RT list: Re: Are logical forms psychologically real??

Hi, Ray! (It[rsquo]s nice meeting you again in cyberspace!)

I have no way to discuss your claim with you, for I am not a psychologist in any denotational/connotational sense possibility of the term. So, I accept your idea on your only parole, if I may say so.

On the other hand, I might as well use your psychologist background to ask for a better solution to the problem I presented the other day with the quiz expression that I repeat here for you:

that that is is that that is not is not that that is is not that that is not nor is that that is not that that is is that it

My explanation, so far, was very simple and straightforward.

Looking at that expression without any "natural" structure-creating device (such as intonation, or punctuation which seems to be less natural, as it tries to account for the intonational device to create structure) it is almost impossible to understand what the meaning of the expression is. Once you hear it, or have it conveniently written, you have no understanding problem. What[rsquo]s more, you can write it as I did without hesitation and without copying it from nowhere. I further think (or, rather, thought) that if you don[rsquo]t already know the expression, the efforts to understand it go precisely in the direction of giving it a logical form.

If you do have a better answer, please, PLEASE, tell us, and I will perhaps leave my chomskyan-sperber&wilsonian logical form for good.

Notice that I said "perhaps", though, for I have another problem which is closer to what has been said in this thread so far.

Gutt proposed the following situation.

e.1.a." Who has left the door open?"
e.1.b."The gardner"

Fine. Let now me try two similar (although absurd) situations:

e.2.a. "Who has left the door open?"
e.2.b. "Between if"

and

e.3.a. "Who has left the door open?"
e.3.b. "The bicycle handlebar"

I may be wrong, of course, for I know nothing about psychology, but I have the strange feeling that to interpret e.2. is downright impossible. My explanation was that there is no way you may assign it a logical form at all and, thus, it is downright impossible to find a meaning for it (absurd or not).

On the other hand, in the case of e.3., (as it happens with e.1.) you may assign it a logical form, constituted by a given structural unit with two functioning components, and so, although with difficulty, you may strive to look for a likely (although quite absurd) meaning, as you may well do while writing a paper on Ionesco[rsquo]s Rhinocéros, for instance.

My explanations to my poor students so far, have stressed the central import of assigning structure over the less strong duty to make vocabulary items fit the institutionalised way of labelling things.

I am probably wrong all over, though, and so, as soon as I receive your neat and clear explanation of those two problems, I will haste to apologize to my students -so that they can see that nobody[rsquo]s perfect, not even their teacher!

Cheers

José Luis Guijarro
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Universidad de Cádiz
11002 Cádiz, España (Spain)
tlf: (34) 956-011.613
fax: (34) 956-015.505
Received on Tue Feb 15 12:05:00 2011