{"id":2162,"date":"2022-03-22T04:16:20","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T04:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/03\/22\/he-who-hesitates-is-lost-2\/"},"modified":"2022-03-22T04:16:20","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T04:16:20","slug":"he-who-hesitates-is-lost-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/03\/22\/he-who-hesitates-is-lost-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pronoun Puzzle: “He who hesitates is lost”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grammatically, 'he' is a pronoun. Pronouns have antecedents. What is the antecedent of 'he' in the folk saying supra<\/em>? It does not have one. <\/span><\/p>\n

A Yogi Berra type joke is in the offing. We're hiking. We must go forward; we can't go back. But the path forward is perilous and requires a bold step over an abysmal chasm. I say, "He who hesitates is lost!" My hiking partner, a smartass, replies, "You mean Biden?"<\/span><\/p>\n

My witticism is modelled on a genuine Yogi Berra joke. You are asked what time it is and you reply, "You mean now?"<\/span><\/p>\n

'He' in the folk saying is grammatically a pronoun, but it does not function logically as one. How then does it function?<\/span><\/p>\n

I say it functions as a universal quantifier. Not like<\/em> a universal quantifier, but as one<\/em>. Thus:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

For any x<\/em>, if x<\/em> hesitates, then x<\/em> is lost.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This strikes me as clear as day. Rather less clear is the role of the first-person singular pronoun in 'I think, therefore I am.'  Does 'I' in this context have an antecedent, and if it does, what or who is the antecedent?   Anythng you say will land you in the aporetic frying pan. Or so I could argue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Later.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grammatically, 'he' is a pronoun. Pronouns have antecedents. What is the antecedent of 'he' in the folk saying supra? It does not have one.  A Yogi Berra type joke is in the offing. We're hiking. We must go forward; we can't go back. But the path forward is perilous and requires a bold step over … Continue reading “A Pronoun Puzzle: “He who hesitates is lost””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242,6,408,316],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-language-matters","category-language-philosophy-of","category-maxims-mottoes-epitaphs-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}