If a lion could talk, we could not understand him. "Wenn ein Löwe sprechen
könnte, wir könnten ihn nicht verstehen."
O. K.: "Seems to be a subjunctive. In the traditional treatment of
material implication, it would seem that 'if p, q' is considered true whenever
p
is false. (Lions don't appear to speak.) However, I am rather inclined to
think that the truth value of 'if p, q' is indeterminate when p is false.
[I]t's interesting that people cite such a wild speculation as if it were
completely proven."
Well, it's complicated. While a treatment with the horseshoe (p ⊃ q) seems
a good start, the occurrence of 'could' (twice, in the protasis and the
apodosis) brings a 'dispositional' element.
Popper might have a word or two to say on this, since I believe one issue
his opponents (the verificationists) had at one time was with the analysis
of counterfactuals involving dispositions (which were used by scientists,
such as 'fragile').
Oddly, as Geary might suggest, there is room for variations here.
While (majestic) we could not understand a lion, if he could talk, an
inverse scenario seems plausible. As Geary would put it: "If I roar to a lion,
he might understand me --". The implicature: "If Speranza roars to a lion,
the lion might understand him -- and only too well."
--- where 'too well' implicates, further, 'and he might take further
action.'
Note that while the cognate for English 'if' is 'ob', Witters prefers
'wenn', which in Scots is "when", pronounced 'hwen' -- hardly your
common-or-garden logicians' horseshoe.
Note that Witters (and his translator) use 'could' which is cognate with
'can' and does with a Scots-Northern English variant of 'know' (as in "Do you
ken John Peele" -- "a tune that everybody in Cumberland knows", as Rupert
Brooke used to say. So it might well be that the lion COULD talk but WOULD
not. The use of the English modal 'might' might be preferable, even if also
dispositional ("right is might, and might is right" -- Hobbes). "If a lion
might talk, we might NOT understand him". While Witters uses 'sprechen',
which is obviously cognate with 'speak' (the Anglo-Saxons disliked the
intrusive 'r'), the use of 'talk' may trigger different implicatures, as it is
cognate with 'tell' (with a replicative suffix -- cfr. "The language of
flowers", or "Say it with flowers" -- 'floral dictiveness').
Cheers,
Speranza
KEYWORDS: ETHOLOGY, animal communication, Wittgenstein, Androcles,
SEMIOTICS.
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