Comments on: ‘Any’

By: Kate

Kate — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 18:11:00 +0000

Tom – interesting childhood!

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 06 Jan 2004 20:35:56 +0000

Interesting that Dell says: “Not that it matters but they could all run against him – just not all as the candidates of a single party.” He means, “All at the same time, but not All of the same party” Not that it matters but they could all run against him in the same party. I mean, “All of the same party, not All at the same time”. But could they all run against him at the same time and of the same party? I think so. But if they were to do so, there would be some interesting backtracking (e.g. it would have to have been the case that the party system was much different than it now is…)

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 06 Jan 2004 20:04:43 +0000

Logically, it’s a poorly worded question, and you could certainly argue that a proper reading be that he is asking if all candidates can beat Bush. However, under this reading, if you answer no, you’d be answering that “not all candidates could beat Bush”, not that “no candidates can beat Bush”. The negation of “all” is “not all”, not “none”. So if you thought at least one candidate could not beat Bush, your answer would be “no”. Of course, most of us choose to answer the question as we believe the questioner intended to ask, not the one they actually did. When I was a child, and my wife asked me if I had cleaned my room, I suppose I could have answered yes, since I had at some point in my life cleaned my room. But of course I knew she meant “Have you cleaned your room since the time that I asked you to?” We tend to parse questions in context.

By: Josh Narins

Josh Narins — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 23:12:10 +0000

I over-analyzed on the math section of the SATs, and answered the more complex question I found. Yah, the only one I got wrong (on that side). But this does scan as an “excluded middle”

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 21:29:11 +0000

Notapipe—I do hear a difference in nearness/closeness of possible worlds, or something like that. “Howard Dean can beat Bush” = something like “Dean will win if he tries hard enough, doesn’t screw up, catches a reasonable number of breaks.” “Dennis Kucinich could beat Bush” = something like “Anything can happen, maybe the month before the election the whole Bush Admin. will be indicted on Plame-related felonies.” It makes a difference if you emphasize “could,” I think.

By: Keith

Keith — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 18:24:30 +0000

It’s a standard Double-Bind question. The wording is rigged so that either answer produces the desired result (or more acurately, a result that, with parsing produces the desired answer). It’s a flaw in the Aristotlian logic of either.or questions. A third or fourth or fifth option would be more acurate but acuracy is not the desired effect, only unscientific data that back up pre-ordained ideologies.

By: notapipe

notapipe — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 18:06:33 +0000

I think it’s fairly clear that the best, common-sense interpretion of the question (if we are forced to choose) is the one where “any” is “some” (the Yes answer). But suppose we make the seemingly innocent replacement of “can” with “could” : “Do you think any of the Democratic candidates for president could beat George W. Bush?” Now I suddenly read it the other way, where “any” is “all” (and answer “No!” because Vermin Supreme hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell). And it doesn’t seem that it’s a difference in how near the possible worlds need to be or some kind of hidden subjunctive. I don’t know why though. Does anyone else read “could” the same way?

By: Fasteddie

Fasteddie — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 17:38:07 +0000

Yes. I have stopped voting Republican.

By: Dell Adams

Dell Adams — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 04:44:48 +0000

(Not that it matters in any way, but they could all run against him – just not all as the candidates of a single party.)

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 00:24:59 +0000

Well no, because nobody thinks it is possible that they can all beat him, because they can’t all run against him. But that’s presumably not what you have in mind.

By: Aramis Martinez

Aramis Martinez — Sun, 04 Jan 2004 23:19:30 +0000

Geeks, gotta love em. I haven’t seen such an interesting and simultaneously pointless argument since my friend and I debated whether Newton’s definition of a derivative using limits was THE definition of a derivative (even though Newton’s work preceded Leibnitz’s work by years). I do wonder what motivates the issue since it seems clear to me that it means “Do you think that it is possible that any of the people running for president of the USA in 2004 as a Democrat can beat GWB in the November election?”. Is there a dialect of English where ‘any’ in this question is equivalent to ‘all’?

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Sun, 04 Jan 2004 21:41:56 +0000

Right, so the question could have been “Why on earth are questions NPI licencing?” But that would have probably been a little too geeky even for CT! I used to know a little about NPIs, but I forgot most of it, so if anyone knows a snappy answer to that question, feel more than free to write it in :)

By: PK

PK — Sun, 04 Jan 2004 20:46:07 +0000

The issue of “positive and negative environments” has been discussed pretty extensively… google “negative polarity items”.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Sun, 04 Jan 2004 20:45:31 +0000

I could happily beat George W. Bush. Give me a two by four and line him up. Or, I could work with a slipper if you bent him over the sofa.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Sun, 04 Jan 2004 19:56:53 +0000

…and I see you made that exact point at your other blog…. Teach me to publish without a proper literature survey.