Pragmatic Considerations in the Interpretation of Denying the Antecedent

Abstract

In this paper I am concerned with the analysis of fragments of a discourse or text that express arguments suspected of being denials of the antecedent. I first argue that one needs to distinguish between two senses of ‘the argument expressed’. Second, I show that, with respect to one of these senses, given a Gricean account of the pragmatics of conditionals, some such fragments systematically express arguments that are valid.

Keywords

• conditional perfection
• denying the antecedent
• fallacy
• Grice
• implicature
• rational reconstruction