If I'm not mistaken

by JLS
for the GC

The script in Woody Allen's film, "Midnight in Paris", has this dialogue with Paul Bates, an intellectual lecturing at Sorbonne (played brilliantly by Welsh actor, M.
Sheen):

"If I'm not mistaken, ..."

he prefaces EACH of his utterances. This gives him an air of guarded
intellectuality that charms Carla Bruni, who is also in the film.



From A E Scott's brilliant review of Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris":

"Paul [Bates]’s habit of prefacing every
show-offy bit of data with

“if I’m not mistaken”

is a sign that, in the ways that count, he is.
He is another classic Woody Allen type, the
know-it-all pseudo-intellectual, and as
such the obvious foil for Mr. Wilson’s passionate,
self-deprecating schlemiel. If Paul ever met
T. S. Eliot, he would spout revised
footnotes for “The Waste Land.” For his
part, Gil cries out, “Prufrock is my mantra!”
Let’s not go there, you and I."

"Unless I’m mistaken, “Prufrock” is a
statement of the very ennui — the perception
of a diminished world unable to satisfy a
hungering sensibility — that afflicts Gil."

---

In symbols, it seems to amount to a tautology

~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p

But

"I am mistaken (about p)" iff ~p.

From which we get

~~p ⊃ p

which by (~,-) (DNE), becomes

p ⊃ p

---.

Another route:

~(I am mistaken) ⊃ p

is equivalent to

p v (I am mistaken)

p v ~p

--- another tautology.

Q. E. D.

Next: the 'implicature'.

It proceeds by pointing to the 'inexistence' (or rare use) of "if I'm right" as an equivalent hedge.

It combines with a view that

To utter a tautology (Grice, War is war, women are women) is to utter something which is totally NON-INFORMATIVE, at the level of what is being said (dictum, phrastic).

Therefore,

"if I'm not mistaken"

turns your conversational move, pedantically, into a nullity.

----

"The statue was dedicated to Rodin's wife."

Carla Bruni: Not his wife, his _lover_.

Paul Bates: I DID say, 'if I'm not mistaken'.

Carla Bruni: You _are_ a pedant, aren't you?!

----

It is a good strategy to look for idioms which may count as variants on "if I'm not mistaken". I suggest,

"I may be wrong, but ..."

But this poses a problem. There was an old music-hall song,

"I may be crazy, but I love you."

Note thta

"I may be wrong, but I love you"

does not quite tell what

"I may be mistaken, but I love you."

"wrong" may be thought as applying to the _fact_ that the utterer is in love with the addressee, NOT that he is doubting whether he loves the addressee. And so on.

We have to distinguish a Goedel-type paradox here:

If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken. --- this is an otiosity. It is a vacuous tautology.

If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken.

Since, "If I'm not mistaken" is a Griceian otiosity -- an otiosity by
Griceian standards, not one that Grice commits, "if I AM mitaken" is rather a
contradictory hedge. It turns everything into something that BREAKS the
conversational maxims. "If I'm mistaken", too, but in subtler ways -- or not.

Note that it's only when _I_ is used (as in Epemenidides' Liar paradox).

Thus, "If Bates is not mistaken, p" (cfr. "unless Bates is mistaken, p")
triggers different implicatures frrom those that "if _I_ am not mistaken"
does (cfr. "It is raining, but I don't believe it" and 'It is raining but
Bates does not believe it" -- Moore paradox).

Goedel may be thrown in into the bargain.




On the other hand,

"If I'm mistaken, I'm not mistaken" -- is a self-contradiction at the object-language level.

Note that J. Stanley may disagree:

"If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken"

is not, he would say, _clear_ enough. Note that,

"If I'm not mistaken that God is eternal, it rains."

is odd.

The implicature, or impliciture as Bach would confusingly have it, is that

"If I'm not mistaken"

refers anaphorically to the next clause:

"If I'm not mistaken about what I'll utter, i.e. p, p"

So:

"If I'm not mistaken, I'm mistaken"

should be clearly distinguished from:

"If I'm mistaken, I'm not mistaken".

Symbolising both reaches surprising conclusions.



And so on.