On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 05:53:04PM -0500, Luke Bergen wrote:
> mmm, so it's more of an "exists in our universe of discourse" not
> necessarily "exists in the actual universe". Is that something like
> correct?
Yes. That's something completely different,
but as John pointed out, a fairly common misunderstanding.
A question remains, whether "our universe of discourse" here means
"the whole UD" - whatever that means - or whether this UD is dynamic
and may change with context.
I believe the latter is the case and I've only seen arguments for the
dynamic answer up to now. Is there anyone, who thinks there is just
one possible UD? If not, then I don't see any reason to discuss this. {u'i}
> And actually, in {da poi m[i] pensi ke'a} (if I am thinking about unicorns),
> wouldn't da be assigned to "unicorns" since I'm saying "that thing about
> which I am thinking".
Depends on whether you use an intensional or an extensional reading.
I'm sure there's more than one opinion on that.
At least you're not expressing anything about the fact that {da} refers to some
unicorn/s in your head..
In my opinion it doesn't refer to unicorns, but to an object in the UD
which only has the property that you think about it (up to now).
Given that John doesn't allow 'anonymous objects' w.r.t. the UD
"in the semantics game", he has to provide a different answer.
v4hn
Attachment:
pgpd_C9CGJo1S.pgp
Description: PGP signature