[lit-ideas] Re: John Kerry's Metalinguistic Negation
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 09:02:01 EDT
We are discussing John Kerry's utterance,
"I would not have done one thing differently,
I would have done everything differently."
-- re: the Iraq war, at
_http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3589879&thesection=news&th
esubsection=world_
(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3589879&thesection=news&thesubsection=world)
-- as reported by R. Cornwell, 'Kerry drafts in Clinton aides' -- Sept
8 2004. I put forward the view that, first, Kerry seems to be negating
"I would have done one thing differently."
but that by uttering the logical negation,
"I would _not_ have done one thing differently."
he is not committing to the _falsity_ of the original statement. Rather he
would be negating the utterance because _uninformative_. ("I don't have two
children; I have three"). The paradox with this 'metalinguistic' -- and to
some
somewhat 'illogical' -- use of negation is that Kerry's second utterance,
"I would have done everything different"
is logically imcompatible with the _affirmation_ that Kerry is negating in
the original clause (Similarly, if I have three children, it is the case that
I have _two_, not that I do not have two).
R. Paul comments:
>Kerry is playing on the ambiguity of
>
> "I would not have done one thing differently."
>
>which, in ordinary speech, means
>
> "There is nothing I'd have done differently"
>
>but could, if taken literally by a crazed logician, mean
>
> "There is something, namely x, such that I
> would have not have done x differently'
>
>-- leaving open the possibility that there
>are other things that one _would_ have done differently).
>
> "For all x, it is not the case that there
> is an x, such that [I] would have
> done x differently."
>
>In symbols:
>
> "(x) ~(Ex.Dx)"
>
> "There is an x, and [I] would
> have done x differently."
>
>In symbols
>
> "Ex.Dx"
>
> "For all x, [I] would have done
> x differently.
>
>In symbols
>
> "(x) Dx"
>
>But "(x) Dx" does not entail "~(Ex.Dx)",
>only "Ex.Dx"; and I think that even this
>is dubious, for "(x) Dx" seems to say
>that [Kerry] would have done _everything_
>differently, whatever that might mean (including
>[uttering] 'I would have done everything differently',
>[in the first place]?
I'm not sure about "including 'I would have done everything differently'.
A further complication here that may help with what R. Paul describes as a
messy complication in Kerry's underlying logic concerns what the Anglo-Indian
logician, De Morgan called the 'universe of discourse'.
I take the universe of discourse in John Kerry's speech to be "the war with
Iraq". So, strictly, 'anything', 'everything, 'one thing' -- as used by Kerry
in that utterance -- must (or should) refer _not_ to 'things' in general
(such as 'taking my vacations in Maine'), but to 'things as they relate,
militaristically, to the war of Irak -- and as they are the responsibility of
the
American President [of America]'.
I don't see that the utterance of (or uttering), "I would have done
everything differently" belongs in there. That would certainly bring a
mise-en-abime
or paradox of regressus ad infinitum (in a counter-factual scenario) to
Kerry's utterance, which I don't think is intended. And uttering 'I would have
done everything differently' is not one of the things as they relate to the
War
with Irak, as it then was.
The interface is here between universe of discourse and hyperbole, too.
Kerry seems to be using conversational implicature via 'hyperbole'. The
hyperbole-cum-conversational implicature Grice mentions in 'Logic and
Conversation' is:
"Every nice girl loves a sailor"
(Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard UP, p. 34) -- note again the operator
"every" which features in Kerry' s utterance "EVERYthing differently".
Grice fails to give what that utterance is supposed to conversationally
implicate. (It is the first line in the refrain of a Great War song). From the
context, it seems the implicature is that "Every nice girl loves a sailor" is a
rather _false_ statement to make -- literally -- and that, at best, and to
use an Americanism, only "Some nice girl -- if not girls -- loves a sailor"
(Interestingly, he was in the Royal Navy for part of the duration of the Second
World War).
But back to Kerry's utterance, I don't think,
"I would have done _everything_ differently
[-- in the war of Irak]"
is that type of implicature-via-hyperbole. Kerry is more, like, (or "all",
as A. Amago would put it) implicating that, *had* _he_ (= Kerry) done
_anything_, there would have been *no war* with Iraq. And, arguendo arguendis,
in a
context [or 'universe of discourse'] where there is _no_ war with Iraq, it is
difficult (although conceivable, I grant) to discuss the things he [or any
other, for that matter] would have done differently -- or _similarly_ for that
same matter. (But on this cf. J. M. Geary, "How to counter a fact with
dichotomical modal tense operators: the polemic with Kripke", Studies in the
Philosophy of the Would Have Been", Minessota Proceedings for the Advancement
of
Science, vol. 3 -- "The Library of Living Philosophers", series B.
Cheers,
JL
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