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John: #And Rosta scripsit: #> Agnosticism isn't possible with synonymy. Either you believe two #> words have the same sense, or you don't. In this instance, they #> didn't. But I do. # #I'm not sure whether "you don't" means "you believe they have different #senses" or merely "you ~ believe they have the same sense". I'm saying that they amount to the same thing, if (as I say) synonymy is a linguistic rule that says "the sense of word X = the sense of word Y". I have such a rule for 'Wolfram' and 'Tungsten'. If you lack such a rule, then X and Y aren't synonyms, even though their senses may be extensionally equivalent. #> That's right. (it so happens that one of the few things I know about #> these two words is that they denote the same thing.) You can conclude #> that for you they are synonymous, unless there is strong evidence #> from the rest of usage that they aren't generally recognized as #> such, in which case you may create a superconcept that covers #> them both, but continue to think of a woodchuck as a M. monax that #> would chuck wood and of a groundhog as a M. monax that appears on my #> birthday to foretell the coming weather. # #So synonymy is really a 3-place relationship between two terms and a #believer, x1 is synonymous with x2 in the usage of x3? Gack -- *please* change "usage" to "language"! But yes, with that change, then indeed synonymy is a 3-place relationship. #> As you recognize, cases like "square of 2" and, if it is understood #> compositionally, "H2O" are not candidates for synonymy because they #> have a compositional meaning. And it is clearly possible to believe #> that 4 is not the square of 2. # #How is this fundamentally different from believing that furze is not gorse, #or that "not" is not a mark of negation? If furze and gorse are aren't synonyms (they aren't for me), then it is not fundamentally different. If they are synonyms, then believing that furze is not gorse is literally the same thing as believing that furze is not furze, so "furze is not gorse" must receive a nonliteral interpretation, under which the two terms are not synonyms. Believing that "not" is not a mark of negation is essentially a lexical belief about sound--meaning correspondences. In contrast, believing that 2 + 2 = 5 is a nonlinguistic (mathematical) belief. #> * Synonymy exists: we can have the knowledge "word X and word Y have #> the same sense (whatever the sense is)". # #But this seems to be true iff we believe it, or more operationally, terms #are synonymous for me iff I use them interchangeably. Yes. #This makes hash of the distinction between de dicto and de re belief. Why? De dicto beliefs are not linguistic beliefs. We can report de dicto in Lojban the beliefs of someone who does not know Lojban. Synonymy would be a fact about my knowledge of Lojban, not about the believer's beliefs. --And.