The word 'can' (Stephen Toulmin)
March 19th 2010 04:59
Two thoughts about the word.
Degrees of possibility
To quote something I wrote about a decade ago: "The 'can' in 'Can you come on Monday?' is vague -- it could refer to several degrees of can-ness, from absolute possibility to mild inconvenience, and it's left open (it's probably not even clear in the speaker's mind) to what precise degree it refers. The conversational exchange that follows the question is to some extent an attempt to fix the meaning of 'can' to the advantage of one of the parties."
Discourse relativity
Stephen Toulmin in The uses of argument (1956) takes a more sophisticated approach.
He observes that the word is used in different contexts, like (and these are my own examples):
-- You can't drive on the wrong side of the road.
-- You can't quit your $100,000 a year job to work at McDonald's.
-- You can't steal that money from the register.
-- You can't refer to your sister as "he".
-- You can't drive all night without taking a rest.
-- You can't divide by zero.
-- You can't push an elephant through a needle.
-- You can't assert P and not-P.
What is common is the function the word performs. There's always some sort of impropriety, be it procedural, practical, physical, mathematical, legal, moral, linguistic, conceptual, or logical -- but it's a different impropriety in each case.
In each case, the idea is something like: "P being what it is, you must rule out anything involving Q: to do otherwise would be R, and would invite S", where "S" is a penalty. For instance, one can't drive all night under penalty of endangering oneself, one can't refer to one's sister as "he" under penalty of being misunderstood or being regarded as strange, one can't steal money under penalty of being caught or being immoral, etc.
To sum up:
I think I had a point that "can" by itself has vague degrees of possibility, and that these possibilities are then the subject of a sort of power play, as people negotiate what the word is to mean.
But I treated "can" without Toulmin's context sensitivity. I think when I spoke of "absolute possibility" that I assumed that all meaningful uses of "can" must be matters of logic or physics.
I also didn't take into account that "can" often refers to rules and their breaching -- and not just to logical or physical ability and inability.
***
Degrees of possibility
To quote something I wrote about a decade ago: "The 'can' in 'Can you come on Monday?' is vague -- it could refer to several degrees of can-ness, from absolute possibility to mild inconvenience, and it's left open (it's probably not even clear in the speaker's mind) to what precise degree it refers. The conversational exchange that follows the question is to some extent an attempt to fix the meaning of 'can' to the advantage of one of the parties."
***
Discourse relativity
Stephen Toulmin in The uses of argument (1956) takes a more sophisticated approach.
He observes that the word is used in different contexts, like (and these are my own examples):
-- You can't drive on the wrong side of the road.
-- You can't quit your $100,000 a year job to work at McDonald's.
-- You can't steal that money from the register.
-- You can't refer to your sister as "he".
-- You can't drive all night without taking a rest.
-- You can't divide by zero.
-- You can't push an elephant through a needle.
-- You can't assert P and not-P.
What is common is the function the word performs. There's always some sort of impropriety, be it procedural, practical, physical, mathematical, legal, moral, linguistic, conceptual, or logical -- but it's a different impropriety in each case.
In each case, the idea is something like: "P being what it is, you must rule out anything involving Q: to do otherwise would be R, and would invite S", where "S" is a penalty. For instance, one can't drive all night under penalty of endangering oneself, one can't refer to one's sister as "he" under penalty of being misunderstood or being regarded as strange, one can't steal money under penalty of being caught or being immoral, etc.
Stephen Toulmin (1922-2009)
***
To sum up:
I think I had a point that "can" by itself has vague degrees of possibility, and that these possibilities are then the subject of a sort of power play, as people negotiate what the word is to mean.
But I treated "can" without Toulmin's context sensitivity. I think when I spoke of "absolute possibility" that I assumed that all meaningful uses of "can" must be matters of logic or physics.
I also didn't take into account that "can" often refers to rules and their breaching -- and not just to logical or physical ability and inability.
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