More on Grice on logical form

In "Canonical logical form", J writes:

"We say Tractatus; you say Trac-tah-tus."

Oddly, Witters said neither. "Abhandlung" from what I recall. The best example of how Ogden really made a serious book out of a soldier's notes in the trenches. (An Austrian soldier, on top).

J adds:

"If formal logic can't map language (ie syntax, propositions, statements, etc)...then what is it good for?"

Dunno. But surely, Frege wanted to _go beyond_ language. His idea of quantification, via 'function', a mathematical term, is not linguistic. When I was doing some work (recent one) on 'negation', I did notice that the tilde, or as I prefer, squiggly,

-p.

Not-p.

Derives from the negation sign in mathematics, the MINUS. This and other considerations (later ones) by Boole, make you wonder that a _language_ (as 'natural language') was NOT what logicians are having in mind. They are onto _serious_ stuff like the ontological structure of language or the components of the thoughts of 'homo sapiens', not the way homo-sapiens chats.

J goes on:

"Maybe helping Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc optimize their warez. An insignificant play of tautologies, JLS? (which still faces the Church/Turing issues...and Goedel--tho' I don't think Goedel the final word--proof to be posted at a later date)."

I do think tautologies play a rather small play, or role. Grice only gives two examples:

(A: So what is, in short, your summing up of Margaret Thatcher's decision to sink the Argentine ship, 'the Belgrano'?)

---- B: Well, women are women.
---- C: War is war.

Grice notes that both "Women are women" (we knew that) and 'War is war' (we didn't know that) cannot but _implicate_, since their 'explicatures' are _stoopid enough_ as it were!

----

J adds:

"That said, there are weirdnesses to logic's relation to language many overlook--
law of excluded middle--A or not-A.
The light's on or off.
But what about....she loves him, OR she loves not?? Hardly discrete in the sense that the circuit is on or off. Or even..Its raining, or its not raining?? Well its raining on Elm Street; two blocks away on Cedar, it's not. Would have to define a domain or something
The myth of the discrete [is pervasive but wrong]".

I agree. Of course, I think Strawson would think that 'or' is a bad word. He does consider "or" and 'v' in a subsection of "Introduction to Logical Theory". The Tertiur non Datur complicates things by bringing in "-" as contradictory negation (which Grice and I take it to be) and 'or'.

Strawson does not think '-' is always contradictory negation. "Some pigs are not fat", I think his example is.

Levinson, in his Pragmatics, book, considers something like

"Either she loves him or she doesn't"

The implicature he discusses is:

"What can YOU do about it".

----- ("Either he'll come or he won't" -- "There's nothing you gain by worrying about it"). I think I once heard John Lennon, in film "Imagine" say exactly THAT, implicating something else.

The White Knight in "Alice in Wonderland" poses Alice with a similar disjunctive which is discussed by Ramsey in "Foundations of Mathematics", ed. Mellor as "foundations":

--- I'll sing you a song.
--- I hope it's not a long one.
--- No. It's not. But it's a sad one. Very sad. Either it will bring tears to your eyes... [The knight made a long pause]
--- Or else what?
--- Or else it won't, you know.

Note that Alice is working on the assumption of Grice's cooperative principle and its attendant maxims. But surely it is all cancellable and the White Knight is ALSO making a point.

Strangely, the song is _not_ sad.