No, this misunderstands a basic distinction in Lojban between ass= ertions and the rest and is just wrong for the function of words like {ai} = and {ui}. There is a difference between being disingenuous and = lying and that appears in the difference between saying {ui} and {mi = gleki} when I am not happy: the first may be misleading but is not false (s= ince not an assertion), the second is an assertion and is false. Mixi= ng the two up, as people have been doing for 55 years in Logjam, is a basic= logical mistake and the source of a large number of stupid arguments on th= e relevant lists (this may be one of them). The source is, of course, = the English habit of not distinguishing the two verbally, one among many of= the reasons for designing Logjam. I am unclear what a truth function= that takes a person as an argument might be; typically they take a sentenc= e in a particular frame, which does indeed contain the speaker as a relevan= t factor (the referent of "I", for example), but not a direct argument.&nbs= p; to be sure, the adequacy condition on a truth function applied to "I am = happy" requires that the referent of "I", the speaker, be in the class of h= appy persons, but that is a another matter. There is no truth functio= n that takes {ui} as an argument, whether or not there is some function tha= t takes the speaker as an argument.

{ai} is a harder case, because s= ometimes we rely peoples expressed intentions (not, it seems, on the intent= ion to go, though one can build cases that are as significant as the intetion to give a million). Not fulfilling those expectations can c= ause very bad feeling, even, in certain cases, law suits or the like, or vi= olence. But that does not mean that the expression of the intention w= as a lie, even if it was misleading. It may not even be disingenuous,= as xorxes points out, being what the speaker intended at the time, before = he changed his mind -- or discovered that his fortune had disappeared or ..= . Promising to give someone the moon may be over the top or met= aphorical, but it isn't false (nor true neither), at most it is insincere a= nd unfulfillable (as of now, at least -- there is a treaty on that isn't th= ere?) And, there are more ways to deceive than by lying.

From: = Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com>
= To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2012 9:32 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] {.au}/{djica}=3D{.a= i}/{?}. No gismu for intention

O= n Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 6:52 PM, Jorge Llamb=EDas <jjllambias@gmail.com> wro= te:

At least no claim or assertion can do it, but you can use a
proposition for other purposes than making claims. "ca'e" is supposed
to mark a sentence as a performative (despite its gloss), so if you
say "ca'e mi jarco lo nu mi brodu lo nu klama"; "I hereby express my
intention to go", you are thereby expressing an intention to go. So
".ai" could be taken as an abreviated form of "ca'e mi jarco lo nu mi
brodu". Similarly for other attitudinals, "ui" is similar to "ca'e mi
jarco lo nu mi gleki", "I hereby display my happiness", and so on.
(The wordy form doesn't quite have the same practical effect though.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes

I would think that ".ui" simply means "I am h= appy", not "I display my happiness". Either way, if the speaker is ac= tually unhappy, I think that we have to admit that he is being disingenuous= to his audience if he utters ".ui" with no hint of irony. Because of= this, I think these attitudinals are as truth-functional as any brivla: th= ey evaluate to a real truth value given two arguments: the speaker and the = proposition that the attitudinal is embedded in. Obviously it's hard to kno= w if a person is truthful in the expression of his own feelings, but there = are sometimes signs, and the truth value of such expressions are still ther= e, however hidden.

Even more so in the case with the irrealis attitudinals. If I say= ".ai [I am giving you a million bucks tomorrow]" when I know that I am ban= krupt and all my banking accounts are overdrawn then clearly I am lying to = you. ".ai mi dunda la lunra do" is simply (literally) false when utte= red by any non-delusional interlocutor.

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