H. P. Grice on "War is war" and "Women are women"

4.46 P/M [→GER | →OGD] Among the possible groups of truthconditions there are two extreme cases. In one of these cases the proposition is true for all the truth-possibilities of the elementary propositions. We say that the truth-conditions are tautological. In the second case the proposition is false for all the truth-possibilities: the truth-conditions are contradictory. In the first case we call the proposition a tautology; in the second, a contradiction. 4.461 P/M [→GER | →OGD] Propositions show what they say: tautolo- gies and contradictions show that they say nothing. A tautology has no truth-conditions, since it is unconditionally true: and a contradiction is true on no condition. Tautologies and contradictions lack sense. (Like a point from which two arrows go out in opposite directions to one another.) (For example, I know nothing about the weather when I know that it is either raining or not raining.) 4.4611 P/M [→GER | →OGD] Tautologies and contradictions are not, however, nonsensical. They are part of the symbolism, much as ‘0’ is part of the symbolism of arithmetic. 4.462 P/M [→GER | →OGD] Tautologies and contradictions are not pictures of reality. They do not represent any possible situations. For the former admit all possible situations, and latter none. In a tautology the conditions of agreement with the world—the representational relations—cancel one another, so that it does not stand in any representational relation to reality. 4.463 P/M [→GER | →OGD] The truth-conditions of a proposition determine the range that it leaves open to the facts. (A proposition, a picture, or a model is, in the negative sense, like a solid body that restricts the freedom of movement of others, and, in the positive sense, like a space bounded by solid substance in which there is room for a body.) A tautology leaves open to reality the whole—the infinite whole—of logical space: a contradiction fills the whole of logical space leaving no point of it for reality. Thus neither of them can determine reality in any way. 4.464 P/M [→GER | →OGD] A tautology’s truth is certain, a proposition’s possible, a contradiction’s impossible. (Certain, possible, impossible: here we have the first indication of the scale that we need in the theory of probability.) 4.465 P/M [→GER | →OGD] The logical product of a tautology and a proposition says the same thing as the proposition. This product, therefore, is identical with the proposition. For it is impossible to alter what is essential to a symbol without altering its sense. 4.466 P/M [→GER | →OGD] What corresponds to a determinate logical combination of signs is a determinate logical combination of their meanings. It is only to the uncombined signs that absolutely any combination corresponds. In other words, propositions that are true for every situation cannot be combinations of signs at all, since, if they were, only determinate combinations of objects could correspond to them. (And what is not a logical combination has no combination of objects corresponding to it.) Tautology and contradiction are the limiting cases—indeed the disintegration—of the combination of signs. 4.4661 P/M [→GER | →OGD] Admittedly the signs are still combined with one another even in tautologies and contradictions—i.e. they stand in certain relations to one another: but these relations have no meaning, they are not essential to the symbol.