There is no particular need to describe the aroma of beer in great
precision, the people who drink it know it. And tastes are subjective
anyway. It is similar with the Sorites paradoxes, the issue of whether a
man with n hairs on his head is bald or not bald is not of such moment as
to call for great precision in language.
On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 3:35 AM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx for
DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Describe the aroma of beer.
In a message dated 9/4/2015 9:08:23 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Language can also serve to convey useful information occasionally - for
example, where that bottle of beer is, is it cold or not etc.
Which of course in Popper's case it can lead to an argument (he ranked the
'argumentative' use the highest), as in:
A: Where is that bottle of beer?
B: Not in the fridge.
A: But is it cold?
B: I said it's not in the fridge.
A: Your implicature is that it's warm?
Geary calls that the 'exchange of ideas'.
But surely it should belong to the argumentative, rather than the
expressive (or 'trivial', as McEvoy calls it), or signalling or descriptive
functions of, say, Hungarian (Lakatos was Hungarian, and an 'enemy',
academic, of
Popper)
Lakatos argued that one common misconception of beer served in the United
Kingdom (he was from Hungary) concerns the serving temperature.
It is believed, wrongly, argued Lakatos, that British beer is served warm.
(For the record, it was Agassi who first introduced Lakatos to Popper.
Lakatos remained at the London School of Economics until his sudden death
of a
heart attack. Then he was taken t a cemetery.).
In reality, Popper would argue (implicature: but perhaps did not) that beer
in the UK is usually served at cellar temperature (between 10–14 °C (50–
57 °F), which is often carefully controlled in a modern-day pub.
although the temperature can, naturally fluctuate with the four seasons: to
wit: winter, spring, summer, and autumn.
Proponents of British beer say that it relies on subtler flavours than that
of other nations, and these are brought out by serving it at a temperature
that would make other beers seem harsh.
So in the above conversation:
A: Where is that bottle of beer?
B: Not in the fridge.
A: But is it cold?
B: I said it's not in the fridge.
A: Your implicature is that it's warm?
The line,
"But is it cold?"
should be rephrased with an index: "It is cold-B". For beer can be cold-B
and warm-C. The Brits arguably argue that British beer relies on SUBTLER
flavours than that of other nations (say Hungary), and that these subtler
flavours are brought out by serving it at a WARMER temperature that would
make
other beers taste 'harsh'.
The meaning of 'harsh' may give room for argumentation.
Some argued, Does Corona beer contain warm horse urine?
The crux of the argument lies on subtle facts: how these aficionados would
know what warm horse piss tastes like doesn't bear speculating upon -- so
we won't.
Where harsher flavours do exist in beer (most notably in those brewed in
Yorkshire -- where M. A. K. Halliday comes from), these are traditionally
mitigated by serving the beer through a hand pump fitted with a sparkler, a
device that mixes air with the beer, oxidising it slightly and softening
the
flavour.
Geary, who is a specialist in Air Conditioning has a whole theory about
beer temperature which is argumentative in nature.
Cheers,
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
