Can you imagine that you are healthy?

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Maybe a better way of stating what seems problematical for me is that if I imagine that I AM (ie in present time) healthy then it would be tautological to imagine that I AM (ie in present time) healthy. I'd have to say "Imagine that you WILL BE healthy" or "...COULD BE..."
------Original Message------
From: Laurence Horn
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Sent: Nov 8, 2007 7:32 PM
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Can you imagine that you are healthy?

At 7:16 PM -0500 11/8/07, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>I keep getting spam with "Can you imagine that you are healthy?" in the
>subject line.
>
>I find this question disturbing. It seems to presuppose both that I am not
>healthy and that I am healthy.
>
>Is there a name for this kind of contradiction in presupposition?
>
I'm not sure I see the contradiction.  The spam presupposing that
you're not healthy (to the extent that one is not asked to imagine
that p holds if p does in fact hold), or at least no healthier than
required to read your e-mail.  How does it presuppose that you're
healthy?

LH

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org