A Reply to Professor Wheatley

Extract

I am grateful to Professor Wheatley for his note, [3], on my analysis of interrogatives, [1]. His comments bring out very clearly a number of considerations that deserve our closest attention. For example, he shows that if we can classify interrogatives as true and false—as I proposed to do—then we can properly inquire about what sentences contradict them, and what sentences are contingently or logically equivalent to them. Furthermore, he shows that, on my analysis, no indirect question can contradict any other indirect question and he accordingly, and correctly, looks for such contradictories among declarative sentences. (Different considerations than any that Professor Wheatley brought out will equally well show that no direct question will contradict any other direct question: “Is Freeman Governor of Minnesota?” and “Is not Freeman Governor of Minnesota?” express different concerns with one and the same topic of concern, hence, are equivalent.) Finally, he notes, [3], p. 54, that in my article, I have treated only inquisitive questions and have said nothing about deliberative or practical questions. While practical questions (as well as their practical answers) demand a different kind of treatment than that which Wheatley speculatively, albeit very tentatively, extrapolates for me, still these questions do form a kind of interrogative that did not get any attention in my article. (But the problems are so complex that I shall not try to say anything about them in this Reply.)