From Pycyn@xxx.xxx Sun Dec 12 17:39:42 1999 X-Digest-Num: 309 Message-ID: <44114.309.1700.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1999 20:39:42 EST From: Pycyn@xxx.xxx Subject: Re: More about questions and the like (was:What I have for dinner...") One names-as-predicates. It is odd semantically: names usually (certainly in English) don't have a sense, just a referent -- unlike predicates, which have both -- and the referent is an object, not a set -- as it is for predicates. On problem 2, using the nap approach makes all sentences about Pegasus true, which is as objectionable in context as the non-denoting names approach that makes them all false (or undefined). Pegasus was the winged horse but Pegasus was not a unicorn. With the xu'a approach, this sort can take place without odd readings of names and as part of a general rule about intensional operators, which we will need anyhow. As for problem one, if John doesn't know Paul as Paul, he probably does not know that he has the property is-Paul either and so not that something both is Paul and went to the party, i.e., that Paul went to the party on the one reading. On the other hand, it probably does cover the other reading, that there is something which is-Paul and John knows that it went to the party. But this does not require the odd predicate is-Paul (rather reads it as "= Paul") to work. Indeed, that is one general solution for these cases, treat "Paul" or whatever as an external "quantifier" to work in: in Lojban, set some variable to "Paul" in the prefix: "For x = Paul, John knows that x went to the party." The problem is with the name inside the the intenly waysional context, not outside. The trick is always to disambiguate in the less likely way -- when the thing involved is real. So the real trick is to know when that is. pc