Re: On {lo} and existence

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

And:
> > Ok, now to probe further. Does every utterance (use of a well formed
> > sentence) determine a unique proposition? Or are there other factors
> > that intervene?
> Every utterance not containing a +specific reference determines a
> unique proposition. Utterances containing a +specific reference
> determine a unique but incomplete proposition.

So you are saying that the determination of the referent comes
from some factor external to the utterance.

> Propositions not determined by the grammar can be derived from
> these complete or incomplete propositions that are determined by
> the grammar.

And this is the pragmatic step, I suppose, that requires something
absent in the utterance in order to extract the final "meaning".

> > What kind of proposition does something like {ai mi klama} determine?
>
> I'm not sure whether the focus of your question is on {ai} or on {mi},
> or on the empty tersumti of {klama}.

It was on {ai}, but the others are interesting as well.

> (i) {mi}: Assuming deictics are -specific, we have:
>        Ex utter(x,this-utterance)
> (ii) empty tersumti: since these are not necessarily -specific, the
> proposition determined by the utterance is incomplete.
> (iii) {ai}: I think this means that once we have decided how to fill
> the empty places of the predicate Klama, the resulting predication is
> claimed to be true of the world of your intentions:
>    true(proposition345,world-of-Jorge's-intentions,1)
> And this predication is in turn claimed to be true of the universe
> of discourse.

So:
     true(proposition346,universe-of-discourse,1)

And I won't ask you in what universe is that last one claimed to be
true, or we may never get to the end of it.

I think going to that first true(,,) proposition is already too much.
I prefer to stay at worst with something like:
        intend(mi,la'e this-utterance)
If we start postulating true() claims, we never get to the bottom
of it.

> > If meaning enters, why couldn't a more sophisticated grammatical
> > analysis detect irony as well?
>
> Because irony isn't determined by grammatical rules. Grammatical
> analysis detects that which grammatical rules have determined.

That's very explicative, thank you  :)

What if there was an attitudinal that meant "irony" (zo'o in some cases,
perhaps). We can't let tone of voice be a part of Lojban, but why can't
it be a part of grammar for an ordinary language? As well as many other
cues that a better grammar might be able to pick up from the context.

> > > First, even if we have determined the context, and can therefore
> > > establish the x3 of true(proposition3234,world2,?), the resulting
> > > truth value doesn't inhere to proposition3234.
> > It doesn't matter. The utterance still has a well defined truth value,
> > even if it is not inherent to its proposition, it is inherent to the
> > utterance.
> I still don't think this is so. If the grammatically-determined meaning
> doesn't include a specification of which world fills x2 of True, then
> the speaker(s) and every hearer of the utterance are free to pick
> a different world as x2, with resulting variation in what the truth
> value in x3 will be.

What type of utterances do have the world place filled? You said that
one with {ai} has that place filled. What about one with no attitudinals?
How can you tell whether the world place has been filled? Is there any
utterance for which it is clear from the grammar, or is it always
pragmatics?  (My answer is that there is no such thing as a world place,
and utterances always refer to the universe of discourse, but I want
to know how you determine that world place.)

> I'll discuss the following example:
>
>    A: Do you want a cigarette?
>    B: I don't smoke.
>
> Step 1: Grammatical rules will derive from B's utterance the incomplete
> proposition "not smoke(B,?)" [let's assume "omitted sumti" in English
> work as in Lojban].
> Step 2: The incomplete proposition must be completed by anyone
> comprehending it. E.g. "not Ex smoke(B,x)".
> Step 3: The comprehender decides which world to associate the completed
> proposition to. E.g. R, the real world.
> Step 4: The comprehender draws inferences until some proposition
> relevant to the context is hit upon. E.g. "If B doesn't smoke then
> B won't want a cigarette. B doesn't smoke. Therefore B doesn't want
> a cigarette." "B doesn't want a cigarette" is the relevant proposition.
>
> These steps form a logical though not a procedural sequence.
>
> Assignment of a truth value can come only after Step 3. In principle
> the truth value a proposition gets is an objective matter, independent
> of the comprehender or of further interpretations made in Step 4.

Ok. I see what you are saying. Then truth values in general are quite
useless for the process of comunication. What matters is the relevant
truth value, which is the truth value of the proposition in the relevant
world. Obviously the speaker has one world in mind, and the comunication
succeeds if the comprehender calculates the truth value in that world.
Otherwise, the comprehender didn't comprehend all that well.

So let me define the truth value of an utterance as the truth value
of the proposition derived from it, in the world intended by the
speaker. (To use your language. In my language, the speaker and the
comprehender have a contract that says that their utterances should
be taken in the universe of discourse, and there are no true() claims
being made, only the basic propositions are claimed.)

> They don't give utterances truth values, because utterances don't
> have truth values. Propositions have truth values, but that doesn't
> mean that entertaining a proposition necessitates computing its
> truth value.

Of course not. It may be that one assumes its truth, in the case one
is being informed of something. What _is_ necessary is understanding
what it means that the proposition is true (or false). If the proposition
is understood, that means that one understands what it means for the
proposition to be true or to be false. If one has previous information
that conflicts with the proposition being true, the one will tend to
believe that it is false (or discard the previous information, or keep
both but knowing that one must be false). In any case, it is important
to know what it means for the proposition to be true.

So for the comprehender to have successfully understood the speaker
he must have selected a world, and thus been able to understand
what it means for the proposition to be true in that world. That is
what I call *the* truth value. It may or may not be known, but it is
well defined.

> I think we can talk about *the* truth value of a proposition if this
> value is an infinite set of pairs matching worlds to values between 0
> and 1.

I don't much care about that one. The important one is the truth value
of the utterance, as I defined above. For communication to succeed,
all those matching other worlds are quite irrelevant.

> By this definition of truth value, we could then say that only Step 2
> can result in two people hearing the same utterance coming up with
> different completed propositions which may then have different truth
> values. So if Step 2 can be skipped, if the utterance contains
> only overt -specific sumti, then it becomes possible to associate
> such an utterance with a truth value.

Yes, but not very useful. The only one of interest is the one
corresponding to the speaker's intended world, which hopefully was
correctly aprehended by the comprehender.

> > My position now is that I would like that {ro nu broda cu fasnu}.
> > Otherwise, if it is decided that {ro nu broda na fasnu}, then
>
> = {naku ro nu broda cu fasnu}, yes?

Yes.

> > that should be equivalent to {ro da'inai nu broda na fasnu}, so that
> > there is no exception in the use of {da'i}.
>
> You understand me right. I won't accept your view, because a potential
> event is indistinguishable from a dahi event. If {nu} is inherently
> {dahi}, then using an overt {dahinai} will not override the inherent
> {dahi}, thus ruling out a way to restrict {nu} only to actually
> happening events.

I'm against {nu} being {da'i} then, inherently or implicitly.

(I don't think the "other worlds" picture is very helpful, though.
I find it very misleading, especially when considering predicates like
{xanri}. I wonder in what world are such propositions to be evaluated.)

Jorge