Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!uknet!dcs.gla.ac.uk!unix.brighton.ac.uk!mjs14
From: mjs14@unix.brighton.ac.uk (shute)
Subject: Re: Is Common Sense Explicit or Implicit?
Message-ID: <1994Oct5.093435.10876@unix.brighton.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Brighton, UK
References: <Cwv4GJ.8qy@spss.com> <CwyFA4.3zx@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <CwyupB.2Ax@spss.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 09:34:35 GMT
Lines: 32

>In article <CwyFA4.3zx@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>,
>Andrzej Pindor <pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>>I also know about statistical distributions, but "men are stronger than
>>women" may mean either "_all_ men are stronger than _all_ women" or
>>"on average men are stronger than women", may it not? Few other 
>>variations are also possible, of course. Unless you can show
>>convincingly why the first interpretation should be more obvious than
>>the second, please explain what makes you think that I meant the variant
>>which '*isn't* "scientifically true"'? 

In article <CwyupB.2Ax@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>Because there is no such variant; if you meant "on average" you should 
>have said so.  

Of course, Andrzej could equally well reply that if he had meant "all"
then he should have said so.

So his plea of being guilty of negligent ambiguity in his use of
the English language would seem to be correct, and I hereby reduce his
term to a one year's suspended sentence  :-)   :-)

What and excellent illustration of the point this has become, though!
That ambiguity, and laxness in the way that all humans seem to use
natural languages, is so prevalent that we must consider it no accident.
That ambiguity and laxness of language use is not a bug, but a feature.
That we are able to use natural language as such a powerful tool for
doing its work *because* it can be so imprecise and unscientific at times,
not *despite* it.
-- 

Malcolm SHUTE.         (The AM Mollusc:   v_@_ )        Disclaimer: all

