From jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:46:41 2010 From: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU Subject: Re: On {lo} and existence Date: Sat Mar 25 13:37:13 1995 Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Sat Mar 25 13:37:13 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Message-ID: And: > > I'm lost again. Are there propositions independently of there being > > a world (or worlds)? > I guess so. They're like numbers. They just exist. There are no conditions > on their existence, and so no circumstances under which a given proposition > does not exist. Well, that may be true for tautologies, because you don't need to understand more than the logical connectors to understand them. But how can that be so for other propositions? How can there be something like a proposition associated with "da blanu" without a world where the word "blanu" makes sense to the speakers of the language? I guess that what I'm saying is that I don't believe in primitive predicates other than as a convention among speakers. What I understand you to be saying is that at least some predicates must somehow be there independently of the world and the speakers. Otherwise, what is a proposition without predicates? (I grant you that tautologies are like numbers, in that it doesn't matter what the predicate {blanu} is in order to know that {roda blanu gi'anai blanu} is true. But for non-empty propositions, you need the speakers in order for the proposition to arise. Without them, you don't have a convention for the predicates, and you don't have a proposition. Unless {broda} has meaning, {da broda} can't give a proposition, I hope you agree.) > > Consider a simple sentence: {da blanu}. How can you associate a proposition > > to it unless you know the meaning of the word "blanu"? How can this word > > have meaning without there being a world out there (with real and imaginary > > components) with things that satisfy the predicate or don't? > Am I saying otherwise? Maybe you are, I don't know. Do you agree that propositions don't arise without there being a language? And that there is no language without a world which contains the referents of arguments and the conventional meanings of predicates? What else is the language if not this "list" of referents and predicates? > > You talk of "proposition634" as if it had a referent outside the world, > > but to me the world consists of all referents, so the referent of > > "proposition634" cannot be outside of it, by definition of world. Are you > > using a more restricted definition of "world"? > I don't think of a proposition having a referent. I didn't say it had. I said that "proposition634" has a referent, and that is the entity that you say is like a number. That's all. I'm not saying that that entity in turn must have some other referent. I'm just saying that that entity, just like numbers, is a constituent of the world. In other words, {da} can take it as a value. > It's more like a > state of affairs, an it-being-the-case-that-p. It's not a kind of > sentence. I know it's not a kind of sentence, but it is an "it", as proved by that last sentence of yours. It is some entity, and therefore it is a part of the world as I understand it. > And I am using a more restricted definition of "world" than > you - a world contains only real things. Including numbers? What does that definition of world buy you in terms of explaining the grammar? What do you do with references to non-real things? Can there be such references in speech? By "the world" I mean all the things that can be values of {da}. If you exclude something from that, how do you refer to that something? How do you talk about it? (If you define your worlds differently, what use are they in describing the grammar?) > But I don't think that makes > much difference, for while you say no proposition can be outside *the* > world, I would say no proposition is outside every world. If you're > happier merging my infinite multiplicity of worlds into one, that's okay. I wonder how you would translate that into Lojban. In what world would you evaluate that sentence? Can you talk in one world about other worlds? If yes, then are there things that can't be values of the unrestricted {da}? For that sentence to make sense, "your infinite multiplicity of worlds" must have a referent in this world. So at least they are merged in this world. You deny that there is only *the* world, but you assume it in your speech. Unless there are worlds of which we cannot talk about, but by mentioning them I am talking about them, so that doesn't help. > > How do you determine whether a referent is or is not in the world? > You inspect the only-real world. And what does that tell you? Once you've determined that a referent is not in the only-real world, what do you do with it in terms of grammar? I don't have any problem with the concept of non-real worlds. I just don't see how that concept is useful as a grammar tool. The ultimate (and conventional) meaning of predicates must belong in the all encompassing world. > > In your proposition true(prop23, world73, 1), are the referents of > > "prop23" and "world73" in the same world? > They don't have referents. Prop23 is in world73. What are you talking about, then? For "Prop23 is in world73" to be meaningful, there has to be something that is prop23 and something that is world73. Otherwise it's like saying "gsrw is in ncksy", not very informative. > Lest it is not dazzlingly obvious, I shd point out that I am pretty much > making most of this stuff up as I go along (tho it nonetheless makes sense > to me). My situation exactly. > I'm not bringing to bear long hours or years of thought on the > question, and nor am I bringing to bear much more than short minutes > of reading on the question. Me too. :) > I share the fairly mainstream view that > as far as psychologically real accounts of meaning go, truth-conditionality > is a sometimes methodologically useful fiction, the philosophical > underpinnings of which aren't terribly important. Whatever, but before you evaluate a truth-condition, you need to understand the meaning of the predicate. In natlangs, this meaning is almost always context-sensitive. I believe that will be the case for Lojban as well. I don't see any indication of there being some absolute predicates that we can take as reference to evaluate truth conditions. What I'm not clear about is whether, in that methodological fiction that you mention, you assume there to be such absolute predicates. In any case, Lojban selbri are not them. > But, all that said, I'm happy to continue this thread. So am I, unless people are already saturated. Jorge