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Re: [lojban] Re: Duty, promice etc...
On 1/5/07, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Good Austinian that I am (when convenient), the most important example
is the phrase "make a promise". While this can be taken as some sort
of figure of speech, it can usefully be taken literally, for, in the act of
promising, one creates (ex nihilo) a network of obligations which
are collectively what it means to have promised.
OK, so a promise is a network of obligations, a network of {se bilga}.
But a network of obligations is not an act of promising, nor the state I'm
in after making a promise. My problem was with identifying a promise
with the act of promising or with the state I find myself in after such an
act. I have no problem with identifying a promise as something created
in an act of promising, which would go in the x2 of {nupre}.
Promises also (in my idiolect anyhow) can expire
and be fulfilled (which would not normally apply to what is promised:
when I give the promised bike, my giving a bike is not fulfilled. it merely
occurs).
I would say that what is promised (i.e. the thing created in the act of
promising) can expire or be fulfilled, while the act of promising cannot.
The state I'm in after making a promise I suppose can expire, but it
cannot be fulfilled.
Also, promises can be conditional
even when what is promised is absolute (though this can usually be
worked either way). But back to the original, breaking a promise is
not breaking, in any apparent sense, the thing promised,
only the network of obligations.
But isn't the network of obligations the thing promised? Isn't it
{lo se nupre}?
Certainly it is not the act of making a promise that gets broken.
The state I'm in after a promise, maybe.
Notice also "Some promises are hard to keep" where the thing
promised is not something to be kept (promises are always
propositional/events -- so simple nouns have to be taken as elliptical
for propositions or events in which the referent of the noun plays
a prominent -- and predictable -- part; that's why there is {tu'a} after all).
Neither the act of making a promise nor my state after making a promise
are "kept" when I keep a promise though, so those cannot be the referents
of the noun "promise" in that case.
For some othese
("breaking a promise" especially, since it was what was asked about) we
can do without this notion of promises, as noted: "He didn't do what he
promised to" and the same probably applies on the
positive side. The case of making a promise can also, of course, be
reduced simply to promising. But the question was aboutr English
example, not how to treat them in Lojban.
Yes, and although you have thrown some light on the matter, I'm still not
convinced that the noun "promise" refers to the act of making a promise,
at least not in ordinary uses, and much less to someone's state after
having made a promise.
mu'o mi'e xorxes