occasion-sensitivity selected essays may 2008

[...]... mouldy biscuits may count as success for a statement of there being biscuits on the sideboard, then it may be built into a given statement that, for it, at least, this will count as success It may be so to be understood It may be understood to be speaking of biscuits on the sideboard 4 Introduction on such an understanding of there being some (Again there is the question how circumstances may make this... sunny day, someone, out of the blue, may call the sky blue There is a truth near to mind that could be so expressed We may count him as having expressed it If, out of the blue, someone tells us that Sid is blue, we are likely to be baffled When we encounter his blue-tinged, rather troglodytic complexion, we may see how one could call that someone being blue, and then may be willing to allow that that is... of intentionally, or, even worse (it may seem) on some special understanding of what it is Thus Grice’s concern to show that language obliges philosophy’s seeming demands, and, in fact, makes those seemingly off-target answers otiose: what was done intentionally was so done, no matter what the occasion for asking (even if it may sometimes seem odd to say so) But if occasion-sensitivity raises such spectres,... can, for one thing, reframe the question, asking what sorts of different understandings intentionally may bear, and why: how one such may differ from others; how different ones relate One might do that by asking, rather than ‘When would something be done intentionally’ (the 10 Introduction question that occasion-sensitivity makes unanswerable in principle), the perhaps answerable question, ‘When would... understood) For, in his third William James lecture, Grice says, ‘The total signification of an utterance may be regarded as divisible in two different ways: first, one may distinguish within the total signification, between what is said (in a favoured sense) and what is implicated; and second, one may distinguish between what is part of the conventional force (or meaning) of the utterance and what is... looking-to-him was going on Exactly when would things, or the (or a) Lexus, look to Sid precisely as they, or it, then did? Well, Sid’s Lexus, looking as it did, did that There may be nothing more to say as to what else might The Lexus may have been such that such-and-such That is a way for a thing, or at least a Lexus, to be There is an indefinitely large range of distinct cases in which a Lexus, in being... question arises as to whether someone has spoken truth, say, in telling us there are biscuits on the sideboard, questions may arise as to what one wants to count as doing that If the biscuits are months old, or dog biscuits, does that count? Circumstances of evaluating a statement may then matter to an answer To state something is to aim at truth Where there is room for question as to what ought to count... open one, with places for reference to the various items—a person, a time—that would need to be spoken of in using it if one is to say something true or false (The open places in this open sentence may or may not all correspond to words actually in the closed one For example, there is no explicit mention of a time there No matter for the present point.) The idea is: if we choose our open sentence well,... Introduction on such an understanding of there being some (Again there is the question how circumstances may make this so.) So we may see Austin’s deepest and most central concern as truth, the rest just flowing from what he found there This is pretty much the core idea of occasion-sensitivity One specifies some things to speak of—being blue, say, the sky—such that in speaking of them in a certain structured... thinkers (and speakers), this needs to be taken into account if we are to get even that far The essays in Part II of this collection illustrate what that might come to I will conclude by explaining their motivations as I recall them Those motivations still move me, even though, were I to begin anew, each of these essays would, no doubt, sound considerably different First, ‘Are Belief Ascriptions Opaque?’ . Norfolk ISBN978–0–19–923033–4 13579108642 Occasion-Sensitivity Selected Essays CHARLES TRAVIS 1 Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Part I. Occasion-Sensitivity 1. On What Is Strictly. Charles Travis 2008 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored. biscuits may count as success for a statement of there being biscuits on the sideboard, then it may be built into a given statement that, for it, at least, this will count as success. It may be