[lit-ideas] Re: The Triteness of Dispositional Talk --as Saved Via Implicature
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:16:53 EDT
In a message dated 4/29/2010 5:41:18 P.M. Argentina Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
but that would not make her virginity a disposition [which is not to deny
that the state of virginity may have dispositional affects; making one less
disposed to pregnancy for example].
----
To take stock:
>have dispositional affects.
--- _E_ffects.
She possibly does NOT have '_A_ffects', hence her virginity.
>making [her] less disposed to pregnancy.
Now, that seems contradictory to me. I won't accept a "Mother" for example,
that keeps being called "Virgin".
----
-----
So to take stock.
We define a disposition as "finkish"
----
A Finkish Disposition is any disposition, _simpliciter_. No disposition is
NOT finkish. But finkish notes or indicates that the notion is, indeed, as
Donal suggests, 'trite'.
But can implicature save 'finkish' disposition? It can, and I proposed that
much in my other post, "Finkish Implicature".
Consider:
Can you speak Spanish?
I don't know. I never tried.
----
versus,
"_Do_ you speak Spanish?"
--- Only 'do' questions are valid. "Can" questions are otiose at the level
of what is EXPLICATED. But they are saved at the level of what is
implicated.
As Searle noted,
"Can you pass me the salt?"
is meiotic and an understatement. Via metonymy what is meant is "can you
pass me the salt-CONTAINER?".
Can implies OUGHT, in spite of Kant's repeated claims to the contrary.
"A pig cannot fly" -- the reason: it would NOT be a 'better' world if it
would. It's the transcendental deontic idiocy of a flying pig that allows us
to say, "Pigs can't fly" (literally).
-----
Popper's rejection of Carnap's counterfactual analysis of dispositional
statements is well-known. At the Vienna Circle, where Popper was not really,
accepted, they were working with the German analoge of "Fragility".
Zerbrechlichkeit
Carnap had proposed:
"Schlick's nose is breakable"
----
"Schliks Nase ist zerbrechlich"
What Carnap, at the time, failed to recognise, is the implicature. The
POINT of Dispositional Talk.
Grice concluded: "Implicatures happen". He found that there was no WAY to
justify dispositional talk.
Part of his impetus there was his "Across the Bay seminar" which he
conducted with Sir Stuart Hampshire's future wife: Nancy Cartwright:
"It looks as if Schlick's nose can break"
"Schlick's nose can break."
----- But the point, raised by Cartwright, was that to argue thus would be
to fall victim of a 'trick of grammar'. There is nothing in the 'grammar'
(or logical grammar) of 'breakable' that imports a 'passive-voice'
metamorphosis. "Surely he himself can break it".
JL Speranza, Bordighera
Other related posts:
