In a message dated 2/13/2001 1:52:20 PM Central Standard Time,
lojbab@lojban.org writes:
But can I ask one clarifying
question? Regardless of whatever imaginary world you may be considering,
when you express an utterance it is evaluated in only one world which may
be real or imaginary, right? A given statement is either true or false,
things exist or they do not exist. Right?
The problem with "imaginary worlds" is that merely posing them suggests to
some people including myself, that the invocation of possible worlds
invokes ALL possible worlds at once, so that therefore unicorns both exist
and not exist at one time, and all truths dependent on the conditions and
existences of the world are indeterminant (i.e. only logical
contradictions are invalid).
Yes, a statement is evaluated at one world at a time. Talking about them
brings them all about (whichever ones you have in mind to have, anyhow) but
when it comes to evaluation, all but one are buried in quatifications like
"possible" etc. So, in this world it is presumably possible that unicorns
exist (they do in some possible worlds) and also that they do (others,
including this one, don't have ''em) but the claim that both situation si
possible is evaluated just in this world.
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