From Minor to Major

--- "But how strange the change"

----- by JLS
--------- for the GC.

KRAMER IS, AS USUAL (I don't mean to imply, not always), right:

The minor-major distinction is otiose in most cases. The major premise is the one that carries the subject term of the conclusion, and the minor premise is the one carrying the predicate term.

But, as J. Kennedy would object, 'it' is HARDLY a subject:

"It was windy"
"It was raining"
--
"Therefore it was windy and raining"

NOT VALID.

Kramer notes that people usually say things in an unorderly fashion. "Barbara" for example, has the form:

"All men are mortal"
"Socrates is a man"
---
"Therefore, Socrates is mortal"

---

But what about:

"Socrates is a man"
"All men are mortal"
---
"Therefore, Socrates is mortal"

EQUALLY VALID.

There are even trickier cases. One is the one put forward by Kramer:

A says: "My boyfriend is from Crete".
B 'replies', volunteeringly, "All Cretans are liars".

----

It turns out that, as 'it' transpires (and smells in the process), both A and B are, as 'it' happens, "Cretan", too:

This has the effect of what Kramer calls, not the 'exploiting' of the Cooperative Principle, but its 'explosion'.

Kramer writes:

"I agree that "major" and "minor" are unhelpful here, not only because JL does not like the connotation" -- that in Logic with a capital L all is 'grand' and major -- "but also because sometimes what is said is the (conventionally) major premise".

As in: A and B are Cretans and both know it. As it happens B is A's boyfriend. Yet, breaching all of Gricean maxims, A utters, in one of her 'illeist' moods:

"My boyfriend is from Crete."

Her boyfriend, hearing her, replies, or, rather, comments:

"All Cretans are liars -- including you".

---- The implicatures are so inconsistent that they give me a headache, and Tarski.

Etc.