Love and Death Part 1 ('A kiss to build a dream on')

And jealousy, Time and infinite longing. So nothing serious, then. Click to play. 

Let’s start with Shakespeare and me. First, the words of one of his most famous sonnets, which I now recall was read at our wedding ceremony…

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove;
Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken 
It is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheek
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

…then the words I wrote a few weeks ago on the topic, with particular reference to the love of one’s children:

There is no such thing as unconditional love, beyond the intoxication of adolescence. There are always strings. It’s simply that for our children we are infinitely willing to alter the conditions of our emotional contracts, on the turn of a dime......whereas for most other people we are not: in the case of other adults, we prefer to maintain the illusion of personal integrity, and clinging forever to the letter—rather than the spirit—of the original document. As if were real...

Clearly both of us can’t be right: either Love alters when it alteration finds (as I suggest), or it alters not—[it] is an ever-fixed mark), as Will would have it: there is not much wriggle room here.

Now, I shan’t for a moment claim any superiority of style, scansion or high sentiment—no-one is likely to have my words performed at their wedding or engagement party—but nor am I about to recant. This is because I believe as a matter of fact that Shakespeare was dead wrong in his characterization of Love. Being a theoretical linguist in my day job rather than a poet means that what counts for me as an empirical demonstration may seem highly abstruse and pedantic to some, but I use the only analytical tools I have to hand. If you don’t care for, or about, arguments of this kind, and simply want to enjoy the sonnet as a expression of a poetic ideal—what love should be, not what it is—read no further, though bear in mind that throughout the sonnet Shakespeare uses is not should be; he is (emphatically now!) making existential claims.

Part I: A little bit of Logic

Before attempting to show why ‘this be error, upon [him] proved…’, it’s worth pointing out, as I mentioned last time, that Shakespeare is not just advancing a false claim, he’s sneaky with it too, using the last two lines to insulate this claim from any criticism by means of dirty logic. Indeed, these lines may count as the finest and most creative misuse of material implication in English literature (and which I’ll use in next term’s Meaning & Cognition class). For those unversed (!) in basic logic, material implication refers to the truth or falsity of ‘if…then’ conditional sentences, in which the truth of the consequent (then)-clause necessarily guarantees the truth of the whole conditional, irrespective of the truth of the antecedent clause. By embedding the ‘this be error’ in the antecedent (if)-clause—and then further muddying the waters with implicit or actual negatives (error, never, nor no man ever)—Shakespeare is able to trade on a common misunderstanding of logical properties to scotch any possible contradiction. 

The truth table below shows that the only way for a conditional statement of this kind to be false is where the antecedent clause is true and the consequent clause is false, as in the following example:

1.     If it’s raining outside, then a lot more people than usual will be carrying umbrellas.

(1) is true if, as a matter of contingent fact, it is raining outside (A=T) and a lot more people than usual are carrying umbrellas (C=T). (1) is also true if it’s not raining outside (A=F) and it’s not the case that a lot more people than usual are carrying umbrellas (C=F). And it is true even if it’s not raining (A=F) and a lot more people than usual are carrying umbrellas (C=T). It’s only false if the consequent clause is false, but where the antecedent clause is true: i.e., it is raining (A=T), but no more people than usual are carrying umbrellas (C=F) (~q -> ~p).

This is of course how the ‘then I’m a Dutchman’ trope works in an argument.* For example, if I say “If Brit-art is Art, then I’m a Dutchman’” then the fact that I am not a Dutchman logically implies (the claim) that Brit-art is not Art (~q -> ~p).

Shakespeare’s ploy is devious because he exploits the fact that in ordinary language (outside of Dutchman contexts) people typically don’t think logically: we can’t help but interpret conditional statements as bi-conditionals, assuming either that both parts of a condition must be true or both parts false. Consider a well-worn statement (in our household at least) such as that in (2):

2.     If you don’t do your homework, we won’t go to Mr. Donuts.

This is correctly interpreted by most children as blackmail, a threat not to go to Mr. Donuts if the homework is not done. But it’s also incorrectly—if conveniently—interpreted by many children—though not Sean, who’s now very wise to such tricks!—as an implicit bribe: if you finish your homework, we shall go for donuts. But this doesn’t follow: ~ ((~q -> ~p) -> (~p -> ~q)). I could truthfully utter this even if I had no intention of going to Mr. Donuts under any circumstances: that wouldn’t be nice, of course, but it would be perfectly logical. No-one said logic was fair, or reasonable.

Because of this common interpretive failing, when we read the last two lines of the sonnet, it is natural to infer that the antecedent clause and the consequent clause must agree in truth or falsity (TT, FF): since we know that I never writ, nor no man ever loved is false, we assume that this be error must be false, too. (Note the tricky implicit negative in error: if [this be error] were false, it would mean that this [=the claim] is not false, but true—that Shakespeare is right about love. ) But really Shakespeare is playing us for fools, using a cunning variant of the Dutchman ploy. Because [this be error] is in fact true…

*Needless to say, this ploy doesn’t work—or works differently—if one happens to be Dutch. Helaas!

End of Part I

Just in case this all seems too serious, and for want of a better place to put this clip, we should start with some comedy, lest we end up "like the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat...that isn't there!" Enjoy  (Click to play)