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On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 11:08 PM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@hidden.email> > wrote: >> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote: >> > >> > I see two distinct ways this could work. One way is [by defining >> > predicates >> > such that], within a given world, imaginary things are included in the >> > extensions of physical things. >> >> That's basically my view, yes, if you replace "are included" by "can >> be included". In some contexts they will be included, in others they >> won't. > > Would "s-" permit the same leeway, or are the contextually construed "can > be included" readings peculiar to "l-"? If the former then "sa je xnra > pvsljrna pxra'ika" means approximately the same thing as the "l-" version, > right? If the latter, then maybe we should say that "l-" is a nonveridical > operator? I would say the former. > I am going to hazard that we are never going to want "le je xkre mlte > vska'ake" to mean anything other than effectively > > le je [ha'e] xkre [ha'e] mlte [ha'e] vska'ake. > > where variable "a'e" is recycled in such a way that when it's used with > "h-", it is implicitly bound to the world in which the discourse occurs. You mean as a standalone sentence, yes? If you say "li fi le je xkre mlte vkka'ake snva'aki" presumably you don't want to force "le je xkre mlte vkka'ake" to occur in the world of the discourse. I admit I don't quite get h- yet. If I'm watching a movie, and there's a black cat in it, I wouldn't have any qualms saying "le je xkre mlte vska'ake" or "se je xkre mlte vska'ake". >> Presumably you don't want to say that what "R" really means is always >> "lW1 smW1 hW1 R", because that would send us into an infinite regress. > > Right, please excuse the sloppiness. It doesn't make sense to apply "h-" > more than once since what "h-" does is convert an intension into an > extension, and that by nature can happen only once (we will never need > intensions of intensions, or at least it seems very unlikely). Even applying it only once per predicate, you would still get: R lW1 smW1 hW1 R lW1 lW2 smW2 hW2 smW1 hW1 R lW1 lW2 lW3 smW3 hW3 smW2 hW2 smW1 hW1 R ... So you may need to treat predicates about worlds differently from predicates about things in worlds. >> > As a side note, I assume that "factual" would deictically mean >> > something >> > like "A is factual in the world in which the discourse takes place." I >> > think we will need this meaning one way or another. >> >> The discourse or the situation being described? Couldn't you use it to >> say "he dreamed that x was factual" without implying that x is >> factual? > > I guess so, but wouldn't "he dreamed that x" be enough? Sure, unless the discussion was about whether x was factual or imaginary, and we want to point out that he dreamed it was factual rather than imaginary. > The way I see things going, the question is not so much should we admit > intensions in predicate places, but is it even possible to keep them out. > IMHO there has to be a limit drawn somewhere, lest we end up with a language > in which "[ha'e] la sma pvsljrna" is true. I'd say "can be true" rather than "is true". That's how I see it, it can be true in the right context. ma'a xrxe