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Sunday, July 18, 2010

Who's Afraid of Equivocality?

[PDF] Aspects of Reason contrib ...
in response to his having got a bit further with the equivocality thesis,. Grice imagines telephoning Kant 'at his Elysian country club in order to ...

www.jstor.org/stable/3752219 - Similar

7 comments:

  1. You do know that all the journals you refer to are via subscription, right JLS? Or they ask you to pay like 40 shekels to read the Klassic.

    JSTOR looks something like a right-wing conspiracy run by Her Majesty's Secret Service, and the CIA, and some ivy league and oxbridge eggheads. All journals, philosophy or otherwise, should be based on "blind" readings, and free, with open access to public. (ie, a PhD does not automatically confer authori-tay--to do so would be a fallacy of Ad Auctoritas...though in some fields--biochemistry, or quantum physics,etc. rather critical).

    Yo Homie, Lil G. we be reading some mutha-f-ing Kant on the transcendental unity of apperception, y'all

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  2. Sorry about that! I know it's illegal -- should expand on this in special blog post!

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  3. O. T. O. H., you can have a friend who works in a library that gets them for free! -- The Interlibrary Loan is so promiscuous it hurts!

    Finally, it's lovely to do googling with 'special collocations', so if you don't have access, you can play with a quote and get lovely extended contexts.

    I know it's obscene how JSTOR is not free. I just make the reference to the Grice Club usually after looking for a special collocation. In this case ""equivocality thesis" + "Grice"" -- most of the sources are rather uninspired BORING commissioned (i.e. they get the free book) reviews of books. In fact, the MOST boring explanation of 'equivocality thesis' comes from, if you can believe that, the Clarendon's own site advertising their Grice! And they get it sort of wrong: they say that the equivocality thesis amounts to the fact that 'must' is univocal!

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  4. It's not just the JSTOR is not free, JLS. JSTOR's the embodiment of Evil, as far as hackademic publishing goes. The editorial board probably wear goat-leggings and read french, etc.

    The PhilPapers has some Grice products, such as that thriller Logic and Conversation, with the "niceness" maxims. (j-k).

    Equivocality really doesn't have much to do with the equivocation fallacy per se does it--it means multi-voiced, or something. In a sense a pun might be multi-voiced, but usually limited to two meanings ("hang" as in, hang out, and "hang", or hanged as in dangled from a streetlamp)

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  5. But then I'm not sure that 'hang' is polysemous. I'm sure it isn't!
    -- That's why I thought of 'generalising' Grice's Aequivocality thesis (mind the italic) -- from 'must' to, well, ANYthing!

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  6. Im not sure. "Hang" seems fairly polysemous, when considering the various uses, even Franklin's proverb. Puns (ie humorous equivocations) generally show polysemous-ness, do they not? Certainly he doesn't mean we should hang together, like from hemp nooses on scaffolds, but hang as in stick, cooperate, etc. OR we shall hang (ie on nooses) separately. So two "meanings". Not that profound, but ...many words do allow for that at least in colloquial usage

    Here's another : "The sign said "Fine for parking here", and since it was fine, I parked there." ca-- ching

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  7. Well, but that's the gross equivocation in Grice, which I take, in Grice, and you, to be intentional. ---

    I.e. 'fine'.

    This is 'caught in the grip of a VYSE/vice'. Apparently, vice (qua sin) and vice (qua carpenter's tool -- that Americans spell vyse) have different etymologies. So they are different words. I'm sure "fine" qua tax and to refer to a 'fine' day, are different etymologies, too, but I should check!

    In which case, it's not like we have a polysemous word, but two words.

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