[lit-ideas] Re: Post the letter or burn it
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2011 21:09:56 +0100 (BST)
In the ordinary way we can understand that "X or y (or both)" is true if it is
the case that either 'x' or 'y' (or both). We can also say "Either x or non-x".
And, turning this around, if 'x is true' it follows that "x or whatever you
like, including non-x" is true. In the latter case it is not that the truth of
'non-x or whatever you like' follows from x, but simply that these
possibilities may be mentioned in a true statement, where the statement also
asserts x and where the statement is true in virtue of x being true.
But when we ordinarily speak that we "Ought to do x", it is strange to say that
we are also saying we "Ought to do x or whatever, including non-x": we are
surely not saying that. Equally, if I say 'x is true' I am not committed to
'non-x is true' - rather the opposite: logically it follows from 'x is true'
that 'non-x is false'. The sense in which if 'x is true' it follows that 'x or
non-x is true' is simpy that the second is true because it excludes no logical
possibility and so cannot be false: it must be true, for example - and without
checking, that either there is a car outside my door or that there is not. But
this sense is too weak to ground an 'ought' claim of any substance, just as it
is too weak to ground an empirical claim of any substance: for it is not a
claim falsifiable by any observation that 'either there is a car outside my
door or there is not'; and, likewise, it is not an 'ought' of any substance to
say 'you ought to murder the
dictator or not'.
From this POV, it is clear that from the imperative "Post the letter" nothing
further follows substantively - such as "...or burn it". And when we do speak,
imperatively, that we ought to "Post the letter or burn it" we are not merely
saying that only posting the letter is the morally correct action; on the
contrary we are positing burning the letter as a viable alternative and one
required if we do not post the bloody thing.
Donal
London
--- On Sat, 13/8/11, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Post the letter or burn it
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Saturday, 13 August, 2011, 15:54
>
>
> In a message dated 8/12/2011 3:02:13 A.M. Eastern
> Daylight Time,
> donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx
> writes:
> Still it passeth my understanding how the square root
> of anything is
> involved here. Also I am not sure you have understood
> my argument why "Post the
> letter or burn it" does not follow logically from
> "Post the letter": the
> latter singular imperative does not imply that
> burning the letter (or
> anything other than posting) is also morally valid.
> Next we'll be told "Feed your
> children" implies "Feed your children or burn
> them".
>
> ---
>
> I think what is going on, and I've been on this elsewhere
> (at the Grice
> Club?) is whether to accept Getzen (Natural deduction) for
> the introduction of
> 'or'. Grice would say that 'or' is OK as introduced in
> indicative
> discourse:
>
> My wife is in the kitchen; therefore, my wife is in the
> kitchen or in the
> garden. (His example in 1961, Arist. Soc. Proc.)
>
> In 1967, Hare, in Mind, applies Grice's argument to Alf
> Ross's objection.
>
> "You can post the letter; therefore you can post the letter
> or you can burn
> it".
>
> So, the oddity is here as to the utterance of
>
> "My wife is in the kitchen or in the garden", when utterer
> KNOWS it's in
> the kitchen, say. Grice explains this oddity in terms of an
> unusual
> implicature flouting the maxim, 'be as informative as
> you can'. It's a 'paradox' of
> "or" that gets resolved when pragmatic factors are
> taken into question.
>
> The same should proceed with "You can feed the children or
> burn them".
> While indeed, from "You can feed the children" does follow
> "You can feed the
> children or follow" it would be some illogical type who
> ERRADICATES 'or' from
> the complex utterance, and infer from "You can feed the
> children or burn
> them" that he can burn the children. Or something.
>
> It's true that the square root comes in rather subtly. But
> the point is
> that the introduction of 'or' should be neutral with
> respect to the force of
> the utterances. If we represent p and q as the
> phrastics (or radixes) of
> what is being said -- CHILDREN FED, CHILDREN BURNT
> --, then we add an
> indication of mood. Children-fed seen as desirable
> object of an imperative
> utterance, say; these mechanisms should be
> force-neutral.
>
> Grice's campaign, believe it or not, is for the
> AEQUI-vocality of human
> reason. He thinks that indicatives and imperatives follow
> the same patterns of
> reason, and he thinks he is following Aristotle and Kant
> in thus thinking.
> I agree.
>
> In this respect, the truth-functor that "or" is is
> re-labelled
> "satisfactoriness-functor", in that, in the case of "Feed
> the children!", or "Bun the
> children!", it is surely what A. J. P. Kenny calls the
> 'fiat' that is at
> play. And so, the issue that the square-root device is
> meant to elucidate is
> whether: "Feed the children!" or "Burn the children!"" is
> equivalent to
> "Feed the children or burn them!" -- i.e. whether
> 'or' has scope inside or
> outside the force-indicating devices that "!"
> represent. I tend to think that
> it's best to see the whole thing as imperative with
> "or" as having minimal
> scope. This may relate to De Morgan Laws, only in
> imperative contexts. Thus,
>
> "Touch the monster and it will bite you", or "Touch the
> monster and you'll
> regret it", perhaps includes an 'if', as Grice notes, and
> it's NOT the
> conjunction of an imperative and an indicative (!p &
> .q), even if that is the
> surface form of what you say. Or something like that. In
> any case, Grice
> would consider that the 'if' (or 'if'/'or') utterance may
> be explained out of
> an implicature of what you actually put forward,
> which is an
> "and"-utterance. Or something like that.
>
> Hare cites examples by Ryle on 'or' from the 1929 paper on
> Negation, Arist.
> Soc. The example being that a train can go via Berwick or
> Crewe (I forget
> the cities he mentions). The idea is that the
> utterance of a disjunction,
> "The train can take the Berwick or the Crewe route",
> are paradoxical only at
> the level of what is being expressed, but that this
> paradox can be
> resolved in terms of pragmatic implicature. Or
> something.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
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