If relevance is a pragmatic constraint on assertion rather than a semantic condition on validity, then Grice's maxims already handle apparent irrelevance without revising logic itself.

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Reasons For

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Reason for

1.Grice's maxims explain cooperative communication norms; irrelevance violations are pragmatic failures, not logical ones.
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2.Logic concerns validity of inference structures; assertion contexts involve speaker intentions beyond logical form.
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3.Distinguishing pragmatic from semantic constraints preserves classical logic while explaining actual language use.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

1.Grice's maxims describe what speakers do, not what makes assertions felicitous or what listeners rationally expect.
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2.Some irrelevance violations block semantic content recovery itself—they're not mere pragmatic cooperative failures.
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3.If relevance constraints are part of assertion's constitutive rules, they're semantic-pragmatic hybrids, not purely pragmatic.
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Key Terms

Apparent irrelevance(as used in logic and communication): When something seems to not belong or matter to the topic at hand, even though it might actually serve some purpose in the conversation.
Grice's maxims(as used in philosophy of language and communication theory): Four practical rules for good communication proposed by philosopher Paul Grice: be honest, be clear, be relevant, and be concise.
Logic(Introduced as an overarching category encompassing rhetoric, poetics, sophistical syllogistic, dialectic, and demonstration.): The universal instrument for distinguishing between the true and the false, whose nature varies according to its objects and ends.
Paul Grice(as a philosopher referenced in philosophy of language): A 20th-century philosopher who studied how language works in conversation and developed influential ideas about what makes communication successful.
Semantic condition(Goodman proposed multiple conditions; the statement focuses on his third one.): A requirement or rule that must be met for a symbol system to successfully create and communicate meaning.
pragmatic constraint(Davies's methodological constraint on art-ontological theories (Davies 2004, 23)): The requirement that artworks must be conceived ontologically in such a way as to accord with those features of critical and appreciative practice upheld on rational reflection
relevance(The simplest notion is containment of query terms; more refined notions weight terms by distinctiveness via tf-idf): The degree to which a document addresses or is pertinent to a given query or topic
validity(Formal logic; distinguished from syntactic deducibility): The model-theoretic counterpart to deducibility; an argument is valid if its conclusion is true under every interpretation in which its premises are true

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Modality & Possibility1 linked Philosophy of Language1 linked

Distinguishing pragmatic from semantic constraints preserves classical logic whi...Grice's maxims describe what speakers do, not what makes assertions felicitous o...

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 2 (1 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit