1 00:00:02,280 --> 00:00:06,972 So now we've discussed two levels of language, the linguistic level and the 2 00:00:06,972 --> 00:00:10,350 speech act level. In this lecture, we want to look at the 3 00:00:10,350 --> 00:00:14,667 third level of language, normally the level of conversational acts. 4 00:00:14,667 --> 00:00:19,422 And the basic idea is really simple. We use language to bring about a change 5 00:00:19,422 --> 00:00:22,800 in the world. For example, I might turn to a friend and 6 00:00:22,800 --> 00:00:26,306 say, could you loan me your car? Well, what am I doing? 7 00:00:26,306 --> 00:00:31,603 I'm performing a speech act of requesting, or asking a favour, something 8 00:00:31,603 --> 00:00:34,768 like that. But am I doing it just for its own sake? 9 00:00:34,768 --> 00:00:39,483 Did I ask a favor just in order to be asking a favor, like it was fun to ask a 10 00:00:39,483 --> 00:00:40,027 favor? No. 11 00:00:40,027 --> 00:00:43,231 I was asking a favor to bring about a certain effect. 12 00:00:43,231 --> 00:00:47,100 I wanted him to hand over the keys to his car so I could use it. 13 00:00:47,100 --> 00:00:51,962 And I wanted him to give me permission to use his car, so I could do it legally. 14 00:00:51,962 --> 00:00:56,824 So I'm trying to bring about a change, not only in the physical location of the 15 00:00:56,824 --> 00:00:59,655 keys, but also in the legal rights that I have 16 00:00:59,655 --> 00:01:03,594 with regard to his car. So I'm trying to bring about a change in 17 00:01:03,594 --> 00:01:08,210 the world, simply by uttering those words, could you please loan me your car? 18 00:01:08,210 --> 00:01:12,340 It happens all the time. Here's another example, suppose my friend 19 00:01:12,340 --> 00:01:16,470 is wondering whether the moon is full, and I say, the moon is full. 20 00:01:16,470 --> 00:01:20,159 Well, am I uttering those words just to expel hot air? 21 00:01:20,159 --> 00:01:23,291 No. Am I uttering those words just to express 22 00:01:23,291 --> 00:01:24,474 my own belief? No. 23 00:01:24,474 --> 00:01:29,486 I'm trying to inform my friend. I'm trying to bring about a change in my 24 00:01:29,486 --> 00:01:33,384 friend's beliefs. And that's to bring about an effect in 25 00:01:33,384 --> 00:01:36,864 the world. So that's a conversational act, to bring 26 00:01:36,864 --> 00:01:40,553 about the effect in the world of informing my friend. 27 00:01:40,553 --> 00:01:45,132 Informing is a conversational act. And almost all speech acts have, 28 00:01:45,132 --> 00:01:48,520 particular effects that are associated with them. 29 00:01:48,520 --> 00:01:53,426 When you ask a question, you're trying to bring about someone answering the 30 00:01:53,426 --> 00:01:56,370 question. When you apologize, you're trying to 31 00:01:56,370 --> 00:02:00,306 bring about forgiveness. When you promise somebody, you try to 32 00:02:00,306 --> 00:02:05,360 bring about the person relying on your promise in order to believe that you're 33 00:02:05,360 --> 00:02:08,750 going to do it. So speech acts are often associated with 34 00:02:08,750 --> 00:02:12,525 particular effects that the speaker intends to bring about. 35 00:02:12,525 --> 00:02:16,619 And the bringing about of that effect is the conversational act. 36 00:02:16,619 --> 00:02:21,800 So, if we want an official definition of a conversational act, we can say that the 37 00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:26,726 conversational act is the bringing about of the intended effect, which is the 38 00:02:26,726 --> 00:02:31,460 standard effect for the kind of speech act that the speaker is performing. 