[lit-ideas] Re: Geary's Infallibility
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 12:57:56 +0100 (BST)
________________________________
From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
>"It is raining or not" sounds vacuous. But include it in a conversation, say
>between two climbers planning to ascend a mountain, on which the weather is
>known to be iffy: "It is raining or not. What shall we do if it is? What shall
>we do if it isn't?" Now it doesn't sound vacuous. It sounds like careful
>planning. >
The claim in my post was not that it was vacuous as every sense - I did not
suggest the expression "It is raining or not" may have no useful use or sense.
The claim was that it is always vacuously true. This can be easily enough
demonstrated using John's example, which is therefore not a counter-example to
the claim.
For imagine the climbers began not with an introductory or preliminary "It is
raining or not" but simply pitched in with
- What shall we do if it is raining? What shall we do if it is not raining?
We can here see that, in John's imagined exchange,"It is raining or not" adds
nothing except to introduce that the "it" (in "What shall we do if it..")
refers to "raining": that is the sense here. This sense does not affect the
fact that "It is raining or not" remains vacuously true.
This is clear enough if we imagine how mad, or nonsensical, it would be if one
of the climbers were to reply after "- What shall we do if it is raining? What
shall we do if it is not raining?" by saying "Hold on - haven't you skipped
something important? That "It is raining or not"?"
We see therefore than "It is raining or not" is, in John's exchange, merely a
way of introducing the "it" of his questions: as a proposition it remains
vacuously true and it adds nothing once we are clear that the "it" of his
questions is "raining".
In John's sense the expression "It is raining or not" may play its part in
careful planning - but as a proposition it does not constitute "careful
planning" but merely something vacuously true but in respect of which [that is,
in respect of the possible weather] a careful plan might be drawn.
Donal
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