A striking thing about language is that is composable in certain ways. I can make an argument in which each step of the argument is self-evident, yet the conclusion is a surprising (but true) consequence of the premises.
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I wonder: is there a linguistic equivalent to Ascending and Descending? An argument of which each step is true, yet the conclusion does not follow from the premise?
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I've found it surprisingly tricky to unpack what's going on. In the case of Ascending and Descending part of the trouble is that our mind is solving an inverse inference problem to recover 3d geometry from a 2d projection. It's tempting to think that's the trouble.
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But we do similar kinds of inverse inference all the time with language.
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Perhaps the best analogue is jokes, which often rely on the same kind of multiple inverse inferences about the meaning of words.
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Or certain kinds of cognitive bias - like the Group Attribution Error - which also rely on faulty inverse inference.
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End of conversation
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(Also brings to mind using Google Translate for back and forth translation... )
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