RT list: foolproof

In a message dated 7/3/2009 4:09:53 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
alessandro.capone@istruzione.it writes:
A propos of 'foolosopher',
I suppose one should treat dead people and respectable philosophers with
respect. I am not completely sure that this is what is being done.
ale
 

----
 
I think you misunderstood my 'point'. "foolproof" is the expression used by 
 R. Carston in her online essay in I. R. P. 
 
I elaborated on various versions of 'fool' versus 'idiot' proof. 
 
And I keep thinking about it: perhaps that's why in my PhD (ch. ii) I only  
focused on truth-functional connectives ('and', 'or', 'if' -- in that 
order).  Consider 'and' ("p & q").
 
If 'truth-conditions' we owe to Witters, so it's to him we owe a few other  
things. If I say, "This metaphysica excrescence is beautiful and so is this 
 other one". The logical form of that is, "p & q". But 'metaphysical  
excrescence' (to use Grice's term) is _not_ something we _want_ in a 'picture'  
of reality. So we can _skip_ the 'propositional content' of "p" and "q" and  
focus on 'and', which is safely.
 
p  &   q
1  1    1
1  0    0
0  0    1
0  0    0
 
There is _not_ an infinite variations of 'connectives'. Only a definite  
cardinal number is possible (vide Gazdar), so it's up to Grice (WoW iv) to  
understand (via a 'rational reconstruction', as Emma Borg would put it in her  
footnote to her essay -- and vis a vis RT, which is more of an empirical 
theory)  why we can only have 'metiers' (the term Grice uses, after Wilson 
(John Cook))  for 'and', 'or' and 'if'. 
 
Now, Urmson ("Philosophical Analysis") (in the quote I gave to Horn, as he  
uses it in "Implicature", Handbook of Pragmatics) takes up Strawson's 
example,  "He married and had a child", and gives one that Grice will later use  
('Presupposition and Implicature' but NOT in the repr. version), "He took 
off  his trousers and went to bed". 
 
So what we have here is an _algorithm_. Witters played with (Ex)Fx, and  
_these_ are not algorithmic; we need an interpretation which is _never_  
foolproof -- consider R. B. Jones on the interpretation of Aristotle's  
syllogistic and Grice's izzing and hazzing in his pdf. online).
 
So an 'algorithm' is foolproof. It's a decision procedure. A Turing machine 
 won't fail it. It's all about the 1 and 0 combos. 
 
But R. Carston is right that to ask for a foolproof decision procedure in  
_other_ areas is not just optimistic but 'foolish' per se.
 
The occurrence of the 'foolosopher' you should blame to the OED device that 
 enables (as I was working on fool-proof) to check other related entries -- 
and  there shone the 'foolosopher' so couldn't resist.
"It cannot be claimed that we have yet  found a foolproof 
criterion that can be  applied satisfactorily across all cases" 
       (Carston 2009:54)
Cfr.
 
1940 Mind XLIX. 249 He thinks of the subject [sc. the calculus] not merely  
as an algorithmic method. 
 
1960 E. DELAVENAY Introd. Machine Transl. 129 Algorithm or algorism.., used 
 by computer programmers to designate the numerical or algebraic notations 
which  express a given sequence of computer operations, define a programme 
or routine  conceived to solve a given type of problem. 
 
The ENTSCHEIDUNGSPROBLEM; decision procedure Math. and Logic, an effective  
formal routine or mechanical method for deciding whether any selected 
formula of  a given system, or a given class of formulas, is true or derivable 
within the  system to which it belongs.
[1922 Mathematische Annalen LXXXVI. 163 (title) Beiträge zur Algebra der  
Logik, insbesondere zum Entscheidungsproblem.] 
 
1930 Proc. London Math. Soc. XXX. 271 The Entscheidungsproblem is to find a 
 procedure for determining whether any given formula is valid, or, 
alternatively,  whether any given formula is consistent. 
 
1938 Mind XLVII. 445 Gödel's example belongs to the field of investigations 
 of the Entscheidungsproblem. This problem is to discover whether the 
accepted  primitive propositions and rules of inference of mathematical logic 
allow us to  conclude either the truth or the falsehood of every PROPOSITIONAL 
formula, and  if so to give a general method by which this can be done. 
 
         -- my emphasis (J. L. S).  This does _not_ apply to 'quantified', 
first-order predicate calculus with  identity -- that forms the base of G. 
Myro's "System G", and which I have  elsewhere re-labelled "System G-hp" -- a 
highly powerful version of System G". 
 
1958 M. DAVIS Computability & Unsolvability viii. 134 Hilbert declared  
that the decision problem..(often referred to simply as the  
Entscheidungsproblem) was the central problem of mathematical logic.
1958 FRAENKEL & BAR-HILLEL Found. Set Theory v. 297 A formalized  theory T 
is decidable if there exists an effective, uniform methoda so-called  
decision methodof determining whether a given sentence, formulated in the  
vocabulary of T, is valid in T.
 
1939 Jrnl. Symbolic Logic IV. 1 (heading) 
On the reduction of the *decision problem. 
 
1954 I. M. COPI Symbolic Logic vii. 235 The decision problem for any  
deductive system is the problem of stating an effective criterion for deciding  
whether or not any statement or well-formed formula is a theorem of the  
system.
1945 W. V. QUINE in Jrnl. Symbolic Logic X. 3 No *decision procedure is  
possible for the validity of polyadic schemata. 
 
1950  Methods of Logic (1952) §15. 82 
A ‘decision procedure’i.e., a mechanical routine for deciding validity,  
implication, consistency, etc. 
 
         -- 'mechanical', and Grice  LOVED Quine, is a good syn. for 
'foolproof'. 
 
1957 Technology July 182/2 Any game of a finite kind which can be completed 
 in a finite number of movesand this includes simple games like noughts and 
 crosses as well as draughts and chessmust have a decision procedure, even 
though  we may not know for any particular game what this procedure is.
 
       -- this reminds me of Mrs. Grice. She  confided to S. R. Chapman, 
"Quine had said, 'logic is a game'. The relentless  literalists that my 
husband and Austin were, said, "Let's play it". They spent  the next two semester 
doing noughts and crosses on pieces of paper".
 
When I explain the 'rational reconstruction' (in 17 steps) for 'and' (to  
implicate "and then") in my PhD to the non-philosopher I _know_ he is 
treating  me as a foolosopher only not saying. And note that working-out schemata 
are not  even foolproof -- since they are abductive. 
 
Now that I have discovered the disimplicature, I now longer care: I used to 
 think that I had to find a rational reconstruction, foolproof criterion 
for  _everything_, but if the Governor of South Carolina cannot find a 
foolproof  criterion for why he loves an Argentine, why should I? Leave it to the  
Disimplicature!
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
   The Grice Circle
 
 
 
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