[lit-ideas] Re: Grice to the Mill

>How stupid are you?
 
I'm not. Note that in McEvoy's reply (below), all he does is appeal to  
_pragmatic_ factors I'm very familiar with. The fact remains that
 
<n, n-1, ... 4, 3, 2, 1>
 
forms a _scale_ (ordered set) and that for each member of the set
 
   n   +> (but does not entail) ~(n - 1)  

The issue is about 'pragmatic intrusion'. McEvoy's arguments are  
'pragmatic', imbued in 'social factors' as intercommunicators' interests, etc.  
Logical form is beyond all that.
 
Note that if McEvoy would be right we would say,
 
   "Joan Rivers is 76-year oldEST"
 
but we don't. (In Palma's native tongue it may be different; he has not yet 
 expressed numerical expressions in his mother tongue -- he has just 
insulted  fellow-listers).
 
---- J. L. S. 
 
In a message dated 6/22/2009 6:21:08 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
When we ask "What age is X?", or say "X is  y years", we surely mean to ask 
after, or state, their present _maximal_ age;  not merely an age they may 
be said to have attained some time ago. This  (implicature?) means that the 
"is" in such statements cannot reasonably be  understood to refer to any past 
age they may have attained but only to their  current maximal age. 
To say Joan Rivers's is sixty, fifty etc. is a similar  cheap trick if the 
question is "What age is she?". If she "is 76" it follows  that she has been 
all the ages that logically are prior to reaching that age;  but it is 
highly misleading to suggest she therefore "is" all these ages, rather  than 
"has been" all these ages where they denoted her maximal age at previous  times.
 
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