"exists in the UD" is= a terrible locution, asking for mistakes; "exists in reality" is als= o misleading, sinvce the whole UD may be in some alternate reality. I= n a fantasy story, the universe of that discourse is the things talked abou= t in that story, the things that exist in that story and the things that tu= rn out not to but are talked about anyhow: dragons on the one hand, say, an= d boogie men on the other. The author, who "exists in reality," doesn= 't exist there and isn't even in the UD.
I don't think there is a "whole= UD", certainly in the sense that there is one that covers all possibilitie= s. Even in limited cases, Iam not at all sure that what we need is a = whole UD as opposed to simply a situation (only enough bears to frighten th= e peasants, not all the bears there might be). As usual in Logic, there are nine-and-ninety ways to set all this up, and every = single one of them is right, so we don't have to decide for everyone. = Personally, I use situations and allow them to expand as the discourse pro= ceeds (Dialog Analysis, H. Kamp et al.). It is slightly less "logical= " and more "languagey", but it works out the same in the end.
{da poi do= pensi ke'a} is going to be a thought of some sort, maybe of a unicorn (but= not a unicorn in your head -- unicorns are in forests and on virgins' laps= ). It may be (I'm not sure) that in {do pensi tu'a da}, da picks up a= unicorn, but that unicorn is not necessarily one even in the present UD.I am not sure what an anonymous object is, so I don't know whether I allo= w them or not. Objects in UD tend to be pretty anonymous unless they = are assigned names or given distinctive properties. The most they hav= e in se is haeceity.

=20

From: v4h= n <me@v4hn.de>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent:= Saturday, January 19, 2013 5:47 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] da and existence
=

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 05:53:04PM -0500, Luke Bergen wrote:
> mmm, s= o it's more of an "exists in our universe of discourse" not
> necessa= rily "exists in the actual universe". Is that something like
> = correct?

Yes. That's something completely different,
but as John = pointed out, a fairly common misunderstanding.

A question remains, w= hether "our universe of discourse" here means
"the whole UD" - whatever = that means - or whether this UD is dynamic
and may change with context.<= br>I believe the latter is the case and I've only seen arguments for thedynamic answer up to now. Is there anyone, who thinks there is just
one= possible UD? If not, then I don't see any reason to discuss this. {u'i}
> And actually, in {da poi m[i] pensi ke'a} (if I am thinking about= unicorns),
> wouldn't da be assigned to "unicorns" since I'm saying = "that thing about
> which I am thinking".

Depends on whether you use an intensional or an extensional reading.
I'm sure ther= e's more than one opinion on that.
At least you're not expressing anythi= ng about the fact that {da} refers to some
unicorn/s in your head..
<= br>In my opinion it doesn't refer to unicorns, but to an object in the UDwhich only has the property that you think about it (up to now).

G= iven that John doesn't allow 'anonymous objects' w.r.t. the UD
"in the s= emantics game", he has to provide a different answer.

v4hn