[lit-ideas] Re: The Air-Conditioned Tautology
- From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 16:12:39 -0700 (PDT)
Where does the air conditioning come in? Are you saying Mike's response is air
tight?
-----Original Message-----
From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
Sent: Sep 21, 2004 3:54 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] The Air-Conditioned Tautology
Erin Holder asks,
"Is "That's that" a tautology?
I say: maybe (yes -- maybe not). Geary says "no," and expands:
>>This is of course precisely where JL goes awry.
>If someone asks me, Who is JL? and I respond: "JL is JL",
>that's a tautology. Nothing new has been predicated
>about the subject (viz.: "JL"). However, if someone
>asks me, "Can you believe what JL wrote today?", I
>respond: "JL is JL", that's NOT a tautology (in the
>context that the ellipsistical is made). Something totally
>new has been predicated about the subject. In each sentence:
(1) JL is JL
(2) JL is JL
>the predicate 'JL' is entirely different _in meaning_. (I'm using
>Derrida's conception of postmodernist meaning here). The fact that
>the predicate ("... is JL") consists of the same two letters
>is wholly coincidental and nothing more than that -- but note that
>if you use two _other_ letters it's _false_, "JL is PX").
>I'm getting tired of having to explain this. There's no such thing as an
>explicated tautology vs an implicatured non-one. Either it's a goddamn
> tautology or it ain't. If something new is predicated, it ain't. Whether
> that predication takes the same form as the subject is irrelevant. Get it
> right, for Christ's sake.
Okay. I would think things are different. "JL is JL" or
"Richard is Richard"
are _patent_, obvious, blatant tautologies. The speaker is _obviously_ and
_blatantly_ 'flouting' a conversational maxim. The speaker _must_ know that the
addresee _can_ figure out that "Richard is Richard". She -- the utterer --
cannot be patronising -- patronisingly explicating the obvious. Therefore,
what Geary identifies as the _implicit_ content is 'communicated' "in the
manner
of a figure of speech", as Grice puts it.
Now, "That's that" looks like a different animal. Geary writes:
>If a parent says to a child, "You're not going to the orgy and
>that's that", he's not saying to the kid:
>you're not going and the fact that you're not going means
>the fact that you're not going. That's nonsense and a reductio
>ad absurdum of the Grice theory, it seems to me. The parent
>is saying, your'e not going, case closed, stop asking
>me, get the hell out of my face, etc. You know that. I know that you know
>that, and the American people know that you know that.
Point taken: --- The implicature being that "That's that" is _not_ a
tautology. It's amazing then, that the phrase has become common with after the
addition, "and..." ("and that's that"). In a way, these cases, as are
discussed by
Geary, look apparently 'non-detachable' -- to use Grice's terminology:
War is war
Woman is woman.
Richard is Richard
(And) That is that
--- Geary is suggesting we should distinguish here between the explicit form:
A is A.
and the implicit form
A is {B}
-- or "S is S" and "S is P", to use scholastic terminology. He is suggesting
that the second occurrence of 'war', 'woman', 'Richard', and 'that' _evolve_
a different meaning -- in context. That's where his theory becomes less
tautologous. Geary concludes:
>Tautologies are hothouse plants. No one speaks in tautologies
>except many politicians in their attempts to say nothing
>new.
--- Well, there's a gnomic innuendo to a tautology -- people think they
sound 'wise' and 'deep' -- especially the Chinese? -- when they 'speak in
tautologies'.
The idea of 'new' (in Geary's "attempts to say nothing new") seems to be on
target. The conflict seems to be between the given and the new. In my view,
the tautologies do _not_ provide 'new' information -- it's all _given_,
'given'
the laws of logic. But it's in the attempt of the addresee to 'save the
face' of the utterer who has said something totally _uninformative_ that
something new is _looked for_ -- and sometimes found (at the level of
'implicature',
but you don't have to buy that theory). Sadly, as Geary notes, some
tautologies carry no implicature, and are just 'sound and fury, signifying
nothing
NEW'.
Cheers,
JL
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