x gives one y, or rather gives one to gather that p. S.: And p, you now insist, is always propositional. G.: Strictly, yes. Even where the old phrase says “mean measles,” the analytic expansion should be “mean that he has measles.” S.: So the signatum is always a that-clause. G.: Exactly. Otherwise one gets lost among labels and diseases and forgets the content. S.: Then let us symbolise. G.: Good. Let S(x,p,z) mean: x signat that p to z. S.: Triadic. G.: Necessarily, once the interesting cases arrive. S.: But for natural meaning the z may be merely the interpreter. G.: Yes. In the spots case, x is the spots, p is that he has measles, z is the doctor or any competent interpreter. S.: And in the purely natural case there may be no utterer. G.: None. Which is why I distinguish natural meaning from the non-natural. S.: Yet you now want to move from signum to signare and then beyond to the utterer. G.: Precisely. Because once we come to the second batch of examples in Meaning, it is no longer the object x that really signat, but the utterer by means of x. S.: The bus bell. G.: Yes. “Those three rings on the bell mean that the bus is full.” S.: There an utterer lurks, namely the conductor. G.: Exactly. And one can then say not merely S(x,p,z), but better U signat that p to A by uttering or producing x. S.: So x becomes ambiguous between utterer and utteratum. G.: Which is why I prefer to reserve agency to the utterer and treat x as vehicle. S.: Then formula. G.: Let U be the utterer, x the utteratum or sign-vehicle, p the propositional signatum, A the addressee. Then U, by x, signat that p to A. S.: Or S(U,x,p,A), if one likes overpopulation. G.: I do not. Too many arguments breed bad manners. S.: Then perhaps simply U signat p ad A per x. G.: Much better. Latin helps by making one honest. S.: You also introduced emissor and emissum. G.: Yes. If one insists on avoiding utterer and utterance, one may say emissor for the agent and emissum for the produced sign-vehicle. S.: Then emissor signat quod p to addressee by means of emissum. G.: Exactly. Though Latin quod clauses are not always obliging. S.: That is the next trouble. G.: Naturally. Latin may say significat quod p, but once one drifts into accusative-and-infinitive or relative constructions, the agent in the subordinate matter begins to slide around. S.: For example. G.: One may want “B signat that he cannot play squash,” and Latin tempts one toward B signat se ludere non posse, where the accusative subject of the infinitive becomes a little too intimate. S.: Or quod se non posse ludere, which is ugly in another register. G.: Precisely. The poor language was not designed for twentieth-century philosophy of language, though it does its best. S.: Yet signare still seems to you cleaner than mean. G.: Very much so. Mean in English is intolerably overworked. It covers intend, signify, imply, denote, indicate, matter, import, entail in common speech, and means as instrument to make things worse. S.: Means and ends again. G.: Exactly. A philosopher says mean and half the room hears intend, the other half hears indicate, and the third half hears “What do you mean, third half?” S.: Hence signare. G.: Yes. Signare has the virtue of suggesting directed marking without already deciding between natural indication and non-natural communication. S.: Whereas significare sounds like a schoolmaster who has already tidied the case. G.: Splendidly put. S.: Thank you. G.: Keep it. Now let us do the shift from Pellegrini to you. S.: To me. G.: To my account, yes. Pellegrini reads natural signs in the human body. I separate the natural case from the non-natural one and then ask what the utterer is doing. S.: So your key question is not “What does this sign naturally reveal?” but “What does U intend A to gather by x?” G.: Precisely. And that is why S(x,p,z) is not enough for the interesting cases. One needs U signat p ad A per x, with the understanding that A is to recognise U’s intention and arrive at p by reason, not merely by causal prompting. S.: Then the squash leg. G.: Exactly. A asks, “Will you play squash?” B displays a bandaged leg. S.: Pellegrini might say the bandage is a sign of injury. G.: Yes, natural enough. But my interest is that B, by displaying the leg at that moment, signat that he cannot or will not play squash. S.: So p is “I cannot play squash with you.” G.: Exactly. Not “I have a bandaged leg,” which A can already see. S.: Then in Latin. G.: B, crure obligato ostenso, signat se pilae lusui interesse non posse. S.: Not bad. G.: Only because I have omitted the addressee. S.: Add him, then. G.: B, A interroganti, crure obligato ostenso, signat se ludere cum eo non posse. S.: And if one wanted the explicit quod. G.: B signat quod ludere cum A non potest. Serviceable, though less classical in flavour. S.: So your preference remains with the utterer