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On 9/19/06, John E. Clifford <clifford-j@hidden.email> wrote:
In any case, notice that I said the real world was where the domain
was restricted to -- not identical to -- the extension of {zasti}.
There are clearly domains of discourse that meet this pattern and in
them most clearly the move fails.
If the domain of discourse is restricted to things that exist in the real world, then the move clearly fails. But saying that there are domains of discourse that are so restricted is begging the question. The mere use of certain predicates in a discourse (for example the predicate "is imaginary" or "is desired" or "is needed") opens the domain to things that don't exist in the real world. I suppose where we disagree is in that for me there is no way that something can be kept out of the domain of discourse when one of the participants decides to bring it up, and for you there are things that can be kept out by one of the participants refusing to let it in. These fights about what is allowed into the discourse or not must be settled before we can make an interpretation anyway, and once the fights are settled, there is no paradox in "I want X" even if X does not exist: it is true or false if the referent made it into the domain of discourse, and it is meaningless if the referent did not make it there.
We say that two things are identical when we refer to the same object using expressions that have different sense.
Why do you say "two things" then? Can two things be one and the same object? Under absolute identity, the answer is: "That's just a sloppy way of speaking. What we *really* mean when we say that two things are identical is that two expressions have the same referent." Under relative identity, the answer is: "Yes, we may say that two things are relatively identical when they are both the same physical object, for example."
The classic is still the Morning Star and the Evening Star.
They are one star, but are they one or two things?
Surely it is not enough for any notion of identity to have them satisfy one predicate. I am not getting any sense of what relative and absolute identity. as you use these terms, means from this desription.
Have you read <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-relative/>?
> Suppose Superman/Clark comes to you and asks: > > Does Lois want me to kiss her? > > What would you respond, and how do you justify it under your > interpretation? (The assumption is that we know that Lois wants > Superman to kiss her but does not want Clark to kiss her, and we > know that Superman and Clark are the same person.) I would probably say that she wants to kiss Superman but not Clark Kent.
Right. But does his question have any possible yes/no answer at all?
In my way of seeing it I would have to disambiguate {mi} between
its two relevant referents in the context. Would you say that {mi} has two
intensions/senses that need disambiguation?
We make this kind of separation all the time -- it is the chief use of the word "qua" in English. I admire Bill Clinton qua the President of the United States but not qua the husband of Hillary. The nice thing about descriptions is that they wear a large part of their senses on their faces.
Right. And my take is that that would work in Lojban too: mi sinma la klinton po'u le merko jatna ku'o .enai la klinton po'u le speni be la xilaris But presumably you would not put it that way.
I assume, by the way, that logically "Superman" and "Clark Kent" are descriptions of some sort, not proper names. I suppose that the justification is that it is exactly true. We are dealing here with senses (in the scope of "want") and the senses are clearly different, so no paradox results, even though the extensions of the two names are identical. I would suppose that you would answer pretty much the same -- only talking about personas rather than individual concepts or sense. Notice, there are not two kinds of identity in either case, just comparison of two different sorts of things.
The difference would be that I would have the one person subsume the two personas, whereas you (perhaps) would not allow this kind of subsumption. mu'o mi'e xorxes