[lit-ideas] "Have You Stopped Beating Your Husband?"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:35:07 EDT
In a message dated 6/22/2009 6:26:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
Jlsperanza writes:
In a message dated 6/22/2009 6:21:08 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
There is an old trick question "How often are there 28 days in February?"
to which the correct answer is supposed to be "always", because even in a
Leap Year there are still at least 28 days. But the 'implicature' of such a
question is surely that we read it as asking "How aften are there only 28
days, and no more or less, in February?".
----
Grice loved trick questions, as that per the title.
I found out that the earliest equivalent in Latin logic was:
Tu no cessas edere ferrum
You cease to eat iron.
-----
Grice dedicates 65 pages of his "Causal Theory of Perception" -- now online
in S. Bayne's history-of-analytic-philosophy website -- to the trick
question.
For him, the implicature holds in the negative, not in the affirmative:
No, I have not stopped because I never started.
Yes, I have stopped -- and I feel relieved about that (<---- for
scenarios of the hubby-beating wife).
I had forgotten that Stubbs (who also mentions the "Jeopardy" Henry-VIII's
number of wives, also mentions the leap year.
How many balls (at least) must a bat have?
Similarly, for the question,
"Where is your wife?"
"In the dining room or in the kitchen"
-- the implicature is cancellable for houses with a passage that connects
both, and when the wife is lying in between.
Cheers,
J. L.
**************Make your summer sizzle with fast and easy recipes for the
grill. (http://food.aol.com/grilling?ncid=emlcntusfood00000004)
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