39 00:02:31,460 --> 00:02:36,187 That's what a conversational act is. Now, since the conversational act is the 40 00:02:36,187 --> 00:02:40,915 bringing about of the standard effect. The conversational act does not occur 41 00:02:40,915 --> 00:02:45,457 when that effect does not occur. And that might seem weird that what kind 42 00:02:45,457 --> 00:02:48,940 of act you perform depends on whether the effect occurs. 43 00:02:48,940 --> 00:02:52,300 Maybe several seconds, maybe even longer, in the future. 44 00:02:52,300 --> 00:02:55,480 But it's not that weird when you think about it. 45 00:02:55,480 --> 00:02:59,920 Because if you pull the trigger of a gun that's pointed at someone, 46 00:02:59,920 --> 00:03:05,193 then whether your act of pulling the trigger is an act of killing depends on 47 00:03:05,193 --> 00:03:08,992 whether the person dies. And yet the person's death is something 48 00:03:08,992 --> 00:03:12,494 independent of it. It's an effect that occurs maybe quite a 49 00:03:12,494 --> 00:03:15,937 while in the future. But your act wasn't an act of killing 50 00:03:15,937 --> 00:03:19,617 unless the person died. And that's the story of conversational 51 00:03:19,617 --> 00:03:22,288 acts. Your act is not this conversational act 52 00:03:22,288 --> 00:03:26,146 unless the effect occurs. It has to be the intended effect, that's 53 00:03:26,146 --> 00:03:30,301 the standard effect, for the kind of speech act that you're performing. 54 00:03:30,301 --> 00:03:33,188 So. The really tricky question is, How are we 55 00:03:33,188 --> 00:03:36,689 going to bring about these effects? because it's not so easy. 56 00:03:36,689 --> 00:03:39,926 Think about how other people bring about effects. 57 00:03:39,926 --> 00:03:43,890 Think about a baker baking the cake. Well, the baker needs to. 58 00:03:43,890 --> 00:03:48,318 Get together the right ingredients, and bring them to the right place, and get 59 00:03:48,318 --> 00:03:52,287 the right amount of ingredients. You know, if a baker fills the entire 60 00:03:52,287 --> 00:03:56,600 kitchen with flour he's not going to have any room left over to bake the cake. 61 00:03:56,600 --> 00:04:01,144 And has to bring the right ingredients, that means if instead of bringing flour 62 00:04:01,144 --> 00:04:05,227 he brings gravel, he can't bake a cake. And he has to put together those 63 00:04:05,227 --> 00:04:08,677 ingredients, in the right way, in the right order, for example. 64 00:04:08,677 --> 00:04:12,241 You can't mix them in the wrong order, the cake won't work out. 65 00:04:12,241 --> 00:04:16,094 It has to bake it for the right amount of time, and so on, and so on. 66 00:04:16,094 --> 00:04:20,751 So there are a lot of tricky rules about how to bring about the effect of a good 67 00:04:20,751 --> 00:04:22,821 cake. Well, the same thing applies to 68 00:04:22,821 --> 00:04:26,155 conversational acts. There are going to be rules that have to 69 00:04:26,155 --> 00:04:30,812 be followed in order to bring about the conversational act that you're trying to 70 00:04:30,812 --> 00:04:33,745 bring about. That is, in order to have that intended 71 00:04:33,745 --> 00:04:36,390 effect of the speech act in the circumstances. 72 00:04:36,390 --> 00:04:40,846 And the same kind of rules apply to any rational person trying to pursue any 73 00:04:40,846 --> 00:04:43,282 goal. Whenever you want to bring about an 74 00:04:43,282 --> 00:04:46,134 effect, you have to follow certain general rules. 75 00:04:46,134 --> 00:04:48,764 And so. It applies to people who are trying to 76 00:04:48,764 --> 00:04:50,587 bring about effects. By language. 77 00:04:50,587 --> 00:04:54,252 That is, to people who are trying to perform conversational acts. 78 00:04:54,252 --> 00:04:58,719 If you want to inform someone, that is, to have an effect on their beliefs, then 79 00:04:58,719 --> 00:05:03,014 you need to speak in a certain way. And if you want to promise someone, that 80 00:05:03,014 --> 00:05:07,080 is, to get them to rely on you, that's the conversational act associated, 81 00:05:07,080 --> 00:05:09,600 associated with the speech act of promising. 