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Friday, September 17, 2010

Plurals -- the implicatures

J quotes my:

""My eyes are blue" only IMPLICATES (rather than say) that I have two eyes."

and comments:

"True. Were the giant Argus Panoptes to have said it, he would have meant the 100 eyes his head was covered with."

Now, a point made be made about Polyphemos, the Cyclops. He, as legend has it, had only one eye.

In this case,

"My eyes are blue"

would THAT be 'false' (given that he has just one eye).

Here we need a recourse to the logical form.

Apparently, 'my' involves 'the'. Note that in Italian, they do say, otiosely, "the my book" --. "or the my books".

'the' is easily enough understood as the iota operator.

What about the 'my'. Never mind 'possession' here, which is a trick of a concept. "Wittgenstein's Poker", for example -- was it HIS?

---

I would think that

"My ideas are always clever"
--- makes sense as per the below:

A: My ideas are always clever.
B: Idea_s_? You only ever entertained one!
A: So?
B: So -- how can you say, your ideas.
A: I didn't say, 'your ideas'. I said, "MY ideas".
B: Still. You meant, surely, "My idea is always clever".

----

I think B equivocates and fails to catch the implicature on B's inability to grasp the logical form of "My ideas are always clever" which does not necessarily entail that the utterer means (as per explicature) that he ever entertained more than one idea.

Ditto for Cyclops's

"My eyes are pretty".

--

It's still different (mabbe) with a sort of sexual dymorphism where males are born with just one testicle: "My balls are blue". But I disgress.

2 comments:

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  2. "Wittgenstein's Poker", for example -- was it HIS?

    It was the property of Cambridge, most likely, tho' St Ludwig was, apparently, quite fond of waving it around, at one point threatening Karl Popper (as you are probably aware). Did LW have the Poker, or maybe ..the Poker had him?

    According to reports (I have a copy of Witt's Poker, and read a bit, until nauseated), even Lord Russell's stoical reserve finally cracked and he barked something like STFU! to Wittgenstein, his former protege. On the whole Popper and Russell seem a bit...saner, however pedantic. Witt. at times verged on madness, tho' supposedly Popper did intend to rile him up, and more or less dismissed Witt's preoccupation with language.

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