Ted raises a very interesting issue about logic.
I don't recall any discussion of it in print, though no doubt people besides
me have said things that have implications for it.
Ted is right that my (tacit) policy for individuating
arguments is somewhere in between the purely grammatical policy
and the purely logical(-form) policy. And he is right to ask why
that should be, when each of the pure policies is straightforward and impurity
seems ad hoc. I will defend my impure policy, though. (Let
me begin by confirming that I do think the individuation of arguments and
instances is a conventional matter. The only considerations that
bear on it are pragmatic ones.)
As Ted agrees, the purely grammatical policy
is a non-starter. No one would ever think the boat-human argument
was a proper instance of &-Introduction. The reason is, that
semantic-pragmatics (incorporating minimal charity) rules that "She" is
equivocal as between the two premises. We know that just by looking.
(Of course, there could be a context in which we would not read "she" as
changing its reference, but it would have to be a very special one.)
I have two objections to the purely logical-form
policy, both rooted in the fact that ordinary philosophers do not know
the precise logical forms of many sentences--not of any sentences,
if any version of Montague Grammar is correct. Linguists and linguistic
semanticists don't know many either; there are precious few (if any) established
results in semantics.
First, take Ted's own example:
(P1)I am carrying an umbrella
(P2) If I am carrying an
umbrella, it is raining.
(C) Therefore, it is raining.
(P1) An umbrella is being
carried by me.
(P2) If an umbrella is being
carried by me, it is raining.
(C) Therefore, it is raining.
As a matter of fact, it's quite controversial whether actives and passives
have the same logical form. Across the board, they certainly do not
(our own Paul Ziff proved that back in the 1960s). In Montague Grammar,
even simple active-passive pairs like Ted's differ in logical form.
So, if we individuate by logical form, (at best) we don't know whether
Ted's two instances are instances of the same argument.
Second, and more to the point of the present
issue, there are lots of context-sensitive locutions about which it's controversial
whether the context-sensitivity is explained by shift of a hidden parameter.
As we saw, in my semantics for conditionals, thir context-sensitivity is
so explained, but in Stalnaker-Lewis semantics it isn't. The dispute
between the two theories will not be settled any time soon. Until
it is, if we hew to the line of logical-form individuation, we won't know
whether Dretske's argument and the standard counterexamples to Antecedent-Strengthening
equivocate or not. (And there are scads of other kinds of expression
that provoke similar debate.)
Ted writes concessively:
In other words, when we individuate by grammatical form, we have the benefit of easily and uncontroversially telling when an argument is an example of modus pollens, modus tollens, etc. Of course this is true only if we are conveniently ignoring arguments that use indexicals, homonyms, proper names, etc. Considering those cases, then, the idea might be that individuation by grammatical form (plus the exception clause) is better because (a) in cases without indexicals and the like, individuation by grammatical form is easier than individuation by logical form; (b) in cases with indexicals and the like, your view individuates the arguments in the same way as the view that individuates all arguments by logical form. So since your view is at least as good in some cases, and better in the other cases, it is better on the whole.Yes, that's very close to my view. I will shortly improve on it.
(A) Individuate all arguments by logical form.Ted says that that hybrid is better than my hybrid because it is uniform in demanding that logical form be the ultimate arbiter in the individuation of arguments.
(B) In cases without indexicals and the like, individuate arguments by logical form via grammatical form. [I.e. when there's no indexicals et al., use the following rule of thumb: whenever you have the same grammatical form, you have the same logical form.] In all other cases, individuate arguments by considering their logical form "directly" (whatever that may mean).
Ted now justly asks why I or anyone should
treat (L)-(W) as non-equivocal and a genuine instance of Antecedent-Strengthening
while still making an exception of the boat-human argument and dismissing
it as a non-instance of &-Introduction. Isn't my policy still
ad hoc? In fact, is it even really a policy, given that I've
just picked and chosen my examples the way I felt like, rather than by
appeal to any principle? And as Ted says, any mere stipulating I
do in this matter should accord with our actual practices in logic.
Right; here's my principle: Individuate
by grammatical form, except when normal semantic-pragmatics rules that
a term occurring (overtly) in the argument changes its meaning or referent
between premises and conclusion. That exception clause takes care
of the boat-human argument, all equivocal use of pronouns, shifts of word
meaning, etc.
(Of course, normal semantic-pragmatics may
not rule decisively. It may only raise the question of equivocation
on an occurring term and/or make equivocation likely to some degree.
In that case, we suspend judgment until we have disambiguated.)
There will still be problem cases. For
example, my appeal to occurrent terms may fail to capture purely
syntactic ambiguities: "Visiting relatives can be boring / \ To eliminate
the possibility of boredom, you must not visit any relatives." I'll
pass that by for now.
What about Ted's concluding example?:
(P1') Everyone made it to
the party.
(C') Therefore, every person
from every nation made it to the party.
I agree it is and should be counted as invalid, and (as a matter of fact) I agree it fails by parameter shift, though not every semanticist would grant that. But I think normal semantic-pragmatics takes care of it. Any normal speaker/hearer knows that "everyone," especially when operating on a predicate indexed to something local such as "made it to the party," does not mean every person from every nation. (And for that matter, the argument is flatly invalidated just by the fact that the conclusion entails the existence of nations, while the premise does not.)
I don't claim to have settled this issue.
I think it remains open and interesting. Thanks to Ted for taking
the trouble to raise it.