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On 9/20/06, John E. Clifford <clifford-j@hidden.email> wrote:
--- In jboske@yahoogroups.com, "Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@...> wrote:
>
> The move in question, I take it, is from "Fa" to "ExFx".
> That move is always valid, as far as I'm concerned.
Actually, it is the more specialized one, in Lojban terms from {F lo
broda} to {da poi broda zo'u F da} from "F a dog" to "there is a dog
such that F it."
Always valid too.
This works in extensional cases, not intensional ones. The idea is to get it to work in all cases (by making the places extesnional
For me, all places are always extensional in that sense.
(though containing -- and thus quantifying on -- intensional objects).
Is the domain of discourse for you partitioned into intensional objects and extensional objects? If yes, is this a metalinguistic or an object language partition?
> The move from "Fa" to "Ex(Zx&Fx)" (where Z is the predicate {zasti})
> is not a move of logic, and does not always work.
And, so far as I can tell, no one has said it does -- or even
mentioned it except you.
It is you who keeps bringing up the "real world" domain. If the predicate
{zasti} is not to play some special role, then I don't see how the "real world"
is relevant in any of this.
> In the restricted domain where AxZx is true (the "real world" domain), > the move from "Fa" to "Ex(Zx&Fx)" will work. When using such a > restricted domain we won't be able to refer to things that don't exist, > obviously, since they won't be in the domain. But here even the simple generalization does not work from intensional contexts "I want a unicorn" does not permit "There is a unicorn I want" though the first can be true in the "real world" domain and the (let's suppose it's this real world" is not. Yet it appears to be of the Fa to ExFx pattern.
The generalization from {mi djica lo pavyseljirna} to {da poi pavyseljyrna
zo'u mi djica da} is quite acceptable in any discourse that takes place in
the real world (or in any other world). Uttering a true sentence {da poi
pavyseljirna zo'u ...} in the real world in no way requires {da zasti} to be
true. For an utterance to be true in the real world, there is no need that
all the referents involved exist in the real world.
> > Showing > > there is a domain in which it does not work (true premises, false > > conclusion) is enough to show that it is not valid. > > There is no domain in which the move does not work, as far as I can see. One just indicated.
If the domain does not contain unicorns as a member, it is not possible
to claim that unicorns are related to me by the relationship {se djica},
and so there is nothing to move from. If the domain does contain unicorns
as a member, then the move works fine. There is no problem with unicorns
being a member of the domain of a discourse that takes place in the real
world. So you have not indicated a domain where the move would fail.
> Every referring term contributes its referent(s) to the domain of
> discourse. If we fail to assign a referent to a referring term, we must
> resort to the metalinguistic {ki'a}.
> We must step out of the discourse, as it were, and clarify the language,
> because the discourse is not working as it should.
I think that this is where you get it screwed up. Every referring
term *in primary occurrence* does indeed contribute its referent (I
suppose we are doing something like discourse analysis where the
domain is built up as we go along). But secondary occurrences do not.
I don't think there is a need to introduce secondary occurrences
with my interpretation, but in any case surely in {mi djica lo pavyseljirna},
{lo pavyseljirna} is in primary occurrence.
Unfortunately,for most secondary occurrences, there are primary occurrences that look on the surface just like them. In terms of that article you pointed to, they have both a specific and a generic reading -- and the generic reading does certain not point to a particular item but also does not guarantee any such item at all.
The generic reading does not guarantee a particular referent, I agree. In my view, particular referents do not play any role at all in the generic reading.
"A bear did not do this" would ordinarily be taken as simply a denail of "A bear did this" and thre denial takes out both any specificity there might be in "a bear" and also the existential import about bears. It is just ~Db (or ~Ex(Bx & Dx).
If you take "a bear" as {su'o da poi cribe}, yes. But that is not a referring
term. For me, all unquantified sumti are referring terms.
