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I don't think that applies here. Your addition "based on good reasoning" is not a non-literal meaning, but a filling in of omitted detail. Gricean implicature is not non-literality, and the addition does not take the example outside McArdle's analysis.
As always, confusion is a property of the confused person, not of the thing outside themselves that they are confused about. If a person says they cannot understand how anyone could etc., that is, indeed, literally true. That person cannot understand the phenomenon; that is their problem. Yet their intended implication, which McArdle is pointing out does not follow, is that all of the problem is in the other person. Even if the other person is in error, how can one engage with them from the position of "I cannot understand how etc."? The words are an act of disengagement, behind a smokescreen that McArdle blows away..
Sure it is. The qualifier changes the meaning of the statement. By definition, if the sentence lacks the qualifier but is to be interpreted as if it has one, it is to be interpreted differently than its literal words. Having to be interpreted as containing detail that is not explicitly written is a type of non-literalness.
No, it's not. I understand how someone can believe in creationism: they either misunderst... (read more)