Criticism
Philippe de Rouilhan (2000) has argued that Boolos relied on the assumption, never defended in detail, that plural expressions in ordinary language are "manifestly and obviously" free of existential commitment. But when I utter "there are critics who admire only one another" is it manifest and obvious that I am only committing myself with respect to critics? Or is Boolos victim of a "grammatical illusion" (p. 10)? Consider
- There is at least one critic who admires only himself.
- There are critics who admire only one another
The first case is clearly "innocent". But what about the second? There is an obvious logical difference, since in the first case the plural is distributive, in the second, it is collective, and irreducibly so. How is it obvious that this difference is innocent? Also, the second is equivalent to
- Some group (or collection) of critics is such that they admire only one another
But what is a "group" or "collection" in this sense? "That is the whole problem". Perhaps Boolos has accorded a kind of innocence to that would actually belong only to the first.
Read more about this topic: Plural Quantification
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)