82 00:05:09,600 --> 00:05:14,010 But you're not going to get them to rely on you unless you follow certain rules. 83 00:05:14,010 --> 00:05:18,649 And so what we need to try to understand are the rules of language that allow us 84 00:05:18,649 --> 00:05:22,200 to bring about these effects that are the conversational acts. 85 00:05:22,200 --> 00:05:25,242 Now on this question, Paul Grice helps us out a lot. 86 00:05:25,242 --> 00:05:28,821 He's one of the great philosophers of the 20th century. 87 00:05:28,821 --> 00:05:32,877 And he layed out a series of rules governing conversational acts. 88 00:05:32,877 --> 00:05:35,323 He called them, the conversational maxims. 89 00:05:35,323 --> 00:05:37,709 And we're going to look at them one by one. 90 00:05:37,709 --> 00:05:42,243 Grice focuses in on context where people are stating things and where their 91 00:05:42,243 --> 00:05:45,822 cooperating with each other and trying to inform each other. 92 00:05:45,822 --> 00:05:50,176 He's not trying to provide a general theory, so it's for statements and a 93 00:05:50,176 --> 00:05:54,320 cooperative context. So the first maxim is the rule of 94 00:05:54,320 --> 00:05:59,373 quantity and it basically says. Don't say more than is required for the 95 00:05:59,373 --> 00:06:03,745 purpose you're trying to achieve. If you say too many words, the point gets 96 00:06:03,745 --> 00:06:08,294 lost in the words, so you shouldn't say more than you need for the purpose at 97 00:06:08,294 --> 00:06:11,242 hand. Second part of the rule of quantity is 98 00:06:11,242 --> 00:06:13,622 you shouldn't say too little. Right? 99 00:06:13,622 --> 00:06:19,335 Because if you say too little then that's going to be misleading and it's not going 100 00:06:19,335 --> 00:06:24,572 to fulfill your purpose because the person that you're talking to won't have 101 00:06:24,572 --> 00:06:29,332 all the information that they need. Second rule is the rule of quality. 102 00:06:29,332 --> 00:06:34,025 The rule of quality says don't say what you don't believe to be true. 103 00:06:34,025 --> 00:06:37,017 Don't lie, don't mislead, don't deceive. Right? 104 00:06:37,017 --> 00:06:40,010 But also, this is second part of the quality. 105 00:06:40,010 --> 00:06:43,882 Don't say something that you lack adequate justification for. 106 00:06:43,882 --> 00:06:49,024 Because you shouldn't just be talking off the top of your head with no reason to 107 00:06:49,024 --> 00:06:53,277 believe what you're saying. These are all pretty common sense rules, 108 00:06:53,277 --> 00:06:57,340 but they weren't apparent to people until Bryce formulated them. 109 00:06:57,340 --> 00:07:02,410 The third rule is a rule of relevance, and it's the toughest of all. 110 00:07:02,410 --> 00:07:05,950 Rule of relevance says, be relevant. Look, it's short. 111 00:07:05,950 --> 00:07:09,066 I'll grant you that. It's going to be easy to remember, I'll 112 00:07:09,066 --> 00:07:12,181 grant you that. But it really is kind of tricky to apply 113 00:07:12,181 --> 00:07:15,186 the rule because you have to remember what's relevant. 114 00:07:15,186 --> 00:07:19,581 And we'll see some problems with that, but for now just remember that it should 115 00:07:19,581 --> 00:07:22,419 be obvious. When you're talking about a subject and 116 00:07:22,419 --> 00:07:26,536 you want to achieve a certain purpose and the person you're talking to is 117 00:07:26,536 --> 00:07:28,985 cooperating with you and Greiss is assuming. 118 00:07:28,985 --> 00:07:32,323 Then you ought to be talking about things that are relevant. 119 00:07:32,323 --> 00:07:35,940 And if you change the subject that's going to be very misleading. 