Jeez, I wish I could make sense of this within any notion of logic I ever heard of. In one suntans we are told we are sticking to the syntactic rules, in the next we are dealing with the universe or a situation that fluctuates from word to word ( so deep in semantics) and the we suddenly have presuppositions (pragmatics). I, unlike & officially, think we have to keep all these factors in view. But keep them separate, not jumbled into one sentence or paragraph. So far as I can make out the situation in &'s mind is that there is a quantifier l, which picks out an object from the reference class (or maybe a bunch oh objects from the reference class, but that introduces new problems). No problem here for l as either long scope or shortscope s or even as requiring that it picks out exactly one thing. At this point, there is, it appears, an unprecedented move the universe, which is traditionally taken as fixed, or the situation, which is traditionally taken as capable of expansion only, contracts so that the reference class is now reduced to this one selected item. This is accomplished apparently by a presupposition of using l that la Ra Pa <=> ra Ra Pa <=> sa Ra Pa holds. Now aside from the impropriety of the move and the inherent unlikelihood of the presupposition, the real question is why all this work, what is supposed to be accomplished? I get the idea from the talk of myopic singulars, that the object selected by l is meant to be a reliable guide about the whole reference class -- before the collapse. This the jump I cannot fathom: the object is singular, but not myopic. It is a good (indeed the only) representative of the collapsed reference class, but not necessarily of the real reference class we thought we were dealing with and presumably wii be dealing with again. Where is the missing piece (unlikely as it is).
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 11, 2012, at 5:15 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
Mike S., On 11/09/2012 03:52:
> On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 8:20 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email <mailto:and.rosta@hidden.email>> wrote:
> I think the presupposition I'm looking for is, given "li bcdi", "ru smu jo si bcdi ckjiku ri bcdi ckjiku". But I'm not adamant on the point.
>
> ru smu jo si bcdi ckjiku ri bcdi ckjiku
> "for every U, there exists some bcd characterized by U iff all bcd are characterized by U"
>
> I think this works, albeit using thinly veiled high-order predicate
> logic. Have you thought about using Russell's definite descriptions
> for a presuppositional approach?
>
> si bcdi ro bcdo =iko
>
> ... is perhaps slightly more direct & easier to grok.
Yes, I think that's fine too.
> > Furthermore: le mlte je nlca'ake [but] si mlti na nlca'aki.
> >
> > ...obviously is intended to have both the myopic singularization of
> > cats and individual cats in its universe of discourse. The sentence
> > has a perfectly sensible and useful meaning. Presumably, you would
> > interpret that sentence as a patent contradiction.
>
> No, I'd interpret that as a shift in UoD.
>
> A shift in UoD within the scope of a single formula? Are you sure?
> Hmm, that would mean it requires more than one universes of discourse
> to interpret one sentence.
It may or may not make more sense to think in terms of multiple construals or versions of a single universe of discourse. But in crudely extensional/logical terms, rather than cognitive terms, yes I think it has to be a shift in UoD.
> I'm not sure I see the difference in practice. Given that "la mlta xkra" presupposes there's exactly one mlt, the interpretation must fiddle with the UoD and/or the definition of mlt so as to conform with the presupposition.
>
> The presupposition is just a claim taken for granted. IMVHO the
> interpretation lays out the truth conditions of a sentence with
> respect to the model, without fiddling with the model.
Presuppositions are of course by definition outside of truthconditional meaning. Does your framework handle presupposition-containing sentences by assuming the presupposition is true? Or by taking the sentence to be meaningless when the presupposition is not in fact true? At any rate, handle them how you like; in saying that l- means, I don't mean to prescribe a particular way.
Martin Bays, On 11/09/2012 03:13:
> I'd just like to briefly surface to say that I'd also be very interested
> to see an account of this "andoxorxesian" l-.
>
> In an attempt to prompt one, here's the impression I've got from my
> half-following of this thread:
> you have la Ra Pa doing two things:
> (a) creating a presupposition that the current situation
> contains a unique individual satisfying R;
Yes, where the individual is the only individual thatsatisfies R.
> (b) binding a to that unique individual.
>
> Is that roughly right?
Yes. And the important thing to grasp is that that's where the rules of the language end. The rules of the language don't tell you how to interpret sentences; they don't tell you what to do when you encounter "la Ra" yet you believe it is true that there are many R. I know how *I* as a user would interpret them, but that's different from the formal rules of the grammar. The formal rules of the grammar just give the presupposition and leave it at that. You are welcome to develop a dialect that does have rules specifying how to interpret sentences.
>If so, how does (a) work exactly? What's the
> scope of the presupposition, and what does "current situation" mean? Am
> I right to bring in situations, which I mean in the sense of
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/situations-semantics/, here?
The current situation is the one the truth-conditions of the l- formula is evaluated against. I think distinguishing situations from UoD is a helpful move. Then we can say that the scope of the presupposition is the l- formula, which describes a situation, but that the 'referents' of l-bound variables enter the general UoD. For example, in one formula it might be presupposed that there is only one Martin, but in another it might be allowed that there are many, and the UoD is populated both by "the one-and-only Martin" and by sundry "one-of-many Martins".
> Furthermore, it seems that the intention is that this construction
> should work in concert with some ontological assumption that there are
> things called "myopic singulars". Is it possible to communicate with you
> in the language without understanding what those are? If, as I suspect,
> not, could you explain what they are?
A user could be of any of these three sorts:
A. The user construes things as types that have subtypes, using l to point to the type, and s & r to quantify over subtypes. Every subtype has its own subtypes so there are uncountably infinitely many types.
B. The user takes it that the world against which truthconditions are evaluated contains individuals and categories, these are different things, and it is clear which is which. The user uses l- to point to individuals and s- and r- to quantify over members of categories.
C. The user takes it that the world against which truthconditions are evaluated contains individuals and categories, these are different things, but it is not clear which is which -- is an apparent individual in fact different similar-looking individuals? Are apparently different individuals in fact the same individual? This user would avoid referring to individuals, instead so as to be on the safe side always quantifying over members of (possibly singleton) categories with -s and r- and avoiding l-.
I won't comment on the extent to which users of the different sorts can communicate with each other. I think it's not a linguistic issue, unless you were to give the language overt A- B- C- modes.
Myopic singulars are where you merely assume that any apparently different instances of X are actually the same instance of X.
--And.
= |