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:
“A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he can divide.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.”
—Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)