| I don't think that this discussion has reached definitive conclusions yet,
but I want to look at where I think we are. 1) With some hesitation, I hold that we all are clear that an attitude indicator (e.g., most of UI) is not the same as a bridi which declares that I have that attitude: {ui p} is not the same as {mi gleki le nu p}. Uttering the former is evidence for the latter, perhaps, but not equivalent to it (one could be true and the other false, for the easiest example). 2) Whenever uttered, an attitude indicator indicates an attitude toward a situation, which may be summed up in a sentence to which the attitude attaches. But need not be -- attitude indicators are complete utterances standing alone. We then may be uncertain what situation evoked the utterance and the attitude it presents. 3) Grammatically attached to a sentence which describes a situation, the attitude indicator indicates its attitude toward that situation. 4) There are two well-known, one documented, and one hypothesized relations between the attitude and its situation, the crucial divider seeming to be whether the situation involved is known to occur or not. The standard theory, which is well documented and is presented -- somewhat confusedly -- in the Book, is that some attitudes require that the situation responded to be known to occur, while others require that they not be known to occur (maybe, in some cases, that they be known not to occur). I cannot hope for or wish for something that I know to occur already, I cannot be happy for something unless I know it does occur (in at least the primary sense of "happy" -- see later). The less well-known but documented relation is one that requires the stated situation to occur but has the attitude responding to not yet determined consequences of that situation. I can learn a fact that makes me hopeful for the future, gives me hope, even though I do not, of course, hope for the fact itself. Since this situation seems complex, the logical apapratus tends in the direction of taking it as a compound, perhaps of an assertion of the occurrent situation and a separate (grammatically) attitudinal indicator. This needs some further investigation, since it may not cover the case -- and may involve more thinking that attitudinal indicators properly permit (especially if the two utterances are to be joined by a causal connective, for example). The hypothetical cases, which arise from taking some of the cases that seem to require that the occurrence of the situation not be known as derivative from the cases requiring occurrent situations by imaginative projection, suggest that some basic attitudes may also be used projectively "I would be..., if p were to occur." The identiffication of, for example, "hope" or "wish" with "I would be happy, if..." has not been demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction, nor has that pattern been convincingly generalized or separated as an indicator from bridi presentations about my emotions. So I leave this view somewhat in the background, too. 5) The present system does not successfully mark the two types of indicators it distinguishes: each of the several groups: aV, eV, iV, oV, uV, CVV contains some indicators that require the situation to have occurred and some that require that it not. In that sense then, the system is less informative than it might have been and requires simple memory to use correctly (we won't talk of reformation, since we are under a freeze). The further possible uses of indicators make the indicators within the present system ambiguous in a partiuclarly dangerous way (whether or not some claim is actually asserted or not, some situation holds or not). 6) Attitude indicators can appear anywhere in a sentence; the different positions have been used only for (not very clear) rhetorical effects so far. To remove the ambiguities claimed for indicators, the suggestion is that we restrict the positions in which an indicator can appear in a particular role: responding to an occurrent situation, projecting the situation, responding to a projected situation, responding to a possibility opened by an occrrent situation. A variety of such plans have been proposed, none to universal acclaim -- even if you omit the people who don't see that the other uses than those given in the book are real. 7) These systems open up a number of amazing possibilities, which many of us literally cannot comprehend -- and thus may resist strongly. In effect, the scheme would allow any attitudinal to function in any role. While the hypothetical form of many "simple emotions" are easy to comprehend (if hard to see as strictly attitudinal), the non-projective form of some of the projective ones (hope, wish, assume, beg) are harder. So far, convincing cases of these are lacking and , as I noted, the "unintelligibility" of some leads to resistance. But no one has come up with a convincing case that they cannot occur either. |