Monday, December 30, 2013

negation - The meaning of "no more … than"




These two attitudes are no more
contradictory than those two.




Which of the following interpretations is right (or give me a better one if possible):





  1. Relatively, these two attitudes are not more contradictory than those two; however, it is unknown, from the statement, how contradictory those two are or whether those two are contradictory at all.

  2. Those two attitudes are not contradictory, and these two are not either; it is not about the comparison between the contradiction of these two and that of those two.


Answer



“A is no more difficult than B” means literally that both are of a similar level of difficulty, and in most cases it also implies that neither is very difficult. So, it's rather 1, but with implications of 2.


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