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* Thursday, 2012-09-13 at 14:30 +0100 - And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email>: > Martin Bays, On 11/09/2012 23:38: > > * Tuesday, 2012-09-11 at 11:15 +0100 - And > > Rosta<and.rosta@hidden.email>: > > The discussion has moved on a bit, and I don't want to go muddying any > waters that have become clearer, but since this is addressed to me > I should reply. Thanks, I had hoped you would. > >> 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. > > > > I'm not sure how to take this. How can I understand the > > presupposition "exists unique a such that Ra" without knowing how to > > interpret Ra? > > You do have access to the encyclopedia entry for R (My point was that R can be of arbitrary complexity, and can itself contain l- expressions, so I'd need to know what they mean before being able to understand the presupposition.) > > Do you mean that you envision the rule as being a purely syntactic > > one, which converts "la Ra Pa" to an expression in a new formal > > language which (somewhere, I'm not sure where) includes an expression > > like "E! a. Ra", and that although you have in mind some way to > > interpret this new language (including interpreting this expression > > as a presupposition), you don't want to discuss how to interpret the > > new language? > > I do think presuppositionality is represented in logical form, which > falls within the scope of the formal specification of the language. > > I don't know what "E!" is. (The 'E' should be backwards; then it's semistandard notation for "there exists a unique".) > I am open to discussing how I as a user would interpret stuff. I just > want to maintain -- and have my interlocutors maintain -- a clear > conceptual distinction between that and the formal specification of > the language. OK, I think I see what you mean. You want to consider defining the language as a two-step process - first, some syntactic translation into a "logical form", and then giving a semantics (formal or informal) for that. Since you doubt the plausibility/desirability of giving a *formal* semantics for the logical form, you consider only the first syntactic operation to be part of the formal specification of the language. Is that right? It does seem reasonable. (Although I think the clearest way to give an informal semantics might be to try to give a formal semantics!) > > the rule "na la Ra Pa<=> la Ra na Pa" > > > > I think it would help alot, actually, if you could clarify what you > > mean by this rule. In what sense is that equivalence to be read? If > > we interpret both sentences within the same situation, and that > > situation satisfies the presupposition, then of course they get the > > same truth value. Is that all that's meant? > > Yes. > > > Or do you mean something stronger, that when speaking I can > > substitute one for the other and expect to convey the same > > information? I don't see how to get the latter. > > I'm conscious I'm being slow on the uptake. I don't see how they'd > convey different information. No, sorry - I had myself confused there, thinking in terms of quantifying over situations. There was nothing I was getting at. > >> 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'll leave this here for now. I don't understand it yet, but I'm > > hoping to after some of the issues above are cleared up. One thing > > which might help, though: could you confirm my suspicion (based on > > vague recollection of what you've said in the context of lojban) that > > in all cases, you would have e.g. types of cats of various levels > > and (in B and C) individual cats all satisfying mlt_? > > In Type-A ontology, there aren't levels, only types, and types satisfy > mlt_. Let's stick with A. So with "la mlta Pa", we're forced by the presupposition to interpret it in a (quantifier-domain restricting) situation containing just one of the various cat-types. Depending on the context (including the hints given by P), this could naturally be "cats in general", or "black cats in general", or "this cat here", or "the noon-yesterday-stage of this cat here", or various other things. Is this right? In particular, there's no way to get at other cat-types in P, not even at the proper subtypes of a, because we have to interpret Pa in a situation in which a is the only cat-type. Correct? I'm still not sure I understand what you mean by "using [...] s & r to quantify over subtypes", though. Do you mean something like using "re mneka Pe" in the scope of a binding of 'a' to a cat-type (which would have to have been done with something other than "la mlta"!)? > In Types B & C, I'd have thought that only individuals and not > categories satisfy mlt_, but I'm open to being corrected on that -- if > you tell me that in Type-B/C ontology, various ways of generalizing > over cats are themselves cats, even tho they're not individual cats, > I will listen with interest and (perhaps bemused) credence. This is a side-issue, but: there's no a priori reason that mlt_ shouldn't refer to both individual cats and types of cat, much like (as xorxes has been known to be fond of pointing out) in English we can say "the black cat is a cat" and mean "all black cats are cats". I would however expect the dictionary entry to indicate whether or not this was the case (if there aren't language-universal rules for deciding), which is perhaps difficult if you want to cater to A-types. Martin
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