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--- In jboske@yahoogroups.com, "Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@...> wrote:
>
> On 9/27/06, John E. Clifford <clifford-j@...> wrote:
> >
> > And "Theory" is just the sentences held to be true? This is, of
> > course, a different sense of theory from the usual one, so part of our
> > problem may be merely teminological.
>
> "The term 'theory' also has a precise technical usage in mathematics,
> particularly in mathematical logic and model theory. A theory in this
> sense is a set of statements in a formal language, which is closed
> upon application of certain procedures called rules of inference."
It is this closure that was at issue. I actuallywas more concerned
about the notion of a model, from which your notion is more clearly
different. An ordinary model has a mass of functions --
interpretations and assignments, by virtue of wehich sentences turn
out to be true or not. That is, it is not a bunch of sentences. To
be sure, a complete set of sentences would largely determine a model,
but the small set we are dealing with at best cuts off some possible
models; it does not identify one. That is what you call models are to
be embedded into (a class of) models in the usual sense.
> That's basically the sense I was using. Did you have some other
> sense of "model" in mind than the one used in model theory?
>
> > But I suspect there is more to
> > it than that. You really do hold that any referring expression (in a
> > fairly narrow sense apparently -- in Lojban, descriptions and what are
> > tied to them somehow by identification) whereever it appears in a
> > sentence has to have a referent, even if the purport of the whole
> > sentence is that it has no referent.
>
> I take (practically) any Lojban sumti without outer quantifiers to be a
> referring expression, yes. Examples: {la djan}, {le mlatu}, {lo gerku},
> {lo nu mi klama}, {lo ka ce'u bajra}, {li pa}, {di'u}, {la'e di'u},
{zo valsi},
> {lu mi klama le zarci li'u}, {do}, {ti}, {ko'a}, etc.
>
> The very few exceptions would be {ce'u}, {ke'a}, {zi'o} and perhaps
one or
> two others I'm forgetting, but no more than that. The bound
variables {da},
> {de}, {di} are also not referring terms, although I'm sometimes tempted
> to include them as well with the referring terms when not bound
> *explicitly* by a quantifier.
>
> I'm not sure how the purport of a sentence could be that one of the
> referring expressions used (as opposed to mentioned) in the sentence
> have no referent.
(no da me lo broda} or even {no da du lo broda)
>
> > > Model_0: Does not contain p in its theory.
> > > Model_1: Includes p and turns out to be inconsistent, so the model
> > is ditched.
> > > Model_2: Includes the theory of Model_0 plus ~p. The examination of
> > Model_1
> > > was helpful to determine that Model_0 could be expanded to Model_2.
> >
> > "Had to be expanded" is perhaps more to the point. A situation
> > ultimately must contain all the logically entailled + claims. But
> > that is not entirely relevant here.
>
> p could be a new proposed axiom rather than just a theorem of the
theory.
> If it was logically entailed by the truths of Model_0, it was as you
say,
> already in Model_0.
The fact that the reductio works ed showed tht it was.
> When it comes to ordinary discourse, seen as a process of model
> building, most new sentences will be incorporated as new axioms since
> what already follows from already extant axioms are usually trivialities
> that noone would bother uttering.
The point is, as usual, that we can sometimes add these new axioms
without having to expand the domain, even though the addition appears
to contain a referring expression.
>
> > The
> > question is now how to get the other reading. but your present
>> positions seems to be that there is no other reading, which flies in
> > the face of everybody's linguistic experience.
>
> My position is that for a given model, there is only one reading for the
> sentence, and furthermore that it is not always necessary to build a
> model where the distinction is of interest. I of course do not argue
that
> it is never necessary to build a model where the two readings have to
> be distinct. Clearly {su'o da poi pavyseljirna zo'u mi djica lo du'u mi
> ponse da} and {mi djica lo du'u su'o da poi pavyseljirna zo'u mi ponse
> da} are not interchangeable in a model where {su'o re da pavyseljirna}
> is true.
Interesting. I gather that you think that the problem only arises
when there are explicit quantifiers involved, which is a useful way to
deal with the deep structure. But ordinary languages seem to create
these contrasts without making the the quantifiers explicit and I
think Lojban should be able to do this as well-- while still keeping
-- and making explcit -- the distinction betweeen the two readings.
Note that the official line does just that; the problem being only
that what that official pattern points to does not seem to be the
right sort of thing. Still, we can mark the difference and worry about
what is actually going on later.
