RE: More about questions and the like (was:What I have for dinner...")

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@xxxxx.xxxx]

> From: Pycyn@aol.com
> 
> Problem 1: Given "for x, if x went to the party, then 
> John knows thatx went to the party" and that Paul went 
> to the party, we might infer "John knows that Paul 
> went to the party." This sentence is ambiguous and the 
> most likely reading (it is usually said) may well be 
> false. since John may never have heard of Paul as such 
> and may have him under a totally wrong-headed 
> description, so that we might never find out from John 
> that Paul was there, even though he knows of the man 
> who is in fact Paul - whoever John may think him to be 
> -- that he went to the party. The set of answers 
> solution for questions needs quite a bit of extra work 
> work to be addapted to indirect questions (and 
> propositional attitudes generally). Like including mappings 
> from the world to the belief worlds involved, for this one. 
> And several other things for the other ones.
> Problem 2. From "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by 
> Bellerophon" being true, it is automatic to infer "There 
> was a winged horse" and thence "Winged horses have 
> existed." But they haven't. The role of xu'a or whatever 
> is simply to prevent these inferences in the cases where 
> context does not (and so should always be used, just in 
> case). It does not say which performative is involved, 
> only that it is opaquifying and that the ordinary rules 
> thus do not apply -- in particular, names need not 
> denote. The alternatives -- in a logical language -- 
> are to make obvious truths false or to allow truth value 
> gaps or to deny the usual rules; none of these are 
> impossible but all are unpleasant.

It seems to me that both problems are avoidable by treating
names as predicates (which IMO is right & proper).

Hence 

"Paul went to the party" 
= "x is-Paul & x went-to-the-party"

And the formula "for every x, if x went to the party, then 
John knows that x went to the party" thus no more entitles
one to conclude

"john knows that x is-Paul & x went-to-the-party"

than to conclude

"John knows that x is-overweight and x went-to-the-party"

on the basis of

"x is-overweight and x went-to-the-party"

Likewise, for the second problem, 

"Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon" 
= "for every x, if x is-Pegasus then x 
is-the-winged-horse-captured-by-Bellerophon"

-- and the universal quantification doesn't license the
inferences "There was a winged horse" and "Winged horses have 
existed." 

--And.