Philosophy
We'll start on this batch of questions, but if you have others, feel free to leave them in this weekend's thread and I'll try to get to as many as possible.
pm asks,
Actually, if I was not a philosopher I'd like to work for Wackenhut as a guard at a nuclear facility because after the hectic holidays, I could sure use some rest. You know it was bad enough that the Bush administration has made it so that you can't tell The New York Times from The Onion, but now we have to face the fact that The Simpsons is a documentary.
Hanno asks,
Now the act of asking is a form of request and answering that request is a context specific action. One can answer a knock at a door by opening it. One can answer a call from God by joining the clergy. One can answer another team's scoring, by mounting a strong drive to a touchdown. But to answer a question is a speech act requiring the assertion of information in the form of a declarative sentence. If one were to ask, for example, "What color is grass?", the appropriate response is the declarative sentence, "Grass is green." "What color is grass?" is a question because it is a request for information that can be communicated by way of declarative propositions. Your request is not for information so capable of formulation and hence is not truly a question. This applies, not only to your question, but also to your meta-question -- but avoiding the need to invoke something like Russell's theory of types, we'll simply deal with your first order concern.
So, if your request is not, in fact, a question, what then is it a request for? What sort of action would be the appropriate response in the context? My implicature which rationally reconstructs speaker's intended meaning here would reasonably lead to the belief that the request really was for a dopesmack upside the head. Consider it to have been executed, my dear friend.
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- Logic And Language
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I love language. I had cause in the car last weekend to repeatedly utter the sentence, "We'll get there when we get there." Now if understood literally, the sentence is what we call a tautology, that is, it is a sentence that because of its form is...
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Philosophy
Jobs and Questions
We'll start on this batch of questions, but if you have others, feel free to leave them in this weekend's thread and I'll try to get to as many as possible.
pm asks,
If you could have any career other than the one you currently have, what career would you want to have and why?A salesman, like maybe in a haberdasher, or maybe like a chapeau shop or something. You know, like, "What size do you wear, sir?" And then you answer me. "Seven and a quarter." "I think we have that." See, something like that I could do. (name the film for Comedist extra credit)
Actually, if I was not a philosopher I'd like to work for Wackenhut as a guard at a nuclear facility because after the hectic holidays, I could sure use some rest. You know it was bad enough that the Bush administration has made it so that you can't tell The New York Times from The Onion, but now we have to face the fact that The Simpsons is a documentary.
Hanno asks,
I had a question, but I forgot it. My question: what was my question?Hmmm...so the answer to your question would in fact be your question. So, in asking it you have answered it. Unless, of course, it has no answer in which case it would not be a question, but a pseudo-question. So, indeed, before we can set about answering your question, we first need to establish whether your question is, in fact, a question.
Now the act of asking is a form of request and answering that request is a context specific action. One can answer a knock at a door by opening it. One can answer a call from God by joining the clergy. One can answer another team's scoring, by mounting a strong drive to a touchdown. But to answer a question is a speech act requiring the assertion of information in the form of a declarative sentence. If one were to ask, for example, "What color is grass?", the appropriate response is the declarative sentence, "Grass is green." "What color is grass?" is a question because it is a request for information that can be communicated by way of declarative propositions. Your request is not for information so capable of formulation and hence is not truly a question. This applies, not only to your question, but also to your meta-question -- but avoiding the need to invoke something like Russell's theory of types, we'll simply deal with your first order concern.
So, if your request is not, in fact, a question, what then is it a request for? What sort of action would be the appropriate response in the context? My implicature which rationally reconstructs speaker's intended meaning here would reasonably lead to the belief that the request really was for a dopesmack upside the head. Consider it to have been executed, my dear friend.
- Seemingly Trivial Unanswered Problems In Discourse: Old Dog Edition
"Seemingly Trivial Unanswered Problems In Discourse," which goes by the acronym D.U.C.K., is an exercise in which we take a question that should not be asked, a question that seems to have no answer or a perfectly trivial answer and actually have a discussion...
- Seemingly Trivial Unanswered Problems In Discourse: Easy Edition
Haven't done one of these in a while. "Seemingly Trivial Unanswered Problems In Discourse," which goes by the acronym D.U.C.K., is an exercise in which we take a question that should not be asked, a question that seems to have no answer or a perfectly...
- Logic And Language
Let me try to get to some of the logic and language questions today: Nick + Adam ask, "After a week of debate, we come to you with this question: Is there an example of an argument that one should believe that is inclusive of one or more premises that...
- Deep Tautologies
I love language. I had cause in the car last weekend to repeatedly utter the sentence, "We'll get there when we get there." Now if understood literally, the sentence is what we call a tautology, that is, it is a sentence that because of its form is...
- Don't Ask A Question You Don't Want To Know The Answer To
Aspazia had a fun little discussion about white lies in which the classic question, "What do you say when your wife/girlfriend asks, 'Does this make me look fat?'" came up. In the discussion, the following exchange occurred between Aspazia and...