120 00:07:35,940 --> 00:07:39,698 And the fourth conversational maxim is the rule of manner. 121 00:07:39,698 --> 00:07:43,845 It says be brief, be orderly, avoid obscurity, and avoid ambiguity. 122 00:07:43,845 --> 00:07:48,835 Pretty simple, it's all about style because if you're not brief enough people 123 00:07:48,835 --> 00:07:52,917 won't pay attention to you. If it's not orderly people will get 124 00:07:52,917 --> 00:07:56,610 confused by that. And if you're ambiguous or obscure then 125 00:07:56,610 --> 00:07:59,397 people won't understand what you're saying. 126 00:07:59,397 --> 00:08:04,257 So these four rules are followed by speakers when they're cooperating with 127 00:08:04,257 --> 00:08:07,070 each other. When people aren't cooperating, they're 128 00:08:07,070 --> 00:08:11,057 trying to trick or deceive each other, they might violate these rules and 129 00:08:11,057 --> 00:08:15,258 mislead people by abusing these rules. But when they are cooperating, these are 130 00:08:15,258 --> 00:08:19,460 the rules they follow, and that makes them able to deceive people by violating 131 00:08:19,460 --> 00:08:21,929 them. And also notice that these rules might 132 00:08:21,929 --> 00:08:25,537 not be completely clear. You might not have ever thought of them 133 00:08:25,537 --> 00:08:27,849 before. But now that we mention them, they 134 00:08:27,849 --> 00:08:31,740 probably seem pretty obvious. It's kind of like the finger and singer 135 00:08:31,740 --> 00:08:34,446 rule that we saw before regarding pronunciation. 136 00:08:34,446 --> 00:08:37,152 That's a rule that you hadn't thought of before. 137 00:08:37,152 --> 00:08:40,028 But once it's pointed out, it seems kind of obvious. 138 00:08:40,028 --> 00:08:44,031 Well that's what Grice has done. That he's shown us the rules governing 139 00:08:44,031 --> 00:08:48,430 conversational acts will enable us to bring about certain effects by language. 140 00:08:48,430 --> 00:08:52,163 Now we can use these rules to understand what's going on in a lot of 141 00:08:52,163 --> 00:08:55,032 conversations. Imagine you're in a restaurant, and the 142 00:08:55,032 --> 00:08:59,198 waiter walks up to your table and says, well, for dessert, you can have cake or 143 00:08:59,198 --> 00:09:02,422 ice cream. Well, what has that waiter suggested? 144 00:09:02,422 --> 00:09:05,701 He suggested that that's all you could have. 145 00:09:05,701 --> 00:09:08,830 Cake, ice cream. Well he didn't mention pie, 146 00:09:08,830 --> 00:09:12,970 So you can't have pie. Footnotes, if he's a good waiter, and he 147 00:09:12,970 --> 00:09:16,446 knows that they have pie back there, and you could order it, 148 00:09:16,446 --> 00:09:19,251 then he ought to be telling you about the pie. 149 00:09:19,251 --> 00:09:21,873 He would be violating the rule of quantity, 150 00:09:21,873 --> 00:09:26,386 that is not providing you all the relevant information if he said, you can 151 00:09:26,386 --> 00:09:29,923 have cake or ice cream. And you could also have pie, but he 152 00:09:29,923 --> 00:09:33,033 didn't mention pie. So because you assume that he's 153 00:09:33,033 --> 00:09:37,668 cooperating with you, and trying to get you what you want to eat, since he is 154 00:09:37,668 --> 00:09:41,683 your waiter, after all, there must not be pie available, so you 155 00:09:41,683 --> 00:09:46,140 say, I'll take ice cream even though you would have preferred pie. 156 00:09:46,140 --> 00:09:49,792 What's happening here is called conversational implication. 