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Illegal Philosophy

coglanglab's picture
  • Brain and Behavior
 

One of the most famous thought problems from the philosophy of language in the latter half of the 20th century turns out to have legal ramifications. To illustrate that what is meant is not always the same thing as what is said, H. Paul Grice created a hypothetical letter of recommendation for a would-be professor of philosophy. There are many variants of this letter around these days (it's a popular example). Here is one:

To whom it may concern:

Jones dresses well and writes grammatical English.

Sincerely,
Professor So-and-so

That is what is said. What is meant is clearly that Jones is no good at philosophy. Explaining in a rigorous fashion how we come to that conclusion has occupied a number of researchers for half a century and no doubt will continue to do so for some time. This is despite the fact that such letters appear to be illegal in California (the state in which Grice worked).

In a footnote to a recent book chapter, the linguist Laurence Horn cites a court case (Randi M. v. Livingston Union School District, 1995 Cal. App. LEXIS 1230 (Dec. 15, 1995)), in which it was found that "a statement that contains only favorable matters and omits all reference to unfavorable matters is as much a false representation as if all the facts stated were untrue."

The moral of this story may be that philosophy is great, but check with a lawyer before trying to apply it to the real world.


Submitted by coglanglab on Wed, 2008-05-14 14:52.
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What? can someone explain

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2008-07-02 16:56.

If a person does not comment on skills necessary for the job, he has not recommended the person for that job in question. Also, it could be viewed as refusing to say something negative explicitly by not saying anything at all,indicates is an implicit negative inference.

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Explanation

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2008-05-21 09:40.

I believe the idea is that the stated purpose of the letter was to recommend someone for a job and the letter itself only describes extranious traits. The law requires that letters of these types only contain favorable information, that is a person used as a reference cannot trash the referenced person to a potential employer thus destroying their chance at a hire. People can sue over things like that--at least that is my understanding. So this article is about implication. You ask "Is this person suitable for a teaching position?" and I answer "He has nice teeth and washes his clothes most of the time." Here it could be taken that I am using true examples to express an implicit meaning, which is "This person is not a good candidate" which may or may not be true.

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Simple

Submitted by belg4mit on Thu, 2008-05-15 14:25.

A good recommendation letter would describe your qualifications, not trivial matters such as attire.

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What? Can someone explain

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2008-05-15 09:44.

What? Can someone explain what this is saying in a coherent manner?

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