[lit-ideas] Re: Grice on "worth" and "not worth"
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 11:17:42 +0100 (BST)
Speaking of (possible) fictions...
________________________________
From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
>You say that 'All boys...' in English (e.g.) has an ambiguity of scope
that can be 'easily demonstrated (disambiguated?) in logical notation.
This is simply false. The ordinary language ambiguity makes it impossible to
know—without prompting—how to express it in 'logical
notational' terms. That is, until the ambiguity is removed in ordinary
language, i.e., whether
'Every boy loves some girl.'
means
'Every boy loves some girl, namely, Alice.'
or
'Every boy loves some girl or other.'
must be decided before anything can be put into the 'notation' of
e.g. Russell and Whitehead. The two disambiguated sentences need
to be logically-notationally different, and which one is to be
preferred is not decided by logical notation.>
Now all of this comment from after "This is simply false..." may be true
without (it seems to me) it being "simply false" that "'All boys...' in English
(e.g.) has an ambiguity of scope that can be 'easily demonstrated
(disambiguated?) in logical notation." There is no inconsistency between (1)
the ordinary language ambiguity can only be disambiguated in logical notation
if the ambiguity in the ordinary language is resolved by adopting one or other
interpretation of the ordinary language which can then be expressed in logical
notation; and (2) the ambiguity of the ordinary language expression can be
disambiguated in logical notation.
Of course, the ambiguity of an ordinary language expression here can also be
disambiguated in ordinary language. But this disambiguation is by further
ordinary language and does not remove the ambiguity of the original expression
per se. The original expression remains ambiguous without further ado.
It also seems to me dubious that wemust resolve the ambiguity of the original
expression in ordinary langauge before being able to express this
disambiguation in logical notation: it might be that such ambiguity could be
resolved either by using, as the further means necessary, ordinary language or
logical notation. Indeed, 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.
Donal
The Friendly Neighbourhood Popperian
I'm surprised you now want to take back, on Grice's behalf, what
he's reported as saying to Strawson. Surprised and puzzled because
I thought it was part of a fictional Grice's counter to something
Wittgenstein is falsely said to have believed.
Robert Paul,
channeling Lewis Carroll
> Re: the former, since the English language IS a set of symbols, "Horses
> run swiftly" is already_symbolic_. Re: the latter, I agree with R. Paul that
> there is a scope ambiguity, etc. -- and that it can be easily
> demonstrated in logical notational terms.
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