The interesting fact is that the two quantified forms are not
interchangable even when there is only one unicorn in the domain. I
can want a unicorn (narrow reading) other than the unicorn there
happens to be -- to deny this flies in the face of what we all do
constantly.
>
> > > None of the relevant articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia site
seem to
> > > be aware of there being such a consensus.
> >
> > Do any othem talk about this approach or offer alternatives. I would
> > be especially interested in the latter, since I have not come across
> > any such theories.
>
> This is from the "nonexisting objects" article:
>
> <<
> Meinong was concerned about the problem of intentional states which
> are not directed at anything existent. The starting point of this
problem
> is the so-called "principle of intentionality", which says that mental
> phenomena are characterized by an "intentional directedness" towards an
> object. For instance, to love is always to love something, to imagine is
> always to imagine something, and so forth. In other words, every
intentional
> act is "about" something. The problem is that sometimes people imagine,
> desire or fear something that does not exist. Some people fear the
devil,
> although the devil doesn't exist. Many people hope for peace in the
Middle
> East. But there is no peace in the Middle East. Ponce the Leon searched
> for the fountain of youth, even though it doesn't exist. It is easy
to imagine
> a golden mountain, even if no such thing exists.
>
> Cases like these seem to be clear counterexamples to the principle of
> intentionality. However, many philosophers found this principle too
appealing
> to be given up completely. While some came to the conclusion that
> intentionality is not a real relation and therefore does not require
> the existence
> of an object (see, for instance, Brentano 1874, Searle 1983),
Meinong offered
> another solution: there is indeed an object for every mental state
whatsoever
> ?if not an existent then at least a nonexistent one.[3]
>
> The problem of intentionality may still count as one of the most
important
> motivations for thinking there are nonexistent objects. But there
are other
> motivations as well.
> >>
>
> > > <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonexistent-objects/>
Interestingly, the article does not deal with the want cases nor does
it take very seriously the other factors of oblique context nor of
primary and secondary occurrences. It did remind of some reasons for
wanting to keep nonexistent objects available but does not touch on
the present problem at all. The present problem is not about
nonexistent object or even nonbeing objects, it is about scopes and
intensions (the three classic marks of intensional usage). these
problems arise whether or not what we want is available in the domain.
> > I don't think this is an ontological issue. We are not in any case
> > (except a strict real world model) concerned with what exists, only
> > with what the variables range over, what is.
>
> If the fact that unicorns are nonexistent is not problematic, why
> do you have such a hard time admitting them into the domain of
> discourse?
I have no trouble admitting them into the domain of discourse. My
only point is that we don't *have to* admit them to deal with cases of
wanting a unicorn. And, incidentally, that admitting them doesn't
help with the problem involved.
> > And even that is not
> > about reality in any sense but merely about how a particular theory
> > fits together to produce certain results. It turns out that, to get a
> > sentence like {mi djica lo pavyseljirna} (narrow reading), we don't
> > need to have unicorns in our domain. Indeed, having them there
> > complicates matters slightly. So, what is the best derivation of the
> > narrow scope want for Lojban and how might we best indicate that,
> > differentiating it from the broad scope case?
>
> When there is a single thing in the model that is the referent of
> {lo pavyseljirna}, there is no distinction between narrow and wide
> scope.
This is simply false. No matter how many unicorns there are in the
domain, the scope problem is the same (well, I guess the list
separates the case where there are no unicorns form the others).
> One can claim that someone wants it or that someone doesn't
> want it, but it makes no sense to distinguish "a particular one of them
> is such that the person wants it" from "the person wants just any one
> of them".
Sure, if you are talking about wanting *it,* but wanting a unicorn is
not the same as wanting it, even if it is the only unicorn there is.
> When more than one thing of a kind is at stake, the distinction is
> certainly there, and I of course agree with you that the way to make
> it is to put the {su'o} quantifier either inside or outside the scope of
> some other operator. Our disagreement is not about that.
> Our
> disagreement is about whether or not we can have a model where
> a single thing is the referent of an expression with that single thing
> having a generic or type interpretation.
In fact, we haven't talked about this at all for some time, and not
very precisely even earlier. If this is what you think the arguemnt
is about, then you really need to explain what a type or a generic
interpretation of a thing is. {lo broda} refers to brodas, as you
kept insisting a few threads ago, to the several of them (how many,
which ones, even whether existent or not, not specified), not to some
one thing of which these were parts or some such relation. Has all
this changed? Why? And why would we want this unknown object in Lojban?