as subject. G.: Entirely. The utterance or display is the vehicle; the agent is the signans in the fully interesting sense. S.: Yet you still keep signans and signatum. G.: Why not. Signans for the produced item or even for the producing agent under a different abstraction; signatum for the propositional content, though I insist the latter is always that p. S.: Always propositional. G.: Yes. The trouble with “mean measles” is precisely that it disguises the that-clause. S.: Then your own examples become: Those spots sign that he has measles. Those spots signified nothing to me, but to the doctor they signified that he had measles. The recent budget signs that we shall have a hard year. G.: Horrid English, but philosophically clarifying. S.: Signify would save the ears. G.: Yes, but at the cost of granting -ficare more respect than it deserves. S.: You are unkind to suffixes. G.: Only when they loiter. S.: Then Italian again with your stricter account. G.: “Quelle macchie sono segno che egli ha il morbillo.” “Quelle macchie non erano per me alcun segno, ma per il medico erano segno che egli aveva il morbillo.” “Il bilancio recente è segno che avremo un anno difficile.” S.: And with significare. G.: Entirely normal: “Quelle macchie significano che egli ha il morbillo.” “Quelle macchie non significavano nulla per me, ma per il medico significavano che egli aveva il morbillo.” “Il bilancio recente significa che avremo un anno difficile.” S.: Segnare still resists. G.: It does, though one can force it: “Quelle macchie segnano la presenza del morbillo.” But that already shifts away from the pure that-clause. S.: So Italian gives you segno as noun, significare as standard verb, segnare as the underlying action of marking. G.: Exactly the point. Segnare may be the more primitive for formal purposes, even if significare is the smoother surface verb. S.: Then Latin. G.: “Illae maculae signum sunt quod morbillos habet.” Or more tersely, “Illae maculae significant eum morbillos habere.” S.: Accusative-and-infinitive again. G.: Yes, and there the grammar helps and hinders at once. It gives you a compact proposition, but threatens to make the subject of the content too fused with the matrix. S.: Still, it is elegant. G.: Latin often is when it is not impossible. S.: Then the bus bell. G.: Better still for the non-natural case. “Those three rings on the bell mean that the bus is full.” S.: Your rewrite. G.: “The conductor, by giving three rings, signs to the passengers that the bus is full.” S.: Which in your notation is U signat p ad A per x. G.: Exactly. U is the conductor, x the three rings, p that the bus is full, A the passengers. S.: Italian. G.: “Il conducente, con tre tocchi di campanello, significa ai passeggeri che l’autobus è pieno.” S.: With segnare. G.: “Il conducente, con tre tocchi, segna ai passeggeri che l’autobus è pieno” is possible only for a philosopher in a hurry. S.: Latin. G.: “Conductor tribus tintinnabuli pulsibus viatoribus signat raedam plenam esse.” Or, if one cedes the suffix: “Conductor tribus pulsibus significat raedam plenam esse.” S.: You still prefer signat. G.: I do. Signat is bony enough for analysis. S.: Then the famous distinction returns. In natural meaning, p follows from the sign in the evidential sense. In non-natural meaning, U means that p by x to A. G.: Precisely. Pellegrini lives mostly in the first region. I care chiefly for the second. S.: Though he helps by preserving the noun segno. G.: He does. And by reminding one that signs were once treated as visible clues to hidden affetti, useful to painters and sculptors no less than moralists. S.: Which lets you say that your smile may mean you understand or only that you are trying to be polite. G.: Exactly. And Pellegrini would first ask whether the smile is spontaneous or studied. S.: While you would ask what the utterer intends the addressee to take from it. G.: Precisely. The physiognomist reads from the body outward. I ask what one does with the body in an exchange. S.: Then the whole point of your quarrel with sign is that it tempts one to stop too soon. G.: Very much so. Sign is a useful beginning. Meaning, in the interesting non-natural sense, requires intention, recognition, reason, and addressee. S.: Yet signare as triadic relation still helps formalise the terrain. G.: Exactly. S(x,p,z) is useful as skeleton. But the living case is better given as U signat p ad A per x. S.: So strictly the signatum is p, propositional; the addressee is A; the signans in the full sense is U; x is the vehicle. G.: Yes. And if one insists on emissor and emissum, that is merely a different costume for the same cast. S.: Emissor per emissum signat quod p ad A. G.: Good enough for a blackboard, bad enough for publication. S.: Dry enough. G.: Sufficiently Venetian, with Pellegrini still reading faces while we quarrel over clauses.