From a.rosta@xxxxx.xxxx Sat Dec 11 08:46:05 1999 X-Digest-Num: 308 Message-ID: <44114.308.1687.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 16:46:05 -0000 From: "And Rosta" From: Pycyn@aol.com > > Problem 1: Given "for x, if x went to the party, then > John knows thatx went to the party" and that Paul went > to the party, we might infer "John knows that Paul > went to the party." This sentence is ambiguous and the > most likely reading (it is usually said) may well be > false. since John may never have heard of Paul as such > and may have him under a totally wrong-headed > description, so that we might never find out from John > that Paul was there, even though he knows of the man > who is in fact Paul - whoever John may think him to be > -- that he went to the party. The set of answers > solution for questions needs quite a bit of extra work > work to be addapted to indirect questions (and > propositional attitudes generally). Like including mappings > from the world to the belief worlds involved, for this one. > And several other things for the other ones. > Problem 2. From "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by > Bellerophon" being true, it is automatic to infer "There > was a winged horse" and thence "Winged horses have > existed." But they haven't. The role of xu'a or whatever > is simply to prevent these inferences in the cases where > context does not (and so should always be used, just in > case). It does not say which performative is involved, > only that it is opaquifying and that the ordinary rules > thus do not apply -- in particular, names need not > denote. The alternatives -- in a logical language -- > are to make obvious truths false or to allow truth value > gaps or to deny the usual rules; none of these are > impossible but all are unpleasant. It seems to me that both problems are avoidable by treating names as predicates (which IMO is right & proper). Hence "Paul went to the party" = "x is-Paul & x went-to-the-party" And the formula "for every x, if x went to the party, then John knows that x went to the party" thus no more entitles one to conclude "john knows that x is-Paul & x went-to-the-party" than to conclude "John knows that x is-overweight and x went-to-the-party" on the basis of "x is-overweight and x went-to-the-party" Likewise, for the second problem, "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon" = "for every x, if x is-Pegasus then x is-the-winged-horse-captured-by-Bellerophon" -- and the universal quantification doesn't license the inferences "There was a winged horse" and "Winged horses have existed." --And.