157 00:09:49,792 --> 00:09:54,497 When the waiter said you can have cake or ice cream, he was conversationally 158 00:09:54,497 --> 00:09:59,090 implying that you can't have pie. And the reason that a conversation 159 00:09:59,090 --> 00:10:03,899 implied that is because if he were cooperating, and following the 160 00:10:03,899 --> 00:10:08,635 conversational rules or maxims, then he would have mentioned pie. 161 00:10:08,635 --> 00:10:13,590 So you assume that since he said only cake or ice, cake or ice cream, 162 00:10:13,590 --> 00:10:18,855 that you can't have pie. He, in effect, conversationally implied 163 00:10:18,855 --> 00:10:23,169 that you cannot have pie. And the way you figure that out was you 164 00:10:23,169 --> 00:10:26,929 took what he said, a little background knowledge about him 165 00:10:26,929 --> 00:10:31,597 being a waiter and having certain goals, and what happens in restaurants, 166 00:10:31,597 --> 00:10:35,746 performed a little mini calculation using the maxim of quantity, 167 00:10:35,746 --> 00:10:39,506 and inferred that he must believe that you can't have pie. 168 00:10:39,506 --> 00:10:44,174 And of course, since he's a waiter, he ought to know whether you can have 169 00:10:44,174 --> 00:10:47,740 something else or not. And therefore, you can't have pie. 170 00:10:47,740 --> 00:10:51,119 But what if he had a favorite customer at another table? 171 00:10:51,119 --> 00:10:56,006 And he knew there was only one slice of pie back there, and he didn't want you to 172 00:10:56,006 --> 00:10:59,071 order it? And he said, you can have cake or ice 173 00:10:59,071 --> 00:11:01,585 cream. I didn't mention the pie so you wouldn't 174 00:11:01,585 --> 00:11:04,820 order it and his favorite customer would get it instead of you. 175 00:11:04,820 --> 00:11:08,728 Well, he still conversationally implied that you can't have pie. 176 00:11:08,728 --> 00:11:12,265 But he misled you. He misled you because he was trying to 177 00:11:12,265 --> 00:11:16,050 get the pie for somebody else. He was not coperating with you. 178 00:11:16,050 --> 00:11:20,517 So the tricky thing about these conversational maxims is that they work 179 00:11:20,517 --> 00:11:23,930 perfectly fine when you're cooperating with the person. 180 00:11:23,930 --> 00:11:28,494 And try to give them all of the information that they need for your 181 00:11:28,494 --> 00:11:33,662 common purpose with that other person. But if you're not cooperating, then you 182 00:11:33,662 --> 00:11:38,897 can use them to mislead the other person. And that's the double edged sword of 183 00:11:38,897 --> 00:11:43,347 conversational implication. But one of the features of conversational 184 00:11:43,347 --> 00:11:46,172 implication is really important to arguments. 185 00:11:46,172 --> 00:11:49,877 And that's that you can cancel conversational implications. 186 00:11:49,877 --> 00:11:53,920 The waiter can say. You can have cake or ice cream. 187 00:11:53,920 --> 00:11:59,036 Oh yeah, and you can also have pie. And when he said, and also you can have 188 00:11:59,036 --> 00:12:04,222 pie, he did not take back, you can have cake or ice cream because you can still 189 00:12:04,222 --> 00:12:08,427 have cake or ice cream. It's just that you can also have pie. 190 00:12:08,427 --> 00:12:13,753 So he can cancel the conversational implication that you cannot have pie by 191 00:12:13,753 --> 00:12:16,627 saying, oh yeah, and you can also have pie. 192 00:12:16,627 --> 00:12:22,093 So, with a conversational implication, if a certain sentence P conversationally 193 00:12:22,093 --> 00:12:27,210 implies another sentence Q, then you can deny Q, and P still might be true. 194 00:12:27,210 --> 00:12:33,393 And that's an important fact because it distinguishes conversational implications 195 00:12:33,393 --> 00:12:37,088 from logical entailments or logical implications. 196 00:12:37,088 --> 00:12:41,387 If I say, Alice is my sister, then that implies Alice is female. 197 00:12:41,387 --> 00:12:45,562 And I can't go, Alice is my sister, oh yeah, and she's not female. 