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Full Idea
Bifurcated logical particles (either/or, if/then) are in principle beyond the power of any local chaining device to build sentences.
Gist of Idea
A simple chaining device can't build sentences containing 'either..or', or 'if..then'
Source
Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.2.1)
Book Ref
Rey,Georges: 'Contemporary Philosophy of Mind' [Blackwell 1997], p.110
A Reaction
True in natural languages, but not in formal ones? If P then either if-Q-then-R or if-S-then-T. Is that chaining? If rain, then if light then puddles, or if heavy then floods. Hm.
| 24097 | The pragmatics of language is more comprehensible than the meaning [Nietzsche] |
| 18046 | Grice's maxim of quantity says be sufficiently informative [Grice, by Magidor] |
| 18045 | Grice's maxim of quality says do not assert what you believe to be false [Grice, by Magidor] |
| 18044 | Grice's maxim of manner requires one to be as brief as possible [Grice, by Magidor] |
| 10991 | Key conversational maxims are 'quality' (assert truth) and 'quantity' (leave nothing out) [Grice, by Read] |
| 9043 | We use expressions 'deferentially', to conform to the use of other people [Evans] |
| 14718 | An assertion is an attempt to rule out certain possibilities, narrowing things down for good planning [Stalnaker, by Schroeter] |
| 3169 | A simple chaining device can't build sentences containing 'either..or', or 'if..then' [Rey] |
| 21639 | 'Background deletion' is appropriately omitting background from an answer [Hofweber] |
| 18042 | The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set [Magidor] |
| 18043 | The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set [Magidor] |