D. Frederick has referred to me, elsewhere, to his online essay on "the unity of proposition" where a mention is made of Carroll, What the Tortoise said to Achilles", and to the point about oratio obliqua.
It seems that -- or at least it seemed to me when I had to impress the jury for my PhD disseration -- that
"... reasons ..."
is not really dyadic.
Rather, triadic:
"Reasoner R reasons from p[remisse] to c[onclusion]."
Never mind about R. Just sick to the 'predicate' (in standard grammar). I.e. not Tom, but '... reasoned from it being today Monday to tomrrow being Tuesday', to use Ryle's example. To use GRICE's example:
Grice reasoned, smugly (his choice of adverb)
from
Jack being an Englishman
to
Jack being brave.
What's wrong with this? Nothing. Only that 'reason' does not point to a psychological attitude but to a transfer, or 'thought-transition' to use Baker's idiom (drawn from Grice) in a recent issue of "Mind".
This may connect then with 'therefore'. 'Therefore' contrasts, as Grice and Ryle note with:
-- p ent q
and
-- q follows from p.
This ARE things that Tom can SAY.
"Today is Monday, and tomorrow is Tuesday; and in fact the latter follows from the former" -- or "the former entails the latter".
Still, we would NOT like, necessarily, to reduce this to a mere string of 'that'-clauses. For, inference cannot be REDUCED to a 'that'-clause.
Since reasoning IS thus mysterious (moves in mysterious ways), no wonder 'therefore' does its best but fails to 'say' things, since there is nothing to be _Said_.
---- Mind, I'm not being a Wittgensteinian about this.
---
We CAN say, but only eliptically,
"He inferred that tomorrow is Tuesday".
"How?"
"Well, he did say 'so'".
---
"He inferred that tomorrow is Tuesday" would thus be 'incomplete' to use Grice's term. For we need to know what he inferred that from:
"He inferred, from today being Monday, that tomorrow is Tuesday"
Clever chap, no? I actually prefer Grice's example, since I submit it is analytic a priori that Tuesdays follow Mondays.
---
"He inferred Jack was brave"
"Whence"
"Why, from Jack being an Englishman, no doubt".
So we have 'structures':
---- "... inferred that ..."
and the specification with 'origin' -- or 'source' rather than mere target:
---- " ... inferred that ..., from ..."
But I guess I still prefer the construction that parallels the source ('from p') with the target ('to c'):
"He inferred from p to c".
"Infer" is perhaps vulgar. But 'reason' may not, and thus,
"he reasoned from p to c"
seems like the canonical thing for which to provide necessary and sufficient conditions, as was Grice's idea in "Aspects of Reason" (he grants he failed -- notably vis a vis the role of intention and causal efficiency of the role of the intention or desire in the supplementation of material in the case of incomplete reasoning).
----
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Since reasoning IS thus mysterious (moves in mysterious ways), no wonder 'therefore' does its best but fails to 'say' things, since there is nothing to be _Said_.
ReplyDeleteMaybe "therefore" does say something. The fact that I could and should be inferring does not prove that I am inferring.
All men are mortal.
I am a man.
I am mortal.
It is not clear, semantically, whether I am inferring my mortality or merely asserting it independently of what can be inferred from my premises. Worse, maybe I am erroneously inferring that all men are mortal from the fact that I am mortal and that I am a man. If you lack sufficient reason to believe me incapable of such an error, how are you to know? To help dispel any doubt, "therefore" "says" "From premises stated and/or unstated, I infer that..." Ain't that something?
Good. But I would think you are using "say" in scare quotes, as you are -- actually 'says' in third person singular.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the pedant Grice would argue:
It's people who say, not particles, like 'therefore'.
Since this connects with "!" moves, too, such as
Post the letter or burn it!
--- Don't post it!
--- Therefore, burn it!
(Hare's example -- citing Grice, in Practical Inferences, originally Mind, 1960s --), it is even a trick to speak of 'assert'.
So I would use "explicitly conveys"
Post the letter or burn it!
-- Don't post it!
-- Therefore, burn it!
U explicitly displayed that A was to post the letter or burn it. U further explicitly displayed that U was NOT to burn the letter. And, third, U explicitly displayed that A was to BURN the letter.
"But he never SAID that or explicitly displayed that the conclusion, "Burn it!" followed from the two premises "Post the letter or burn it!", "Don't burn it!""
----
So, yes, "therefore" indicates this or that. But is it legal?
A conventional implicature is not said to be cancellable, which helps. (Unfortunately, the most explicit Grice gets on this is in Section II which he omitted in the WoW reprint, of "Causal theory of perception" but which is available in full online in S. Bayne's website).
"He asserted that Jack was an Englishman. And he further asserted that Jack was brave."
But: Grice is reluctant to say: "He asserted that the former entailed the other" -- because he didn't say it. He just said, "therefore".
Now, since a conventional implicature is NOT cancellable (for him; they are cancellable in MY idiolect), Grice found it funny (peculiar) to hear someone say:
"Jack is an Englishman. And Jack is brave. And Jack is, strictly, THEREFORE, brave. But I do not mean in the least to imply that the latter follows from the other."
----
The ordering of premisses and conclusion may help. It would seem odd, as per Kramer's example above, to suggest that "I am mortal" and "I am a man" YIELD "All men are mortal". For that would involve:
"Therefore, all men are mortal. And I'm a man, and I'm mortal". But surely, 'therefore' is hardly used as the initiation of a paragraph.
Anyway, will come back to this.
Lawyers use "therefor" which is yet another animal:
From:
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/therefore-and-therefor/
therefor: adv.
for that [thing];
for that, for it
Example:
"I will give you my pocket knife if you will give me your watch therefor."
"... respondent will not know
how to defend against petitioner’s
case because it does not know how
petitioner is calculating the
charges, and the justifications
therefor."
---
"BOND ORDINANCE PROVIDING FOR
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF
WATER STREET AND APPROPRIATING
$170,000 THEREFOR."
Quod Erat Therefore.