Date:  Wed, 12 Oct 1994 04:58:55 -0700

From:  James Beniger <beniger[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RCF.USC.EDU>

Subject: Source of Kripke Story



My source for the Kripke story was a New York Times Magazine cover story

on him roughly 10 years ago. Because the article was based on interviews

with an impressive number of scholars from several countries, including

Kripke, I tend to believe that the story is not (entirely) apocryphal.

But I wasn't there, either.



                -- Jim Beniger

*******



On Tue, 11 Oct 1994, Larry Horn wrote:



> I don't know if the story is apocryphal, but I've always heard it cited

> (including every time I have talked about "logical" double negation before an

> audience containing philosophers) along the following lines:

>

>   [Speaker] "...and while two negations often cancel out to an affirmative,

>     there is no known attestation of two affirmatives reducing to a

>     negative."

>   [Sidney Morgenbesser, in a loud sotto voce] "Yeah, yeah."

>

> I've come across the same anecdote a few times in print since including it in

> my 1989 book "A Natural History of Negation" (p. 554) and in my 1991 CLS

> paper "Duplex Negatio Affirmat...: The Economy of Double Negation" (plug,

> plug) and each time the attribution was to Morgenbesser. From what I've heard

> of Morgenbesser, master of the rapier-like counterexample through many decades

> at Columbia, and what I know of Kripke, the standard version of the anecdote

> appears more likely. But was I dere, Charley? No.

>

> Larry Horn

>