From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Tue Mar 14 23:35:47 1995 From: ucleaar Date: Tue Mar 14 23:35:47 1995 Subject: Re: Truth In-Reply-To: (Your message of Sun, 12 Mar 95 06:40:15 EST.) Status: RO Message-ID: Logic soap says: > >When I look out of my window I don't see fictional people solving > >fictional crimes. I see real people solving real crimes. > >The proposition "S.H. solved many crimes" is true of the relevant > >fictional world and false of this world. > Maybe you see the world much more accurately than some others. I perceive so... > I think the line between perception and imagination is rather > arbitrary at times. I have no trouble with the predicate "solved" > applying to imaginary solvers and imaginary crimes in exactly the > same way that it applies to real solvers and real crimes. I agree with both statements. > I think that the imaginary world in such cases IS incorporated into > the 'real world'. This would make false statements true of the real world by virtue of their being imagined. That's a job for {dahi}. > Actual language use doesn't traditionally mark > all imaginary things as irrealis, as far as I know, and in fact makes > no distinction between 'real', 'perceived', and 'purely imaginary'. > I think this is due to the differences being epistemological. None of this strikes me as an impediment to defining meaning within the framework of a given epistemology. Lojban communication gets by fine without all this kerfuffle about truth and worlds. That only becomes relevant when we delve into literal, grammaticall-determined meaning, armed with truth-conditional methods. > One can treat a fictional world as an isolate from reality, but it is > much harder to isolate reality from all epistemological variations on > what is 'true'. I don't claim to be able to do it actually, but I do claim to be able to do it hypothetically, which is all that is necessary. > >For example, "I described Sherlock Holmes" can be true of the real world. > No, at least in the sense that you have talked of the real world, I > don't think you are correct. You can say "I described my idea of what > Sherlock Holmes might look like if he were real", or "I stated Doyle's > description of his character Sherlock Holmes". In Lojban terms, you can > describe losi'o da crlak. xolmez. Okay. What is the syntax of {da cerlok. xolmes}? --- And