Systema G

Suppose you say "Either Wilson or Heath will be the next Prime Minister." I can disagree with you in one of two ways: 

(1) I can say

"That's not so; it won't be either, it will be Thorpe." Here I am contradicting your statement, and I shall call this a case of "contradictory disagreement."

 (2) I can say 

*I disagree, it will be either Wilson or Thorpe." I am not now contradicting what you say (I am certainly not denying that Wilson will be Prime Minister). It is rather that I wish not to assert what you have asserted, but instead to substitute a different statement which I regard as preferable in the circumstances.

I shall call this "substitutive disagreement." 

For either of us to be happily said to be right, it is (I think) a necessary condition that we should have had an initial list of mutually exclusive and genuine start-ers. If I had said "It will be either Wilson or Gerald Nabarro," this would be (by exploitation) a way of saying that it will be Wilson.

Now if it turns out to be Heath you have won (have been shown to be right, what you said has been confirmed); if it turns out to be Thorpe, I have won. But suppose, drearily, it rurns out to be Wilson.

Certainly neither of us is right as against the other; and if it was perfectly obvious to one and all that Wilson was a likely candidate, though the same could not be definitely said of the others, then there would, I think, be some reluctance to say that either of us had been shown to be right, that what either of us had said had been confirmed (though of course there would be no inclination at all to say that we werc wrong). 

This situation is one in which it is accepted as common ground that Wilson is a serious possibility, that the only reasonable disjunctive question to which one can address oneself is "Wilson or who?"