There is also the specific reading (I
don't actually like these terms but they come from the article which I
assume you have read)which \x~Dx(b) or Ex(Bx & \y~Dy(x)), which in
either reading says that there are bears and furthermore that some
particular one of them did not do this (though another one may have --
consider the grade-school riddle:"I have two coins that add up to 30
cents and one of them is not a nickel.") There are similar cases for
most secondary occurrences (the article gives some for intensional
direct objects and some adjectives ("imaginary"). The point is that
the secomdary occurrences of referring expressions need not refer to
anything in the domain -- and so do not automatically add something
when they first occur.
If you interpret descriptions a la Russell, I can follow all that. But I
don't find that interpretation of descriptions at all compelling. For me
{lo broda} are always referring terms.
And what they need not add is not just a specific thing but even the whole predicate extension: "I want a unicorn" adds to the domain not only not a particular unicorn but not unicorns at all. To think that secondary occurrences add particular references or even generic ones (guarantee that a certain predicate has a non-null extension) generates one array of either paraadoxes or misconstruals of ordinary -- and ordinarily understood -- sentences.
I don't think generic terms add particular tokens to the domain, if that's what you mean by particular references. I don't find any paradoxes in requiring all (unquantified) terms to refer.
It is, as you note, exceedingly difficult to have a primary occurrence of a referring expression that fails to refer. It can basically only happen when we have in mind a holistic model into which the developing situation is to be fitted to test for truth and that model does not contain anything to which the expression might refer. We havwe then either to scra[ that background model or reject the referring expression (Oh, we're talking about..., I was thinking of ..." or "But we're not talking about ...").
Right, stepping outside the discourse for a moment and making some metalinguistic comment about the language being used.
It is unfortunate that
"primary occurrence" seems always to be defined negatively ("not in
the scope of....") and that, as investigations proceed, the list of
things in the diairesis gets longer and longer, but the distinction
remains basic to semantics of natural languages for all of that.
In some theory.
> > > > 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? > > > > We tend to say there are two things when we mean there are two > > denoting expressions. I think I said it carefully at least once, but > > that is tedious and hardly anyone who is a cooperative > > conversationalist misunderstands the other expression. > > I agree it's easy to understand. I'm not convinced that the theory that > says that this way of speaking is just sloppy usage is better than the > theory that says that this way of speaking is perfectly justifiable uage. I am afraid that I can't even figure out what a literal reading of the sentence would be; as you point out, there can't be two things that are identical in the same ways as there are two of them. They can be two in one sense, identical in another, but that is not the issue here (or, if it is, then there is no issue).
Two things can be the same F and different G's, that's the only significance of relative identity.
> > > Have you read <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-relative/>? > > > > > Yeah. It didn't help since you seem to have reproduced its way of > > talking fairly accurately and it is that way of talking that does not > > make sense. > > To me it makes pretty good sense. It is in fact the only account of > the "paradoxes of identity" that I have found satisfying. Is there any > particular part that does not make sense to you? Well, the notion that there are two kinds of identity, rahter tha comparisons between two different things is a good starting point. This seems simply a misuse of language and to fly in the face of what we actually do.
That we actually do often say things like "two identical things" is, I hope, patently true, so it certainly does not fly in the face of what we do. That "two identical things" is a misuse of language requires a theory that obviously results in lots of misuses of language in ordinary speech.
> so as to make clear to Superman/Clark that his "me" must be interpreted > in accordance with his current guise. Indeed so, And your point would be?
That there is no ultimate Superman/Clark token independent of context.
We are now comparing Superman slices with Clark slices and finding them not identical, whereas, if we compare the wholes from which the slices are cut, they are identical. But there is only one sense of identity here.
Right. But then we have to be careful with the claim
{la superman du la klark kent}. It is very often false. And if we can
see that that claim is false, there is no failure of substitution of
co-referring terms since we don't have co-referring terms to begin
with.
> There is
> already the predicate {mintu} which is pretty much what relative
> identity is.
Well, then we need something for absolute identity.
{du} should be reserved for that.
And, note, we need the stuff for sense-reference anyhow, in some form or other. And, if we do other things right, the "problems" that the two-identities theory is meant to solve won't arise.
I'm not convinced we need any grammatical marker for sense. So far, all can be done with simple reference. mu'o mi'e xorxes