RT list: Grice's "Sillygistic"

Before N. Allott announces that only one post by Speranza per day allowed
(if any), let me hasten to add that this will be, hopefully, my last today;
but this pun by my friend, P. A. Stone, 'sillygism' and 'sillygistic', is
too good to miss.

In a message dated 1/14/2010 9:29:46 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
nicholas.allott@gmail.com quotes:

'[this] "forthright negotiator principle" ... is
certainly something that normal humans presuppose in their
communicative exchanges. It's part of why "theory of mind" reasoning
is hard."
 
Yes, _part_ of why.
 
For Grice, 'reasoning' is in general _hard_. Most of what we know from
Aristotle, revered, as he was, amounts to what the OED2 has, sexistically, as
"woman's reason"
 
    p
    _____
 
    p
 
"I like it because I like it".
 
In symbols, /- (it is a theorem that) p --> p
 
In Aristotelian parlance,
 
   "There's nothing in the conclusion
    that was not already in the premises".
 
This I call 'sillygistic'. For, why, and as an adherent of 'be relevant'
write, then bother?
 
Grice makes a couple of points:
 
"Reasonings", or words to that perlocutionary effect,
"can be trivial"
 
-- he fails to notice the etymology of 'trivium', which _is_ interesting as
 for the Romans
it included 'grammar'! Tell Chomsky about it!
 

---
 
"Reasonings", again, or words to that perlocutionary
effect", should have a 'point', or be otherwise 
springing from the reasoner's abiding with, 'be relevant'.
 
His example is along the lines:
 
    I have 5 fingers in my left hand,
    And I have 5 fingers in my right hand.
    If we add the fingers in both my feet,
    that's twenty fingers in total. 
    ------
    Therefore, if I had only one hand
    and only one foot, I would only
    have ten fingers in total.
 
--- Actually, his example is _sillier_.
 
The idea is Hobbesian: "That's not philosophy; that's Aristotelity".
The serious point: logical reasoning is _silly_, i.e. blessed, in this  
respect.
The not-so-serious point: It may be the case that the content (cfr. Kroell, 
 the content of content) of an assumption to the effect
 
   p --> q
 
(where --> is the horseshoe)
 
is not the same content as an assumption to the effect
 
   -p v q
 
---
 
And so, that an utterance of
 
   "If it's raining, I love you"
 
is not the same as
 
   "It's not raining or I love you"
 
For surely 'love' is not like, er, ... the weather. (Fickle, that is -- or  
is it?)
 
Anyway, this just a comment on how hard 'reasoning' (never mind "theory of  
mind" reasoning) can be! And why we don't necessarily want all our 
reasonings to  be blessed by Aristotle's apodeictic epideictic (necessary proof).
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
   For the Grice Circle