6 ideas
| 22200 | If you eliminate the impossible, the truth will remain, even if it is weird [Conan Doyle] |
| Full Idea: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. | |
| From: Arthur Conan Doyle (The Sign of Four [1890], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: A beautiful statement, by Sherlock Holmes, of Eliminative Induction. It is obviously not true, of course. Many options may still face you after you have eliminated what is actually impossible. |
| 22330 | Grice said patterns of use are often semantically irrelevant, because it is a pragmatic matter [Grice, by Glock] |
| Full Idea: The slogan that meaning is use came under scrutiny by Grice's theory of conversational implicature. He said patterns of use shown in analysis were often semantically irrelevant, snce they are due not meanings of expressions but to pragmatic principles. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Some Models for Implicature [1967]) by Hans-Johann Glock - What is Analytic Philosophy? 2.8 | |
| A reaction: I think the simplest objection is that words only have use because they have a meaning; The most interesting part of pragmatics is what you DON'T say in conversation. |
| 4001 | The meaning of a word contains all its possible uses as well as its actual ones [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a word contains all its possible uses, true and false, not only its actual ones. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (What Does It All Mean? [1987], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: It has always seemed to me that meaning is not use, because you can't use it if it hasn't already got a meaning. What use is a meaningless word? |
| 18045 | Grice's maxim of quality says do not assert what you believe to be false [Grice, by Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Grice's maxim of quality says one ought not to assert what one believes to be false. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Some Models for Implicature [1967]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 5.2 | |
| A reaction: The obvious exception is irony, where are truth is asserted, but the listener is supposed to spot that you are not really asserting it. |
| 18044 | Grice's maxim of manner requires one to be as brief as possible [Grice, by Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Grice's maxim of manner requires one to be as brief as possible. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Some Models for Implicature [1967]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 5.2 | |
| A reaction: An alternative maxim of conversation is that there should not be long silences between contributions - which would probably result if the contributions are all curtly abbreviated. |
| 18046 | Grice's maxim of quantity says be sufficiently informative [Grice, by Magidor] |
| Full Idea: Grice's maxim of quantity says 'make your contributions as informative as required'. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Some Models for Implicature [1967]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 5.2 | |
| A reaction: Is the 'requirement' of informative for the speaker or for the listener? It is easy to image situations where, one way or the other, the two people don't agree about informativenss. |