[lit-ideas] Re: Roman Superstitions
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 23 May 2014 08:57:59 -0400 (EDT)
Were the Aztecs superstitious? (by Roman standards, that is).
In a message dated 5/23/2014 7:51:24 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Next, having lectured everyone who has ever used a phrase like "irrational
superstition" that they are guilty of otiosity, we will be told that the
Bible's "It rained for forty days and forty nights" is otiose.
Indeed. The problem however is Aramaic in nature.
It may be that in Geary's idiolect, 'That was a fine day' DOES NOT entail,
"and night too".
Similarly, Cole Porter's song, "Night and day" is possibly otiose, but
surely "Day" does not scan.
McEvoy:
>having lectured everyone who has ever used a phrase like "irrational
superstition" that they are guilty of otiosity
This may amount to Moore's paradox.
"It is raining but I don't believe".
It may do to look for examples of first-person 'superstition' ascriptions:
"I know it is superstitious, but I do believe that p."
"I am superstitious when I think that p, but I can't say I'm ashamed of
that."
I.e. it would seem the ideal Kantian rational 'ego' of apperception would
deny superstition _in principle_. Walter O. does, too.
Cheers,
Speranza
>It rained for forty days and forty nights.
versus
>It rained for forty days (nights included).
If the 'implicature' is that the rain never stopped, then, the utterer
indeed does not need to be more informative than is required.
Note, however:
It rained for forty days and forty nights, but not successively.
--- REFERENCES:
------ Biblical accounts of the divine flood, and the new film with R.
Crowe ("We thought of having a voice over repeating the Aramaic lines, "It
rained for forty days and forty nights" but we found it otiose -- given the
digital imagery we were displaying.").
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