RE: Re: Subjunctives

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@pmail.net>]

> From: Pycyn@aol.com
>
[....]
> The perfective seems to involve relevance conditions, which are one of the
> hairiest problems in possible world games (of which tense is one in the logic
> business).  For the contrary to fact cases being discussed, the best course
> is to say every world exactly like this one except for the condition named in
> the protasis (if....) and whatever is required by that change.  So, clearly,
> changing the world by having me possess a million just requires that I also
> be shifted into the class of rich folk (I think -- a million just ain't what
> it was anymore) and maybe nothing or very little else.  Or does it: can I
> have a million and still be a retired professor from a really cheap
> university?  Don't have to have had some source for that million and if so
> what?  So maybe the worlds can vary on the ways I got the million.  But if
> they vary too much, I come to doubt that this is still me they are talking
> about.  And, if I start to vary too much, does this not affect others around
> me (wives and childen, etc., at least and students and colleagues and....).
> Where does it end?  Cut it off too soon and the world so little changed is
> greatly changed (a retired professor gets a mill out of the blue); let it run
> too far and it no longer seems to apply to me (or to be about this sort of
> world at all).
> Probably all that the original really means is that anyone with a million is
> rich, perhaps with the added wish that I were one such.  (And, of course, if
> I were as rich as Rothschild, I'd be richer than Rothschild.)
> Talk of possible worlds really brings up a point about my favorite (and
> everybody else's least favorite) change, restricted quantification.

Can you tell my why it's your favourite change (and others' least favourite,
too)? I've been planning to read up on arguments pro r.q., and your views
would be helpful. The only argument I'm aware of so far is that r.q. better
preserves the correspondence between logical and linguistic form.

> As
> Xorxes points out, "for every possible world w, if I have a million in w,
> then I am rich in w" could be true just because there is no possible world in
> which I have a million -- hardly an improvement on the material reading in
> this world.  On the other hand "in every possible world in which I have a
> million, w, I am rich in w" looks only at the worlds in which I have a
> muillion -- and says that there are some.

I didn't take Jorge to have said quite that. But anyway, is it really the
case that "every possible world in which I have a million" entails that
there is such a world?

> Clearly the latter is much closer to what is wanted, though even it may not
> be quite right (Lojban has the means to do this, but does not use it for
> this purpose).

I presume the means you have in mind is the "da poi ke'a" construction?

--And.