Abstract

This paper is a preliminary inquiry into the nature of implication; how things are seen as ‘going together’ or following one from another. The argument presented here is that implication is non-logical and is central to the routine process of reason, induction and generalization. The organizing force underlying implication and practical inference is argued to be Von Domarus’ Principle , by which similarity on some dimension of interest ‘carries over’ to some other dimension of interest.One major difficulty with this formulation is that where VDP is the only organizing force, incoherent utterances resembling the word salad of the schizophrenic are likely to result, quite a departure from the routine utterances of normals that a useful model should generate. Two important ways that normal speech and word salad differ are that, in the latter, associations are, first, often implausible or bizarre, and second, they are likely to be so personalistic as to be virtually inaccessible to others.These considerations led to a search for elements that would provide the corrections necessary to bring the products of a VDP based model of implication close to normal utterances in these two areas. One element that appears central, concerns the role of subjective probability in evaluating plausibility of associations. Also considered are aspects of ambiguities in ordinary language especially concerning number and probability. The problem of making associations accessible to others is mitigated by providing elements in the setting or the communication itself that act to highlight or salience the association intended to be communicated. Finally, suggestions for further research are presented.