[lit-ideas] Re: Contingency Fee
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 07:12:58 EDT
In a message dated 5/1/2009 11:18:24 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
I believe you are talking about De Interpretatione, 12 a[n]d 13. Why, is
not exactly clear.
----
Well, a few comments.
First, my apology. That post distributed yesterday was distributed by
mistake. I was working on it, and said, "This is not ready for the forum,
under
the circumstances", so _sent_ it to myself. But this was a mistake. What I
did do was to send it to the list! Imagine my panic!
--- Ditto I had composed posts on other topics, which I'm keeping for a
collective post in the future.
--- I do think it _may_ be Prior Analytics, Book I, chapter 8. I found it
in a googlebooks edition. Tried to print it for which I downloaded the
whole book, but the machine printed the wrong page. I think in both De
Interpretatione and Prior Analytics Aristotle speaks of what we may call the
'modal
square of opposition'. The phrase I got via google hit for the exact
phrase, "the necessary is contingent". ---
--- This was in connection with McEvoy's use of words like 'logical
necessity' _resulting_ in 'logical possibility'. It would seem that
'contingent'
requires a closure tag, "something is contingent if it is _not_ true in all
possible worlds". But why someone may want to restrict an otherwise nice
word like that escapes me.
--- While I agreed with Wittgenstein that tautologies don't speak about
the world, I'm less sure about contradictions. They either. But Grice notes,
"Do not say what you believe to be false", so the uttering of a
contradiction has to be interpreted, charitably, as an _irony_. ("My
girlfriend is not
a girl", etc.).
--- I believe what McEvoy may be into is logical versus metalogical
distinctions. It seems Wittgenstein was wedded to a bivalent standard
interpretation. Hence his love for things like "~(p & ~p)", or "p v ~p" as
both being
vacuous tautologies. But that depends on the introduction and elimination
axioms for, say, 'v' (disjunction). This is a metalogic (natural deduction)
constraint. So the type of _necessity_ this brings is best understood alla
the Second Wittgenstein, as a move in a conversational game that defines
what sentences are axioms and theorems and what sentences are not (merely
_contingencies_).
The phrase 'contingency free' I found, hateful as it is, in the OED, as a
new addendum from the USA. I would have also used 'contingency planning'. If
it's all contingent, as I think it is, and Aristotle too, then that's
otiose and redundant for 'planning' simpliciter.
The article by Noel Burton-Roberts is called "Modality and Implicature" --
and myself, elsewhere has analysed what Davis calls 'modal implicatures'
(chapter 3, section 13, I believe) in his book on "Implicature" (Cambridge
University Press). One of his examples: "I may tell you how much I love you"
vs. "I must tell you how much I love you". For surely it's the issue of
whether <must, may> for a scale for scalar implicature, which I think they do
(i.e. an ordered pair where 'must' entails 'may', and 'may' only
implicates [and thus can be cancelled out] not must'.
Thanks to R. Paul for the quotes. I'll try to find the context for De
Interpretatione too, and I hope I was not (too) wrong about the Arist Pr. I, 8
(It's page 107, I believe on that google book).
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza, Buenos Aires.
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