[lit-ideas] Re: Grice on "worth" and "not worth"
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 12:36:07 -0230
Speaking of logic, sort of, here is a problem my undergrads in the Critical
Thinking course particularly like. (Oh no, I said "particularly" again).
Psychologists like it because solutions given to the problem very often display
what they coyly refer to as " coming to a premature conclusion." (Life must
really be boring in the AI/Cog Sc departments of the world. Here it is:
Bob is in a bar, looking at Susan, who is looking at Pablo. Bob is married.
Pablo is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Cannot be determined
The first person to correctly solve this problem will receive an all-expense
paid 2 week holiday in Pittsburgh. Second prize is 3 weeks in Pittsburgh.
Hopefully, Portland (the other Portland) next year will be a finer experience.
The American Philofed conference will be hosted by a hotel - I forget its name
-across the street from some very famous bookstore. Benjamin's? Bertrand's?
People say Portland is just like the old town in Montreal (my hometown).
Looking forward to it. Don't some of the regular irregulars on this list reside
in Portland? We can have a get-together in my suite and discuss the difference
between showing a single malt and drinking a single malt. We can also just play
chess over some nice Oban.
Walter O
Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
> You don't really believe (I hope) that the English language is
> 'a set of symbols,' on all fours with the logical spinach one finds
> in e.g. Frege, Russell, and elementary logic books.
>
> If you did, the assignment 'put the following [some text with ands
> and ors and thens and maybes] into symbolic notation would be (I think
> this is the right term), otiose.
>
> You say that 'All boys...' in English (e.g.) has an ambiguity of scope
> that can be 'easily demonstrated (disambiguated?) in logical notation.
>
> This is simply false. The ordinary language ambiguity makes it
> impossible to know?without prompting?how to express it in 'logical
> notational' terms. That is, until the ambiguity is removed in ordinary
> language, i.e., whether
>
> 'Every boy loves some girl.'
>
> means
>
> 'Every boy loves some girl, namely, Alice.'
>
> or
>
> 'Every boy loves some girl or other.'
>
> must be decided before anything can be put into the 'notation' of
> e.g. Russell and Whitehead. The two disambiguated sentences need
> to be logically-notationally different, and which one is to be
> preferred is not decided by logical notation
>
> I'm surprised you now want to take back, on Grice's behalf, what
> he's reported as saying to Strawson. Surprised and puzzled because
> I thought it was part of a fictional Grice's counter to something
> Wittgenstein is falsely said to have believed.
>
> Robert Paul,
> channeling Lewis Carroll
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Re: the former, since the English language IS a set of symbols, "Horses
> > run swiftly" is already_symbolic_. Re: the latter, I agree with R. Paul
> that
> > there is a scope ambiguity, etc. -- and that it can be easily
> > demonstrated in logical notational terms.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>
This electronic communication is governed by the terms and conditions at
http://www.mun.ca/cc/policies/electronic_communications_disclaimer_2012.php
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
