🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct8.210422.43690@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>In article <1992Oct08.150840.51360@Cookie.secapl.com>, frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
>> I think this is not quite accurate.  A scientific hypothesis is
>> simultaneously interpreted in two different ways: one as exact as possible,
>> and the other quite loose.
>
>Simultaneously?  Are you sure this is what you want to claim?

Simultaneously, in the sense that the utterance of the hypothesis is
simultaneously understood in both ways by the listeners.  This does not
imply that any later use of the hypothesis depends on both interpretations
simultaneously.

>>  In the example I gave of a personal description, my listeners and
>> I might both understand that I think all the details I gave are correct, but
>> that there is a much greater degree of certainty that they are approximately
>> correct.
>
>It sounds as if you are talking about *vagueness* and indeed natural
>language is vague, in the sense that we cannot normally *precisely*
>define the truth conditions of an utterance.  However for language
>theorists the degree of precision required by an assertion is
>determined by the context* of the assertion.  Your claim of assertions
>simultaneously having multiple precision values seems mystifying.  Do
>you have any evidence from speaker behavior to back it up?

If I give a description of a person believed to have committed a crime, the
police will attempt to use the exact description to enable identification of
him in the future.  They will also, not assuming my powers of observation to
be perfect, use a much more approximate interpretation to study the question
of what the activities of the person were.  Assuming I also understand the
limits of my powers of observation, I will give the police the description
in detail, expecting it to be understood at both levels.

Another example: if your boss tells you that there will be a meeting
tomorrow with every employee in the company present, you will believe
strongly that there will be a meeting; much less strongly that *every*
employee will be there.  This is understood by both you and your boss.

>If you claim that assertions might be ambiguous in intended precision,
>so that a hearer might be uncertain, and might be intended by the
>speaker to be uncertain, just what degree of precision is intended, I
>think that certainly happens; it is a rhetorical device and it is
>regarded, quite simply, as a trick!

Assertions vary in the degree of certainty which the speaker has in the
assertion as well as in the precision of interpretation.  It is not unusual
for an assertion to occupy more than one point on this spectrum.