[lit-ideas] Every girl detests some boy
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 09:30:09 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 6/25/2012 6:17:53 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
it is conceivable that it is in the effort to translate an ordinary
language expression into logical notation that we first become aware of its
inherent ambiguity: and thus we do not need to have 'resolved' the ambiguity
in
ordinary language before being able to express it in logical notation.
Perhaps neither ordinary language nor logical notation have some kind of
priority here in terms of logical analysis: after all, they are (at least
partially) inter-translatable.
It may be conceivable (I love this double modal idiom -- "may ... --able")
that Ockham was not that WRONG when he said that there was a sermo verbalis
and a sermo mentalis.
Suppose the scenario:
Jack: Every girl detests some boy.
Jack: I thought you loved me.
---
Hintikka:
Police Officer: One man gets hit by a car here every day.
Passer By: I wonder how still survives.
Ockham claimed that, as uttered by JILL, "Every boy detests some boy" is
NOT ambiguous. The 'sermo mentalis' (or in Grice's parlance, what Jill means)
is NEVER ambiguous. Only what dull Jack makes out of a remark can be
ambiguous.
Still, Grice compiled a idiot proof 'conversational manual' (or
'immanuel', as he called it, to echo Kant -- since it should be
'universalisable')
which includes the injunction,
"avoid ambiguity".
This relates to Witters. He thought:
"I will be at the bank by noon".
is ambiguous. The 'sense' of "bank" (financial institution? geographical
accident by a river?) wasn't shown by the utterance, resulting in the
dialogue:
Jack: I will be at the bank by noon.
Jill: It's Sunday -- banks are closed.
Jack: RIVER banks are closed?
--- And so on.
--- McEvoy's point is perfect: the alleged ambiguity of "Every girl detests
some boy" is like Chomsky's example:
"Flying planes can be dangerous" -- to either those who fly them, or any
occasional victim of them.
Or:
French books and landscapes.
---
can always be resolved in this further 'set of symbols' that a paraphrase
in English becomes. I'm not sure as Palma is, that
Palma thinks; therefore Palma exists
carries the same philosophical force as Descartes's
I think; therefore I exist
so I disagree with Palma that it was Palma (or anyone, in variable terms)
that Descartes was thinking. Descartes was possibly taking "I" as a constant
(Grice disagrees in "Personal Idenity": "I was hit by a cricket ball;
therefore I existed").
---
Grice's idea of substituting nonspecial objects like 'girl' and 'boy' as
applied (respectively) to Jill and Jack by the 'special objects' which he
calls "the altogether girl" and the "one-at-a-time" boy is yet another of his
genialities. It resolves the ambiguity before you feel it. Soothing effect.
Note that for Witters, the sense of 'bank' is not said (but shown) in "We
had lunch at the river bank". "I thought it was Sunday -- wasn't the river
bank closed?". But then, his inability to show what he meant by what he
thought he was saying was proverbial.
Cheers,
Speranza
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