[lit-ideas] Re: The Answering Machine
- From: "palma@xxxxxxxxxx" <palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:45:03 +0200
you may want to llok at Predelli's work (of oslo, then UK)
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 10:31 PM, <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Avramides reports:
>
> "[Sir] Michael [Dummett, the late Wykeham professor of logic, at Oxford
> [University]] * -- adding [University] here, as Nancy Mitford reports is
> non-U]" "once explained that he [regularly?] made a telephone call only
> to be
> put through to the answering machine. [He liked it]. He observed: “They
> call it an answering machine but it’s not. You can ask it questions, but
> it
> won’t give you any answers.”".
>
>
> In a message dated 1/10/2012 5:37:43 P.M. UTC-02,
> donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx comments:
>
> >Did no one ever say, "[Sir] Michael, but they don't call it a
> 'question-answering machine'"?"
>
> McEvoy expands:
>
> "[An answering machine] *answers* a phone call in the [Fregean?] sense
> that it connects the caller to a device that allows the caller to leave a
> message."
>
> And that above is _analytic_.
>
> "That is why most people understand the expression 'answering machine'
> without thinking that it is there to answer questions asked of it and are
> not
> so foolish to even try (as you appear to)."
>
> ----
>
> McEvoy goes on:
>
> "Often even when humans 'answer the phone' they only do so to get
> information or take a message and do not answer any questions:"
>
> The fallacy here may be etymological. In German, antwort (ans-wer) means
> "contra-diction", literally.
>
> McEvoy:
>
> "perhaps you would also like to take issue with the expression 'answer the
> phone' on the basis that no questions are necessarily answered by whoever
> picks up the receiver, so how do they answer the phone?"
>
> ---- Strictly, the bell may count as the question:
>
> RING RING RING ---- translated as "Is anybody home?"
>
> ----
>
> McEvoy:
>
> "And indeed the phone itself is simply a vehicle of communication that
> itself does not communicate, so it is doubly wrong an expression as we do
> not
> answer the phone but respond to the person ringing."
>
> I wouldn't think the _person_ rings. "Ring" is a mechanical verb: it
> applies to bells, and machines (e.g. phones, or alarm clocks) but hardly to
> persons (or birds).
>
> McEvoy:
>
> "I would climb the stairs to bed at this point rather than indulge you
> further in this witless quibbling except no doubt you will say it is untrue
> that I 'climb' as, in fact, I use only the soles of my feet and in effect
> 'walk up' the stairs. Unfortunately, [Sir] Michael, you have typically
> failed
> to notice something important - how absolutely pissed I am. I shall
> climb."
>
> -----
>
> I would take a different implicature:
>
> What Sir Michael said was:
>
> “___They____ call it an answering machine but it’s not."
>
> Similarly, in "The Seas of Language" he quotes from Kripke's example:
>
> "He is called Socrates, but he isn't".
>
> ---- This, to Kripke, is not contradictory per se but _otiose_ (if true).
> Cfr. Puccini, "La Boheme", "Mi chiamano Mimi" (they call me Mimi --
> implicature: I'm NOT Mimi -- Her real name was Lucrezia).
>
> Dummett writes:
>
> “They call it [i.e. "it"] an answering machine but it’s not. You can ask
> it questions, but it [i.e. "it"] won’t give you any answers.”"
>
> -----
>
> Oddly, "Answering machine" does not translate to Magalasyan.
>
> "Climb" brings in other issues, and implicatures. Strictly, truly, it is
> McEvoy's Feet who climb. But since McEvoy's feet BELONG to McEvoy, by
> extension, it is not _false_ to utter that McEvoy climbed the stairs.
>
> A different case is Grice on 'sink'. As he notes:
>
> "H. M. S. Pinafore sank the enemy ship".
>
> This is different from:
>
> "Therefore, H. M. S. Pinafore SANK" (simpliciter).
>
> ---- And so on.
>
> Grammar is full of Quirks, and Sir Randolph knew it.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
> ----
>
>
>
>
> You can ask it questions, but it won’t give you any answers.”".
>
>
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--
palma, KZN
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