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John: > pycyn@hidden.email scripsit: > > > One case that seems like the ones I have taken as bare conditionals > but that > > does not seem to work well, "I am a novelist" in the sense "I write > novels." > > Not writing novels does not (by itself) count against the claim, but > > explaining the test has so far escaped me. > > I think this is a confusion. For me, "I am a novelist who doesn't write > novels" is a flat contradiction, right along with "I am a cook who doesn't > prepare food", "I am a painter who's never touched a brush", "I am an > illiterate reader", etc. etc > > Pace And, I don't know any way to become a lion-tamer without taming, or > participating in the taming, of at least one actual lion, any more than > one can become an automobile driver by reading a book It is sufficient for the purposes of discussion that at least some of us think that lion-tamers needn't have tamed lions. I don't find it odd to say "I'm a qualified lion-tamer" when I've never tamed a lion. Certain I know qualified teachers who would give their profession as 'teacher', even though they've never taught. I have a friend who says he's a novelist, even though he hasn't written a novel, and doesn't seriously plan to. I used to claim to be a nonsmoker who smoked, and during the period when I had quit I felt myself to be smoker who didn't smoke. Such descriptions are not meaningless or nonsensical or even flat-out contradictory. Rather, they need to be enriched, in their logical form, by notions of possible worlds, hypothetical states of affairs, etc. --And.