* Monday, 2011-09-19 at 19:17 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 10:36 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> >
> > Would you accept that "Lions are ruining my garden" is a reasonable
> > possible translation of {lo cinfo cu ca daspo lo mi purdi}?
>
> Yes.
>
> > Would you agree with Chierchia (Ch98 p.364) that "Lions are ruining my
> > garden" means that there exist some lions which are ruining my garden?
>
> Only in the sense that "I am in my garden" means that there exists
> some stage of me that is now in my garden. So yes, but not really. It
> is a posible explanation of the meaning, but in terms of things that
> were never mentioned. When I say "lions are ruining my garden" I don't
> really mean to bring individual lion manifestations into the picture,
> just as when I say "I am in my garden" I don't mean to bring stages of
> me into the picture.
I don't understand the distinction you're making here (but see below
where I guess why).
In "I am in my garden", the world is specified. So the sentence is true
iff it holds of the referent of 'I' that it is, in that world, in my
garden. Nothing else concerning 'I' is involved.
The same goes for the lions, except that there are likely many lions in
the specified world.
The derivation of this may involve going via kinds, but the kind 'lions'
ends up being irrelevant.
> > If so - that's the kind of existential quantification which we don't see
> > with {mi} or {ti}. {lo cinfo cu ca na daspa lo mi purdi} has to have as
> > as a meaning that no lions are destroying my garden.
>
> No, it doesn't have to bring individual lions into the picture.
So you really think that "lions are destroying my garden" means
something other than
\exists l. (lions_w(l) /\ destroying_w(l, [my garden])), where w is the
present world?
What are its truth conditions, then?
> It just says that if my garden is being ruined, it must be by
> something other than lions, or that if lions are ruining something, it
> must be something other than my garden, or if lions are doing
> something to my garden, it must be something other than ruining it,
> and so on. You may infer from it that no lion is ruining my garden,
> but that's not what it means.
Ah, or is it that you're introducing something too subtle for me to
understand? Are you considering as part of the meaning of a sentence
something other than its truth conditions? i.e. would you agree that the
converse of the inference you just accepted is also valid?
> > Could it be that our only point of disagreement here is that you'd
> > prefer to leave {lo cinfo} as a Kind, and have a later stage of
> > processing do the conversion to (in this case) an existential, while I'm
> > suggesting we skip the Kind stage?
>
> I don't want to introduce at any point an existential claim about
> individual lions. (If you do, you must then make exceptions for
> intensional contexts.)
What do you mean?
(I fear I know what you mean, but I'm hoping I'm wrong.)
> > Actually that can't quite be the only point of disagreement, as I'd want
> > an existential or generic reading of {lo} to be allowed in cases when
> > there's also a pure-Kind reading - e.g. "I don't like lions" vs
> > "I don't like some lions" vs "I don't like generic lions", all meaning
> > quite different things; if {lo cinfo} in {mi na nelci lo cinfo} returned
> > a Kind, it seems we'd have no way of accessing the latter two meanings,
> > since the first would take priority.
>
> Yes, "I don't like lions" takes priority. It could also mean "I don't
> like the lions" in a context where we already have some individual
> lions in the domain of discourse.
Right, OK.
So it does seem that the ontology Chierchia presents in my favourite
paper does fit rather well with your {lo} - you have it always giving
a Skolem function with values in that universe.
Similarly for {zo'e}.
Correct?
Martin
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