198 00:12:45,562 --> 00:12:50,599 That doesn't make any sense because see she's not female, she can't be my sister 199 00:12:50,599 --> 00:12:53,979 because that's a logical implication or entailment. 200 00:12:53,979 --> 00:12:58,419 But with a conversational implication instead, you can deny what is 201 00:12:58,419 --> 00:13:02,727 conversationally implied, and the original sentence is still true. 202 00:13:02,727 --> 00:13:06,240 So if the waiter says, you can have cake or ice cream, 203 00:13:06,240 --> 00:13:10,989 and then, I find out that he's been saving the last piece of pie for this 204 00:13:10,989 --> 00:13:14,331 other table, then I can come up to him and say, wait a 205 00:13:14,331 --> 00:13:18,205 minute, you lied to me. He didn't really lie to me, because what 206 00:13:18,205 --> 00:13:21,580 he said was still true. I could have cake or ice cream. 207 00:13:21,580 --> 00:13:24,412 It's still true, I can have cake or ice cream. 208 00:13:24,412 --> 00:13:29,132 He didn't say anything false to me. He simply didn't mention the pie that I 209 00:13:29,132 --> 00:13:32,892 could also have. So that's very different in the case of 210 00:13:32,892 --> 00:13:37,434 conversational implication than in the case of logical entailment. 211 00:13:37,434 --> 00:13:42,663 And that'll be important to us especially when we get to formal logic in a later 212 00:13:42,663 --> 00:13:46,586 part of this course. So let me give you another example that's 213 00:13:46,586 --> 00:13:50,164 more important. Imagine a politician says, I've got a 214 00:13:50,164 --> 00:13:54,981 policy that's going to reduce crime by getting criminals off the streets. 215 00:13:54,981 --> 00:14:00,018 And the policy is lock them all up. When people are suspected of crimes, you 216 00:14:00,018 --> 00:14:03,435 lock them all up. That's going to get criminals off the 217 00:14:03,435 --> 00:14:06,523 street. Well, that might convince people, if they 218 00:14:06,523 --> 00:14:09,480 don't notice that he's left out another fact. 219 00:14:09,480 --> 00:14:13,555 He's not just going to get people off the street who are criminals, he's going to 220 00:14:13,555 --> 00:14:15,946 get lots of other people off the street too. 221 00:14:15,946 --> 00:14:20,075 He didn't give you all the relevant information, like the waiter who mislead 222 00:14:20,075 --> 00:14:23,172 you with the pie. He suggested that his policy will solve 223 00:14:23,172 --> 00:14:27,139 the problem of crime by putting people in prison who would commit crimes. 224 00:14:27,139 --> 00:14:31,268 And, just left out the other relevant fact that it's going to put lots of other 225 00:14:31,268 --> 00:14:34,996 people in prison too. So he has conversationally implied that 226 00:14:34,996 --> 00:14:39,716 there's no other relevant facts to consider, by only mentioning that it's 227 00:14:39,716 --> 00:14:43,790 going to reduce the crime rate. And you have to be good at looking 228 00:14:43,790 --> 00:14:48,963 through that implication and asking, yes, but is there something he's leaving out? 229 00:14:48,963 --> 00:14:54,006 And that's often what you need to do in order to avoid being misled by sleazy 230 00:14:54,006 --> 00:14:58,920 politicians and other people who leave out the relevant information for the 231 00:14:58,920 --> 00:15:03,087 issue that you're talking about. Now of course the politician might not 232 00:15:03,087 --> 00:15:05,616 care that he misled you. That might be the goal. 233 00:15:05,616 --> 00:15:09,758 He wants to persuade you and he doesn't care whether he misleads you, because 234 00:15:09,758 --> 00:15:14,061 it's persuasion not justification that he's interested in, as we talked about in 235 00:15:14,061 --> 00:15:17,342 the first lecture. In addition, he's got his defense ready. 