The Normal, and the Perils of the Sylleptic Argument

作者：Edmond A. Murphy · 发表于：Perspectives in biology and medicine · 年份：1972 · DOI：10.1353/pbm.1972.0003 · 被引用次数：63 · 研究领域：Whitehead's Philosophy and Applications、Media, Communication, and Education

THE NORMAL, AND THE PERILS OF THE SYLLEPTIC ARGUMENT EDMOND A. MURPHY, M.D., ScD* The basic notion of syllepsis can be simply represented. Two attributes separately predicated of two quantities may be confused and make it appear that the two quantities have an attribute in common . Algebraically we might say that A is predicated of B and A* of B*; confusion of the quantities A and A* may make it appear that B and B* have the attribute A in common. Syllepsis is widely used for literary effect. For example in Mrs. Packletide's Tiger the heroine wishes to shoot a tiger so that she can give a party to gloat over her friends with the "tiger-skin rug occupying most of the background and all of the conversation" [I]. Here the word "occupied" is being applied to the words "background" and "conversation"—in the former in a literal sense, in the latter as a metaphor. Syllepsis may be carried over into the field of argumentation. In Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme (act 1, sc. 2) the dancing master argues that the diplomat should learn dancing because the errors of diplomacy are false steps, and that the best prophylactic against taking false steps is to know how to dance. There is little danger of error from such transparent cases. But this kind of absurdity is often perpetrated quite unconsciously with words which have many meanings. A brief classification of such words is given in table 1. A typical misuse in an argument, which it seems appropriate to call the "sylleptic syllogism,...