236 00:15:17,342 --> 00:15:21,137 He can say, but I didn't say anything false, what I said was true. 237 00:15:21,137 --> 00:15:25,703 If we put all those potential criminals in jail, we're going to reduce the crime 238 00:15:25,703 --> 00:15:28,545 rate. Maybe it's true that we're also put some 239 00:15:28,545 --> 00:15:33,264 innocent people in jail, but we will reduce the crime rate, and that's what I 240 00:15:33,264 --> 00:15:35,995 said. And what Grice's maxim of quantity does 241 00:15:35,995 --> 00:15:39,596 is it tells us exactly why we have a criticism of him now. 242 00:15:39,596 --> 00:15:44,439 We can say he's not cooperating because he's not following the conversational 243 00:15:44,439 --> 00:15:49,530 maxim of quantity, he's not giving us all the information that we need in order to 244 00:15:49,530 --> 00:15:52,510 achieve our purpose if we have a common purpose. 245 00:15:52,510 --> 00:15:57,664 And this politician is pretending to have a common purpose with us, the good of the 246 00:15:57,664 --> 00:16:01,290 country, when actually he doesn't have a common purpose with us. 247 00:16:01,290 --> 00:16:05,326 He just wants to get elected. And so Grice gives us an insight into 248 00:16:05,326 --> 00:16:10,326 what's going on when we get misled in those contexts, and also, what we need to 249 00:16:10,326 --> 00:16:13,275 do to respond to those types of bad arguments. 250 00:16:13,275 --> 00:16:17,634 Now this distinction between conversational implication and logical 251 00:16:17,634 --> 00:16:22,443 entailment is crucial to arguments, because it tells us something about how 252 00:16:22,443 --> 00:16:26,161 to refute arguments. When you don't like the premise of an 253 00:16:26,161 --> 00:16:31,225 argument because it's misleading, because it conversationally implies something 254 00:16:31,225 --> 00:16:34,880 false, that's not a way to show that the premise is false. 255 00:16:34,880 --> 00:16:39,230 In order to show it's false, you have to show that it actually logically entails 256 00:16:39,230 --> 00:16:43,308 something that's false, then you can infer that the premise itself is false. 257 00:16:43,308 --> 00:16:47,441 This will become important later when we look at the role of conversational 258 00:16:47,441 --> 00:16:50,051 implication and logical entailment in arguments. 259 00:16:50,051 --> 00:16:54,021 But for now, the important thing is to understand the distinction between 260 00:16:54,021 --> 00:16:56,740 conversational implication and logical entailment. 261 00:16:56,740 --> 00:17:00,690 The speakers usually follow these conversational maxims that Grice 262 00:17:00,690 --> 00:17:04,876 enunciated when they speak and when they're cooperating, but they don't 263 00:17:04,876 --> 00:17:08,118 always follow these maxims. Sometimes they violate them. 264 00:17:08,118 --> 00:17:12,540 And of course, as always, there's a lot more to be said about conversational 265 00:17:12,540 --> 00:17:14,604 acts. If you want to learn more about 266 00:17:14,604 --> 00:17:19,379 conversational acts, you should look at the chapter in Understanding Arguments in 267 00:17:19,379 --> 00:17:24,011 the text that accompanies this course. But I think we've learned enough about 268 00:17:24,011 --> 00:17:28,366 conversational acts to move on, because so far we've looked at language 269 00:17:28,366 --> 00:17:31,371 in general. At the linguistic level, at the speech 270 00:17:31,371 --> 00:17:33,947 act level, at the conversational act level. 271 00:17:33,947 --> 00:17:38,485 Now we want to take these lessons and apply them more specifically to the 272 00:17:38,485 --> 00:17:42,226 language of argument. That is, the particular kind of language 273 00:17:42,226 --> 00:17:46,520 that gets used in arguments. And that's what will be the topic for the 274 00:17:46,520 --> 00:17:47,624 next few lectures.